Prisoners and Thug Kids

Recently, we had a nine active prisoners visit our church. It was kind of a scary thing. Yes our church agreed to it, yes it was my husband, Z, that was behind the whole thing, but scary for a 20 something year old girl. Z knew all the prisoners that were coming, so I comforted myself with that knowledge. I went to church a little nervous and little hesitant about the whole situation. So when I was at church I prayed that God would protect us all today. Everything was fine at church. The guys were really nice and normal even.

Later that day Z was in town and wanted to know if I would meet him downtown so we could go on a walk. It was one of the first gorgeous days of spring. So I was riding my bike downtown. I came to a crosswalk where I needed to wait for the light to change so I could cross. I stopped a distance from it because there was a group of four teenager boys that kind of looked tough. As I stopped one of them approached me and asked me something. That alone was kind of weird. Usually strangers don't talk to me here. What I thought he said was, "McDonalds." I figured he meant where's McDonalds. So I answered him. Then something weird happened. The four guys surrounded me. It was totally awkward and I really didn't know what was going on. I wanted to be friendly, but I'm not so good at small talk in German. But I noticed that the traffic light had changed, so I said excuse me and was on my way. As I rode away they started to laugh. I figured they were laughing at my German. I must have said something ridiculous or maybe just my accent. Then I noticed an angry Z across the busy road. He had seen the whole thing and asked what they said to me. Totally naive I told them they wanted to know where McDonalds was, but they laughed at me, so now I just don't know what they wanted. And the more I thought about it the less likely it was that what they wanted to know where McDonald's was.

Apparently as I rode away one of them had pretended to smack my butt and little did they know that my husband had watched them do that. Part of me thinks it would have been awesome to see those kids face if they really would have smacked my butt. Can you imagine what those kids would have done when a big muscular angry husband came to kick their butts??? That would have been AMAZING! Like a movie or something. But lets focus on God. He is always looking out for me. I don't know why when those kids circled me and I was able to get away so easily. I don't know why they didn't take my purse and bike. But thought back to that morning where I was surrounded by scary prisoners and asked God to protect us. He did, and He never stopped. It's strange to me that I was doing something so ordinary, something I do daily and wasn't thinking I needed God to protect me at that moment, but He did it anyways. He even had a back up plan in case I was too dumb to ride away.

Another and hopefully my last airport story

As I was traveling back from Germany to America after my first six months here I was so excited after a long trip to see America again. I was so excited to go back and be able to order pizza without any struggles or unwanted extra attention. So my husband and I got off the plane with our custom forms filled out and standing in line with all the other Americans! I was thrilled! Like kiss the floor excited! All smiles! My husband was not so happy. He had a cold and when you fly with a cold it's a miserable experience. His ears where all clogged up so every time he would say anything he would yell it.

This was my very first experience with going through customs. (When you enter Europe you barely notice that you went through it.) So we went up to the desk with out filled out form and handed it to a very stern woman. She said, "You didn't put a date." I said, "Oh sorry, what is the date? She replied, "15 March" By the way she said it you would have thought I just asked if it was ok if I brought a 10 oz bag of Marijuana with me. So I went to write the date. When I was in Germany I had learned to write the day first and then the month, but now that I was in the USA I reminded myself to write the month first then the day. The customs lady was pissed about that. She gave me a look that was meant to put the fear of the United States government in me. It did. She told me as if it were of the utmost importance and I had broken a major law, "I told you the day first then the month." Uuuhhhh...ok sorry lady. Luckily she let us in despite the horrible thing I had done.

We went to claim our baggage so we could put it right back onto another baggage claim belt. (I don't get the point of that.) As we were walking I was still totally excited and my husband looked like a zombie, the security stopped him to ask him a few questions about what he was bringing into the country. He could barely hear anything. They'd ask a question and he'd yell his response back to them. I told my unaware husband that he was yelling his answers and the security guys just glared at me. Oops, controlling wife, not a good look for me.

We got rid of our bags and went through the medal detectors. I flew through them, since I had practical slip on shoes and no belt, while my husband had on a belt, a watch, quadruple knotted tennis shoes. Every time we went through security I was always way faster and I guess in a hurry to get to the next place. So finally he was getting sick of it! I was getting ready to bolt to to find some of that amazing American food that I missed and he's trying to put his belt on, and he yells at me, "Why are you always running away from me when my pants are falling down?" He had no idea that he had yelled till he noticed curious eyes staring at him.

Ok just so my he doesn't feel so alone, what's something you've blurted out and wish you could take back?

Travel Tips

We went to Rome five years ago. We went with one of those super cheap airlines--Ryan Air. They can shuttle you around Europe for like 25 euros a ticket. I found out the flight was only going to take an hour and a half. So I decided to forgo my usual motion sickness medication. I figured the stuff makes me so drowsy and it was such a short flight it wouldn't matter. Of course when we got in the plane I started to get nauseous. One of the stewardesses came around offering drinks. I asked for sprite hoping it would settle my stomach. She handed me a miniature sized can and cup and then said, "That's 3 euros." We were like what? Since when do we pay extra for drinks? We begrudgingly handed over the money. The rest of the flight the stewardesses walked up and down the aisles selling everything. Alcohol, weird little toys that looked like they were made out of rubber bands, cologne, and who knows what else. We tried to tune it out. We were smarter now. We were fast learners. They were even selling bus tickets into the city, but we already lost 3 euros on a tiny Sprite, we weren't going to be tricked again.

So we got to the airport in Italy and were trying to figure out how to actually get to Rome from this airport. We went to ask a lady behind a desk. We stood in line and Z, my husband, went ahead and asked in German if she spoke English. (Yes, we were in Italy) The lady looked at him oddly and said, "I speak German and English, which would you prefer." We chose English, because this was really before we actually spoke German. We found out we should have purchased our bus tickets on the plane because they were cheaper there. So we lost a few more euros, but bought our tickets.

We got on the bus and we were both eager to see a bit of Italy, but I was feeling really nauseous from the plane ride. I was so dizzy from the trip, and I had such a bad headache I just kept my eyes closed for the 20 minute ride into town. Z was having a great time. He would tell me every once in a while to open my eyes to look at a ruin, then say "oh sorry honey I guess you didn't look in time." At one point he got really excited and said look a prostitute! Neither of us had ever seen a real live prostitute before. We're from small towns alright, that was exciting stuff to us. So after I missed all that excitement we finally got to the center of town. I was feeling even worse after that wild ride. Bus drivers drive like maniacs, I think it's part of their training--drive this bus like it's a Lamborghini.

I got my luggage and we were trying to figure out where we were. It was dark out and despite the fact that we were in the center of Rome, we didn't really know what that meant exactly. So we were standing on a curb and realize that I was really sick, like I'm about to throw up. I call out to my husband, who is apparently so engrossed in studying his map that he's walked away from me. I was standing by myself throwing up on the curve holding my own hair in a foreign city. Hesitantly, another tourist came over to ask me if I was ok. I wasn't but I said I was and walked away to go yell at my husband.

A few days later after a lovely time in Rome we went to get back on our bus to head back to the airport, as I was putting my suitcase in the under the bus storage area another passenger was swinging his large bag into the compartment. He swung it directly into my head. I wobbled off to go find my husband who was once again absent and happened to miss that fine moment of mine.

And that's kind of what traveling is like with us. We're a mess. If you don't believe me you can read this old post about Z and his problems with getting through airport security.

So my travel tip is, do the opposite of what we did and you'll do great!

Sometimes I love my life, sometime I don't

Love:

Super late Sunday night, actually Monday morning, we had a Super Bowl Party here in Germany! It was awesome. The sports announcers even greeted our tiny town! We were all so excited! We had tons of great food! We got to watch the super bowl with a bunch of Americans and Germans! And thanks to our influence everyone there was rooting for the Packers!!! My husband's birthday is today and he's still on cloud nine because his favorite team won. He's calling it the best birthday present ever, and I'm ok with that.

Don't Love:

I started a new art class, the teacher basically told me all the art supplies I have are way too cheap and for school kids. I felt like crap. I didn't have a list of what I needed. It said that they would tell me when I got there. Everyone else seemed to know what to bring.

Love:

That my German is good enough that I understood the class well and people didn't seem to think my German was bad. One person even complimented it. Instead of taking another German course, I thought, I'd try something where I could improve my German and meet Germans. In language school I of course only meet foreigners, and most of the foreigners that I've met have left the country.

Love:

Getting complements on my German. Seriously, last Thursday I met someone and they told me I had only a small accent and my German was quite good! Do you know how you felt in high school and a cute boy gave you a complement? I felt that good for days after that! And trust me it was not a cute boy or anything that said that. That's what us language learning people love to hear. Now I'm not saying my German is that good, but one person mistook it for being good. So I'm excited.

Don't love:

The sometimes brutal honesty we get from Germans. I mean it's seriously rough sometimes. It's like please lie to me a little. Like please don't tell me what you really think of my haircut. I have to live with it for awhile.

Kind of Love:

They don't lie to you, they don't fake friendly. Sales associates don't pretend to be your best friend. I've worked at plenty of stores in america where my job was to be miss perky friendly sales girl at whatever store. That's not my natural personalty, so it's nice that I can go in a store and no one necessarily greets me. Although the negative side of that is the customer service here is pretty stinky. I think at some stores they're paid to be rude. Maybe the more costumers they ignore the better Christmas bonus they get. But that's ok, because if you ignore me I'll just find it cheaper on amazon.

Love:

Germany, the people I've met, the life I have here. The culture that I've been able to discover because I've lived here for a while. Do you know that when someone has known someone for a long time here and they switch from the formal way of addressing each other to the informal, they will reintroduce themselves to each other using their first name. Yeah, so even if you've known this person for 10 years and obviously know what their first name is and have both decided to switch, you kind of stop the conversation and reintroduce and shake hands. Weird, I know. Luckily for me, most people just use the informal with me. All though it would be fascinating to do this.

Don't love:

Germans always talk about how cheap and flimsy american houses are compared to their 500 year old stone houses. I don't know why, but this more than anything, drives me crazy. Maybe because German houses sometimes drive me crazy. See post here. They seem to think that if a tornado came to Germany their houses would be fine. Which brings me to final point.

Love:

That Germany doesn't have any major storms. Thunderstorms are almost nonexistent. When a thunderstorm comes I barely take notice. Germans will talk about it later and I'll be like, that little storm? Huh? Yeah I guess the sky made a grumble sound. And no tornadoes! Woohoo!

Guess what, the "loves" outweigh the "don't loves," so I'm pretty happy in Germany. I love the friendships I have here. There's something deep and strong about our friendships here. Germans have thick walls, but somehow the relationships that we have feel so strong. That's a huge "Love." So even though today was bit of a tough day, after writing this and looking back at my weekend I've got to say I'm happy with the friendships I have and am building on!

So what about you, what do you love/don't love?

Spoiled...

About a year ago, I was feeling really down about being here. I didn't have many friends at all. I was so lonely. I was writing in my journal and my writing turned into a prayer to God. I specifically asked God this, "Please help me to have Christian women to talk to. I need something." A week and a half later I visited some friends for a weekend. I wasn't particularly close to them before this. I don't know why, but my friend decided we'd leave the boys and have girls only breakfast. And that morning she let me pour my heart out to her, actually I take that back, she forced me to pour my heart out to her. Despite the fact that I was wanting this so badly, there was no way I was going to actively search for a shoulder to cry on. I didn't even realize till two months ago that I had written that. I looked at the date of the journal entry and that's when I remembered that a week and a half later God had sent someone to me.

This past December, my husband and I were dreading taking the public transportation. The whole month of December was a blizzard! To get to church it take about two hours using trains. About an hour of that is outside waiting on connecting trains or walking from the train station to church several miles. (I'm not looking for pity, this is just important details for the story.) In December, I don'think we walked from the train station to church once. There was always someone who offered to drive us there. One time we were on our way home and were happy because God had provided someone to drive us to the train station. We knew we would have to wait for a connecting train for a half an hour in a cold dark train station. It was really cold that night and neither of us were dressed warm enough. The half an hour was really long and cold. We got on the train and were glad to have a place to warm up for another half an hour, because we knew we didn't have any bikes waiting for us. So were gearing up for the half an hour walk home. The problem was that after that train ride, we still weren't warm. We walked slowly out of the train station and put our hats and gloves on. When we walked out the door we saw someone we knew. He was waiting for his ride to get there. Not only that, but they had a DVD to return to the rental place near our house.

That isn't the only time God provided rides for us during the month long blizzard. He was so good to us during that time! He still is. But it's brought me also to this conclusion, I'm spoiled by God. I just noticed this the other day. I was searching desperately for a piece of paper. I searched for days! Finally I decided it was time to pray about it. So I did. A lot of times when I do this, there are like almost instant results. God is that awesome. But this time nothing happened. It turned out we had to make a phone call to get the info we needed. It really wasn't that hard, but when God didn't answer my prayer the way I wanted I was shocked. It was then that I told Z that I was spoiled by God. He agreed.

So I know you hear a lot about when God doesn't answer your prayers. And I don't mean to play that subject down at all, but seriously, He is really good.

So what are some ways God has answered your prayers?

There's nothing like homemade cookies, and there's definitely nothing like my homemade cookies made in Europe

Last week I made chocolate chip cookies. Usually making cookies isn't really a big deal, but here for some reason the flour is different in Europe. Like one time I made some brownies with an american recipe, it was for a church carry in. Everyone at my church are amazing cooks! And they always put me to shame. This time I was making one of my husbands favorite childhood desserts. They're called blonde brownies. I was warned about the flour, horrible things would happen if I made an American recipe with German flour, but did I listen? No. So after my brownies cooled I went to cut them. They looked amazing, just like my mother-in-laws. I went to put the knife in, and it was a rock! Solid hard. Not only did I not have anything to bring to church the next day, but my overwhelming thought was, how am I supposed to get this rock hard substance out of my glass baking pan? That's all in the past, long time ago. The church pot luck managed without my amazing contributions. And my husband spent the rest of the week with a chisel getting out what ever he could. (This could explain why he had so much dental problems this past summer.)

So last week, I thought, "It's Christmas, we have to have cookies. And I want chocolate chips, not just any cookies, I want gooey no need to bother chewing chocolate chips, and I'm going to make them with only ingredients that I can get here." So I took a bar of dark chocolate, cut it up into chunks. (not as easy as it sounds) Used all ingredients from here even the dreaded flour. Now my trick this time was I would only bake as many as we could eat that night and the rest of the dough would go in the fridge for later. My husband was reading the Bible with someone in the living room so I didn't have anything else to do, so I sat on the kitchen floor and watched the cookies bake through the glass oven door. I know what your thinking, can this blog get anymore exciting. She is sitting watching cookies bake. (ok i should probably be honest, it's not going to get much more interesting, so just go back to reading facebook updates.) Ok back to the baking cookies, normally when you peek at cookies baking the round balls of dough melt into lovely cookies. Mine were oozing butter. They did flatten out, but they were way bigger and flatter than they should have been. I went to put them on our plates only to have them crumble. So we ate our cookies with a fork. When my husband tried my cookies he was so excited. He couldn't stop saying how excited he was that they were made out of all ingredients from here. They tasted amazing and if you didn't let them cool, which is not a problem for us, they're soft and gooey. And they make your husband say nice things to you.

I know, I know, those look amazing, you want the recipe, but you'll have to beg me for it. I love comments, if you comment maybe I'll tell.

Thoughts on Grace

When I was a child I remember thinking if I can just get better at doing this and get over my sin then someday I'm going to be perfect.

Why hasn't this happened yet? Why is it the older I get the more I need this grace? In fact I'm desperate for it. But that's what makes His gift so amazing. It's value is stronger than the Euro :)...Ok stronger than ever.