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!

Weekend in Poland

Wroclaw, Poland

I love to travel.  One of my life goals is to travel to every country on earth.  This last weekend I got to add a new country to the list, bringing the total to 16 countries I have spent time in!  I to Poland to visit my friends Joel, Renata, Daniel, Eric and Amelia!  I have known this family my whole life(Renata was at my birth) but do not get to see them very often, so it was great to spend the weekend with them!

FRIDAY:
At 8 pm I embarked on a journey to Wroclaw, Poland.  I got on a bus in Bremen and left for a ten hour ride.  I brought some snacks and drinks and cleaned out my iPod before I left so I would have room for movies.  I hoped that maybe I would sleep a few hours, especially considering I was going to arrive in Wroclaw at 6 am.  I managed maybe two hours of sleep...the bus stopped every hour or two, and they played a very loud Polish movie until 1 am.  At 6 am Joel picked me up at the bus stop, and I went straight to sleep at their house.  (They had planned a hike for the afternoon, so I figured it would be important to sleep a few hours :D).

Daniel, Joel and I on top of the mountain!

SATURDAY:
That afternoon Joel and Daniel took me on a hike to the top of a mountain and back.  This mountain is the highest in the area.  It is about a 30 minute drive from Wroclaw and has an interesting history of Slavic tribes.  You can find pagan idols all up and down the mountain.  Of course at some point the Christians came in and built a church at the top.  I am slightly out of shape, so the hike to the top was a little hard, but was fun.  The mountain is beautiful.  From the top you can see many towns spread throughout the valley below.  And you can climb a tower from which you can see even further.  We sat in the sun for a while and ate lunch before heading down the mountain.

Me with Poland in the background!

The trip down the mountain was quite adventurous.  We wanted to take a different trail down then we took up, so we found a route where we would start with one trail, then get on another and a little while later again switch to another trail.  So we headed off.  It started off well, we found the first trail then the second.  It was the third one that caused some problems.  We could not find it!  But we figured as long as we were heading downhill, we were going at least somewhat in the right direction.  So we kept going.  We ran into a couple deer on the way and walked along some beautiful trails.  After an hour or two we reached the bottom!  We found ourselves in a village, and stopped and asked where the town our car was in is located.  It was about 1.5 miles away!  So again we headed off, hiking through the Polish country side and through villages.  I quite enjoyed this and took many pictures.  We even made friends with a dog who followed us for a while.  We eventually made it to our car and stopped on the way home for ice cream!

PALM SUNDAY:

The plaza around the Synagogue

I attended a Polish speaking church for Palm Sunday.  Daniel helped me out by translating the sermon as much as he could.  I wanted to sing along with the songs, and though I knew some of them in English, I knew that my pronunciation of Polish was not to par...so I listened as they sang.  That afternoon Daniel and Eric took me on  a bike ride through some beautiful fields next to their house.  Sunday night Joel, Daniel and I went to a Jewish Synagogue for a Jazz concert.  It had an accordion, two guitars, a cello and a violin!  We also stopped at a Jewish coffee shop for some hot chocolate!

You can find these little dwarfs
 all over Wroclaw

MONDAY:
Today Renata took me on a tour of Wroclaw.  Wroclaw is a very interesting city with a diverse history.  Much of the city was destroyed during WW2, and due to Communism they were not really able to start rebuilding until 1989.  So now Wroclaw is a growing city with a lot of construction going on!  It was interesting to see the mix of old and new buildings as well as some war ruins.  There are also a lot of beautiful fountains around the city, and many interesting places to shop and eat.  One thing interesting about Wroclaw are the dwarfs you can find all over the city.  There are hundreds.  You can find them next to stores, restaurants and around other parts of the city.  These dwarfs were a form of protest against Communism during the 1980's.  A group called the Orange Alternative in Wroclaw would paint smiling dwarfs over Communist propaganda.  The statues showed up in Wroclaw in 2005 to remember the work this group did.

At the Japanese Garden

TUESDAY:
This was my last day in Wroclaw.  Joel, Daniel, Amelia and I went into Wroclaw to find a way to tire me out before my 10 hours bus ride that night :).  We ended up walking through a really beautiful Japanese Garden!  It had giant fish and beautiful paths to walk along. That night I headed back to Bremen.  Getting home was a little exciting...the bus line I was on, Sindbad, had about 10 buses show up all at once...so Joel and I ran around trying to figure out which was mine, none of which were.  Mine showed up about a half an hour late, and they did not have my name on the list.  It ended up that I accidentally bought a ticket for the next day.  Luckily someone didn't show up for the bus so they let me on!  I was able to sleep a little more on this ride,
and arrived back in Bremen safely and just in time to take a nap! 

Prayer Requests:
-This is my biggest prayer request: Lately I have found myself dreading going back to my apartment.  When I'm with friends or at a restaurant or store, I dread the idea of going home.  Not because I want to stay where I am, but because I am scared to run into my landlady.  Almost every time I come home she either tells me something I have done wrong or I come into my apartment and find that she has been in there without my permission.  I understand when I do something wrong, she has to tell me, but its not a good feeling to feel like you are always doing something wrong.  And, I don't like her invading my privacy by coming into my room without my permission.  Please pray for this situation and that God will give me wisdom on how to handle it.
-I have had a soar throat for a couple of days, please pray that it will get better soon!
-I have a lot of school work to do in the next 2.5 months.  Please pray that I will find time to do it all!
-Two friends and  I are traveling to Amsterdam and Belgium this weekend.  Please pray for safety as we travel.  We rented a car and depending on if the company can get us an automatic or not, I may be the driver.
-Pray for the Euro to Dollar exchange rate...right now its not moving in my favor!

Praises:
-Praise God for many opportunities to travel over this two week break from school!
-Praise God for the opportunities I have had to not go to places just as a tourist but to actually get to spend time with local families and getting to know their culture!
-Praise God for the relationships I have been able to build here in Europe and the opportunities I have had to share the Gospel with people!

Update from my iPod...

Note: Praise God!! My computer is now fixed!  I figured I would post this update anyways since it was pretty much ready to go at the time that my computer got fixed!

First of all, I'm sorry for the lack of updates! I was almost ready to update my blog when the unthinkable happened: my computer broke. (I know what your thinking: "Kims computer NEVER breaks!").

I am updating my blog from my iPod! My iPod is my only connection to the outside world now. I'm not used to depending so much on it, so it's been kinda exciting to have everything be touchable!

Homesickness:

A sign I found in Bremen
Never too far from home :)

I have been in Germany just over a month. That means I have now been out of America longer than ever before. And after next week I will have been away from my family longer than ever before. This has lead to the first true hit of homesickness, as I realize that this is not just another two to three week trip out of the country. At the same time I am starting to realize that I will not be in Germany much longer...so my emotions are kind of a mix between wanting to be home and wanting to stay in Germany longer.

I have also started to realize the hardships of living in another country. Nothing is easy...simply ordering a cheeseburger or buying a loaf of bread is hard because you don't know if the cashier will know English or if you'll know enough German to communicate. At first that was an adventure, but now it is just hard. It is a hardship I am learning through, and I am reminding myself everyday that I am here to learn and experience their language and culture.

Traveling:

St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg

The last month has been nohing short of amazing! Three weeks ago In spent a day in Hamburg. The highlight for me from that city was St. Nikolai. St. Nikolai is a church that was destroyed during WW2. The remnants of it, including a steeple that you can go to the top of, are now a WW2 memorial. This was the first time that I had the opportunity to learn about WW2 from Germanys point of view and was very interesting.

In front of the west side of the
Berlin Wall

Last weekend I spent three days in Berlin. I'm sure most of you know Berlins history with the Berlin wall. This again was very interesting to learn about from Germanys point of view. And I got to stand in front of the Berlin wall on both the east and west sides.  I also go to walk around Berlin's Holocaust Memorial.

Driving the pedal boat in
Bad Zwischenhahn

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in a city called Bad Zwischenhahn. This is a small tourist town in the north west Germany. It surrounds a large lake and you can rent boats for vey cheap! So five friends and I rented two pedal boats for a half an hour, costing a total of 11 €. I was the driver of my boat and had a great time pedaling around the lake!



Protests:

Logo for the protests in Germany

Back in December and January when he Arab World Protests first started I thought to myself "well atleast Germanys not protesting!". Little did I know the world events that were going to occur while I was in Germany...ever since the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, Germans have been protesting the use of nuclear power in their country. Luckily these protests have been peaceful, but about once a week they protest on the route the trams take to my house, which means the trams to my house stop running for an unknown amount of time. This usually occurs when I am alone after dark trying to get home(at around 7 pm so not too late). The police and tram drivers give the people lots of information, but not in English. This has probably been my biggest challenge here, as I try to figure out how to communicate with people who oftentimes don't speak English and try to find my way home, or atleast figure out when the trams will be running again. I always manage to make English speaking friends at the tram stops and I always get home safe, usually about an hour later then I had planned on.

School:

My German Class!

And of course there is the whole reason I came to Germany.....school! School started two weeks ago. It was a bit of a rough start as the school here does not do a very good job of communicating. But after accidentally ditching one class and being late for another, I finally have my schedule figured out! I am taking four classes. One German language class and three computer classes. So far these are all very interesting. In one of my classes I am the oy person who does not speak German. So the whole class is in English for me...no one seems to mind, too much.....


God:

God has been teaching me a lot since I have been here.  I have met people from all over the world, and have learned about their religions and cultures.  I have had a lot of time to think about my life, my calling and my religion.  I know that I am called to spend my entire life serving God full time, but He has not fully revealed to me what this means.  Over the past almost twenty-one years this calling has been revealed in small bits and pieces. I believe that part of the reason God has brought me here to Germany is to show me, in more details, what His plan is for the rest of my life.  This has been exciting, challenging and hard.  I have been constantly under Satan's attacks and every day has been a battle.  One verse that has really stuck out to me over the last couple of weeks is Esther 4:14 "For if you remain silent at this time, relief will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish.  And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"  This verse has humbled me as I realized that if I were to not fulfill God's calling for my life, He would use someone else.  This verse also scared me as I thought of the possibility of not fulfilling God's calling, and what that would mean for my future.  And this verse gave me an excited peace, as I thought of God calling me for "such a time as this".  This is a topic I'm sure I will write on more in the future...for now it is something you can be praying for!

Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany

Prayer Requests:
-Please pray for my computer that all of its problems will be solved.  It is running again, but it is not completely fixed.
-Please pray for me as what I am studying here is not the same as back home.  Back home I study mostly computer programming, here it is mostly graphic design.
-Please pray for me as I continue to grow in Christ and learn about where God is leading me.
-Please pray as Easter Break is coming up and I am planning to travel during that time!

Praises:
-Praise God that my computer is working again!
-Praise God that I have made a wide variety of friends!
-Praise God for the people who bought me a bike this week!
-Praise God for the opportunities to travel around Germany!
-I finally found a place to get my favorite type of soda, Root Beer!!