Castles and Kickboxing

Jess and I ventured out today to investigate Bad Homburg on our own. We've been there with our neighbors (for Christmas market) and during the new teacher orientation (back in early August). The pictures above are of the castle (or schloss) and the surrounding gardens and lake. We hiked around part of the lake today on our way up to the schloss where we enjoyed a piece of mandarin cake and a cup of hot tea. Imagine the scenery at 20 degrees F and covered with snow. The lake is frozen and people were walking across it (which freaks me out a little so I stayed on the path). After tea and thawed toes, we went on to the shopping area (closed on Sunday but we were only on an investigatory trip anyway).

We took the train to Bad Homburg and took a bus back to Oberursel. On the way out of town we laughed as we realized our 15-20 minutes walk from the train station to the castle and shopping area could have been 5 minutes if we'd known where we were going. But, next time we will :).

I'm getting ready to make a big pot of soup and a fellow ESL teacher is coming over at 6 to eat with us.

On a side note - I started a kickboxing exercise class last Tuesday and could hardly walk the next day I was so sore. Sigh! The instructor is the husband of my school's secretary and an extremely nice (and fit) individual. He kept encouraging all of us to keep going (as those types always do). However, when I felt as if I would puke, I stopped and walked around for a bit. "Don't quit, you can do it!" I almost threw the hand weights at him! I'm going back Tuesday for more as I most definitely need to feel pukish and weak again.