Germany Week 4

This week was good in many respects. We finished up lot 1 of parts this week @ the plant. Next week we will begin to build 4 crash cars. These will be used of course to use in crash tests to validate structural integrity and make necessary changes before the car goes into production. We had a visit this week from Phil Johnson, one of our V.P.s He said they had recently met with Bill Taylors boss and were very encouraged by what they heard. The company is committed to research and development and new products to be on schedule. This will allow us to be ready to meet demand and have successful rampups when the economy improves.
Saturday morning Thomas Supper picked me up @ 9 a.m. and we went to his house for breakfast. He and his wife speak pretty good english and his 2 daughters take english in school. His daughters are Catalina 11 and Natalie 9. Thomases wife Suzanna is from Brazil. After breakfast we went to a protestatant church in their neighborhood to clean the building. Suzanna is the custodian at the church and they had an activity the night before. We moved all the chairs and mopped the floor and put all the chairs back in place for Sunday morning. Sounds familiar huh. Thomas and 5 of his friends have season tickets to the Stuttgart football *soccer* games. One of the group was not able to go so he invited me to go with them. Thomas was the only one who spoke any english but I had a great time. It was however very cold at the game. Stuttgart beat Dartmund 2 to 1. So we all were very happy. Thomas said if we had lost the game I could never come to another game. Lucky for me huh. He also gave me a Stuttgart cap. They won the champiohship in 2007. He said after the game 250,000 fans partied all night in the streets of Stuttgart. Germany had never seen anything like it.
We plan to go back in June to visit his family and have a barbeque. I was amazed that even though they allow smoking in the stadium it was much cleaner than our stadiums in the U.S. When you buy a cup of beer or cola you pay a 50 cent deposit on the cup and get it back when you return it to the concession stands. Thomas took a back pack in with us and we had coffee and snops at half time. Well most of us anyway. I had an opportunity to talk about the church when Thomas and Suzanna asked why I did not drink coffee or tea. Also before I left home Anne challenged me to read the Book of Mormon while I am here. I have made good progress, have read 260 pages so far. I also am doing stepups and pushups each day in my room to try to get in shape a little since we do so much walking. Today will be for relaxing and watching some movies. We are halfway through, be home in less than 4 weeks. See ya soon. Love to everyone, Dad.