'I AM NO MAN!'

Karl asked me to give him an update of my life - he hadn't been reading my blog, you see. But even if he had been, there still would have been some unanswered questions such as 'where are you', 'how was christmas', 'what have you been up to aside from skiing'. 'how was skiing' and stuff like that - he told me to just copy and paste off my blog, but since there have been no recent updates, I'll just copy and paste off the message I sent him. I hope you guys don't mind second-hand information - it's the same stuff, really, just worded slightly differently than it would be if I re-wrote it right now. It's not super detailed either, but I'm not using my laptop and therefore it is rather frustrating to use a german keyboard while still typing properly, and this space bar has issues so I have to keep going back every couple of words to add a space, so I really don't want to make this long. 'Hooray for copy+paste!'

Just as a bit of background information, he asked me how I've been doing. Any additionaly add-ins from right now will be un-bolded.


I've been doing pretty good actuallly. I just got back from a week of skiing in Switzerland..and by back I mean back to the house of a friend of my parents in Gummersbach, near Köln, where I've been staying. And most recently, I just got back from watching Return of the King (extended edition!! they know how to properly watch LOTR here in Germany) in the youth room of the youth group I went skiing with. It was a bit unfortunate because they watched it in german and put on the english subtitles for me... but i've seen it enough that I almost didnt need the subtitles so it really wasn't that bad. Javier and Grant, we need to have a marathon when I get back, a full one... none of this heading up to camp in the middle of it stuff, okay?

I think skiing was a really good lesson for me.. I'm not bad at it (because I’ve been many times before and obviously havn’t killed myself yet) but at the beginning (for some stupid reason, probably to teach me a grand life-lesson or something like that) I was terrified of going down a stupid mountain on two thin waxy sticks. And I'm pretty sure I looked like a huge loser because the first day mostly consited of me taking baby steps (they should have given me snowshoes) down the mountain, telling myself to suck it up and not be a wuss and reciting verses such as Joshua 1:9 saying 'God, I'm pretty friken terrified right now.. if you're with me and for it, I'd like to make it down this mountain alive and in one piece!' I was always the last one to join the group. Then at the end of the week, I was almost always the 1st or 2nd one to finish a run... it was a lot more fun by day 5.

So I basically learned three things last week:
1. The Alps are awesome - God is rad.
2. You can do anything if you choose to do something and don't let your feelings get in the way.
3. Being a Christian is like skiing, (generally) you see others doing it and want what they have, rent skis/ invite Jesus and that jazz, get to the top of the mountain/ get to a point where you know you have to change or do something and freeze. Baby steps willeventually get you to the bottom but to really enjoy yourself and actually do it the way it was intended, you have to let yourself go and trust your skiis/ Jesus to do the work for you.

Tomorow we are going to take a trip to IKEA (be stoked for me, IKEA... in Europe - it promises to be a grand occasion), wednesday promises a trip to Köln (likely visiting cathedrels and that jazz, but hopefully some shopping) and a switch from this house back to the house of a second family where I spent the first few days of Christmas break. On saturday I return to the school. My train gets in at 4:24 which means I'll catch the 4:36 bus and get back to the school around 5. Rather unfortunately, I wasn't really thinking about my arrival time and therefore I will probably have last pick of a bed and closet space... top bunk and top shelves that I will hardly be able to reach are looming over my future.

Christmas in Germany was a tad strange; they have 2 christmas' here... the main part (church, big meal, get togehters) is on christmas eve day and then they have a little small family deal on christmas... it was a bit sad not being at home this year, but it wasn't too bad.
On boxing day, we went to Frankfurt and went on a walk (as did hundreds of other Europeans... apparently it's a popular activity here). On the way to Frankfurt I thought of you (Karl) and your (Karls) suggestion to"Have a Berliner in Berlin and a Frankfurter in Frankfurt." I havn't been to Berlin yet so I've had no chance to have a Berliner and unfortunately did not have a Frankfurter in Frankfurt... but on the walk I saw a sign that said Frankfurter and so I took a picture of it in honour of you (Karl).



Erm, ya. Anyways, I hope that was a reasonably satisfactory snipit of my recent life over here.


TTFN, ta ta for now.