A cloister, pretzels, chocolate, and a maze

Part of the reason I had to do observations on Wednesday was because I knew I was taking the kids on a few field trips on Friday. Originally Paul was going to join us, but this week he'll again be homeschooling the kids Tuesday through Thursday. This meant if had he joined us on the field trips Friday and tomorrow and time in Maryland with my sister's family yesterday and today, he would have been away from work for eight days straight. He hasn't been in this house in Maryland since December 2015, and it means he didn't spend any time with the Towfighis this year (the kids and I came down here three times over their four month visit to the US). The fact that I was out the door at 7am to observe student teachers and again at 7:00 on Friday to drive to Ephrata meant that I only exercised once this week - Monday. Once the schedule gets back to normal, I am sure I will get back to using the elliptical 3-4 times a week.

Our first stop yesterday was the Ephrata Cloister. We spent almost three hours there. It was built in the 1730's. We did all of the learning stations with the exception of "God's acre" (the cemetery). The tour of the Sister's House (where the women lived) and Meetinghouse was the most informative. Nadia always loves the time spent in a one room schoolhouse. We all decided we would *not* have wanted to become a member of the Cloister. They slept on a wooden bench with small wood block for their pillow. They slept from 9pm to midnight and 2am to 5am each day. They thought the Lord was returning during their lifetimes, and they thought he'd come between midnight at 2am, so they had a prayer service every night from midnight to 2am. Ian made the comment to me that when the Lord comes it will be a different time all over the earth. The other reason the kids said they'd never have wanted to join this group was because they only ate one meal a day. One of their claims to fame is that they published 1,000 copies of the 1,500+ page long Martyr's Mirror book, which was the longest book published in the United States prior to the Revolutionary War.

After we finished exploring the Cloister, we ate the lunches we packed as we drove to the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Factory for a tour. This is the oldest hard pretzel factory in the US; it was founded in 1861. We weren't able to eat the soft pretzel that we rolled and twisted, but they did give each of us a little bag of Tom Sturgis hard pretzels. I learned that pretzels are brown because they are dipped in sodium hydroxide, otherwise they'd stay the same color as they look in their dough form. The pretzel factory is in Lititz. There is a chocolate factory very close to the pretzel factory so we made a brief stop there. There wasn't a tour, but we were able to watch some candy being made and they give out free samples of their Wilbur Chocolate Buds (either milk or dark chocolate). They must have liked the samples because Nadia and Oliver used some of their money to buy more of them. Nadia likes white chocolate and dark chocolate better than milk chocolate so she bought dark chocolate ones. I myself vastly prefer milk chocolate to dark or white chocolate. The only kind Paul likes is white chocolate. Then we drove to Maryland. After playing with their cousins, we had dinner at McDonald's and then went to a corn maze. I don't like corn mazes in the daylight, and doing one in the dark sounded terrifying to me. Wesley (who recently learned how to walk) and I skipped the corn maze. Yesterday and today we stayed at the Towfighi's home all day (aside from going to church this morning). Tomorrow we're headed to Mount Vernon and then home sweet home.