Stuck in San Francisco

I'm sitting here on the floor in middle of San Francisco International Airport.  I've been traveling for about 36 hours, have gotten approximately 8 hours of sleep in the last 48(not in a row btw...) and I haven't showered or changed my clothes since Tuesday morning, Germany time.  I'm sure I look beautiful and energetic right about now :D.

I was supposed to fly back into Arcata an hour ago.  Obviously I didn't.  You may be wondering why...well here's what happened:

I flew into San Francisco last night.  My flight was delayed and we didn't get in until 9:30 pm.  I jumped on BART and headed off to Pleasanton to stay with a friend for the night.  I got there, we went to In n Out, and after spending a couple of hours talking we fell asleep at around 1 am.  Then we woke up at 4:45.  I got back on BART at 5:15 to head to the airport.  The train arrived at SFO at 6:40 am...my flight was at 6:56....

I got in United's line to talk to them about what I should do.  They told me that all of today's flights were fully booked but they could wait list me.  It would cost $75, and my  debit card wasn't working with their machine so I went to find an ATM.  I got back with my $75 and realized that I had forgotten about the $35 luggage fee.  At first I was going to have to go back to the ATM, but after talking to her boss, the United employee decided that she would just charge me for the luggage and not for the flight change.

So I made my way through security.  It was....secure.  I went to find my gate and found out that the flight I was wait listed for had been canceled!  At this point  I was starving and, knowing that I needed food in order to make logical decisions, I went to eat an expensive but delicious breakfast.  After breakfast I went to talk to the airline people.  They told me that my name had not been moved to the new wait list yet and I would now be #16 on the list...

I went to customer support to see if  I could get a flight to Redding or Crescent City and then my parents could pick me up, but they were all booked until at least tomorrow.  As I was talking to my mom on the phone, figuring out if she wanted to drive to SF or if I should stay another night here, the customer service representative handed me a ticket and said "miraculously, as we were talking two seats opened up on a flight for this afternoon"!  So now I have a flight for this afternoon, at 4:17 pm!  By the time I get home I will have been traveling for close to 48 hours, and probably will not have gained much more sleep...but I will be home!

Oh, and to add to the happiness: since I didn't have to pay for the first flight change, I didn't have to pay for the second either!

Landlady drama

This is just a quick post to update you on the latest drama with my landlady...if you were looking for my updated about Denmark and Sweden, look one post below!

Monday afternoon my landlady tried to kick me out of my apartment.  She didn't say she wanted me out in a week, or even a day...she said I was to be "out tonight".  You're probably wondering what  I did to deserve getting kicked out...I am wondering that too!  Before I tell you the story though, let me make it clear that I did not get kicked out.  I convinced her to let me stay for my last week in Germany. (Although I am not sure that I want to!)

Here are the reasons she said I was to leave:

1. A mistake I made, and corrected four months ago.  When I first moved in, I didn't think about needing to open the bathroom window when I shower because I had never had to do that before in my life.  After two weeks she told me that I need to open the window when I shower, and I did from then on.  But there is some mold/mildew on the shower wall from that.  Apparently this is the first time she has noticed it, and she was very angry about it.

2. She decided to empty my trash can while I was in Denmark.  I had not emptied the whole thing because her trash can was too full.  She told me she spent an hour sorting through my trash in order to correctly recycle things, and she showed me three moldy items she found in my trash can.  She was very angry about this, which I didn't understand because I never asked her to empty my trash, and was planning to sort through it myself.

3.  Apparently every night I am supposed to sleep with my bedroom window open, even in winter.  She never informed me of this, and when I open the window bugs come in.  But she was very angry that I had not been sleeping with it open, and thinks the mold around the window is caused by me sleeping with it closed.

4. She thinks that I water damaged my dresser.  When she first said that, I quickly looked at it and apologized for the water damage.  Later I looked closer at the dresser, and realized that it is not water damaged but that that is just how the dresser looks.

Those are her reasons for wanting me out.  I did not understand her reasoning, especially since she wanted to kick me out without warning.  I apologized for everything she was mad about, and explained why things were not the way she wanted.  And I told her I am only here one week, and asked if I could stay one more week.  She agreed that I could.

I have just one week left here, and don't want to be stressed out this whole week.  I don't usually cry, but after she left the room I started crying.  I also have a feeling I am going to have trouble getting my deposit back...

I have been praying that God will help me to remain calm and humble, and that He will speak through me so that I do not say hurtful words.  I have also been praying that through my witness of not cussing at her, or yelling, or even seeming mad, that she will see Jesus.  Please join me in praying for all of this.  Please also pray for me as this has added a lot of unneeded stress on my life.

Reaching 20 countries!!

Denmark is in green, Sweden in orange

I spent this weekend in Denmark and Sweden.  Denmark was country #19 and Sweden was country #20!!  I have now spent time in twenty countries on four continents!!  Only 174 more to go....

This was one last trip before heading back to the States.  Zeba and I left for Denmark on Wednesday afternoon, and we stayed with my uncles friend in Copenhagen.

Here is our story:

Wednesday:
We left Bremen on Wednesday afternoon.  We were planning to take a train to Hamburg, and catch our bus there.  We heard that the train drivers were striking, so out of concern of getting there on time, we left as early as we could.  Since I had class at 8 am, the earliest we could leave was 11:30.  We got to Hamburg no problem, with about two hours before our bus!

In Copenhagen, Denmark

The bus was great!  We had business class seats(which for some reason cost less then regular seats...) so we had wifi and a free snack!  In order to get to Copenhagen, we had to cross the Baltic Sea.  By ferry.  This was a 45 minute ride on a huge ferry, which had a mall inside.  It was a lot of fun getting to see the Baltic.  We got back on land and continued our journey.

When we arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark, our host had a wonderful dinner prepared for us!  We ate pork sausage like things, delicious (not-American) potato salad and tomatoes!  After dinner we went on a walk around Copenhagen, and our host took us to Tivoli Gardens.  Tivoli is a beautiful place, that kind of reminded me of Disneyland, but I think I like it better then Disney!

Thursday:

In the Cannon Museum!

Thursday morning our host left for her parents house.  We had the apartment to our self until late Friday night!  On Thursday we explored Copenhagen, went to two museums and on a boat tour!  We also ate delicious sandwiches and Belgium waffles! (mine had ice cream on it!)

The first museum we went to was the Denmark National Museum.  It had artifacts and information from Denmark and European history.  It was very interesting, and apparently Pokemon is a part of history...
The second museum was a cannon museum.  I liked this museum, it had cannons from all throughout history!

In Christiana.  I was scared because
there were signs everywhere saying not
to take pictures...due to the drugs
being sold in the area

Friday:
On Friday we were going to go to Sweden, but we woke up too late...so we relaxed till mid afternoon and then we decided to walk around the city again.  We went to a part of the city called Christiana.  Christiana used to be a military place, for defending Copenhagen.  But in the 70's hippies took over it and built interesting buildings.  Today it is a place with art, interesting buildings, music, and a flea market.  It also is a place where you can find marijuana....lots and lots of marijuana...

Saturday:

Me, in country #20!!

On Saturday we finally went to Sweden!  Sweden is the 20th country I have spent time in!  We left in the early afternoon, and got on a train to Malmo, Sweden.  We weren't sure what to do there, we didn't even have any of the Swedish Currency.  So the first thing we did was exchange money.  Then we wondered around the city, and found a boat tour.  We went on the tour and learned a bit about Sweden!  Then we sat in a coffee shop and ate delicious cheesecake.  At around 6 pm we headed back to Denmark.

Denmark Storm

Going back to Denmark was quite chaotic.  The storm started in Sweden, but while we were there it was just a lot of thunder and lightning.  By the time we reached Denmark, it was crazy rain.  They say that in those two hours Denmark got as much rain as they usually get in two months.  155 mm, or 6 inches.  The trams were not running on time, so we were stuck at the tram station for a while.  But eventually we made it to our final stop.  Problem was that the stop was about a 15 minute walk from our house.  The water on the roads was about 5 inches deep.  And it was raining very hard.  We were soaked within seconds.  Lightning was going every couple of seconds, and the thunder was very very loud.  Zeba, who is from India, described it as a monsoon.  We eventually made it home, and showed up at our hosts apartment soaked!  But she graciously let us in, and helped us get dried off.  And she had even made us dinner :)

Sunday:

Under the castle!

Sunday morning Zeba and I went to an art museum.  It had really beautiful paintings and statues.  We started realizing the affects of the night before's storm when I received a text from our host, telling us that her basement had flooded and she had to save what she could.  We got home to find everything mostly okay, and then we headed off to a castle.  As we drove to and from the castle, which was north of Copenhagen, we saw more of the storms effects.  People all through town were draining water from their stores and basements, and their ruined items laid on the sidewalk.  The power was out in some places, and many of the highways and roads were flooded.  Getting there and back took about a half an hour longer then it should have.  But the drive was along the Baltic Sea, and was quite beautiful.

The castle was beautiful.  It was near Sweden, and we could see Sweden's coast across the Baltic.  (The castle even had cannons pointed towards Sweden :D)  We explored below the castle, where the soldiers lived.  There were winding, dark halls.  It was really cool, but kind of creepy!  We also explored the ballrooms and royal apartments.

Traveling home:
That night we left for Germany at 11:45 pm.  Somehow, amazingly, on a bus full of people from Africa, India, Europe and other places, I managed to sit next to a guy from California...he was taking his last, and first, trip before heading off to medical school.  We talked for a couple of hours, and got to know each other quite well.  Funny thing is neither of us thought to introduce ourselves till an hour into our conversation!

At the Baltic! Not at 1 am though...
this was the first time we crossed!

At around 2 am our bus had to cross the Baltic Sea, by ferry.  This meant that we had to get off of the bus. Luckily the ferry is huge, and has stores and restaurants.  So I got a bite to eat and sat down with Zeba and two other young traveler's we had met, one who was on our bus and one on the bus in front of us.  It was a lot of fun getting to know other young travelers!

After the ferry, at 3 am, I fell asleep...kind of...I fell as asleep as you can when you are squished in a tiny space on a bus and there is lightning going off every few seconds....we arrived in Hamburg at 5 am, and had an hour to wait for a train to Bremen.  The best part of the story?  I had class at 8...I arrived in Bremen at 7:30 am and went straight to class, I was the first person there!

Prayer requests:
-Pray for my landlady's and I's relationship.  I will post more later about what happened, but to sum it up: She tried to kick me out yesterday.  I have been praying that God will use me to show her Jesus through my attitude and lack of cussing or yelling at her even when she is frustrating me and causing a lot of stress in my life.  Please join me in praying about this.
-Pray for me as I finish up homework and get ready to travel back to America in one week!!
-Pray for me to have patience as I am very excited for Blue Slide Camp and almost cannot stand waiting three more weeks for it!
-Pray for me and the other camp staff as we prepare for camp!  Also pray for the campers, that they will grow in their relationship with God!

Praises:
-Praise God that I was able to reach 20 countries!! There were times in the last 4.5 months that It thought I wouldn't reach my goal, but I would pray about it, and now I have!
-Praise God that the e. coli outbreak is mostly over!

One month left!?!

Friends hanging out in
Rhododendron Park!

I have been in Germany for just over three months now.  I have month left.  This idea is bittersweet.  I love being here, and I do not want to leave.  I have made many great friends here, have had many adventures, and have learned a lot.  At the same time, I miss my friends and family from back home.  I was hit by homesickness for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  It was right around when I hit the three month mark.  It was the weekend of the Kinetic Sculpture Race.   My brother was in it, and all of my family members got together to watch it.  Luckily I was able to watch it online, text my dad and look at pictures of the festivities.  Then in the next week, as I realized how long I had been here, I was hit with homesickness again.  Then last week I said goodbye to my best friend, Katie, as she went off to work at a camp for a few weeks, and again I felt homesickness knowing that I would not be able to talk to her until I got back to Humboldt.  Now that I have gotten over the three month mark, and unto my last month here, I am over the homesickness and am enjoying my last days in this beautiful country.

Playing Ultimate Frisbee!

A few exciting things have happened in the last couple of weeks:

E. Coli:
You may have heard about the European E. Coli outbreak.  Its been making international news lately.  Yes,  I live in the middle of it.  No, I am not sick.  And yes...I have eaten bean sprouts...but I think I may be past the incubation period for e. coli.  The outbreak has been going on for over a month now.  Last I checked 35 people had died, and over 3,000 were sick.  Almost all of the sick and dead are from Northern Germany.  One of my friends caught e. coli, and was in the hospital for a few days.  The officials recently found e. coli in bean sprouts, and in recent days the number of newly affected has been going down.

At the North Sea

Bremerhaven:
Bremerhaven is a town on the North Sea, and is 30-40 minutes from Bremen.  I went there last week with a couple of friends.  The city has a great zoo that has polar bears, mountain lions, harbor seals, arctic foxes, penguins and many other animals.  We spent the afternoon at the zoo and even got to watch the trainers feed some of the animals!  We also walked around the city a bit and walked along the water, which looked more like a bay then a sea.

International Breakfast:

International Breakfast!!

Last Monday a group at my school put on an anti-racism event and asked the international students to cook some food from their home countries and bring it to an international breakfast.  Each group was given 45 Euros to buy food with, and there was a prize of 50 Euros for which ever group brought the best food.  The three other students from HSU, Stephanie, Juliannah, Joannah and I decided to cook a traditional American breakfast.  We cooked bacon, scrambled eggs, pancakes(both with chocolate and without), banana bread and coffee cake.  We also brought many many toppings for the pancakes.  There were groups of students from many different countries: Spain, Mexico, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and a few others.  All of the food was delicious and we all had a lot of fun!  My group also brought pictures from places around America, and some Humboldt t-shirts.  Although many people said they liked our food, the Mexicans won the 50 Euros.  And their food was quite delicious, so I think they deserved it :).

Planet Shakers, Jeremy Camp and Joyce Meyer:

Jeremy Camp!!

Two Christian bands came to Bremen recently: Planet Shakers and Jeremy Camp!!  My friends and  I went to both.   One of my favorite parts of the Planet Shakers concert was the band that played before them, Rainbow.  Rainbow is a German Christian band, and they played mostly German music(and one English song...).  I found that worshiping in German, with Germans, is pretty much the most amazing thing ever!  And I learned that, even though this world is all broken up by language, worshiping God surpasses these barriers!

My goal for the Jeremy Camp concert was to be in the very front, so we walked right in, to the front!  Jeremy Camp is one of my favorite singers, and I had never seen him live before.  During the concert, when not talking on the mic, he looked at me and said "It's hot in here.  Are you hot?"  I nodded...even though I wasn't really hot, I think I was just too shocked that Jeremy Camp was talking to me :D.  It was really cool singing songs that I had heard on the radio, or had run slides for at church.  The concert was great and my friends and I had a great time worshiping God together!

Liandri and I waiting for the
concert to start!

On Sunday we spent the whole afternoon at a Joyce Meyer conference in Hamburg, Germany.  There were probably around 10,000 people in attendance, and it was pretty amazing worshiping with thousands of Germans!!  Joyce Meyer was a great speaker, and one of my favorite things she said was "If you do what you can do, God will do what you can't do!"  This was a great reminder that, even when I think I can't do something, God can do it.

Upcoming Events:
Fourth of July BBQ!  One of the other American's and I decided that even though we are in Germany, we still ought to celebrate the Fourth of July!  We are putting on a BBQ, and invited all of our international and German friends!  Sadly, we will have no fireworks...(we don't want the police to show up to our BBQ!)

Trips to Spain and Austria!  Some friends and I are planning trips to Spain and possibly Austria!

Prayer Requests:
-Pray for me as I head into my last month here.  I have a lot of school work left to do and also would like to travel some more.
-Pray for me as I start figuring out life back home.  I have to figure out how to pay rent, tuition, bills, etc.
-Pray for me as I prepare to direct a church camp.  A week and a half after I get back I will be directing this camp.  Please also pray for the kids who will attend and the staff.
-Pray for the e. coli outbreak, that no more people will get sick or die.

Praises:
-Praise God that the officials seem to have found the source of the e. coli outbreak.
-Praise God for a somewhat better relationship with my landlady.
-Praise God for all of the opportunities I have had here, the people I have met and the things I have learned.
-Praise God for the great opportunities to see different Christian bands and speakers here!

A Crash Course in European History



Prague, Czech Republic

 My friends and I enjoyed our last road trip so much that we decided to go on another one!! This time to another side of Europe and with a few different people.

Liandri, Zeba, Claudia, Fiorella and I took off from Bremen on Friday morning and headed to Prague, Czech Republic!

 Here is our story:



Friday:

In Dresden



Friday morning we all met up at 8 am.  We packed the car and ran into our first problem: the GPS was taking over 40 minutes to load our directions...so we waited around for a while and finally at around 9 we were on the road!  About an hour later, after driving through little German villages and farmland, we began to wonder why we had not hit the highway yet.  Then we realized that the GPS was set to "avoid motorways".  We changed that setting, and finally got to the highway! We decided to stop in Dresden, Germany for a couple of hours on our way to Prague.  We didn't know what there was to do there, so we got out and walked around.  We found some really neat buildings and went to a beautiful church that had recently been rebuilt after it was destroyed during WW2.

Zeba and I during our first
 moments in Prague!

After exploring Dresden, we were back on our way to Prague.  At around 8 pm we arrived!  It was raining like crazy and there was thunder and lightning going on.  The streets were flooding, which was making driving quite hazardous.  Our GPS was not working well due to the fact that Czech has had a lot of construction recently.  It was trying to lead us down nonexistent roads...and even took us the wrong direction down a one way street that luckily lead to a dead end...we found a Chinese restaurant and ate delicious Chinese food for dinner!  After being slightly lost, driving around for a while and calling the hostel, we finally found our place to stay and got a good nights sleep!!

Saturday:

Charles Bridge in Prague

Saturday morning we walked from our hostel into the city.  There was a free three hour tour of the city starting in the Old Town Center, so we went to that.  It was a great tour that told us all about the history of the city.  We saw things like a six hundred year old human arm hanging in a church and a Jewish Ghetto from WW2.  After the tour my friends and I headed to the Prague Castle, which is one of the largest castles in Europe, but then Zeba and I decided that we would rather go back to the city.  On the tour I had seen signs for the Museum of Communism, and I thought that that sounded interesting.  So Zeba and I back tracked on the tour route and found the museum.  Interestingly the museum is between a McDonalds and a Casino.  The way our tour guide described it is: "The Museum of Communism is next to a McDonalds, can't get much more American or capitalistic then that.  And its beneath a casino, where you can play Texas Holdem.  Again, you can't get much more American then that."  Apparently, America is the opposite of Communism. 

I went in and spent about an hour learning about Communism and the history of The Czech Republic:


Sign for the Museum of Communism.
Note the very angry looking doll.

The museum started with information about how The Czeh Republic was taken over by Communism.  Czech had been given to Hitler by France and Britain before WW2, in an attempt to keep Hitler from starting a war.  (We all know how well that worked out...).  Then towards the end of the war, the Germans had control over Prague.  The Americans and the Soviets werre both heading towards Prague from different directions.  The Americans had agreed to free Czech from Hitler only to a certain point, and Prague was not inside that area, so the Soviets freed Prague.  After a couple years of some sort of democrocy, Communism took over.
The museum then went on to tell about life under Communism.  It told about empty stores and an emphasis on labor.  It told about education of children and the inprisonment of people who were successful before Communism.  It then went on to tell about the overthrow of Communism.


Me in Old Town Prague

 The overthrow of Communism in The Czech Republic is interestingly similar to what we see going on in the Middle East today.  It all started in 1969 with a college student lighting himself on fire in protest of Communism.  He died three days later.  You may remember the young Tunisian man lighting himself on fire late last year, which sparked what now has been over six months of protests accross the Middle East.  The Czech mans death would not cause the overthrow of Communism for twenty more years.  In 1989, on the twentieth anniversary of his death, the people of The Czech Republic decided it was time to overthrow Communism once and for all.  They protested, mostly peacefully although the police did get quite violent.  And as I'm sure you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall came in 1989, and Communism all accross Europe ended.

After the museum, Zeba and I met back up with Liandri, Fiorella and Claudia at Starbucks in the Old Town Center.  Accross from Starbucks there is a quite amazing clock.  It was built in the 1700's, and still stands today.  It is the Prague Astronomical Clock.  Every hour, on the hour, it goes off. 

This is what it does:

Prague Astronomical Clock

First, there are four small statues.  Three of them are men, one holding a mirror to symbolyze vanity, the next a money bag to symbolize greed, and the third represented a "Turkish Infidel".  In between them there is a skeleton holding a bell.  When the clock goes off, the three men shake their heads to show that what they are is bad.  And the skeleton rings his bell, I suppose to symbolise death, perhaps caused by what the three men represent.  Then, the twelve appostles take turns coming through two doors.  At the end of this all, a rooster at the top of the clock crows.  Now, this clock, though famous, was quite a dissapointment to many tourists.  I personally found it amazing, but apparently not everyone agrees with me.  In an attempt to solve this problem, the Czech government recently decided to add to the clock.  Once the clock does its thing, a man comes out at the top of the tour above the clock, and blows a trumpet.  Then he waves to the hundreds of poeple below and everyone claps.  Apparently the governments attempt worked!

Sunday:

A Mosque-ish Synagogue

Sunday was quite a busy day. We debated and debated how we wanted to spend it.  Before we left for Prague we found out that Berlin was not far out of the way between Bremen and Prague, and thought that stopping there might be a nice idea.  But we still wanted more time in Prague.  So we decided to spend Sunday morning there and leave for Berlin by 10 am.  Zeba and I really wanted to go back to the Jewish Ghetto, while the others decided to explore the city some more.  The Jewish Ghetto was very interesting.  During WW2, it was the most run down part of the city.  The streets were below the river, so they flooded regularly.  The Jews from Prague were forced to live there.  But today, it is now called Josefov, The Jewish Quarter, and is the most expensive part of the city!  In the Ghetto there are many Synagogues.  One was very interesting, when I first saw it, I thought "Oh a Mosque!"  I later found out that many others thought the same thing as me.  This Synagogue was built at time when the Jews and Muslims somewhat got along, so they built a Mosque-ish Synagogue to represent their relationship.  There was another Synagogue that held the Jewish Museum, and outside of it was the Jewish Cemetary.  First, Zeba and I went to the museum.  On its walls were the names of 80,000 Jews who died in a nearby concentraion camp called Terezin.  These names were handwritten and included the peoples birthdays, dates of entering the camp and dates of death.  Seeing the sheer number of people who died was astonishing.  And these names represented only a tiny proportion of the people who died in the Holocaust.  But I got through that part without crying.  It was the next part of the museum that brought tears to my eyes. 



The wall of the Jewish Cemetery
near the Jewish Museum

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a former art student at the Bauhaus in Germany, was imprisoned in Terezin.  Knowing that, while the adults could cope with the terrible situation, the children would not cope so well, she decided to start art lessons for the children at the concentration camp.  Though the Nazi's allowed the art lessons to occur, they would not allow further education.  But the people of Terezin took advantage of this opportunity to sneak in reading, history and math lessons for the children.  And Terezin held many of the best educated Jews, so the children were able to get probably the best education they could considering the situation they were in.  Throughout her time in Terezin, Dicker-Brandeis collected over 4,500 drawings from the children.  Some of these drawings were of normal, childhood things.  Sometimes they were of toys, family members, houses, etc.  But, many of the drawings represented the terrible things these childrens were witnessing.  Some of the drawings showed life inside the camp, what the barracks looked like, the work people did.  Two of the drawings stuck out to me.  The first was called "The Other Side of the Gate".  It was a drawing of both sides of the entrance to Terezin.  One side showed chilren playing with their happy parents.  The other side showed people working.  This showed the huge difference between life in the camp and life outside, and the children were aware of the difference. The next painting that stuck out to me brough tears to my eyes because it was of something a child should never witness.  In fact just writing about it brings tears to my eyes again.  It was called "The Execution".  It depicted the hanging of a Jew.  You could tell the person was a Jew because they had a Star of David pinned on their shirt.  Before seeing these drawings, I had never realized how many children were apart of the Holocaust.  Though some of these young artists were freed, most of them were sent to Auschwitz where they eventually died.  After hearing this, all I could think was "Who would do that?  Who could kill children?" 



In the Jewish Cemetery

After spending time in the Jewish Museum, Zeba and I went to the Jewish Cemetary.  According to Jewish customs, a Jew can not be cremated or burried in a tomb above ground.  They have to be burried underground.  During WW2, this cemetary filled up.  The Jews went to the authorities asking for another cemetary, and were denied.  To solve this problem, the Jews added a pile of dirt on top of the graves, and burried the new dead in the new pile of dirt. They repeated this everytime they ran out of room, and ended up having to add dirt about 11 times.  Now, the cemetary is extremely tall.  You can walk around the outside walls, and the walls go up to about the first story of a house, almost full to the top with graves.  They say thousands are burried there.  When you go into the cemetary, all you see are probably over a thousand tombstones seemingly piled on top of each other.  There is no room to walk between them, and they are all different shapes and sizes. 

Me in TV Tower

After spending time in the Jewish Ghetto, we went on to Berlin.  I had been in Berlin before, so had only one goal for my second trip there: to go to the top of TV Tower.  I had not done that my first time in Berlin, and regretted it.  Luckily we parked near the TV Tower, so while my friends went off to fulfill their Berlin goals, I went up to the tower.  It was a very interesting view of all of Berlin, my favorite part was seeing Brandenburg gate and the tower just past it from up so high.  After spending about an hour in the TV Tower, I joined Zeba in starbucks and grabbed a drink.  Liandri called me and said she wanted to go to the Berlin Wall.  Liandri had not been to Berlin before, so we were trying to take her to the "got to see" parts of Berlin.  Fiorella had taken her to Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial.  Liandri met up with Zeba and I and we made our way to the wall.  This time we went to a part of the wall I had not spent time at before, the Berlin Wall Memorial.  It contained pieces of the wall, ruins of gaurd towers, and pictures of those who had died trying to cross the wall.  Something new hit me on this trip to the wall.  As I was walking past it I realized I was walking through what once was "No Man's Land", a place that people in the past had been shot for trying to walk through.
 
After Berlin we made our way back to Bremen. We hit a lot of traffic at about ten pm at night.  We reached Bremen a little after midnight, and after dropping the car off and calling a taxi, I got home at around two am. 


In front of the Berlin Wall



Overall it was a great trip, I felt like in those three days I went through a crash course of the last one hundred years of European history!  Prague is now my favorite European city, and I want to go back soon.  God also used this trip in my life.  From learning about Prague's history, I really became intersted in Europes history of religion, and current nonreligious people.  Throughout that trip, I kept thinking "how can this history of religion be used to bring these people back to Christ?" 

Prayer Requests:
(I know these are long...but they are very important so please read and pray!)
-The past couple of posts I reported on an improvement in my relationship with my landlady. But, yesterday things got worse again.  My landlady came to my apartment and told me she was "very angry" about the mess and that I had to clean it.  It is not that messy, there were about five unwashed dishes, and there were some things laying around my room.   I am feeling like she is invading my privacy, and have been informed by many Germans that she does not have the right to be coming into my room without telling me when I am not home.  I have started locking my bedroom door, but I cannot lock the whole apartment.  I am hoping that locking the bedroom will at least garuntee me some privacy.  Please pray for this situation, right now leaving this apartment is the only reason I am looking forward to leaving Germany.  I also feel that I need to talk to my landlady about this, so please pray for wisdom and courage in doing that.

-God has been speaking to me a lot recently.  My whole time in Germany has been a giant spiritual battle, which has been hard but has been helping me grow.  I have been praying about what God has for me next, because, for my whole life, and even more so now, I have felt that America is not where God wants me permanently.  Right now I am looking at going on a six month missions trip, possibly back to Europe, after I graduate from college next year.  This trip would be with the International Missions Board.  Please pray as I seek after Gods will in what exactly He has called me to do next. 

Praises:

-Praise God for the many opportunities I have had to travel!

-Praise God for keeping us safe on our road trip!

-Praise God that I am no longer feeling lonely here in Germany!
-Praise God for the many friendships I have made here!

A European Road Trip!!

Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium

I love road trips!  You jump in a car with a few friends and drive some sort of long distance to somewhere that you all want to go.  For American's, road trips usually involve crossing the state, or maybe going to the next state over.  If your lucky, maybe you'll even reach the other side of America.  But you usually stay in America.  Here in Europe, countries are more like states.  There's no border crossing and no needing a passport or visa.  So the road trip I went on last weekend didn't involve crossing a state, it involved driving through three different countries.  We started in Germany, went to The Netherlands then to Belgium and back to Germany.  Here is the story of our trip:

Before I came to Germany, my dad asked me "Are you going to drive in Germany?" I couldn't think of a reason I would, so I said no.  But about a week ago some friends and  I decided to go on a road trip.  My friends Liandri and Michelle from South Africa and I decided that we would spend the weekend in Amsterdam and a day in Belgium.  I was the best choice for a driver because America drives on the same side of the road as Germany while South Africa doesn't.  So we rented a car and got ready to headed.

Thursday:

Liandri, Michelle and I at Hard Rock

Thursday at a little after noon we took off.  That day we drove from Bremen, Germany to Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  This was the first time in my life I had driven in another country.  I found that driving between countries is interesting because the second you cross the border the language, culture and laws change.  And here in Europe there are no customs or anything to go through, so you may not even realize you crossed the border till you see signs in another language.
We got to Amsterdam in the late afternoon and decided that we would go to dinner in the city.  Amsterdam is probably the largest city I have ever driven in and to add to that it was a major holiday weekend.  There were people trying to cross every where, and cars going all directions.  It was also the first time I had to deal with trams while driving, and figuring out when I can drive over the tram line and when I can't.  But I figured it out and we survived to eat dinner at Hard Rock Cafe!  We also got to spend the afternoon exploring the city.

Friday:

Getting ready to go into the Ice Bar!

Friday was our big tourist/spending money day.  First we went to a place called Keukenof.  It is a park outside of Amsterdam that has many many beautiful flowers.  We walked around it for an hour or two.  After that we went into Amsterdam to try and figure out what museums/tourist attractions we wanted to go to.  We ended up deciding on Madame Tussauds and the Ice bar.  We also went looking for orange shirts to buy for Queens Day.
The Ice Bar was really interesting.  Everything in it was made out of ice and they had some cool ice statues.

Me in Madame Tussauds being
rescued by Spiderman!!

The cups were even made out of ice!  Madame Tussauds was also very interesting.  If you have never been to one, it is a museum of wax figures.  Interestingly, when you walk in the first person you see is Barack Obama.  When I saw him, he looked so real that I thought "Oh my gosh Obama!!".  The museum wants to charge you 11 Euros to take a picture with him, so even though I wanted a picture I did not take one.  I did sneak one of him though :D.  The rest of the museum was really interesting.  It started with a wax history of Holland (The Netherlands).  Then it goes on to a haunted area where they try and scare you and people jump out at you.  This wasn't very enjoyable for me because within the first minute of it a girl turned around to run out and stepped on/bruised the side of my leg.  After the haunted area, it goes on to a bunch of wax figurines of famous people.  They had JFK, Bush Sr, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and many many more people.  Most of them you could tell weren't real just because they weren't moving, but a few I had to look at three or four times just to make sure they were actually wax!
That day we also ate cotton candy, walked around the city and bought orange shirts for the holiday on Saturday!  That night we went back to the house we were staying at and had a barbecue, which was delicious!

Ready for Queens Day!!

Saturday:
Saturday was the big holiday, Queens Day.  Queens Day is the day that The Netherlands celebrates their Queens birthday.  It's actually the Queens mom's birthday, but the Queens birthday is in winter so they do not want to celebrate it then.  In the morning we watched the news coverage of the holiday and found that on this day the royal family plays a bunch of games while people watch.  Also on this day, everyone decks out in orange. The reason for this is that way back in the line the royal family is from a place called Orange.

Our Dutch tour guides enjoying
the music!

In the early afternoon we went into town with the guy that we were staying with to meet up with a few of his friends.  We, of course, were all wearing orange.  We started out by going to an outdoor concert.  All of the most popular Dutch bands were there.  They sang some English and some Dutch songs.  There were thousands of orange people there!

Orange people on boats!

After watching the concert for a while we left to walk around the city.  We found a place to sit along the canal and watch the boat parade.  There were thousands of boats in the canals, all with many drunk orange people on board.  They had DJ's and bars on many of the boats.  Some of the boats had themes, for example there was a tennis boat.  We watched the boats for a couple of hours.  Then we again walked around the city and went to find food.  Our Dutch friends took us on a tour, and even showed us the area that Anne Frank's house is in.  We walked along some street shops.  A tradition on this holiday is for kids to take their toys and sell them on the side of the streets.  There were little shops everywhere with toys and clothes for sale.  We worked our way back to the concert and watched a DJ play for a while.  Then we decided to head home.  Queens Day was really interesting because there were so many people.  You would look ahead at the street and see a sea of orange people ahead.  Many(or maybe most...) of them were drunk/drinking, which made things interesting.  And people will shot beer at each other, or silly string.  They also throw things around and play little games on each other.

Sunday:

Eating our Belgium Waffles!

Sunday was the day we headed back to Germany.  But we made a stop in Belgium first (No, Belgium is not on the way to Bremen, but it was a nice stop anyways!).  In Belgium we went to a chocolate museum where we learned about the history of chocolate and learned how to make chocolate, and went on a canal tour!  We also ate Belgium Waffles and walked around the city.  We were in Brugges, Belgium.  Brugges is a really beautiful city and I want to go back and spend more time there.  In order to drive into Brugges, you have to drive through a castle entrance!  The whole city is very old and the streets and city center are really beautiful.

On a boat in the canal!

After Brugges we headed home to Bremen.  This meant driving back through The Netherlands and then on to Germany.  So in one day I drove through three countries and over 800 kilometers.  We left Amsterdam at 7:30 am and didn't get home until 1:30 am.  It was kind of a crazy day!  But it was fun.  We got lost a few times and took some wrong turns off the highway, but we had a GPS that figured it all out for us!


Overall it was a great trip!  I am hoping to go on more road trips around Europe, it seems like a really cheap and fun way to travel, and allows you to see a lot of different places!

Prayer Requests:
-I had a kind of rough first week back after two straight weeks of travel.  I didn't get a lot of sleep and had a lot of stress from homework and what not.  I also did not eat very well because I had no food at my house.  Please pray for me as I readjust to normal life.
-I would like more opportunities to travel and am already planing more trips with my friends.  Please pray for wisdom for us as we plan and safety as we travel!
-Pray for continued improvement in my relationship with my landlady.
-I have also been feeling kind of lonely lately.  I think it is because I got used to constantly being around people while traveling, but now am sometimes home alone.  Please pray for me that I will find good things to do with my time.


Praises:
-Praise God that the Euro-Dollar exchange rate has been improving!!
-Praise God for keeping me safe over the last two weeks as I traveled!
-Praise God that my relationship with my landlady has been improving!
-Praise God that I had many opportunities to travel over Easter Break!
-Praise God that I am starting to adjust back to the not traveling life!

Easter Experience

The castle in the village I visited

Experience.  Thats the only way I can describe how I spent Easter Weekend.  Having known that I would be in Germany for Easter Sunday and that my 21st birthday was going to be on Easter Sunday, I spent the last couple months thinking about what the coolest way I could spend that weekend would be.  I thought about Paris or Prague, Berlin or my home church in Bremen.  But, I think I found the best way I could have possibly spent it.  I spent Easter/my birthday weekend staying with a German family in a tiny village (population 250) in East Germany!

To some people Paris or Prague may sound more exciting then that...but, not only do I love to travel, I love to experience culture.  I don't like going somewhere just as a tourist and just going to the tourist sites.  I like to see how the people live, even spend time living that life with them for a few days if I can.  I like going to the places that the locals go, doing things that the locals do.  And to add to that, Easter is usually a family time for me, and I always thought my 21st birthday would be a family time too.  So having a family to spend the weekend with helped ease the homesickness :).

Walking through the village

Here's how my weekend went:

Thursday:

Thursday after noon I jumped on a train and headed to the village, with a 30 minute stopover in Hamburg.  The village I was going to is called Charlottenthal.  The family I was going to stay with picked me up from a train station about a half an hour from the village.  When I arrived in Charlottenthal, I went on a tour of the house and village.  Afterwards we sat outside in the sun and drank coffee and ate cake.

Friday:

A look out on our bike ride

Friday was "Good Friday" or "Karfreitag" as they call it in Germany.  Karfreitag does not mean "Good Friday".  There isn't really a set definition for it, but it means something along the lines of "crying" or "caring".  We rode bikes to the next village for church. The service was in German, but I did my best to sing along with the songs and pay attention.  We did communion in a way I never had before.  We all stood around the stage and were each handed a cracker and we drank the juice out of the same cup.  After church we continued to ride our bikes along the lake and stopped at a sea food restaurant for lunch.  The fish there were mostly ones that were taken out of the lake we were biking around.  After lunch half of the family went back to the village for Fire Brigade sports(which  I will tell you more about later) and the other half and I continued onto a 7.5 mile bike ride around the rest of the lake.  We rode threw fields and villages as well as along the lake.  We stopped at a lookout and an old church.  It was a beautiful bike ride.  At the end we stopped for some delicious ice cream.  That night we sang songs around a campfire in the back yard.

Saturday:

In front of a castle in Gustrow

Saturday morning the family I was staying with took me to the "big city" (population 25,000) a few miles away from the village I was staying in.  That city has a castle, and some really neat buildings.  We explored the castle and walked around the city.  That afternoon, three more people arrived, including a very cute two year old.  We spent the afternoon painting Easter Eggs.  We painted 60 Easter Eggs.  Now I've painted Easter  Eggs before, but this was a little different for one reason: drinking was a big part of this.  Each person got a small shot of whatever they wanted(I had Bailey's) and drank it.  This was the first time in my life I had really drinking alcohal(other then a couple sips of warm wine my first 

day in Germany) and happened to be the day before my 21st birthday....

Fire brigade sports practice

Saturday afternoon half of the family again had Fire Brigade sports practice.  I went with them and watched for about a half an hour.  It was very interesting.  One of the two sports I watched is a relay race.  The two people who start have to race and stick a large hose into a large bucket of water then hook it into a machine that will suck the water up.  The next couple of people run, stretching out a very long hose.  The last person kneels in front of a tall metal structure that has a small hole at the top leading to a bucket.  They have to spray the water into the hole and fill the bucket up.  The other sport I watched involved using a ladder to climb up a tower.  The person starts by holding the ladder and runs to the tower and climbs up to the first window as fast as they can.  Then they pull the ladder up and climb up to the next window.  These sports are very common in German and some other European villages.  They even have national and international championships.

Painting Easter Eggss

Saturday evening we had a barbecue.  We ate delicious chicken and bratwurst.  After the barbecue we went to the village Easter Fire.  This again is very common among German villages, where either on the day or a couple days before or after Easter, they burn all of the branches the villagers have cut down from their trees.  The whole village was out drinking, cooking sweet bread and hanging out around the fire.  After an hour or so of being there we went back to the house and sat around talking for a few hours.  Some people knew that my birthday was coming, and so planned to sing happy birthday and drink a shot with me at midnight(it was my 21st, after all).  It was nice to be with people to celebrate my birthday at midnight.  A couple of friends from Bremen also called to wish me a happy birthday, which was very nice.
  

Sunday:

Sunday, of course, was Easter and my 21st birthday.  When I woke up the whole family was sitting in the living room waiting to sing me their family birthday song.  It was in German so I don't know the exact words, but it was something along the lines of "Its your birthday, there are flowers on the table, if you have a cake the size of a mill invite us."  There were flowers on the table, and the family gave me two presents.  The presents were really nice books about 

the area of Germany I was in!  

Easter Egg hunt!

After celebrating my birthday, we went out to have an Easter Egg hunt!  In the family, this is a big competitive event.  There were 60 eggs hidden, and we found 54 of them.  I found 5 :D (with some help from the family...).  After the egg hunt we ate breakfast.  With the eggs they found they make a really delicious breakfast treat involving vinegar, oil and mustard.  After breakfast we went to have the next family competition: the ping pong contest!  We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, everyone took naps(we were up pretty late the night before) We tried to go to the animal park in the next town over to watch the bears eat Easter eggs, but we decided not to because there were so many people.  We ended the day by playing board games(of which I lost, terribly...).

Monday:

Me in front of the ruins of a castle
destroyed by the Communists

Monday was my last day in East Germany.  I bought a train ticket for 5:30 pm that night.  In the morning we went to the animal park.  It was amazing!  I felt like I was walking through the forest and simply running into these animals.  When you get to the animal park, you walk through a gate that looks like its meant to keep animals from getting out(which it is).  The first thing you see is a giant herd of deer, which you can pet.  The park has only native to Germany animals.  They have owls, bears, wolves, and a few other animals.  The dangerous animals are caged, of course.  (Although I was a little concerned that they might not be).  There are bridges going over the cages, and some of the bridges also have obstacle courses.  We spent a couple of hours exploring the park.

Monday afternoon we went to an old water mill to look at where one of the family members and his fiancée were going to get married.  The water mill was left from when lords ruled over the lands.  It was beautiful.  We also went on a walk to the ruins of a castle.  The castle was destroyed by the Communists during the 1950's. 

My time in East Germany was a great experience. The people I stayed with were all either born under or grew up under communism.  They told me about the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or German Democratic Republic, which is what East Germany was called before the fall of Communism in 1989).  They also told me about the first time they went to America, and how crazy it was to be able to go to the USA after years of not being able to leave the communist run countries.  

Me with members of the family I stayed with

It was great to be able to experience this families culture.  Every day at 4 pm we sat in the sun and ate cake and drank coffee.  I also got to learn about German culture.  One thing that stood out to me was the meals.  I have found that this seems to be common in at least some parts of Europe.  For breakfast every day we ate rolls with cheese, meat, butter and other condiments.  For lunch we would eat a big meal.  Dinner would be pretty much the same as breakfast, but usually with different bread.  It was all great food, although it took some time to get used to lunch being big and dinner being small.

Prayer requests:

~Pray for me as I readjust to being in school again, and not traveling constantly.

~Pray for me as I have a lot of work to do in the next 2.5 months before I get back to the states.

~The Euro to Dollar exchange rate continues to get worse...please pray that it will improve, at least long enough for me to get money out before it goes back up.

~Things seem to be improving with my landlady, but please pray for continued improvement in our relationship.

Praises:

~Praise God that my road trip to Amsterdam and Belgium went great!  I was the driver, and God gave me wisdom while driving and kept us safe.

~Praise God that My relationship with my landlady has been improving, the last few times I talked to her she had nothing bad to say :)

~Praise God that I was able to travel a lot over Spring break!