friday friday

Friday was mainly spent touring Lancaster and seeing the Amish.  We had some ice cream with whole milk in it and it was so thick...it was a meal.  We looked in the Bird-in-Hand farmers markets and shops and learned theat the stars on the houses meant to bring good luck.

We then took a buggy ride from Aron and Jessica's buggy ride company. We did have to wait for a few minutes but the ride was worth it. There was a little guy with his grandpa's rooster.  The Wardlings were amazed by the rooster.  The buggy driver was an Amish youth who hadn't joined the Amish faith as of yet. He was quite the instructor. We learned the Dutch is the Amish's first language, then English, and then German.  All the sermons are in German, but they don't learn German until school.  School only goes to the 8th grade and the teacher only has an 8th grade education herself and is typically 16-17 years old.  There is a one roomed school house, only 30 students and there is a school house for every 1 mile radius. The Amish think that an 8th grade education is high enough to live as a farmer.  They can go to a doctor, but cannot be one themselves. Also- @ the age of 16, the youth are given a choice whether or not to join the church.  They can go wild...but once they decide top join the religion and do those things, then they'll be shunned.

Their way of life is interesting to me.  It seemed to me that they tended to split hairs.  They live without electricity, because they don't want to be connected to anyone.  However, they have generators and solar panels to have a refridgerator and stoves.  They also have cell phones.  Which was explained that since the school house shooting, they felt it was necessary and since they aren't connected to anyone, it was ok.

Jacob had quite the time on the buggy.  After the ride, he goes into this story... He said..."Mom the horse lifted his tail and his butthole was this big and then it got this big (with a show of hands) and then, he pooped out big poops!"

Then we drove by an Amish auction and Erin said, "I think it is cool that these people are dressed up like Amish people."  We then explained that they weren't dressed up as Amish, they were Amish.

Once we were finished touring, we had a slight detour to Carlisle, PA.  Expedia totally screwed our reservations up.  We stayed in a less than pleasant place, with the next to smallest pool Josh had ever seen.  We didn't sleep very well, and since we have a big family we ended up getting 2 rooms, but they were across the hall from each other rather than being next to each other. The hallway smelled of armpit and smoke. Nice huh?!