My new second favorite place!

So we all know that Brugge is my favorite place, but I think I have a new second favorite!! York. I'm in Leeds visiting a friend that I worked with for a summer at camp almost 3 years ago, and today we went to York for the day. There's a really fantastic cathedral there and some castle ruins...but it was just such a precious medeival town. Such beautiful buildings and a river running through, with lots of cute passageways between buildings and, of course, a great outdoor market! Plus the weather was absolutely wonderful, sunny and quite warm, which is not entirely common for this area. I only wish I knew how to post pictures on here...

Dream man...

Just in case anyone was wondering, my dream guy is Doug Pickett of Wilmington, North Carolina. I first saw him a couple of years ago in a Polo sport ad in a mag...and have loved him ever since. Be sure and click on his name to see his bio, and scroll down for lots of pics!

Best News I've Heard All Day

I just read that the "Wedding Singer" is being made into a Broadway musical, and will open in 2006. How great is that!! Now I have to go back to NYC! So anyway, last night I gave my first ever talk at DV8. I did the Taco of God-which Megen did at Ignite several weeks ago. I changed it a bit though. The article "The Taco of God" actually came from Relevant Magazine. It's like the best mag ever and you can look at it online or subscribe. It's greatness. So anyway, I cooked tacos again for the kids. We had 20 middle schoolers. They were outta control crazy last night for some reason. More than usual it seemed. The talk went pretty well though, they seemed to really listen and pay attention and everything. I felt good about it, I really wasn't nervous or anything, so it was a good experience overall. I'm glad it went well because I'm going to be in charge of DV8 every Sunday in the fall. In a couple of weeks I have to talk at Ignite, which is really scary for me! But I am sort of excited about it because we're doing Film Fest 2005: How Movies Saved My Soul!! So I am going to screen "The Goonies." And I love the Goonies!!
Had a good weekend. Pretty relaxing and nice. I feel like I've been so busy lately, it was nice to be home and chill out a bit. Friday morning I had breakfast with my friend Chris. That was fun-I love to go out for breakfast, but I never have here because English breakfast really is not yummy. But we went to this diner that has American style pancakes. English pancakes are usually much thinner than American ones. Other than that I did the usual, worked out, hung out, read, watched Felicity, babysat...but then Saturday night was the big highlight! Fajitas at the Riley's. Greg and Vicky Riley are the people that Megen lives with...and they make the best fajitas this side of the Atlantic. They even make the tortillas from scratch. It's an amazing experience. This is the second time I have been so blessed as to experience fajitas at the Riley's. They do it for the youth interns and we love them for it.
That's about all that's going on here...got a busy week ahead as usual. Should be good. Hope you have a great week! Thanks for reading.

Paris: An Unforgettable Weekend

Megen and I went to Paris this past weekend. We had planned the trip a while ago...the main reason being because Megen was going to run in the Paris Marathon on Sunday. Paris is her favorite city, and I have only been there once, when I was 17...so I really wanted to go back! We left Friday morning (had to rise at 4:15!!!) on the Eurostar. I had never been on the Eurostar and it is really great. It's comfortable and spacious and only 2 1/2 hours to Paris. Plus it's nice to be able to see the countryside through the window. Got to Paris and went to the hotel. The hotel was directly across from Gare de Nord station where we arrived, so that was really nice. Unfortunately, that was the only nice thing about the hotel. More on that later. So after checking in we headed out into the city. Went to the Opera Garnier, which is a magnificent edifice. So beautiful. Especially at night when it's all lit up, but I don't think we made it back over at night. Walked around a bit more and then Meg had to head down to get her marathon stuff for Sunday, so I headed over to the Louvre. The Louvre is incredibly impressive of course, but I got bored after a short time there. I love to read about each piece I like and find out a little bit about them, see what medium was used, etc. Everything about the paintings in the Louvre is in French, so I couldn't find out any information, thus I got bored. Of course I went to see the Mona Lisa; it's such a huge deal to go and see that painting, but why? What's the big deal? I don't think I'll ever fully understand what makes some of these artists and certain paintings so famous and great. Anyway, Megen and I met up again and went walking down by the Seine toward the Notre Dame. I hadn't seen Notre Dame before and it is so majestic! The churches in Europe are really something. You can look at pictures and know that they are beautiful, but until you are up close looking at the intricacy and detail of every inch of the place, you just can't grasp their majesty. We went in and there was a service happening, we thought it had to do with the Pope's funeral being that day. After that we continued on walking around, went to Ile de la Cite and Ile St. Louis, which are the two sort of isles on the Seine river. On Ile St. Louis, we had the best gelato ever made by human hands. It's a wonderful little place called Amorino. There are actually several of them, but I am not kidding when I say that this gelato is from God. So, this wonderful creation sparked in me such inspiration that I had to write a haiku about it. One haiku led to another, and before we knew it, Megen and I seemed to be communicating predominantly through haikus. It was so great, everything became a haiku, and we were constantly counting on our fingers as we thought and spoke. It was awesome. The rest of the weekend it continued. All day at Disneyland, haikus. I would like to take this opportunity to share a couple of the haikus inspired by Paris, with you. Here is a double:
You may ask yourself...
what's so great about Paris?
museums galore...
bistros everywhere
monuments of majesty
splendid cathedrals

ode to croissants:

All butter croissants
layers of flaky goodness
better than ice cream?

in a cafe:

from behind the glass
people constantly pass by
watching in wonder

profound:

with each new question
elements come into play
and change the answer

at EuroDisney:

How funny we are
embracing childhood though adults
alive at Disney

and one from Megen on romance:

A shared umbrella
tilted to cover her head
equally happy

Well, it was hard to choose which to share...there are many more. We are probably going to publish a book. I'll let you know. Um...Saturday went to Euro Disney which was fantastic! We totally were like little kids, so excited when we entered and saw Main Street USA...we were jumping and laughing and running!! So fun! Euro Disney is way smaller than Disneyland, but still lots of fun. Really a day there is enough to cover what you need to cover. I came prepared...researched ahead. So I made a sheet that had EuroDisney broken into the main parks-and then which rides I COULD NOT miss, which were second, and which were third. I did not want to waste time or miss anything. Some of my faves, like Pirates of the Caribbean, were quite different, but still great. Super fun day. Sunday was the big Paris marathon. Unfortunately, Megen had hurt her knee (overuse) during training, and was also sick a bit, so she knew going into the run that she would probably only run the first couple of miles and then have to walk the rest, depending on the knee pain. We went down to Champs d'Elysees where the race started, near the Arc de Triomphe. It was so incredible-there were 35,000 participants running in the marathon! The atmosphere was exhilarating...people so excited and energetic. It was an experience I've never had before, but would like to again. I wanted to be in the marathon so bad, but Lord knows I cannot run 26 miles. I think I may train for one though, I wish to, but it's pretty intense. I think I'll try a 5K first! But what an incredible thing to do. Since there were so many people, the start lasted a good 10 or 15 minutes. After everyone was gone and I had snapped some pics of the aftermath-clothes and plastic poncho type things littering the street- I hopped on the metro and went to Bastille(the 15 mile marker) to cheer people on and watch for Megen. It was awesome-tons of people lining the streets cheering. All in French of course, so I really have no idea what was being said. I loved it! The first 3 I saw were wheelchairers, which is just amazing to me! The first group of runners were Kenyans, black as night and pure muscle. At 15 miles they were running hard, not jogging, RUNNING. Amazing. The first guy in made it in 2h 8min 2sec. I stood there for about 2 hours watching people run-people coming constantly for 2 hours!! Sometimes it was massive herds of people, sometimes more sporadic. So exciting! Things I saw: many clown costumes, some full on with the wig, nose, glasses, one piece outfit; dads with jogging strollers, people pushing handicapped people in wheelchairs, a man in a white wedding dress, bumble bees, man with floatie around waist, men wearing berets...lots of other crazy things. And if I was giving out awards, some of them would be for things like the tallest man, smallest woman, hairest back, most attractive man, sweatiest man, best costume, weirdest hair, and so on. After that I went to the Eiffel Tower and walked around a bit, then met Megen at the hotel. We went up to the Sacre Coeur, which is high on a hill-gotta walk up a lot of stairs. Then went to Montmarte just behind the church, which is quite possibly my fave little area. It's so precious...outdoor cafes in the middle surrounded by artists painting and drawing, then more cafes on the outter rim of the square. Had more gelato and crepes-my goodness I haven't mentioned the crepes! Crepes and croissants in Paris are wonderful beyond belief. Anyway, that pretty much wraps up the weekend in Paris. Thanks for reading-sorry it got so long! I clearly love details!

Romania = Instant Humility

Returned from the missions trip to Romania on Sunday afternoon. Wow, what an amazing week. I had never been to a post-communist country before, and it was really something. Very unclean and run-down looking; lots of stray dogs running around. Very humbling environment. It's amazing what a blessed life I live. God is so much more than good to me.
We flew into Budapest Monday afternoon and got on a bus for the 6 hour ride to Beius, Romania. Beius is a town of about 12,000 people; many of which are orphans and gypsies. After arriving in Beius we were split (boys and girls) and taken to the places we would be staying for the week. I never saw where the boys were staying, but the girls were at a church, in a building that was much like a regular house. Downstairs there was a tiny kitchen and a large room with a lot of chairs-maybe for some kind of church service-and upstairs were 3 rooms and a toilet, shower, and sink. Two rooms had 2 beds each, and electric heaters. The third room had 7 cots and a wood burning heater. It was really cold because there was miscommunication between the church and Good Samaratin Beius, so the church thought we were coming Tuesday and had not turned on the heaters. Well, we turned the heaters on and began to settle in, and then the power went out. So the pastor came and flipped the fuse or whatever, and it was okay again. After he was gone it went out again, so that was it for the night. No heat and no hot water for showers. This experience in itself was quite humbling for me. I guess I think that I have the right to heat and electricity and indoor plumbing, things like this that we all take for granted. But the truth is, I am blessed to have those luxuries in my daily life. I don't deserve them any more than all of those poor people in Romania and thousands of other places, but I thank God that he more than meets my needs. Throughout the week we did various works such as scraping the paint off of the walls in an apartment, and then repainting; working in a field-shoveling, raking rocks up, chopping wood, laying cement, planting, pulling weeds; playing with children and interacting with the orphans of various ages. It's interesting-no matter what age a person is, if they grew up as an orphan, they are always referred to as an orphan. So if a person is 30 and married with a child of their own, they are still referred to as an orphan. I thought that would be degrading for the orphans, to be introduced that way, but it didn't seem to be at all.
One day we went to this amazing cave/cavern called the Bear Caves. It was awesome! Very beautiful formations of stalactites and stalagmites. We also went to an animal market, for a bit of Romanian culture. That was interesting. The animal market happens weekly and it's a pretty big deal. Everyone comes from the surrounding towns to buy and sell animals, mostly pigs, and buy potatoes and who knows what else. There were many people on the road headed to the market driving horse drawn carriages and pulling carts with pigs in them! One lady at the market had several baby pigs in her car trunk for sale. It was pretty awesome. Another cultural experience we had was the Romanian folk dancing. We were so lucky to get to watch a group of young dancers/singers do their traditional performance. That was one of my favorite things.
Food in Romania is not so good for the most part. Not a huge selection, and not a lot of vegetables really. I ate grilled chicken and boiled potatoes for dinner pretty much every night. And I often had goulash soup for a starter. Goulash is a Hungarian dish and it is fantastic! Romanians also put ketchup on their pizza instead of proper tomato sauce. Not a great idea.
The organization we worked with was Good Samaritan Beius-which was started 12 years ago by Adrian Ciorna. He lived in a big house with his mom and brothers, and saw a huge need in the orphan community. Orphans would come out of the orphanages and have no support system, no real skills to get a job, and basically just hopelessness. So the Ciorna's began taking in orphans and housing them for a month or two, and providing for their physical and spiritual needs, as well as helping them develop skills to enable each person with what they needed to get a job and help themselves. They converted the living room and an upstairs bedroom; stacking beds 3 high when needed! They had varied numbers of people, but sometimes as many as 16 living with them. The house only has one bathroom!! Adrian's mom did all of the cooking for everyone. So our group actually got to go to the Ciorna's house and see where GSB began, meet Adrian and hear him speak about the whole thing. He actually works full time for Habitat for Humanity as their National Director for Romania. It's amazing how much one or two people can change the lives of others. I love it!
Saturday we left Beius and took the bus to Budapest, where we got to spend a good few hours. Budapest is really a beautiful city with a lot of great things to see. We had dinner at this restaurant called Fatal--which means "wooden plate" in Hungarian, which serves massive quantities of food on huge serving plates. Quite a variety of choices as well. Good stuff! Definitely would like to go back there.
Sunday morning we got up early and flew back to London. So that's sort of our trip in a nutshell. Thanks for reading!