11/30

Today is the last day of November, also known as No-Shave November. That means the last day of men's competitive and often humorous beard-growing. In order to honor this great occasion, all of the girls at Bode woke up early in order to cover their faces in Vaseline and stick coffee grounds on there in the shapes of beards, which we all wore non-challantly to breakfast, like this:

During break today, I worked on my second Bible essay, then Annelie, Steph and I headed to Frieds for Annelie's Christmas present.

When we told her it was a surprise, she was slightly argumentative, but finding out we were taking her to Sushi more than made up for it. We ate way too much once again..tried several rolls of questionable composition, one of which Steph later identified as spider...and really enjoyed our time together. This is the last time we'll get to eat together for awhile since Annelie's leaving soon for ten days for another one of her German service year training sessions.

When we got back, Steph and I were feeling slightly lazy and a little homesick. We stayed up watching some of the home videos I have on my laptop. As I go to bed, I'm a little sad tonight for no particular reason. But I'm also feeling blessed remembering all the incredible people and situations I've been surrounded with for my whole life.

Titus 3:4-7
4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

11/29

I worked on my project all day today, then for dinner, the whole crew from English Camp went out to eat pizza at La Taverna. Seriously the best pizza I've ever eaten. I don't know what they do to it, but it's incredible. Steph and I split two different kinds.

I sat next to Caleb, the guy from Rocklin, and it was really good to talk with him a little bit and get to hear a small part of his story. He's a good guy and I'm excited to get to know him better.

Our speaker right now is a man who was born in a Muslim house. His family is very high up in terrorist groups, hosted members of Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Ladin. When he was about twenty, he became a Christian through various miraculous events in his life. When he told his family, they kicked him out. Luckily, some Christians found him and took him in. The next morning, he read his own obituary in the paper. His parents held a funeral for him and there is a gravestone with his name on it in their family plot.

He has some incredible stories, and some really good insight into Islam as a religion. I feel so blessed to be exposed to these types of people and hear their testimonies. It seems a lot of times that the bad covers up the good, God is doing powerful things for good in this world.

Titus 2:11
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

11/28

There's a couple here for about a week who are waiting for their visas to come so they can go to England. They're from Mongolia, him originally, she's from Sweden, but went there as a missionary. They have a really neat story of God's active work in their lives and ministry with the Mongolian people. He's headed to England in order to learn English better and become more integrated with other churches for help and support. They have their little four month old baby with them, and he sorta gets passed around and held by lots of students every day.

Today, that little one inspired me to decide that in the future, Old Testament Bible reading would probably be easier to do while holding a baby.
holding a baby while reading the Bible.

I showed Autumn and Annelie some videos Aly had made for me before I left of her dancing sillily and they thought it was hilarious.
I read the Bible quite a bit, we had pizza for lunch, which is a treat cause it's hard to make.

For dinner, we had hot salty water with some potato skins and celery sprinkled in. I think cause the pizza took so much time. But still. It was sort of funny=)

Philippians 4:11
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

11/27

Today I read and ran.

Steph's got a lot she's been needing to talk to her family about lately, so we went to Bahnhof again tonight, this time on bikes, but there wasn't internet :/ It's decorated so pretty though! They sprayed the windows with that frosty stuff around the edges of each pane and stenciled snowflakes and holly and snowmen on them.. On each table is a silver candle holder, a sprig of pine tied with red ribbon and a cinnamon candle. It's very warm and Christmassy feeling. I'm gathering ideas for my home someday:)

We rode our bikes back through a light rain, Steph several yards in front of me, and I made a joke as we passed the creepy doll. 50 feet down the road some guy was smoking out on his front porch and I guess he made some sort of noise cause I heard Steph scream and the entire bike swerved. It's a good thing she kept her balance though, cause if she hadn't have, there's no way she would've been able to mistake the normal part of the curb for the part that dips down to allow bikes up onto it, and therefore there's no way that her bike would've stopped short and sent her flying like a rag doll over her handle bars and into the mud beside the path.

I felt so awful, but when I'd made sure she was ok, laughter was sort of compulsory. I stifled it as best I could, helped her stand up. She had mud across her face and had torn the sleeve of her coat, poor thing :( There were leaves stuck in her coat buttons and hair and I picked them out as we walked home.

It really was hilarious, but I'm glad she's ok. Here's a picture of her when we got back to my room:

I sorta love her:)

Psalm 100:4
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

11/26

Today was Annelie's day off and she, Steph and I went up to Marj's apartment again to have a nice relaxing day. Steph and I have a lot of Bible reading to catch up on, and I caught up on a large chunk of it this afternoon there as the other three caught up on sleep:)

While we were there, I noticed another difference between North American and German homes. In Germany, all the houses have fake shutters that don't actually close on all the windows. But they also have rolled up metal shutters that they can close from the inside with a little rope when it gets stormy. They're really loud when you close them.

Steph needed to skype her brother, so we went to Bahnhof after lectures. We headed back to Bode at about 10:15. And so the story begins...

It was a full moon. Patchy clouds drifted eerily across the sky. I seriously spell across wrong every time I type it out. EVERY TIME! I spelled it with two 'c's, fixed it, then started writing that next sentence and spelled it wrong again! You know what else gets me? Judgment. I like to slip an 'e' after that 'g'... Steph and I walked arm in arm down the center of the silent street, houses dark and quiet on both sides. The two bars on that street are mellow, no peals of laughter in the distance. Somehow in my mind, I would like to say there were peals of laughter in the distance cause that just sounds right, but there weren't..just wanna make that clear.

As we walked, each street lamp caught and stretched our shadows. I commented on how it reminded me of the movie Nightmare on Elm Street where the burn wound victim with metal claws comes into people's dreams and kills them..looking back, there was no justification for why that street would've reminded me of that movie, but at the time it added the needed kick of adrenaline to an otherwise uneventful night.

We neared the end of the street and something moved in the shadows beneath the tin roof of the fire station and/or oddly placed airplane hangar on our right. We both screamed and grabbed each other. Out walks a German cop. He crosses the street behind us to where two other cops are standing and they talk in hushed tones, which we strain to hear despite the fact that we know they're speaking in German and there is therefore no way that we can understand a single syllable of what they're saying.

Turning the corner, we jumped to the side of the eight inch wide sidewalk (which I assure you is a feat in itself) out of the way of two more cops striding stoically (extra points for alliteration) down the street. I'm sure German cops are good people for the most part, but they're German men in uniform, so my brain just automatically draws the parallel to the more publicised German men in uniform from various World War II movies and makes them that much more scary.

Steph and I laugh a little. I probly cracked some sort of stupid joke to lighten the mood, which
Steph probly laughed at cause she's just awesome like that. Everything is fine. The excitement's over for the night. We pass a naked baby fountain. I attempt to start a conversation about the mental process that must've taken place in order to establish chubby, exposed marble infants as a popular mode of decorative water distribution. Steph checks her phone and lets me talk. All is as it should be.

Ahead on our left is the apothecary. I call it an apothecary only because apothecary is almost the same word as what they use on the German sign over this medicine store and I don't know what the correct modern English replacement for the word might be.

I like this apothecary because it's got a huge window in the front and when you look in, you see shelves and shelves of those bulky brown glass old-fashioned medicine bottles. It sparks my curiosity a little. Every time I walk past there I imagine the old man who owns it-white frizzy beard and hair like Einstein... skinny... spry. I'm not completely sure what spry means, but I think it fits here pretty well. ...animated and a little off. Probably, one eye twitches. He smokes a pipe and likes to make up things about what kinds of things used to be in those old medicine bottles just to see his audience's reaction.

So here I am creepily daydreaming about a lonely old man as I walk along, the traces of adrenaline sluggishly draining from my veins and I look over and see this:

That, reader, is not just a doll. That is a wooden doll with empty black eyes that pierce your soul. That doll is holding some sort of weapon which I was unable to identify because when I get freaked out, my eyes water for no particular reason. I think that might prove unfortunate for me if I'm faced with any real danger at some point in the future, but that is a topic for another conversation.

The adrenaline in my veins woke up again!

I want you to know that I got within ten feet of that window to take those pictures. I risked a lot. And I was pathetically jumping around from creeped-out-ness the whole time, which makes the quality of those images doubly impressive.

As I'm taking pictures, Steph's telling me we've gotta hurry. Lock-up's in seven minutes. Let's go. I knew she was right, so I'm hurrying, multiple "Oh my gosh"'s  and "What??!!"'s coming from my mouth cause despite my blanched fear, I was still trying to figure out some logical reason for someone to place that cold, lifeless puppet in their window.

Just as I'm taking my last, closest, and most brave picture, I hear "Shhh!"

My first impulse is frustration at Steph. In my mind I'm thinking, "If I want to take a stinking picture of a stinking creepy doll, just let me do it. Don't shush me! Since when did you get so..." I turn around and Steph is frozen. I'm not sure if the crippling shiver that ran down my spine was because it was frigid outside, or because terror took on a physical embodiment and gave me crebbles. (Crebbles is a made up word that a girl named Cara brought to Bible school from way up north in Canadia. It means a gentle back rub. Not like a massage. Like how I slipped that little nugget of knowledge in there? Also, while I'm at it, "Boatloafing" is having deep, emotional conversations. I don't think there's a reason behind either of those word choices.)

I started to ask Steph, "did you..." she shook her head. We heard it again "SHHH!" And I'm talking that was a powerful shush! It must've come from accross the street, but it sounded like it was next to us! I have no idea who shushed us..could've been some old lady across the street-just spelled across wrong again-could've been the angry spirit of the little boy who that spry little apothecary had turned into his window puppet...who really knows. One way or another though, it didn't take a significant amount of time for Steph and I to put some impressive distance between us and that window.

We make it to the graveyard on our right. When you're comforted by a graveyard, you know there's something wrong. The little candles on the graves seemed almost inviting.. it really is a pretty little graveyard though. Anyways, so we're walking, sort of giggling still, but not yet making conversation. Across the street we hear a loud noise and both jump and scream. The motion-sensor light in the parking lot over there turns on and two men dressed in dark clothes are dragging a huge bag from a truck toward a dumpster. I kid you not. The sound we heard was the bag and whatever its contents might've been (I'll let you make your own speculations) hitting the gravel ground from the bed of the truck.

If you weren't understanding of our girlish fright before, please do be now. We ran-walked down the street and around the corner. The clouds parted and the moon cast a beam of light on the sign for the graveyard. Like we needed the added affect.

As we turned onto our street, a black cat scampered into the bushes in front of us. Warmth started to return to our bones as we neared Bode. Our heartbeats calmed a little. We stepped onto the brick parking area of the school. Somehow, and I'm honestly not sure why, everything felt all warm and happy and safe as soon as we got there. It might've been because we knew the door was within competitive running distance from most any danger, but now I'm just speculating..

Steph and I start to laugh a little bit and breath normal again. We both can't believe that all that just happened to happen on one night. And as girls, of course, we feed off each other so it just made it that much worse.. We're almost to the door and all of a sudden there's a sudden noise to our left. I thought they were shooting at us. Who "they" were didn't occur to me. Suffice it to say, we both jumped and screamed and ended up grabbing each other for dear life before realizing that it was just Marj's metal shutters closing for the night.

I feel like I just walked through Fishbach's own little haunted house :D

Romans 12:10
Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

11/25

Today was a good day. Steph and I-who are both on that weird emotional laugh-cry-sleep-complain pendulum that you'd only understand truly if you've been a teenage girl at some point in your life-went into Frieds to catch up online. For me, with this blog and for her, with family.

We went to Gessler's for most of the day, then went to the sushi restaurant next door cause we knew we needed to try it out if we were gonna take Annelie there for her Christmas present. All you can eat sushi for ten Euros isn't bad at all...and we were so stuffed by the end, it was ridiculous, but so good! No disappointments there, and no food poisoning thus far, so we're content=)

After dinner, I wanted to skype my dad cause today is his birthday and Steph had a skype date with her cousin to keep. It was about 6:30pm. In general, you wouldn't think it would be too much of an issue to find wifi in a tourist town with about eighteen internet cafes in it right? Wrong. Because everything is closed by 6pm.

So here's Steph and I walking the deserted streets of Friedrichshafen. There was a pretty moon out and the area we were in has cobblestone streets, street lamps, we walked down along the waterfront and it was the cutest, quaintest little walk, I loved it! Like walking down mainstreet in Disneyland on a quiet day, after the kidlets have gone.

There were little red glass skylights for the underground parking intermixed in the cobblestone, and we were in just loopy enough of a mood to hop from one to another and make a romantic-looking couple hurry past us awkwardly =D

We finally found internet outside a little chocolate shop with tables out front and even an outlet! On ground level all around us were shops and cafes, and above them, apartments of different colors with shutters and flower-pots. Just very European. If there'd have been snow, it would've completed the scene. I played the twelve days of Christmas by Straight No Chaser just cause it needed to be played and my father wasn't able to get on skype to talk :/

From there, we went back to the train station to catch the last bus home. Lia's been away having Thanksgiving with family in Italy for about a week now, but she came home today, and it just happened to be that we walked into the train station just as she was arriving back there. We rode the bus back together with another group that'd been hanging out in Frieds all day.

Tonight is my night to catch up on some Bible reading for the report that's due soon. It's funny how you always tell yourself you'll stay on track with that sort of thing, but you just never follow through. Oh well..good practice staying up late at least.. Haven't done that in awhile!

Psalm 85:8
I will listen to what God the LORD says; he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants— but let them not turn to folly.

11/24

Saturday. Brunch. No further enthusiasm is required from me than what I have already invested into this blog in regards to brunch.

Today, Steph taught me how to curl my hair. I now have nine burn marks in total on my hands and wrists. But my hair was pretty:) After I curled my hair, I read the Bible out loud to catch up while Steph cleaned her room.

After lunch, I took a run and grabbed a shower. Before The Crossing, I wanted to have a little Bible Study, so while everybody else was getting ready, I went down to the library with my Bible. About five minutes in, a girl walked in who I didn't recognize. She was from Germany, her name's Lisa and she was really happy to talk to me about her life and we had a nice conversation :)

During the program, my job was to stand outside the door and make sure all the right people went in at the right time. It went flawlessly. I say it's due to my air traffic controller-like dexterity.

As the program was concluding, two Alexander from Serbia and Scott (Stephen from Vienna trip's brother) were playing chess and Alexander didn't want to anymore. I later found out that Scott is some sort of genius chess player, and he did beat me, but apparently the skills I learned from past father-daughter chess matches were sufficient to impress them enough that they want to play more chess with me!

...I'm not sure if that's actually the reason, or if they just can't find anyone else willing to face almost certain loss, but I'm gonna stick with option A cause it makes me feel so much more accomplished!

After The Crossing, we're supposed to socialize with people and talk about it and ask what they thought and stuff and it tends to promote awkward situations, but tonight Steph and I sat at a table with five or six German students from a local college Bible study group and it was a lot of fun =)

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

11/23

Since tomorrow is our second Crossing and Steph's in charge this time, I helped her with setup.

I played an intregal role in the whole production.

I tied leaves on a decorative tree for three and a half hours. =P

Tonight after dinner, they had the dress rehearsal for The Crossing. The theme is living a fruitful faith. Yvonne from making cookies yesterday is actually the one giving her testimony! Then there's a quick skit about the sower of the seeds and a twenty minute sermon.. I'm not sure how much I said about it the last time, but it's a ministry for Germans in the area, so it's all done in German, and it's a pretty awesome production.

The other person giving his testimony is a boy named Jordan. He was pretty deeply involved in drug dealing in the city he lived in until the end of last year, when he turned his life around. He's a gifted musician and will give his testimony in English with a translator, then sing a song he wrote to go along with it.

There are a few other songs being sung and then it's over.

After the dress rehearsal, Steph, Annelie and I went up to Marj's apartment and hung out for awhile. We were all tired and pretty emotionally drained for some reason, so we headed to bed pretty quick.

Galatians 5:13
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

11/22

Today we had another Reflection Hour instead of a lecture.

I haven't posted about my faith a lot on here in order to avoid feeling like I need to watch what I say about it so as not to have my words misinterpreted.. It seems to me that a lot of people are much more interested in debate than in understanding another person's point of view. I think that's good in certain circumstances and bad in others and I'm not gonna make a judgment call for this particular circumstance-mainly cause I'm eighteen and there's not a whole lot of experience to back it up =P-but I would ask that you take what I say with a little grace and the understanding that I'm growing up and learning new stuff every day, alright? :)

I've been struggling a little bit lately to feel the connection with God that I've been seeking. And I'm not seeking some constant warm fuzzy feeling from Him...the only thing that would do for me would be to make me stagnant and weak in my faith.
Alright, are you ready for this? This makes me sort of excited:) In my mind, it's easier to condense the idea of sin into two basic umbrella sins: pride and fear. Every wrong that I can think of can be fit into one of those two categories, or a combination of the two. I'll let you think that one through on your own and decide whether or not you can agree fully, but here's one example:

Take the idea of faith. You've got images of falling back into someone's arms, trusting they'll catch you...rappelling down a mountain assuming your belayer's got a good grip on the rope...taking the medicine your doctor prescribes... All of these things require you to acknowledge, subconsciously or otherwise, that you don't have the power to do for yourself what will be best for you, but someone else does and will. In other words, you must humble yourself, and you must put away fear of the unknown in order to have faith. So when you lack faith, your pride and your fear are getting in your way.

My problem is that I tend to think of a lot of things as weaknesses that, in reality, are evidence of strength. So when I'm struggling with something, my first impulse is to deal with it on my own. If I rely on someone else to help me solve my issue, first of all, it's inconvenient for them and they've got their own problems to deal with. But second of all, I'm "giving up". I'm being weak.

The truth is that in going to someone for help, I'm humbling myself and putting aside my fear. It's good. And it's something that requires a lot more strength than just pretending I've got everything under control.

So anyways..........haha today during free time, I had all these things floating around in my brain and I wasn't feeling very peaceful at all. I wasn't a huge fan of the first 15 minutes of reflection hour. I didn't feel like talking to God, and I didn't really feel like doing much else, so I opened up my computer and just started writing out questions as they came to my mind.

Being here, it seems like there are so many complicated concepts being thrown around pretty casually. The reason for this is that the majority of the complicated concepts within Christianity are man's attempts to come to grips with God's reality. I think this is good for us to do. A couple of C.S. Lewis's models really help me to approach my faith in a better way, so I like them. But they don't answer all the questions. They just can't! And this was maddeningly frustrating for quite a long time...

So there I was, down in the little basement game room area, typing out my questions with some pretty heavy frustration, resenting the fact that God would dare to do something that didn't fit into my picture of His story.

And then it hit me: the issue wasn't the fact that there were things I didn't understand about my faith. The issue was that I wasn't operating out of faith! In my pride, I had taken a defensive stance for myself against God's word. I allowed myself to believe only what fit the right way, as if I planned to sort through everything, checking and re-checking every concept, testing it against my own experience and the experience of others and science and all the rest of the convoluted mass of opinion and knowledge that I've encountered in my lifetime.

Don't get me wrong, I think that's an excellent way to start out this journey. I think of Lee Strobel, an atheist who made up his mind to prove once and for all that it was all nonsense and instead ended up becoming a Christian. It's always good to proactively seek the truth. Not many people do I don't think... And it's wise to want to be sure that what you believe in is logical to believe in.

But there comes a point where it's time to stop challenging and start believing on faith. And by the time I'd gotten to the end of the second page full of irritated questions, I realized I'd reached that point. I realized that to worship a God I understood fully would defeat the idea of an all-powerful God altogether. And I decided I believe that the Bible's true whether I understand it all the way or not!

Haha I know that's a simple realization for such a long post, but it seems to me.......that you can hear something over and over your entire life and it means nothing to you. But then one day, you hear it again and for some reason, it means everything.

I'm not gonna talk about why I ultimately made that decision cause it just feels like more of a coffee date conversation than blog post material.. though I think I might've stretched the whole blog post material status already =P

This week, our speaker, Johan Schep, is sort of awesome. He was born in Germany, his dad was a drunk and didn't support the family, so that became his job. When he was old enough, he was eager to escape and went to Israel as a hippie. While he was there, a war began and ended. He tells stories of helping in different ways in the war...chasing cows through fields of active mines...meeting high-up military officials...

Before he'd left, his mom had slipped a little Bible into his backpack and on the lonely nights, he started reading it and ultimately came to believe in its message passionately.  From the moment he accepted his message, he was filled with such joy that he told everyone he saw. His prayer from the beginning was for Bibles in the language of the people around him. One of the people he told about Christ's salvation brought him to the house of an elderly woman that he said was "just as crazy as you are."

Turns out, this woman was a Christian and had an entire back room filled with boxes of Bibles in Hebrew that had been sent to her years earlier by an organization associated with Billy Graham, but she was too weak and old to distribute them on a large scale.

Conveniently, Johan had both the health, and the passion to do it for her :) He spent most of his life in Israel serving the people there. He got married ten years ago and is now a vibrant 60 year old man who plays simple little sing-along songs on his guitar, complete with dance moves and hand motions.

In the afternoon, I went to make cookies at one of my K-group leaders' house. Inga works in the kitchen at Bode. She has a really interesting testimony..she lived a very free sort of esoteric lifestyle from an early age, became pregnant at seventeen and traveled with the baby to Austrailia, and later to India in search of "truth". At some point while she was living in a small community of similarly spiritual people, she realized that she wasn't being fulfilled, and somehow (I forget the story exactly) came to the Christian faith.

Anyways, Inga, Valeska, Yvonne (all three from Germany), Megan (from Canada), Johan's wife and I rode our bikes past the church along the road I usually run on and then over to Inga's house the back way. It took us about 30 minutes, and it was such a peaceful, beautiful ride!

Inga had the dough all ready for us when we got there, and we rolled it out and used cookie cutters to make three different kinds of traditional German cookies: a spice cookie rolled in powdered sugar, butter cookies with jelly in between, and regular cookies with frosting.

I was slightly disappointed because Germans don't eat cookie dough, nor do they eat massive numbers of their own freshly-baked cookies like us Americans do. (or at least like Steph, Aly and I are accustomed to) Other than that though, it was a lot of fun and I got to know a little bit more about all of them that I wouldn't have otherwise.

When the cookies were done, Inga fed us some potato soup and for dessert, she'd made pumpkin pie because Germans for the most part have never heard of pumpkin pie! We told them about it at Thanksgiving dinner and they thought it was like a salty casserole type of thing or something.

So Inga made it, but as she's bringing it out, she's telling us how it didn't look right to her, so she stuck some vanilla pudding mix in there to thicken it and all this stuff and she sets it on the table and asks us if it looks right and Megan and I just sorta snuck a quick glance at each other and smiled a little bit and told her it was beautiful.

It was a yellow-green color. Inga had hand-cubed a fresh pumpkin and there were therefore pumpkin strings sticking out of the surface of the pie in all directions. She put a generous portion on Megan and my plate and everyone watched carefully as we took the first bite. It tasted like chunks of pumpkin suspended in vanilla pudding! And so of course we finished off our pieces and watched with little smirks on our faces as everyone else at the table silently did the same. I'm not sure if they were more afraid of offending Inga, or us, but to put it plainly, I don't foresee pumpkin pie becoming a new part of German holiday traditions.

We biked home with buckets of cookies on the backs of our bikes. It was really cold. I'm always cold here. I wear multiple pairs of pants, several sweatshirts, carry around a blanket and a cup of hot water and am still cold the vast majority of the time. Daily I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's a problem more with my internal temperature regulating system than anything else.

When I got back to Bode, Annelie ran up to me and told me I was gonna be SO excited, Steph had a surprise for me!! Out walks Steph from the kitchen with a piece of pumpkin pie she had saved for me. I guess someone brought it in for all the American students. Made my day:)

2 Corinthians 7:10
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

11/21

The Bible Study project was due today. I worked on it until dinner and turned it in on time. I am very happy to have finished it.

Since today was American Thanksgiving, I tried to Skype the family as soon as I got finished. Mom's ipod was off, dad's laptop was broken, and I think Aly might've been sleeping. Of course Uncle Ron came through for me on Tango and we talked for a couple minutes before the internet cut out. It was good to talk to him though, and he said hello to everybody for me.

I haven't missed home very much since I've been here. I mean of course I love my home and family, and of course there are things that you miss. ...family dinners...driving Aly to school...my own room...the freedom to eat whatever and whenever I want, haha. But I haven't ever really wanted to be home instead of here. Today was the first time I've felt a little pang of homesickness thinking about missing my first Thanksgiving dinner away from the Trigueiro's house with all the favorite foods, made the usual way:)

I really think it's good for me though. It's painfully cliche to say, but I think I appreciate the familiarity of those things more knowing what it's like to not have them for awhile.

To finish off the day, I took a nice shower. There are four rooms with showers on each floor. One has just two showers, two have three showers and two toilets, and one is a single room, all-inclusive, luxurious, resort-style shower-toilet-sink-mirror-heater-window combination.

..Guess which one's my favorite?

So tonight I beat the crowd to my favorite shower room. Bible school student victories, right? But it made me really happy. I said hello to my two spider friends. They are always in the same spots on the ceiling.

I'm not sure how they're still alive. Sometimes, they mix it up on me and dangle precariously from the ceiling right above the shower.

Then I have to balance my time between taking lightning-speed quick-peeks to make sure the little guy's still there, watching agonizingly as the water vapor makes him slip down his meager webling closer and closer to me, jumping every time the water pressure changes and I think it was the spider landing on me, and actually showering.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Psalm 118:21
I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation.

11/20

Today I worked on my Bible Study project all day. There's a certain point at which writing begins to make me sick. I reached that point today. It's not even the subject matter that I dislike, it's just the fact that I have to write five thousand words on it when there isn't five thousand words worth of material to write about it! I would've gone online to look up more stuff, but the internet was so slow I couldn't even load my Google homepage..

Haha and a Bible school student with four hours of free time a day complains about a five thousand word essay. Irony. I'm pretty sure I can think of at least eight friends who are currently experiencing real college finals and would therefore laugh at my whining right now.

To finish the day, Steph, Annelie and I had a nice prayer time in the hall right before lock-up. I have good friends:)

James 5:16
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

11/19

Today was my day to catch up online and try and finish my Bible study project.

When Annelie got off work (she's working in the kitchen now, so her schedule's different), she came and grabbed us and we went over to her apartment with probably five other girls to eat a special cake her mom brought her yesterday.

Her mom's family is from Denmark, and I guess there's a tradition that for a girl's birthday, you make a cake shaped like a girl and for a boy's, a boy and then you have a little party and everybody screams as the birthday person cuts off the cake's head. So we did:) Haha we warned the neighbors and steph filmed us all screaming as Annelie murdered her cake.

The cake was like cinnamon bread with a chocolate chip face, frosting dress and licorice hair. We all sat around eating it and one of the women from the kitchen came down and brought some cookies she had made along with a little present for Annelie.

We find that there are certain days here that just aren't good mood days for anybody. I don't know if girls' hormones are syncing up, or we're all just tired, or the weather affects us or what, but today was one of those days. I think it was good to take a break from writing and vent a little bit on topics ranging from boys to name-meanings.

Afterwards, I figured I was getting plenty of carbs from yesterday and today combined, so I skipped dinner to take a run that I really didn't feel like taking (you know, the whole "bad day" thing), and went to lectures. After lectures, Steph, Annelie and I went up to Marj's house for a cake party instead of a cereal party, to finish off what was left of her cheesecake.

A girl named Kezia came up a little later and hung out for awhile. She's such an interesting person, haha and fun to be around. She loves to dance, taught herself how and will all of a sudden break into dance once in awhile. She's only attracted to Asian men and wants to marry an Asian cowboy. Excercises more than anybody I've ever met and has a really great testimony of not wanting to come here, being forced, hating it and all of us for the first month and then slowly realizing how good it is for her. She's growing stronger in her faith and I'm so excited to see her mature throughout this year in that way:)

We headed back to the main building just before lockup and Steph and I ended up having one of our really deep talks, which was really good. It's tough to fit those in just cause there's so much going on and so many people you want to get to know, but tonight we both needed to figure some stuff out, so we went in the little double-shower room and talked til 2am!

We're all experiencing such incredible, constant growth here. It's so good, but a lot of times it's also difficult to work through. I really am thankful to have Steph here. Since we know each other so well, we're able to help each other through stuff that probably other students end up having to work through on their own.

I think my appreciation of Steph as my best friend is something that has really grown since I've been here. That's something that we've both recognized. I want to say that I'll come home a completely changed person. I know there are a lot of students here who will. The reality is that I will come home a person who more fully recognizes just how weak I am and how strong Christ in me is.

I can see my faults much more clearly now, and because of this, have been able to begin the process of surrendering them to my Savior. I am confident of His Spirit working powerfully in my life to heal me and teach me to grow beyond those things.

But ANYWAYS...my point in starting all that up is that one of the ways I've grown is that I'm becoming a much softer person as far as friendships and emotions go, so I'm beginning to appreciate things like coffee with Steph a lot more than I used to. It's good. It makes me happy:)

Psalm 37:30
The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak what is just.

11/18

Oh boy, this'll be a long post...prepare yourselves.

Today was Annelie's birthday.

Steph and I woke up early to wake the darling up with a flower and a little note telling her that she didn't have to work today. We'd talked to the housekeeping team and arranged to take over her duties for her.

Of course, since she wasn't expecting anything, she was extremely excited:) She said it was the best birthday present ever! ..But she didn't know what we had planned either, so...

After breakfast, Steph headed over to Annelie's house to do her hair and help her pick out a cute outfit for church while I did Annelie's chores.

Then we had church and right after, one of the Germans here who has a car helped us sneak Steph past Annelie and drove her to pick up the cake.

Meanwhile, Annelie was opening presents in the hallway. Autumn and Jessica got her a bottle of a very expensive perfume that she'd always wanted.

Steph and I skipped lunch to put together the rest of Annelie's birthday surprise. We'd written out nine hints yesterday and we tied each to a little boquet of two or three flowers.

I spent the in-between times of yesterday and this morning running around frantically making sure everyone knew where they were supposed to be, giving the boquet-hint things to the people who were supposed to have them and checking on reservations.

Kelty (who went to Vienna with us) and I walked to Schwartz where she explained our plan to them in German and asked them to keep one of our hints. On the way there, I found out that Annelie's parents and little brother had dropped in for a surprise birthday visit and brought a cake. So when I got back from Schwartz, Steph and I joined them and each had a little piece of her mom's chocolate cherry cake, which was without a doubt the best cake I've ever eaten.

Of course, finding out her parents were here had a rather adverse effect on Steph and my planning, but while Annelie was out of the room, Steph explained to her family all that we had planned and it turned out they couldn't stay long anyways, so it worked out perfectly:)

After her parents left, Annelie went back to her apartment where we told her we wanted to hang out with her for awhile for her birthday. We met her there a few minutes later, holding one of the hints, saying "Look what we found in front of your door!"

The riddle told her to go catch the bus. Steph and I played it off as if we had no idea what was going on, sort of teasing her a little bit and she asked us over and over again, "Where do you think we could be going??!!"

Obviously, we replied with, "I have no idea! Do you think they're watching us right now? Do you see anyone you recognize? Are they kidnapping us??!!"

The bus ended up being an hour late. We were really cold by the time we got on. But it all worked out. Annelie's still asking where we're headed. How she's gonna know when to get off.

At the first stop, David and Austin were waiting with the next hint. Annelie literally squealed when she saw them, haha! ..Germans don't usually do that.. =P

Their hint told her what stop to get off at. Emma and Brooklyn were waiting there with a hint that lead her to a pizza place where the rest of the gang was waiting. I think there were ten or twelve of us total. When she saw everybody waiting there with balloons on her chair, pink roses on the table and her gift, she started crying, it was the cutest thing!

We ordered pizzas (I honestly don't know what they do to the pizza here, but it is incredible, all of it) and hung out just eating and joking around. Annelie opened a couple presents from her parents and grandma. The waiter was so nice to us! He brought out a complimentary birthday dessert plate with candles and we all sang happy birthday:) (he later tried to hit on Autumn and ruined his awesome waiter reputation...what is it with forty year old indian guys, my gosh?!)

Dinner ended costing us like four euros each, not bad at all. We caught the bus back home and Annelie was smiling like a crazy person, it was great! She even started tearing up again, haha cause like I said, she wasn't expecting anything for her birthday. After every step, she thought it was the end of her birthday celebration, but when we got back to the Bode, we had another hint waiting in her apartment.

David (German guy who helped us order the cake) helped me get everything ready while the whole group followed the clue over to Schwartz. At Schwartz, the lady handed her the next hint, which brought her to the kitchen. By this time, David and I had gathered everyone from the halls of the Bode downstairs in the games room where we had the cake set up with candles and everything.

In the kitchen, I met back up with the group and played a little "hot and cold" game until Annelie found the next clue, "a room with four beds that is close to your heart." She didn't hesitate at all, but headed straight up to my room. When we got up there, we blindfolded her and lead her down into the games room. When we got there, the room was silent, the candles were lit, and the lights were off. As soon as I took the blindfold off, everybody sang happy birthday and Annelie was in complete shock=)

She blew out all the candles in one breath and all thirty or so people got a piece of cake with some left over for Annelie to take home. She was so cute, her face was all red and she couldn't even talk she was so happy and excited! And she absolutely couldn't believe we remembered her favorite kind of cake:)

It was a great day and everything worked out just perfectly. I'll try and come back soon and post some pictures of it=)

Psalm 126:2
Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”

11/17

Brunch. Ahhh brunch. The only meal at which I allow myself to eat whatever the heck I want and it's a truly beautiful thing. If I ever need any encouragement throughout the week, that's it. "What? What's that Emily? You have a lot of reading to do? You miss home? It's been raining for a week and a half? That's ok! Calm your face. Brunch is in four days."

What I just said is only partially true. Germany hasn't turned me into some food-crazed monster.

After brunch, we had a nice little room hangout time and then I got all athletically dressed up and ran to Kaufland to meet with Steph. We shopped for all of Annelie's birthday supplies for tomorrow and then I walked home listening to the fabulous Francis Chan with a grocery bag in each hand.

Fun fact: you have to buy your grocery bags if you're gonna get them here. They're sturdy plastic ones for a dollar and you can use them over and over again. And you bag your own stuff. I think it's a better system personally..

When I got home, I worked on my Bible study project on James 4. We have to write a full historical, spiritual and personal analysis on a chapter of the Bible. I'm really excited for it. It's similar to our Exegesis in Parrott's class senior year and I think it'll be really good for all of us.

James 1:12
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

11/16

Ahh lunch dishes. James and I go back and forth with our delightfully entertaining conversations, Steph pipes in, and we have much fun every day. Unfortunately, afternoons go by quicker since an hour is already gone by the time we're done with dishes. But it's all good, I enjoy it.

I went for another run. I know it's not really necessary to keep saying that. The excitement is fading. But in twenty years when I'm reading this and can no longer go for a run I know I'll be doing a little Tim Tebow pose every time I read it and smirking to myself, "That's right. Eighteen year old me was,  in fact, the awesome, athletic, disciplined person I like to think she was. And my thirty-eight year old body thanks her."

Also, cool thing about running? No guilt at dinner time. And since today was our room's day to celebrate Brynn's birthday, we all went to Spicy Grill to celebrate. If you can imagine four American girls all dressed up and riding on a bus full of stoic Germans...haha good stuff. I never thought I'd learn to enjoy the typical "girl talk", but it was definitely a night of girl talk and it was great.

Brynn is one of those girls who really, deep down, wants her birthday to be celebrated, but says she doesn't really care about it or want any attention. So she loved tonight=) We talked to the waiter and he brought out some apple crisp with vanilla ice cream and a few sparklers in it and she was so surprised and turned all red and everything:)

After dinner, of course we were all crazy. We sang Christmas carols all the way home like idiots=)

Happy Birthday Brynn!!

Habakkuk 3:18
yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

11/15

Rob Wittaker is our speaker this week. He's the principal of Capernwray Hall (the Torchbearer Bible School in England) and spoke a lot on the controversial subjects of Christianity, trying to make us think and decide for ourselves what we believe. Today, a group of us went to Schwartz for coffee with him and one of the main things we talked about was predestination and free will.

Basically, some people think God chose everyone who would have salvation and they have no say in it at all...other people say that free will reigns supreme and it is completely man's choice whether he has salvation or not...and other people think it's different mixes of the two.

And churches split over this issue. People get into heated arguments. And of course there was a little bit of that here, but it's so different and refreshing for me to be in an environment where the attitude is much more one of learning than of establishing opinions to be defended.

So Rob got us all thinking about everything and discussing it. One of the things he mentioned as being something that some theologians are talking about is the possibility that God actually limits his power in order to give us and our prayers power on this earth so that He can be closer in relationship to us.

Now keep in mind I don't want to start any conversations on this topic. I am actually the opposite of interested in discussing this, and I don't say that in a hostile way, only because I think at some point you can get too focused on details and miss the more important picture of the Christian faith. But it's an interesting thought!

After coffee, I went for a short run and had a nice little prayer time. Good day:)

Psalm 34:17
The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.

11/14

Today's main goal was to order a cheesecake for Annelie's birthday on the eighteenth. It's the funniest thing, she's been pouting all week about how no one's gonna do anything for her birthday and she's gonna have to make herself a cake. We've been going along with it, I feel a little bad.. We told her that we don't even really celebrate birthdays in America, and that it's not that big a deal and stuff, poor thing!

But of course Steph and I have a ton planned. It's gonna be great, you'll hear about it in Sunday's post.

Anyways, so I went for a run during lunch, then I'm not sure if I've mentioned that we switched duties, but now I'm doing lunch dishes instead of showers. It takes more than an hour every day, but I actually really enjoy it! I work alongside a kid from Canada named James. He's a great guy, so much fun to talk to and we entertain the whole kitchen with our conversations=)

After dishes, Steph and I were planning on going to Kaufland and then meeting one of Annelie's fellow German workers, David, at Cafe Hopker to order her cake. Unfortunately, Annelie overheard us making our plans and wanted to come to Kaufland with us. So we talked with Autumn, orchestrated a foolproof plan so that Annelie would have to leave Kaufland early to meet with her, and synchronized our watches.

Annelie, Steph and I biked to Kaufland...slowly. We walked into Kaufland and shopped around the fruit section for awhile...Annelie's checking her watch. We went into the cereal aisle...read all the labels on the boxes... Annelie suggested that we buy some cereal that had a fat hippo on the front. Which I think is an excellent sign. Then the birthday girl had to leave.

Ten minutes later, Steph and I were on our bikes and headed to Cafe Hopker, where we had arranged to meet with David, one of Annelie's fellow German workers.

Now before I tell you guys what happened (and don't get too excited in the meantime cause it's not that great of a story) you have to understand something: I like being Steph's friend for many reasons. She's friendly ...energetic...has pretty hair. But one of the best things about Steph? She has no sense of direction. So she makes me feel like the most talented navigatress alive.

Anyways...so I took the back way to the cafe. Steph was following close behind. We each had a Kaufland bag in one hand and were trying to steer our bikes with the other. The sidewalks are about six inches thick. I steered into a bush in an effort to avoid falling off of my bike.

Sorry I have another interjection: one of my fears since I've been here is somehow falling off of my bike into oncoming traffic and getting run over by a truck. There have been three people who have fallen off their bikes since I've been here...which I find hilarious. I feel like I'll probably appreciate remembering that when I read this again in 40 years.

Continuing on...I decided to turn right. Up the hill. The cafe is left. I knew this. But I thought going right would get us there quicker. Steph questioned it initially, but went along with my decision based on my flawless record of perfect navigating. So we began our ascent. Have you ever tried to ride a bike up a hill with a twenty pound bag in one hand on a six inch wide sidewalk? I'm pretty sure the first person to try that invented switchbacks.

Halfway up, Steph started walking her bike. At about the same point, I was forced to acknowledge the strong possibility that we were on the wrong road. I chose not to tell Steph until she had reached the top. To our left was a set of stairs. I knew they would lead to the right road. I assumed we would need to climb up them and then ride down a sidewalk that would lead us to the right street.

I assumed wrong. I made my poor faithful best friend carry her bike and a twenty pound Kaufland bag up one set of stairs and down six to the right street.

We met David a fashionable five minutes late. You should be impressed with the following information: I remembered what kind of cake is Annelie's favorite from the first week we were here. True story. So David helped us order a cheesecake with mango jelly stuff and fruit on the top with "Happy Birthday Annelie!" written on it. I'm so excited for her to see it!!!

After lectures, we had a little room time that included Annelie and Steph. Turns out the fat hippo cereal is actually cocoa puff squares filled with Nutella. The fat hippo is fitting. But it's delicious so I'm ok with it, just this once. Plus I mean really? You're never gonna find such blatantly artery-clogging and not ashamed of it cereal in America. We don't foresee the box lasting more than a week.

Psalm 19:7
The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

11/13

Today....I took an hour run to the train bridge that I'm pretty sure I posted pictures of last time. I specify the hour because I am still darn impressed with myself for it. I've started listening to sermons while I run instead of music. This successfully distracts me and helps remind me to make the run a metaphor for my faith. It sounds sorta dumb, but it's actually a great lesson. I can run a lot farther than I thought I could. I never woulda known that if I'd have stopped when I got tired. You draw your own spiritual paralells.

After my run, I met Steph at the turf soccer field that's a ten minute walk from the Bode. We did some excercises and had another of our deep conversations. It's so good to have her here. We help each other work through what we're thinking about and figuring out. I think I might go crazy if I didn't have her to talk to about stuff.
president's hour: testimony talk

When we got back, I was freezing and took an even longer shower than usual =/

Yesterday I said I decorated my bed. That is uncharacteristic for me. It's so interesting, I think I've explained how I'm growing spiritually, but also just personally a lot, really expanding my tastes and learning how to live with people. To go along with that, since I've been here, I've developed interests in things I've never been interested in before.

Whereas in the past, I would never have spent the time decorating my bed area because there's not really a logical reason for it, now I'm actually learning to enjoy that kind of thing just simply for the joy in creativity, not because it's necessarily something that needs to be done.

I don't know if that's a sufficient explanation, but I don't know how else to say it, so I'm gonna leave it at that. My point, though, is that I've been bugging Steph to teach me how to do some different things with my hair, so when I got out of the shower, I read the Bible out loud while she curled my hair. She made it into something I think she called a waterfall braid and it turned out really pretty:)

After lectures tonight, we had a cereal party at Marj's apartment.

Psalm 119:64

The earth is filled with your love, LORD; teach me your decrees.

11/12

Well folks, blogger.com has just informed me that I am no longer allowed to upload pictures onto my blog because I have gone over my free picture storing space limit that I was not informed existed. I have yet to decide what I will be doing in retribution for this absolutely unfair phenomenon.

I think retribution is the wrong word since nobody from blogger.com is gonna have to suffer as consequence for my inconveniencing, but it makes me feel better about the whole scenario to imagine they will, so I'm gonna leave it.

Unfortunately, I think I'm gonna have to copy past posts onto my computer and then remove the pictures from the blog itself. This is highly disappointing to me as it will require something that I will quiveringly refer to as my completely unfair first-world problem.

As it is almost mid-November, today our room has decided it's time to jump in to some Christmas spirit!

*Note* if you picture Buddy the Elf saying that, it's more fun.

We all cleaned up the room and embarked upon the fifteen to twenty minute walk to Kaufland, where we, in our cheap college-kid style, invested in some christmas decorations and some room trail mix.

During the walk home, Autumn informed us that she didn't mind carrying the bag of groceries all the way home cause her purse back home was so heavy that her right shoulder no longer feels pain.

We then hung our Christmas lights, put on some Christmas music, and mixed trail mix in our individually-assigned 1 liter ziplock bags.

While at Kaufland, I saw a fruit I'd never seen before. Since I have a rule that I have to try something new every time I go to Kaufland, I bought it. The sign at the store said "Kiwano". It was yellow-orange with spikes. Looked sorta like a sea nautilus. When I cut it open, it looked like the seed part of a cucumber, only quadruple the size. It tasted like a cucumber-kiwi-melon and something else which I can't remember. I scraped it into a bowl and it was all sloshy and gross-looking.

As I took the first bite, the possibility that there was a good reason I'd never seen one before entered my mind. It had the texture of alien snot. And yes. I know that. Just trust me. I quickly dismissed the mental image of me seizing and flopping on a German hospital bed, mouth foaming from Kiwano poisoning, and headed to Annelie's house where she and Steph were waiting to share some Oreos and peanut butter with me.

By the way, was Kiwano what the bat poop in Ace Ventura called...?

Steph, Annelie and I had a classic girl conversation. It was good times. As time progressed, I got inexplicably distracted and loopy. I don't usually get like that. It was sorta fun. As much as I'd like to conclude it was from some sort of accidental side-effect of not having immunified myself to Kiwano, I'm pretty sure it was largely psychological.

After oreos, we went to lecture. We moved seats this week. When I was in my other seat, I sat next to a kid named Peter. (The one who acts like a secret agent.) I dislike Peter. I have no good reason to dislike Peter. Peter is nothing but polite and nice to me. Every day, even though we no longer sit next to each other, he still sets a piece of chocolate on the table in front of me, just because. He's a good guy. But I cannot stand him.

It's terrible..almost humorously so, in fact. I've been working on not despising Peter. Just when I think I've got it down, another absolutely inexplicable surge of abhorrence escapes me. It's not even serious either, it's just there! (Just a quick interjection: if you comment in order to try and give me advice on how to stop this meaningless dislike cycle, I will ignore you. It won't be because I hate you too. It will be because I am writing this down purely for my own future entertainment. Just be warned.)

When lectures were over, Steph came to our room. With Christmas lights and music on, it feels very homy. We've all agreed that we've secretly got the best room ever. Steph comes and hangs out in there almost every night just cause we're awesome. While we talked, I decorated the area around the head of my bed with pictures she printed for me and letters I've received since I've been here. She has decided to have a little sleepover tonight. She keeps me warm, so it's all good:)

Psalm 139:3
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.

11/11

Today I woke up at an ungodly hour and got poor Autumn out of bed to go to mass at Stephensplatz. She had said she wanted to go despite the fact that she was up Skyping til 4am last night, but her morning self wasn’t quite as happy with the arrangement. We managed to get ourselves presentable-ish and we headed off to the train station, avoiding eye contact with the creepy doner guy, to catch the 6:30 mass.

The inside of the Cathedral was even more magnificent from the one we saw before the movie last night, it was incredible. I thought the priest was going to be teaching in Latin, but it ended up just being in German.


I don’t know why that was disappointing to me, we wouldn’t have understood it either way…haha my midnight logic I guess=P

After mass, we went and found a store where Autumn wanted to buy a hat, but nothing was open cause it was so busy. She did decide that the woman modeling one of the other hats looked just like me, so she took some pictures:

And I found the first cuckoo clocks I’ve seen since I’ve been here, which reminded me of you, Father:

 Then we took a nice roundabout walk during which I somehow managed to miss a turn and end up like a quarter-mile past our train station at the very first cathedral we saw in Vienna (it was the only time I got lost the whole time we were there thanks to my trusty map, which, ironically, tore during this last walk).

 But we caught the train back to the hostel just fine, had breakfast, packed up, and got to our train at the main station in Vienna a perfect half hour early. Peter met us there and we grabbed doners for lunch on the train since train food is so expensive.

During the ride, Autumn and I once again watched a movie, then she fell asleep and Kyle and I watched Friends and disrupted the poor, stoic German commuters with our laughter. We were all super tired so, needless to say, the train ride back was a lot quieter than the one going there.

After some odd, tired discussions on various topics, we arrived back in Frieds and took these fabulous, loving photographs:

Our roommates with poor Stephen:

Then we got McDonalds, which I refuse to ever do again here because it’s more expensive and even less edible, which is just sort of stupid. But it was the only thing open.

When I got back to Bode, I found Steph and we had a nice excited little best friends reunion and caught each other up on our weekends. It is nice to get home again, and be in my sort of own bed:)


Psalm 16:9
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,

11/10

This morning Matt knocked on our door and told us he was having chest pains and wanted to go to the hospital. Since Kelty is the only one of us who speaks good German, she needed to go with him to the hospital. She, Gabe, and Matt went and the rest of us had breakfast and took advantage of the good internet at the hostel. 

When they got back from the hospital a couple hours later, they told us that the doctors didn’t think Matt’s chest pain was a problem, but Matt still wasn’t feeling great, so he decided to rest a little and I gave him my ipod so he could get in touch with us if he wanted to meet up with us later.

So we set off. We wanted to go to the military museum, but only had a general idea of where it was at. We took the subway there and started walking through what seemed like one of the more rundown areas of town. As we were looking for the military museum, we just happened to pass a huge palace. One of the signs outside of the castle gate said something about Gustav Klimpt..apparently the members of our group are slightly more cultured than me because they had been talking about this famous artist several times since we started traveling together. 

His most famous painting is called “The Kiss”, and we just happened to have found the art museum in Belvedere Palace called the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, where this painting was housed. So we went in!

We ended up spending about three hours inside, looking at art. It was so crazy to see paintings that even I recognized from the pages of my history books from elementary school! One of the ones you might recognize is the original painting of young Napoleon on his horse heading off to battle. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but here’s what it looks like from the internet:

Klimpt was the most popular portion of the museum. He’s famous for his use of gold in painting. Here’s his most famous painting that we got to see:

This is the backyard:

And the building from the back:

After the museum, we grabbed some pizza for lunch. Here's a sign we passed on the way there. We though it was funny:

Since Vienna is famous for its cafes, Autumn and I had been wanting to make sure we got to go enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake at one of the cafes, and we wanted to make sure and see the rest of the main city of Vienna. The rest of the group really wanted to fit in the military museum, so we decided to meet at five next to the Austrian National Library since it has internet. There are so many cafes all over the place with free internet access, so Kelty gave me her ipod touch since I had given mine to Matt and we knew if there were any problems, it would be easy to get in touch with each other that way.

I wish I could’ve seen it too, but I’m glad we split up because Autumn and I got to see some pretty cool stuff too, and it was fun to spend the time with just the two of us.

First, we went back to the main city by train and walked through some of the more busy streets, looking for a nice café. We ended up going into Motzart’s Café (I think. Maybe Beethoven’s? I don’t know, one of the famous composers who was in Vienna for awhile.) across the street from The Albertina, and cattycorner to the opera house where we saw the ballet.

I wish I had pictures of the café to put up, but I didn’t get the ones from Autumn’s camera. Maybe I’ll update it later, but the café was gorgeous. All the waiters wore suits, the ceiling was all pretty and decorated with that white swirly old-fashioned stuff. We felt like little girls, all giddy, trying to be sophisticated, haha.

We each ordered a coffee and a piece of cake and shared everything. Each coffee came with a tiny little cup of cold water which is SUCH A GOOD IDEA! If I ever open a café, I’m definitely doing that=P

 It ended up costing us more than anything else we did the whole time we were in Vienna, but we figured nine euros for a really good piece of cake and a cup of coffee in Vienna was worth it for that experience. (Plus, I mean really, if that was the most expensive thing we did, I’d say we did a pretty good job:)

We ate and drank really slowly to enjoy the experience to its full potential, then headed off to explore a little more before it was time to meet.  

We walked the busy streets, looking into all the shops and famous buildings. Ran following the sound of trumpets to find a Viennese band playing Christmas songs next to yet another exotic Christmas market. We went to the main shopping street where all the really expensive clothing stores are, and went into a dress store where we found a three hundred Euro ugly shirt, and were too intimidated to touch any of the actual nice dresses to see their prices. We walked up the store’s granite spiral staircase that wound around a chandelier of strands of crystal beads that hung from the ceiling to the floor. On the second floor was one of those classic nice dressing room places with couches and martinis on the tables from the last guests, and all the dresses were intricately beaded and everything, it was crazy! I think if we’d have been dressed a little nicer and had more time, we’d have seen if they’d let us try something on, but we needed to keep moving.

Since we were a little whimsical after our fairytale café experience, we had a nice arm-in-arm walk through the romantic streets of Vienna, planned a future perfect engagement date in Vienna with prince charming, beginning with a ride in one of the horse-drawn carriages we passed along the cobblestone streets. We skipped through castle courtyards, made up stories about who might be living in all the lighted castle windows we saw around us, and laid down next to a statue in the middle of the little promenade outside the library to wish upon a star because it gets dark so darn early here. (Yeah. We did that. It was just one of those moods. And we were in Vienna, which has its own sort of magical atmosphere in a cute, fantastical way. Like what Disneyland feels like at night, only real..And I was with Autumn, so there’s your little sneak peek into her crazy, awesome personality=) 

When we got to the library at five, none of our group was there yet, so Autumn and I had a nice little bathroom break complete with country music and drinking water out of the sink like the civilized people we had already proven ourselves to be.

We waited til 5:30, but there was still so much we wanted to see, and we knew we weren’t gonna have much more time, so we sent Kyle a message with Kelty’s ipod and left the gang a note in the key hole of the big locked library door so they’d know where to meet us, and walked toward the giant, magnificent City Hall via the second big garden in the middle of Old Vienna.

It was dark, but the streetlights made everything really pretty and we were in a very touristy area next to the streets, so we felt pretty safe. We saw some Greek Goddess temple replica in the middle of the park, then took pictures next to a pretty rot iron gate on yet another beautiful building, then crossed the street to City Hall. 

The building itself looks like a Cathedral, it’s just gorgeous and so intricate-looking! The pictures don’t really do it justice:

We walked through all the little wooden buildings where they were setting up for their Christmas Market out in front. The Christmas tree was being decorated, and when we climbed the main steps of the building, all up and down the porch were little wooden dioramas depicting different Christmas scenes. 

We climbed up on the wooden benches outside the actual building and looked through the windows and everything inside was all decorated with wreaths and lights and all. It even looked like they had built wooden frames inside, as if there would be a live nativity scene. It’s crazy that it’s just the beginning of November and already they’re getting this prepared!

After exploring and admiring the building, we sat down to rest. Across the street was the other pretty building with the rot iron fence where we’d taken pictures, so we had a nice view. We were only there for probably ten minutes before our group came walking through the Christmas market buildings and Autumn and I felt rather clever for our ingenious National Treasure-like means communication:) The gang looked pretty tired.

I really liked spending more time with Autumn, not just because she really does just have a bubbly, joyful personality, but also cause we can keep up a quick pace and see a lot more. The rest of the group is more interested in stopping every once in awhile, but we wanted to make sure we got to see everything there was to see.

It was nice to be back with the group though, and share stories both ways. Even though everybody was tired, there was a cathedral about two hundred yards away (dad=P) that Autumn and I had been admiring from the steps of City Hall, so we convinced them to go see it with us. Not that it was hard to convince them or anything, everybody was pretty willing to work with everybody else, like I said – awesome laid-back group. Here are some pictures we took on the way there:

Front of the Austrian State Opera:

This is the outside courtyard of the Hofburg palace all lit up at night on our way to the cathedral:

Anyways, the cathedral was incredible. It was about 6:30ish by this time, and things start closing earlier here, so we assumed the church would be closed. We took some pictures outside, and were about to walk away when Erik actually tried the door and it was open! We went inside and it was absolutely breathtaking. Once again, the pictures can’t capture it cause the lighting wasn’t great, but it really was just overwhelming:

After the Cathedral, we found free wifi outside a bar and checked in with Matt. He said he wanted to meet up with us, so we took the subway from where we were, grabbed him at the main front stop in Vienna, and went to the big shopping street where Autumn and I had seen the dress store before. Everyone was hungry and wanting to save money, so we had dinner at MacDonalds. 

I forget what building this is, but it's pretty:

On the subway to pick up Matt:

We had decided earlier to see a movie, so using our student ID’s, we got six Euro movie tickets to see Skyfall. We. Saw. James. Bond. In. Vienna. What??!! Haha, it was great, the theater was really nice and it was even in English!!

Afterwards, we were all really tired. Gabe had a sore knee and Erik wanted to go home with him, so Matt, Kelty, Autumn, Stephen and I went to see the most famous cathedral in Vienna, Stephensplatz. If you look at the pictures from yesterday at the first palace we went to, Schonbrunn Palace, you can see its steeple on the skyline:)

The cathedral was under construction and not quite as magnificent from right next to it as it looks from far away, but still very cool. Autumn and I decided that we’re gonna get up early tomorrow and attend mass there before our train leaves. The timing will work out perfectly=)

Just as a side note, I mentioned in an earlier post that the guys in Fischbach are really shameless about honking and whistling at us on the streets. In Vienna, it was so much worse. I can't tell you how many times I looked up and saw a guy checking either me, Autumn, or Kelty out. Maybe that's not surprising, but as a sheltered girl from Auburn, it was a little disturbing. 

By the end of the weekend, I was literally making eye contact with these guys and gesturing with my arms to try and communicate a universal "What're you looking at?" and they just looked at me, blinked, and went right on looking me up and down like it didn't phase them at all!

Here's a picture of one of them when we were heading back from the cathedral. 

Tonight is a late night and everyone in our room seems past the point of exhaustion, so it’s that silly, sleepy phase in our room right now. Autumn’s skyping her best friend Courtney and complaining about having to share a room with poor Stephen, who’s actually been really good about everything. Kelty and I are laughing and observing, as usual:)

It’s been a successful travel weekend, hopefully we’ll all make it home without turning into zombies and killing each other on that eight hour train ride:P I guess we shall have to see…

Psalm 40:5
Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.