Hey Everyone! It's been a while. I've not been doing much of anything in English and since I've stopped using English, for the most part, I've been having entire days/nights with only German thoughts. Sorry that I've been in bad contact. Please be patient. Thank you all for your prayers.

The pictures are from today. I've been really bad lately about taking my camera places. I'll try to do better...I made this out of old glass along the river. It says "Hila & Mengni"...

Here I am making it. We were going to go on a Boat trip down up the Rhein but we were too late. They don't run in the late evenings. (By the way, it's really light here...until 9:30 or 10...) So we rode our bikes to Mehlem and took the ferry across to Koenigswinter and at icecream. It was really beautiful.

Here is what Mengni etched into a rock...

Here we are on the ferry. I'm glad that we got to do something together...

Here is where we went from the path down to the river bank. I don't know if we were allowed but we did anyway. It was fun.

Mengni. She's very beautiful! I couldn't get this picture to load upright. I don't know why.

This one either, but here we are with our ice cream...



There is Mengni!

Ok, I'm going to bed!

Middle of May

Finally the pictures are loaded. Now it's late and I'm tired. This might be somewhat scatterbrained, but whatev.

I am back in Pech. Freudenstadt was beautiful, the family was beautiful, the time was good. I learned how to make some German bread and how to make Spätzle, which are long, home-made noodle things.

Here is Margaret and Michael, her fiancé. I had some Louisiana jumbalaya, which tasted good, and Margaret also made cornbread. Yummy.

This sign says, "Unser Kopf is rund, damit das Denken die Richtung weckseln kann." -Francis Picabia

This means, "Our head is round, so that the thought can change it's direction." Thought that was interesting. It was on the side of some building in some city, I don't remember. Maybe Stuttgart.

This is the Stuttgart central train station, which is very large. It is, however, dwarfed by the Berlin station, which is gigantic.

And I had almost an hour to wait in Stuttgart, so I walked about a bit and it was beautiful. I swallowed my dislike of taking pictures in public and was like, "I'm doing this, it's ok, I'm taking a picture of Stuttgart. I should, I mean, I can't come to Stuttgart and not take a picture. Breath. Yes, those two ladies off to the left are talking about you. No big deal. Nope, ok, pictures taken. Done. Phewwww". I survived.

There were so many people between here, where I was standing, and the central station, off in the distance. I literally had to walk through the crowd, weave in and out among people. Crazy.

Here is Theresa, the youngest from the Freudenstadt clan, in a tree. She's super friendly and nice.

Here is the mother, Beate, and Johanna, the third. They are such nice people. The kind that you want to be around again. They brought me to the train station and waited until my train left.

This was taken while we were stopped at a little train station on the way to freudenstadt. This is right on the other side of the tracks. Beautiful, isn't it?

About a week ago a bunch of us went to Mun's house and he cooked chinese food for us. It was tremendous. That's Mun with the apron and Nakato helping. It was a good time and the food was delicious!

And here are Amadeus and Queen being very cute...

"His name is Wonderful, His name is Wonderful, His name is Wonderful, Jesus my Lord.

He's the great Master, the Rock of all ages, Almighty God is He.

Bow down before Him, love and adore Him, His name is Wonderful, Jesus my Lord"

The weekend

Ok, I tried loading more pictures but it failed both times, so this will have to do for now. I'm hoping that I will be sent some pictures of last night, when a group of us went to a friends' house and he cooked chinese food for us. It was delicious and a good and fun time.

I'm also hoping that Mengni will be able to send me some pictures of the hike that we went on. Well, sort of a hike sort of a walk, it wasn't very long but it was up a mountainish thing called the Ölberg. It was nice to get out and move around and the view at the top was refreshing and beautiful.

I'm sitting right now out on the patio. It's getting a little cold, but it's much more pleasant out here.

Tomorrow I'm planning to take the train down to Freudenstadt to visit the cousins. Felicitas said that I might be able to go to Tübingen and Freiburg from there...

Anyway, On Saturday I rode to Linz to stay with a family from church. They invited me to come over and spend the night on this pentacost weekend. So I rode my bike along the Rhein and had a beautiful ride. It took me about an hour and a half...

Along the way.....this here is the bridge that the Allies crossed over at the end of World War II. It was the only bridge to survive the war to the end, but it collapsed afterwards from so much bombing and damage that had been done during the war.

I didn't know it but riding on this side of the Rhein meant also driving through some little villages. The trail wasn't exactly along the Rhein the whole time, but it was good anyways.

Here is the Bahnhof in Linz. I waited here for the twins to come and get me. That's the Rhein just donw the way and over the street. So cool and very beautiful at this time of year. After they picked me up we walked a little through Linz. It has one of the smalles streets that I've ever seen. (I hear that the streets in France can also be really narrow...). We got some ice cream and bread rolls and hiked up a 20% grade to get to their house. Wow.

This is where I spent the night. Their house is on this hill (it was very steep!) and the veiw is spectacular. After I got there we had some pizza--with corn on the top, don't forget the corn. Most of the pizza that I've had in Germany has corn on top. And then we had Strawberry cake--which means a sort of spungy base (circular) and then strawberries on time held together with red gelatin-ish stuff.

Then I went with the twins to this Island on the Rhein, where we sat around with friends from their school. It was nice and relaxing. My legs are like 3 shades darker than they were a week and a half ago. My chaco tan is on it's way.

Other note: I really like Tetley Tee. German earl gray doesn't really hit the spot like good old British-ish tea.

This is the Poppelsdorfer Schloss. Schloss means palace. No prince lives here anymore, and unforunately I haven't informed myself as to it's history, but it's probably interesting. I met with an American friend today, Margaret (who, by the way is cool) to transfer some of my music onto my stick because my CD/DVD drive is busted, and we walked into the city center and ate an ice cream together. It was very pleasant.

I also bought more Keith Green music and put it on my ipod (I'm still really thankful for the ipod!) and I've been very encouraged by it. Especially the song: Unless the Lord Builds the House. Great.

I was sad to miss both my dad's birthday and mother's day last weekend, and I'm very sad about missing the Family Reunion (capitilized because it is a proper noun--yes it is that important), but I have the comfort of knowing that God has me in Germany, and knowing that where God has me is always the best. So, I'm trying to live each day doing what the Lord has me to do.

"When we walk with the Lord in the light of His word, what a glory He sheds on our way. When we do His good will, He abides with us still and with all those who trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey."

That song reminds me of my mother. Which reminds me: I am very grateful that mom and dad sung lots of hymns and songs with us. Thanks mom and dad. These hymns are often a comfort to me and come to mind (God brings them to my mind).

happenings

I've had a headache for approximately the last 24 hours...you know that dull kind of lingereing headache kind of like the beginning of when you're getting strep-throut, but not. (is that how throat! is spelled? Ah, throat!, ok like goat, wow. Why, oh why? Alas.) But today is, dum duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DUHHHHm.....the 5th sunny day in a row!!!!!!! Amazing, simply amazing and wonderful.

Another random observation. I've been thankful for this before, but I'm just going to say it again: I'm very, very grateful that my parents disciplined me and my siblings. I'm very grateful also that they gave us older siblings authority when we babysat, and I'm very glad that obedience and good behaviour is the expected norm for my siblings--that is wonderful.

Did you know that a rat can fall from a five story building and still survive? My daytimer/planner is full of really interesting facts. For some reason that one kind of stuck with me. Strange.

I've started sort of learning Chinese. This languag is difficult. I don't have a course or anything, Mengni is just teaching me some stuff.

I've been playing my violin more lately and realized how much I really love playing violin. Sarah, THANK YOU for sending the books, I really appreciate it!

I haven't gone to Siegberg yet to get my visa. This is slightly nerve-wracking...and irritating because I have to go to this other city and bring papers and get this work done. Felicitas however also has to go to the Ausländeramt to ask about some stuff, so she said we could drive together. It would be way less scary if I didn´t have to go by myself!

Margaret Monk, the nice girl from Louisiana is coming over tomorrow. The floor in her dorm suit is getting replaced and she either has to stay in her room (not even go out to use the bathroom) from 8am to 6pm or she has to stay out. So she's coming here. She eats crawfish.

Mom, I look forward to eating your food.

I'm also really glad that we normally ate together as a family when I was growing up. I think I already wrote that on my blog once, maybe, but I think it's important to spend some time together as a family, and meals are ideal.

Speaking of meals, I think we're going to eat soon....

Yeah

Finally I have some pictures! Sarah came to visit and flew away yesterday morning.

This is in the car on the way home from the airport. We basically went straight to Bad-Godesberg and then to Church. The sun was shinging and it was a beautiful day. The sun is actually shining today as well. It's wonderful and warm.

And this is by church (you can see it in the background). But these motorcycles with tops are cool and strange, so we took a picture of one.

And this, my friends, is the smart car that we rented. Sarah and I had talked about possibly renting one and I didn't have class on Wednesday. So Wednesday morning I called a bunch of car rental places and Europcar had a smart car on the lot and he said that we could rent it the same day. It was really great and really worth it to rent the car!

Oh, there it is. So small, so speedy, very cool. AND, it was a convertable (ible?), which just added to the coolness factor! This pictures was when we stopped by the school that Sarah had volunteered at while she was in Bonn. The teachers were really nice and I really liked how international the school was.

And here is another picture of the car. This is at some little town along the Rhine. We stopped at the tourist information to see if we could get a map or ideas for the area. It was really beautiful driving along the Rhine.

And there is Sarah, looking very schick in the Smart car! We had an amazing time putting the roof up and down.

An action shot of me driving. I really like driving, especially the challenge of trying to navigate where I've never been before. You know, when you take public transportation you get sort of a scewed picture of how everything fits together, and it was really cool getting to driving and figure it out. The only thing was that the shifter was more or less lame, because it was an automatic or manual. And by manuel they mean that you can push it upwards to tell it to go to the next gear, but it really wasn't a manuel. I guess it is better for the company that way because anyone can drive it, alas.

We crossed over the Rhine on a ferry and then drove to Linz, a beautiful little town on the river. I took a picture of these houses not only because they are cute and the street is pretty and because people actually live their normal lives here (hard to believe!), but because I think it's so cool why they are built the way they are.

If you look closely you can see they they are narrower on the bottom and then get gradually wider on each level. Sarah explained to me that this was because the taxes used to be by how much of the house was touching the ground...so people would build narrow at the bottom and then try to make it wider at the top--bigger without raising the taxes. I thought that was pretty cool.

We also drove to Cologne to visit Sarah's friend Kity. It worked out nicely because Kity's sister was also there. We went to this Lebonese restaurant which was very nice. I had some sort of hummus wrap thing and then a piece of Baklava for dessert. It was a nice time and trying to get around Cologne was exciting and scary at times. I think the whole city is under construction or something.

We kind of had to take a picture of this Mc. Donalds because it is so clean and not banana yellow. It's probably one of the nicest McDonalds that I've ever seen. We used the bathrooms, which were quite posh. That's Bad-Godesberg for ya.

Yeah, and last night I went to Hannah's birthday party (one of the woman from Navis) with a bunch of the Navi people and then we went to Rhein in Flammen, which is a huge festival thingy in the Rheinaue, that enormous park that is in Bonn. I heard that 400,000 people go to it...and I believe it. It was absolutely packed. At 11pm they had a huge firework show that was about a 1/2 hour long. I spent the night with Alex, which was really great, and then came back to Church this morning. I decided that I really like when it's sunny and warm out!

I'm really hungry and I think I'm going to go eat lunch.