Day Twenty, part two: The Amazing Amish Village!

Our plans to travel to South Carolina from Philadelphia were changed by Hurricane Matthew.

My Dad always says, "Everything that happens to you is an opportunity".

In this case, it was an opportunity to spend more time in Pennsylvania

learning about some very interesting people:  The Amish

(This blog post has lots of cool links!)

This place is called the Amish Village.

It's located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Lancaster is home to 36,000 Amish people.

The Amish Village is an attraction that allows you to tour 

a complete village in a small amount of time.

The tour includes a house.  This girl is not Amish.  

She is actually from Africa and works at the Amish Village giving tours.

We were told that the Amish would think it prideful to give a tour, 

so that work is done by non-Amish people, like Jon here.

Here, she is showing us Amish clothing.  This is what a single female would wear.

This is an Amish kitchen.  Most Amish don't use electricity.

The appliances here run on propane gas.

This is called a "summer kitchen".  

It's a cellar, and keeps everything cool when the weather is hot.

The bedrooms were simple, but the bed quilts were beautiful!

Notice the prices?  The quilts are expensive because of all the work that goes into them.

Outside the house was the Village, which had lots of buggies in the common area.

Some were covered, others were open like this one.  

That white building is the blacksmith shop...

...where Dad tried his hand out using an Old World plow!

Next to the blacksmith is the schoolhouse.

The Amish are hard workers, and that white sign encourages kids to do their best.

On the chalkboard is a lesson in "Pennsylvania Dutch". 

It's not actually Dutch, but a form of German.  The Amish learn High German, too.

The Amish raise lots of animals.  Dad's not too sure about these goats...

...but they were very friendly!

So were the horses...

...and the chickens!

I really am glad we took time to stop at Lancaster.

I loved the village, and was very interested in how the Amish live. So interested that...

I bought this book!

This isn't all I did in Pennsylvania.

I also visited Philadelphia and Hershey, but more on that later.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!