We continued our second day with a bus tour of Amish farm country with a few stops at some key shops (quilt, ice cream and pretzels). Our driver is himself a Mennonite and lives right here, so we got some first-hand knowledge of this area and what it's like to live here.
We're glad that we did the Amish Village earlier in the day because that gave us a better perspective of an Amish family's life ... and then with the bus driver giving us his personal experiences (apparently his parents were Amish), we got a lot more out of the bus tour.
The obligatory stops along this 2-hour tour were fine ... the first one was the most impressive and tempting! ... the quilting shop. This shop is owned and operated by the driver's family ... but OH! the things we saw. All of the items are hand made, of course, and it is unfathomable to me how much skill, time and patience goes into the making of these quits. Some were truly exquisite! We figured on average that it takes 400-500 hours of work to complete one quilt ... and that's if you're highly skilled and know what your doing so that you're not wasting time.
What's a "quillow"?
It's a quilt that is also a pillow .... you've got to see these things!
The quilt is about the size and shape of a very large sleeping bag. When you fold it up and tuck in some extra flap or something you actually get a pillow - like the kind you would use on your sofa.
How cool is that!
Well, the wife bought one and the boy got one for himself as well. And the price is almost like cost ... 35 bucks for this thing.
We ate a smorgasbord dinner ... that was fine - we're used to these kinds of buffets, so this wasn't really any new adventure ... except that the food, of course, was all local style cuisine.
After dinner we took in our second show at the Sight and Sound theater ... this one about Abraham and Sarah. It was a good show, although no where near as good or as spectacular as In The Beginning (the one we saw our first night here). Once again, the entire show ... its focus, the script, the songs, the whole shabang ... suffered from some very thin theology. Unfortunate ... because the story is filled with so many layers of all sorts of meetings and prototypes ... in fact, I read and study with my 8th grade students the passage of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. There's Melchizedek, there's the account of Lot and his wife, the whole covenantal relationship between God and his people through Abraham, and the list goes on and on and on.
It's just that this show focused only on one simple theme of remaining faithful to God through everything.
Hey! That's a GREAT lesson and one definitely worth hearing and seeing and contemplating ... don't get me wrong. Like I said, it just seemed awfully thin.
And this one wasn't so much a musical as it was a 'play with music' ... there were songs, of course, but they sure didn't seem as well integrated into the story or with the characters as it seemed in the first show we saw. And that was too bad because both the lead actors had some rather incredible voices. And the songs were a tad bit more preachy ... not so much pushy ... but just a bit 'preachy' in their message.
All in all, though, a really great evening.
Probably the best part of the entire day was when we were all getting ready for bed and the boy gave to both wifey and I a thanks ... that he had a really good day.
THAT was worth everything!
We're glad that we did the Amish Village earlier in the day because that gave us a better perspective of an Amish family's life ... and then with the bus driver giving us his personal experiences (apparently his parents were Amish), we got a lot more out of the bus tour.
The obligatory stops along this 2-hour tour were fine ... the first one was the most impressive and tempting! ... the quilting shop. This shop is owned and operated by the driver's family ... but OH! the things we saw. All of the items are hand made, of course, and it is unfathomable to me how much skill, time and patience goes into the making of these quits. Some were truly exquisite! We figured on average that it takes 400-500 hours of work to complete one quilt ... and that's if you're highly skilled and know what your doing so that you're not wasting time.
What's a "quillow"?
It's a quilt that is also a pillow .... you've got to see these things!
The quilt is about the size and shape of a very large sleeping bag. When you fold it up and tuck in some extra flap or something you actually get a pillow - like the kind you would use on your sofa.
How cool is that!
Well, the wife bought one and the boy got one for himself as well. And the price is almost like cost ... 35 bucks for this thing.
We ate a smorgasbord dinner ... that was fine - we're used to these kinds of buffets, so this wasn't really any new adventure ... except that the food, of course, was all local style cuisine.
After dinner we took in our second show at the Sight and Sound theater ... this one about Abraham and Sarah. It was a good show, although no where near as good or as spectacular as In The Beginning (the one we saw our first night here). Once again, the entire show ... its focus, the script, the songs, the whole shabang ... suffered from some very thin theology. Unfortunate ... because the story is filled with so many layers of all sorts of meetings and prototypes ... in fact, I read and study with my 8th grade students the passage of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. There's Melchizedek, there's the account of Lot and his wife, the whole covenantal relationship between God and his people through Abraham, and the list goes on and on and on.
It's just that this show focused only on one simple theme of remaining faithful to God through everything.
Hey! That's a GREAT lesson and one definitely worth hearing and seeing and contemplating ... don't get me wrong. Like I said, it just seemed awfully thin.
And this one wasn't so much a musical as it was a 'play with music' ... there were songs, of course, but they sure didn't seem as well integrated into the story or with the characters as it seemed in the first show we saw. And that was too bad because both the lead actors had some rather incredible voices. And the songs were a tad bit more preachy ... not so much pushy ... but just a bit 'preachy' in their message.
All in all, though, a really great evening.
Probably the best part of the entire day was when we were all getting ready for bed and the boy gave to both wifey and I a thanks ... that he had a really good day.
THAT was worth everything!
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