Polish Pottery Trip

Amber and I had to try to make the most of her last few months in Germany. We both had been wanting to make the trip to Poland to shop for pottery and see the sights. She found the most amazing guesthouse to stay at, the Blue Beetroot. The story goes: there was a time that alcohol was banned. farmer of this place used to smuggle alcohol underneath the beets that he took to market. One day the cart went out of control and rolled into the lake, beets, alcohol and all. Occasionally, a beet will float to the surface and magically it is soaked through with alcohol. Regardless of the truth of the myth, it was a beautiful place to stay. I'm not sure I've every shopped so much in my life! We must have gone to about 7 different shops. Most of them had new stuff, but some were very close in their patterns and it was a bit boring after awhile. That didn't matter though because we just had so much fun together filling my entire care with pottery. I even had the chance to speak Korean with a couple of women who were shopping! I listened in and once I determined they were speaking Korean I snuck in the few words I knew....it was so cool to speak Korean in Poland!

On our way home we stopped at Buchenwald concentration camp. It was a bit out of the way, but we both agreed it would be worth it and boy was it ever. It was extremely sobering to walk where so many had died. It was also exhausting because all the exhibits were in German and I had to spend so much time translating. We finally just stuck to looking at the pictures. The ironic part was all the letters that were written in English were translated into German, but not vice versa. At Buchenwald the most moving aspect is the zoo that the Nazi soldiers built just outside the fence.

The "prisoners" were a zoo on one side and the animals were a zoo on the other side. The animals were probably fed better when you consider the deplorable conditions the people were forced to live in. Also, it is situated on a hill so it was impossible the villagers below didn't know what was going on above them. Yet when the camp was liberated and the villagers were force to walk through, many of them were astonished at what they saw.

Beja, Portugal

Okay, I know I'm bad about updating and this is actually from quite awhile ago, but I had the opportunity to go to Beja, Portugal and it was gorgeous! It's not a place we normally get to go for trips so I jumped at the chance to be on the crew. We had great missions and even better freetime. We just walked downtown, although it was quite a hike.

We visited a castle in the center of town....I know, how amazing, a castle in Europe! It was cool because you could see from the top of it and there was a bull fighting ring down the street. Also, there was a Geo cache sight on top of the castle as well. I'm not really into the geocaching scene, but one of the guys was so we went to find it. Apparently there were quite a few in the area, but I only found the one. I was, of course, there with a really great group of people who were willing to take lots of pictures and go see all the historic sites with me!

Whenever we fly we practice Emergency Procedures so we will know what to do if the real thing ever happens. We decided to have a photo shoot. This is what our oxygen masks look like. With them on we are capable of still talking on the radio so even if we have a fire or loss of pressure we can still safely control aircraft. Not that we ever would have to do this in real life of course, but it's important that you practice it as often as possible so if the time EVER comes that you need to do it for real you won't hesitate.