Athens, Greece!

Friday, January 12, 2008
We arrived in Athens today! Although extremely tired from only 3 hours of sleep, stepping out into the warm Athens sun definitely lifted our mood! Directly across from our metro stop is the most fabulous Greek Bakery. We immediately stopped for some baklava even before finding our apartment, This put us in a very good mood indeed! We found our apartment right off (imagine that!) We're getting good at this! But there was one slight problem. We hadn't had any contact with the owner in several days and had no idea how to get a hold of her to get inside. Eventually we got a call from one of her friends but in the meantime we waited on the porch for about an hour and a half! By the time we got inside it was about 3 pm and we all felt like hitting the sack. We decided to put that on hold for a while and go get some food. So first we went out for some (yeah you guessed it) Greek food! Gyros and french fries! Okay so it's fast food but at least its ethnically accurate. And if it isn't, well sorry, I don't want to hear about it! There's a lot of little shops lining the streets around here so we grabbed a bit of food for breakfast and went back to our Greek bakery for some more local pastries. What can we say? We happen to like food! Then we went back to our apartment and crashed. It was a very exciting day.

Monday, January 7, 2008

Pieter and Sofie picked us up from our cute little Bed and Breakfast, bright and early, say around 10:00. We all caught the train to Brugge. Only about a 25 minute ride from where we were staying, Brugge is the lace capital of the world. They have some of the most amazing handmade lace you will ever see! Some lucky people have been chosen to receive some as souvenirs. Mom, if you're reading this, don't get your hopes up, sorry! A large part of Brugge is actually built on water and has many canals. It has been called the Venice of the North or as the Belgians say Venice is the Brugge of the South. This city was once a thriving town, specializing in lace and tapestries, but some of the canals were sanded over with sediment and so the large boats could not get in. All the rich people left the town when the industry died, leaving only the poor people. They couldn't afford to rebuild newer and more modern buildings so most of the original architecture was left as is.

So after seeing a lot of architecture, Amanda needed a bathroom immediately. So we went to a little cafe since it was pretty close to lunchtime. Although with us it doesn't have to be anywhere near a mealtime to eat. Amanda had an upset stomach and we were trying to heal her with large does of Pepto Bismal but apparently this wasn't the brightest idea since she puked it all up. The rest of us enjoyed our first Belgian waffles and some delicious soup. After lunch it was time to hit the shops! Pieter and Sofie couldn't handle our love of shopping and split off from us. We managed to score some pretty sweet boots as well as some of that previously mentioned lace and other souvenirs. LeAnne would like to take this opportunity to mention that anyone connected to her should not be expecting anything. Her backpack is full and postcards are the only thing that will be purchased from here on out. After shopping, we took Pieter and Sofie out to Pizza Hut and caught the train back.

One thing we really love about being here is that we are not in charge of anything! The Debus ahve everything figured out for us and we haven't had to pore over any metro maps or guidebooks in the last 24 hours! Can't beat that!

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Just to let you know why we are so behind on our blogging, because we know the throngs out there are waiting with bated breath for the latest installment of our journeys. We have been having some difficulties with finding internet access, not for lack of trying though, we would have you know. We have traversed Europe and back attempting to find an internet café, simply to post our blogs for your viewing pleasure. Anyway its all good. Wednesday, we were woken up very early in the morning, with loud banging on the door, as chronicled by Char on the previous blog. We headed out to check out the amazing city of Barcelona, stopping first at a local bakery type place that...wait for it...served TAKE OUT coffee!!! This was a very good start to our day! We meandered down to the Mediterranean Sea and touched it because this is something you have to do if you are not a local. Some people thought about swimming and some of us thought about helping them out with that idea, with a gentle shove. No worries, we all stayed dry. After walking around for awhile, we decided to check out the Gaudi Cathedral that Amanda and Char had been pleading to see all week. It was amazing! More on that later. We also went to the Picasso museum and the Chocolate museum but didn't actually go inside since no one felt like shelling out the cash. So we thought that with the money we saved we could, you know, go shopping! Some store owner gave us all communist symbol pins. He actually pinned them on our jackets for us and we didn't actually check them out until we left. We thought that it might not be a great idea to walk around supporting such things since we weren't 100% sure what they even said. "Everyone! Easy pickpocketing here!" for all we know. Back to our hotel we went to collect our bags so we could catch our 6:00 train to Paris. Once there we had a horrible shock! We found out from some cute boys from Seattle that smoking is not longer permitted inside buildings in Paris as of January 2nd! This was a huge disappointment as I'm sure you can imagine. Ha just kidding. We were ready to eat our meals in peace without second hand smoke everywhere. The REAL shock came when we pulled out our tickets to double check the time of departure. We found out that our train was actually leaving in exactly one minute!! Understandably we all freaked out! We had mistakenly read 16:40 as 6:40. So we made a mad dash down to the train station to try and get our tickets changed to see if we catch the 9:00 train that Catie and Maria were on. We met up with the Brown boys and their cousin Marc at the station to return some socks and other items we left at their house. We rapidly blabbered out our dilemma to Marc and asked if he could translate for us to change our tickets. He and Natalie dashed off to see what we could do. Within about 5 minutes they were back. Apparently there was a train leaving right that minute and they were holding it for us!!! So we ran through the terminal hauling our overstuffed backpacks and dufflebags, with a man in a walky talky thingy following behind us, supplying updates to the train, "They are on the stairs right now!" Anyway we made it on board and the train left about 5 seconds later. We were supposed to change to a night train in Narbonne, France but with the later train we were actually able to catch the night train at an earlier stop somehow. So we made it onto our correct train and sat behind some lady with really smelly perfume. And talked to the French guy from London across the aisle. We think he was a Christian because as he left he was wearing a sweatshirt with something about Jesus being #1.
LeAnne

Sunday continued

So meeting was great. We didn’t realize that it was going to be such a long continuous thing so we were kind of holding on until the end of the hour for bathroom breaks. Not anyone else though. Every single person walked out of meeting at least once. Also all the girls wore pants and since it was absolutely freezing, we were more than a little jealous! After meeting they made an announcement in Spanish and then looked expectantly at us, we managed to decipher that they wanted to take us out to lunch. We all walked down the street to this huge mall and went to a Chinese buffet. There’s something a little funny about a couple of Americans, some Bolivians and a Canadian going out for Chinese in Spain! LeAnne accidentally ate OCTOPUS!!!!! She mistakenly took some salad that she thought was just vegetables and didn’t realize what she was eating until she had taken a huge bite of it. Upon closer examination, she realized the purple roots she thought she was eating still had tentacles attached!!!!! Needless to say, the rest of the salad was not finished. The other girls thought this was pretty hilarious but they weren’t the ones with the mouth full of squishy stuff. After the meal our hosts wanted to know if we would like to go shopping at the mall. Silly question! OF COURSE we would like to go shopping!! We went thru several stores and ended up at the grocery store since we all like food pretty well. After that they volunteered to drive us all the way back to our hostel instead of just to the metro stop. We were happy not to have to ride the metro back and thought we could just sit back and relax. Wrong! The car LeAnne and Char were riding in apparently wasn’t used the weight of foreigners and kept dying on the hills! We were a little freaked out especially since it was heavy traffic and we kept rolling back down the hills. We never actually hit anyone, for which we were very thankful but we came very, very close and had a more than our share of car horns. Glad to be out of the car, we decided that we really needed to see some people who spoke English, so we thought we would change our tickets to go to Barcelona and see the Brown boys. We hopped on the metro to go to the train station and were able to change our tickets with no problems. As the only non spanish speaking girls in our group, Amanda and LeAnne were elected to speak to the hostel lady and let her know we would be leaving a day early. We had learned earlier from our Italian buddy Simon, that the owner understands English very well, but prefers to use rapid-fire Spanish in an attempt to confuse poor, unsuspecting tourists. Stomping our feet, saying 'no comprende' every time she tried to use Spanish and a little attitude was all it took. After five minutes all details were taken care of. We went back to our favorite Turkish place and got some dinner and even free dessert from the owner who obviously remembered the five cute Americans/Canadian. Back at our hostel, we met up with the Councells and their friends. Apparently we girls were a little too loud and excited to meet up with friends for our hostel lady. She actually opened up our door twice to poke her head inside and tell us to be quiet. Okay this is the end.

LeAnne

La Reunion de Domingo

Another early morning! We got up early because we had no idea how we were going to get to the meeting room! The numbers Natalie was given were not working! At first we were a little worried, a little frustrated, and with only three hours of sleep, a LOT tired (due to our lovely hostal lady-we blame everything that went wrong on her!). Leanne and Cheryl were ok with getting up early because of the great motivater, Starbucks, right down the street. Problem, when you have a city that stays up till four in the morning, they aren´t exactly ready for business at eight! We had a solution, walk up the street a couple more blocks and hit the next Starbucks. Yeah, no. Not working for us! So turning around, we pasted smiles on our faces, and marched back in high heels to meet the other girls who were still trying to contact the meeting people. So what were we going to do? We had a brilliant idea! Hop on the metro and just go find it! We all know how good we are at finding things! So we had a vote. It turned out that this was probably not our best option. So a few trans-atlantic cell phone calls later (we would appreciate any donations towards that bill!), Cheryl´s Uncle Bob phones at only about three in the morning his time. Pretty eager to help us out, he arranged for us to be picked up and taken care of before we knew what was happening! Thanks Uncle Bob! We love you and want to forgive you for making us haul 60 pounds of Bibles around Europe! JK, we actually really appreciate the biceps we have developed!
Anyhow, we were picked up at the metro stop by a very nice man, Gaston. We hadn´t yet been exposed to the European greeting (double cheek air kiss) and were a little shocked at first! We followed Gaston around the corner to his house and met his wife, Milca, who had prepared a huge breakfast for us! Cheryl and I finally got our coffee!!!!!!!! They even had comfort food such as cocoa puffs! As well as this most amazing cheese. We safely delivered the bibles and calendars to Gaston and the extra weight was totally worth it when we saw the look on his face. He was thrilled! Apparently SUVs and mini vans are pretty much non-existent in Europe so they had to shuttle us to meeting in several different cars. We met a ton of wonderful people (there´s about 20 or so in the Madrid meeting) and got a ton more double cheek air kisses. With all the cheek contact, we started wondering exactly how these people keep such beautiful skin! Meeting was interesting. Amanda and Leanne understood pretty much nothing, but Cheryl, Char and Natalie were able to pick up quite a bit. They have a 30 min Sunday School, launch right into Breaking of Bread for an hour, followed immediatly by a 30 min Gospel meeting. This was a little hard to pick up with the lack of spanish skills but we managed it. For Breaking of Bread we got to talk in meeting. Well we actually just read our own names in our letters of commendation because the brother was having some difficulties with it.
Anyway this will be continued soon as we have much more to tell you and this day was not over yet. Photos are arriving soon! We promise!!!!!

Arrived Safely!

Well just a quick update to to let everyone know how we are doing. We arrived safely in Madrid at about 5.30 pm after 18 plus hours in the airplane/airport. And we pretty much do not want to see the inside of another plane again for a very long time. We flew Lufthansa and just as a side note, this is a very good airline to fly. If you are in first class, you get reclining seats with tons of leg room and your own personal TV. If you are in regular class like we were, it is still nice but minus the reclining seats, tons of leg room and personal TV. Okay so it pretty much is like every other airline but they are really nice and gave us heated baby wipes when we first got on the plane. This is a definite plus since I can honestly say I have never had a heated baby wipe. We even got hot dinners! For your dining pleasure this evening they had our choice of pasta or turkey. After our lovely souped up TV dinner they played a movie. The only thing my sound thingy worked and Cheryl´s didn´t. So after repeated attempts to fix it (and numerous German flight attendants checking on us) they offered the solution to reset our whole section. Except after that, neither of our sound systems worked. The flight attendant had the brillant idea of borrowing the sockets from the couple in front of us since they were sleeping but when he tried to plug our headphones in the couple woke up and decided that they wanted to watch the movie themselves. So we read magazines instead. We had about an hour layover in Munich, Germany and met this cute little German girl named Maria. She was about 4 and spoke German and Spanish and laughed when we tried out our Spanish on her. After a two hour flight we arrived safely in Madrid and met up with Amanda. We got lost trying to fnd the baggage claim and got locked out of the section we had to be in. We ended up following an older guy who was on our flight and happened to be wearing some sweet red shoes (ahem dad?) and he got us thru. We finally found the baggage area in time to claim all of our luggage. Nothing was lost for which we are very thankful for. Even the suitcase load of bibles Cheryl is delivering. Although if it got lost we hope that someone would open up the suitcase and start reading and get saved. But this didn´t happen because we didn´t lose anything. So then we had to find the metro station to catch the subway to our hostel. We bought these cards that give us 10 rides for like 7 euros except that I paid 11 euros because I pushed the wrong button. I´m sure my ride will be nicer than the others, you know say about 4 euros nicer. We had to take about 3 different subways to get to our stop and then got completely lost trying to find our hostel. But on the bright side we did end up seeing a lot of downtown Madrid and did find our hostel eventually. Ok my fingers are tired of typing now.
LeAnne