P52:2

Skype Date

One of my favorite things to do is skype/cook with my sister Lyddane.  We come up with a recipe we like, get the ingredients and then on a Sunday afternoon/evening we cook and talk for a few hours.  This recipe for spicy Thai pork with mango salsa and coconut rice was so good! But even better than the food was the few hours I got to spend talking to my sister and niece.... almost made me feel like I was home!

P52:1

A Cold Winter's Walk

Germany has been crazily lacking in snow this winter.  Laura's whole visit in December produced hardly any snow and even through January, it might snow for a few hours and then it all melts.  I've been able to get out and walk a little bit more this winter because it's so much easier without all the snow.  It has been super cold though and still dreary as ever though :(

Last year I tried to do a photo a day and got to about mid July before giving up..... just kind of ran out of time to edit them the way I like and started to run out of inspiration.  This year I'd like to get back into some photo projects but a photo a week seems more like it.  So I'm going to try and do a project 52 and give the highlight of my week or something that will help me to remember what's going on.  If nothing is exciting (which is most likely!) I'll try to photograph to a theme or something that will push myself to try something new with editing/shooting.  So here's too a new project! Let's hope for some good inspiration :)

Fall days in Grafenwoehr

Karlovy Vary

Karlovy Vary is just a few hours away from me so this was a fun little day trip.  Czech is known for it's spas- there are hot springs in a lot of areas so spa towns built up around those.  I was able to get a facial and walk around and just enjoy the sites and food of the area.

There were some cultural festivals going on while I was there.

There were fountains all over the city that had the mineral waters that are supposed to be good for your health.... kind of just tasted like iron water!

fun pots everywhere to scoop up that healthy water!

wafer cookies famous in Czech

beautiful spa in the middle of town

The Hotel Pupp- featured in a few movies Last Holiday and Casino Royale

Enjoying the local drink of choice :)

waiting....

Wait
by Russell Kelfer

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried;
Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate . . .
And the Master so gently said, "Wait."

"Wait? you say wait?" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and I'm claiming your Word.

"My future and all to which I relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to wait?
I'm needing a 'yes', a go-ahead sign,
Or even a 'no' to which I can resign.

"You promised, dear Lord, that if we believe,
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord I've been asking, and this is my cry:
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply."

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate,
As my Master replied again, "Wait."
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,
And grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting for what?"

He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes met with mine . . .
and He tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.

"I could give all you seek and pleased you would be.
You'd have what you want, but you wouldn't know Me.
You'd not know the depth of my love for each saint.
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint.

"You'd not learn to see through clouds of despair;
You'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there.
You'd not know the joy of resting in Me
When darkness and silence are all you can see.

"You'd never experience the fullness of love
When the peace of My spirit descends like a dove.
You would know that I give, and I save, for a start,
But you'd not know the depth of the beat of My heart.

"The glow of my comfort late into the night,
The faith that I give when you walk without sight.
The depth that's beyond getting just what you ask
From an infinite God who makes what you have last.

"You'd never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.
Yes, your dearest dreams overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss, if you missed what I'm doing in you.

"So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
That the greatest of gifts is to truly know me.
And though oft My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still . . . Wait."

Fall Fun in Germany

This past month, I've had a lot of chances to travel around and see some cool new things.  My friend Kat invited me to something called "Rhein in Flames" which is a huge firework show over the Rhine River.  Her brother lives over that way (about 4 hours from where I live) and they go camping each year to see this festival.  I got suckered in by the promise of a fun time and had to go camping again.  When I'm planning a trip, I think "oh camping won't be that bad" and then I actually go and remember why I hate camping so much! Germans camp in campers and so did most of the people I was with but I still got stuck in a tent and it was freezing that weekend too.  I just need to stamp on my forehead... do not go camping no matter how much fun you think you'll have!

 Fireworks were shot from the river and from 3 castles on the riverbanks.

The next weekend I went down to Austria with some friends to see the cows come down the mountains. It is a big festival in towns

It snowed.... I am starting to get more used to the weather here but snowing in Sept is just a little uncalled for! We were up high in the mountains so I guess it's okay.

 Families who own the cows dress them up in fancy headdresses and bells for the 30 k walk down the mountain.  The festival is to thank God for blessing the herd throughout the year and for no injuries/deaths.

Alpine horn players!

Before we left we went hiking to this beautiful waterfall.

Gnomes everywhere!

passports

My very first passport just expired. The woman at the passport office told me I'd have to turn over the first one and that made me really sad for some reason.  I remember this movie- I think it's called Only You- but the main girl always carried her passport around with her... just in case she wanted to leave at a moments notice or she found the man of her dreams and he whisked her away to an exotic land.  That was what I wanted- I have had a love affair with traveling for as long as I can remember but I didn't take my first trip out of the United States (Mexico doesn't really count) until 2001.  I'd always wanted to live in England and figured that should be my first trip. My friend Bonnie and I headed to London one rainy, cold spring break and I've never looked back.  Any extra money I had was set aside and any break I had from work, I was researching where I'd be going.  It's hard to believe that 10 years ago was the first time I'd ever left America and now I'm living in another country.  

There are so many memories on the pages of that passport....

Great trips with great friends... eating fish and chips with a Strongbow in my first English pub....getting lost and stranded without our luggage... figuring out one of your friends has had makeup the whole time you didn't have your luggage....seeing the Eiffel tower for the first time....navigating the crazy airports and trains... volcanic ash...spending a summer hanging out with teenagers and taking them to summer camp in Italy....Leslie singing on a train to Amsterdam....realizing my love for photography....having to take just one more thing out of my bag to get on that Ryan Air flight...landing in Dublin at midnight and trying to figure out the bus system with some locals....getting stranded in London after some airport scare...eating strange street food and things I probably don't even want to know what I was eating... praying that the hostel I booked will be as nice as the one in Edinburgh....spending a month in China teaching and traveling... having taxi drivers tell you that you are staying in a sketchy part of town.... arriving at the apartment in Rome where LB put Burt's Bees in every room for me...getting detained in Heathrow and questioned for hours

Ok- this is one thing I will not miss being in my passport.  I've been a little nervous to go back to England since then even though I know I have no reason to be and I most likely wouldn't be flying in through Heathrow anyway.  I'm headed to England the first chance I get!!

 Now have my nice, fresh, new passport (and I didn't even have to turn in my old one).  I don't know why that woman told me I would. And on plus side,I feel like I haven't aged much in 10 years and I kind of like this picture better anyway 

I know stamps in a passport don't mean too much especially living over here because my passport is never stamped anywhere I go anymore but here is to 10 more years of fun, adventurous travel..... and for my friends who don't even have a passport yet (you know who you are)- GET ON IT!!

True Contentment

“Contentment is being able to come to terms with where you are and what’s going on in your life, even if it’s not what you would have chosen for yourself. True contentment is not having everything you want, but learning to appreciate everything you have.”

(From Clutter to Clarity by Nancy Twigg)

Venice Italy

I went on a cruise with some friends from work and we started and ended the trip in Venice.  Venice was one of the most beautiful, magical places I've ever been!  The entire city is on water and boats are the only way to get around.  The city is not exactly luggage or wheelchair friendly with all the bridges and little alleyways.  I'm usually pretty good about finding my way around a city but even with a map, I kept getting lost. 

San Marco

Rialto Bridge

I did get a gondola ride too! 

I'm ready to go back for Carnivale in February so I can wear the mask I bought!

The Awesomeness That Is Travel

Sometimes I feel like I was born to travel. I don’t mind airports and time changes. Feeling out of place and not understanding people is pretty normal for me. I can make do with minimal personal hygiene (even though it's not my top preference) and I will try about almost anything as long as it doesn’t kill me. I can deal with getting lost in a city if I have a map and a language dictionary. As much as it is the thrill of being in a new place, travel has brought a lot of unexpected richness in my life.

·   Travel has widened my sensory experience. Often when we go outside the confines of our everyday, we are given an opportunity to a new way of seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting. I've often joked that my "love language" is trying new things. I haven't loved everything that I've tried but I think I have a pretty open mind and willing spirit just to jump into "whatever" and hope for the best :) One of my favorite ways to experience a culture is to try the local food- even if it is really strange like snake wine.  

(Notice how most of my really weird food experiences were in China!)

·  Travel  has stretched my ability to live simply. Going beyond the borders of what was comfortable for me forced me adapt to the unknown and the unpredictable. I learned that I didn’t need much in this life, and that richness is found in the essentials and not luxury. Living over in Europe where the pace of life is completely different than the US has changed me too- I love the convenience of so many things in the states (and can't wait to experience them in a few weeks!) but I've learned I can also easily live in a place where life shuts down on Sunday and after 6pm.  I've learned to be efficient in getting things done and really just letting things go that are not really necessary.  Cesare Pavese said once, “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” Exactly.

· Travel has broadened my understanding of the world. Traveling grounds me in the realities of the bigger world we live in. It broadens my heart and soul to what I welcome as good and it puts me in touch with pain and suffering that I am often shielded from. It helps me see my prejudices and bigotry that I don’t realize I have. It also gives me a more holistic perspective of the culture I grew up in and the culture I am immersed in now. My context for living has changed. Samuel Johnson puts it well, “Traveling helps regulate our imaginations by reality, instead of thinking how things may be, we see them as they are.”

· Travel has deepened parts of me I wouldn’t have otherwise tapped into. There’s something about travel that unmasks and unravels our inner being. I have traveled on my own, traveled with some great friends and traveled with strangers, who through the adventure end up becoming friends.  I've learned a lot about myself in all the types of travel I've done, learned a lot about my friends and bonded with complete strangers.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our life here on earth IS a journey and that we are travelling towards a destination, which I call My True Home. Perhaps deep within we are all nomads and sojourners who have lost touch of what travel does to us because these days, we want nothing more than to stay put, be stable and lock in on the promise of security for ourselves and our families. But travel pulls away that veil and reminds us that THIS isn’t it. There are better things ahead. We don’t fully know or comprehend what is over there, but we hope. 


I feel very blessed with all the travel opportunities I've had. This year alone, I've been in 13 different countries and have seen a ton of Germany.  Some months, I was only home one weekend!  As much as I LOVE to travel, that was also a bit exhausting- I don't know how people who travel for a year at a time do it!  I'm really hoping in the upcoming year to spend some of my time traveling to places in the eastern block countries doing some mission trips to orphanages and to other missionaries serving in those areas.  My pastor from church has been in Europe for a while and has some partnerships with missionaries living in Romania, Czech and Poland and I'm praying for opportunities to serve and build relationships with people and organizations.  

My birthday weekend in Switzerland

I went with a group from church to go camping in Switzerland for Memorial weekend- which happened to coincide with my birthday.  Hadn't been to Switzerland yet and I had heard how beautiful it was, so I couldn't pass it up (even though I had been out of town for the last 3 weekends and was perfectly exhausted).  We camped in a town called Lautenbrunnen near Interlaken.  There were about 40 of us so it made for a great time around the campfire, cooking out, hiking, etc.  

One thing I learned on this trip- I am getting wise in my old age- as much of an "outdoorsy" person I try to be, I really just am not an outdoorsy person.  I did not grow up camping or really doing a lot of things outside.   I've thought it would be cool to be a mountain biker, serious hiker, one with nature kind of girl, yada yada yada.  I mean I have an REI card and a NorthFace sweatshirt! But alas, it is just not my cup of tea.  I can do a day hike but sleeping in a tent for 4 nights when it is raining and cold is really just not enjoyable.  And I can proudly say that now and own it- this girl is not a camper.  There I said it, I feel so much better!

Luckily God heard me and let me bunk up in a cabin with a pregnant lady on the trip.  It really was an answer to prayer!

On my actual birthday, it was just so relaxing- slept in a little, went shopping in some Swiss thrift stores in this town called Thun.  I got some great deals- a big wall map of Switzerland for $2, a fondue pot for $5 and a huge traveling backpack for $30 (they retail for $150-200!).  I saw some great furniture too but no room in the car unfortunately.  

My favorite day of the trip was when we took a gondola ride up the mountain and then did about an hour and a half hike across through some beautiful towns and then took the gondola back down.

I even bought some fresh cheese in this town.  You just had to knock on someone's door and you could buy milk and cheese.  Pretty awesome!

Yummy cheese fondue for my birthday!

Switzerland was really expensive though so I doubt I'll go back often- it's one Swiss franc per dollar so a coffee at McDonalds was 7 freaking dollars.  Crazy!  I wanted to try a Swiss dish called Rosti, which is basically hashbrowns with stuff in it but every place I went charged 25-30 swiss francs for it.  Who in their right mind is going to pay $30 for hash browns.  Not this girl!  But I did buy a package at the grocery store for $4 and I am going to try and make it on my own.  

I'm heading off to Greece on Sunday on a cruise with some work friends and then home to Texas July 2-21, Virginia July 21-28.  Can't wait to come home, shop at Target, eat Mexican and Chickfila and see some friends and family!! This summer is going to be great!