More On Our Time In Holland (Sorry, it's kind of long...)

As I said at the end of my last post, my mom and I had a nice time in Holland. Our bodies weren't quite ready for the cold we experienced there and are now recovering, but other than the weather, everything went well. We got to spend time a great time with nice people, made new friends, and enjoyed what we could of Holland (most of our time was spent inside, though).

At the 24/7 Prayer gathering there were 200 people and 22 countries represented. Sadly, most of the countries were from norther Europe. Not that that's bad, don't get me wrong. I think it's wonderful that so many people came, but the few of us from the south wished there were more of us...
We had a lot of different speakers throughout the day and then times of fellowship, times of worship, and times of prayer, which were all very good.
Some teachings or discussions were for the whole group, but then others were for smaller groups. Here are a few things that were said in the seminars I attended:
1. What is your "Promised Land", something you long for? We need to make a choice: either we get all of our prayers answered without God, or we go on with our life without answered prayers, but with God.
2. Europe is the most challenging missionary frontier of our time even though it is the continent with most Christians.
3. Keys to receiving God's presence are: a. Prioritize Prayer (Prayer is partnering with God, it's changing reality); b. Deny Distractions (Lay your vulnerabilities down, whatever keeps you from God); c. Love Learning (If you stop wanting to learn more about God, there's something wrong).
4. "Most people are fed every Sunday, but people need to learn how to feed themselves daily."
5. Europe has so much history and hurt. Throughout the centuries, Europe has been hungry for freedom, truth, and justice, you can see it just by the revolutions that have happened in history. Our job is to help Europe rediscover beauty, love, community, and truth. We need to help this continent find healing and hope.
6. Most churches say that you need to "go out and make disciples", but we need to realize that what the Bible really says is to make disciples wherever we are as we go. And we need to realize that we need to change our worldview and the church's worldview. We need to re-wire the way we do everything. Instead of basing things on information (which is what everyone is obsessed about today), we need to base things on Jesus Christ.
7. People say that working in Amsterdam is useless because it's a Godless city, it's completely "messed up". But there is no such thing as a "Godless city" because God is everywhere. He's even in Amsterdam's logo:

And here is something else that was said that I found very interesting:
Europe is 10 million squared km. The U.S. is 9.8 million squared km.
Europe's population is 700 million. The U.S. has 307 million.
Europe has approximately 50 countries in it and more than 60 languages.
Europe's density is 65/squared km. The U.S. has 31/squared km.
And yet everyone thinks that the United States are bigger than Europe!

Ok, well, back to my mom and I...
It was funny watching my mom get excited about going back to Amsterdam 'cause the last time our family was in Holland was 17 years ago.
My parents actually met (briefly) in Amsterdam in one of the YWAM dorms in 1983. My dad lived there for four years (from 1980 to 1984) and my mother just went there for a summer when she was 19 and still wasn't done with university. (Then they met again in the States and got married 6 months later).
So, my mom has a lot of memories of the city. Plus, the gathering we went to was being held in the same YWAM building my mom and dad met in!
While we were there, my mom told me different stories about when she lived there (at age 19) and showed me places she'd been to. One day, when we got off our usual bus at Central Station, she pointed out the Samaritan's Inn cafe building, where she sometimes went to hang out. She told me that one evening, as she was walking home from a meeting with a YWAM leader and was stopping by that building, a man came behind her, grabbed her, put a knife to her throat and asked her friend to give him money. She said that when this happened, she was very calm and wasn't afraid and her friend just took out his keys, opened the side door to the building, and then somehow got my mom away from the man with the knife and went inside. She has no idea of how she got free from him.
Then, not too far away from that building, she pointed out a big church, which I looked at every day when we got off our bus. There, she said, another day, she was walking along and saw a man laying on the front steps of the church injecting heroin. She said he looked so sad that she decided to stop and sit with him. She told him that Jesus loved him and talked to him for a while and then she continued on to where she was going.
It's crazy for me to think that all that happened to her when she was a year younger than what I am today!

Here are some pictures from our journey. I included pictures of the buildings I just talked about. I hope you enjoy them.

Mixed Up Dreams

It's funny how my brain gets mixed up. With all the different places I've been to around the world and all the different people I've met, places and people get all jumbled up in my mind when I'm not awake.
So, I end up having dreams where people from Chicago are in my old house in Italy. Or Italian people that I played with when I was young end up being friends with people from Portugal that they have definitely never met in real life. Or people who were in my Italian middle school are living in the community I lived in in Chicago. It's really funny and strange!

Dreams and nightmares are so interesting to me...I wonder how they form, what causes them, where certain things come from...It's incredible that it all comes from my brain while I'm sleeping!

A Summary Of What Has Gone On Lately

Wow, it has been over a month since my last post! Wow. Time has gone by so quickly! And now it has been over 60 days since I moved here! Crazy!

Well, here I am, back from the real world =)
I've been so busy lately, I haven't had any time for writing on here, answering emails, hanging out with people...I feel so bad, but I couldn't help it!
After my last post, my family and I went down south to a region called the Algarve to visit some friends of my parents for a week. We had fun hanging out with people, speaking Portuguese (well, I mostly listened and was able to catch the general meaning of what was being said), playing Guitar Hero, and swimming in the pool or the ocean. It was really nice for me to finally meet Edna, my friend Barbara's sister, who has become really good friends with my mom, and to meet her twin boys, Joshua and Nelson (here's a picture my sister took of them. Nelson's on the left and Joshua's on the right. It's not the best picture since they're not smiling, but it'll have to do). They're two years old and would call my brother Isaac "Eeshakee", my sister Alana "nana", and I was "inny". They were really cute trouble makers =)
Spending time with Edna made me miss Baba, whom I've been wanting to visit ever since I've moved here, but haven't been able to since I have no money to travel.

The day after we got back, I started my new job! I am now helping out at a small International Christian school by teaching History and Geography to eight 6th and 7th graders and Bible to five high schoolers. It was a real challenge the first week, 'cause I hadn't had time to prepare lessons in advance, so I would wake up, eat, go to school, teach, eat, teach some more, go home, prepare my lessons for the next day, and go to bed! So, of course, I got sick. But I love my students and I really like teaching them and I've heard from the kids, other teachers, and moms, that my students really like me, too, so I'm really happy.
In case you are wondering, I am not getting paid, but the school is providing me with a bus pass, so now I don't depend on my parents driving me everywhere and can just take the bus....if it comes! (Portuguese bus drivers come and go when they please. They could be 5 minutes early, 10 minutes late, or even 30 minutes late and if you're not there when the bus arrives, well, good luck!)

The week after I started teaching, my good friend Annica, whom I've known my whole life, came to visit me from Italy. I was so happy to see her again after two years that I cried when I picked her up at the airport, but we've just been saying that I was having allergies =)
I wish I hadn't been so busy with teaching and that I hadn't been sick, but we had a lot of fun together anyway! (Here's a picture of the two of us being silly, which is what we do best)
We went to the beach, we went to a few of the nice cities in the area (including Lisbon), took a lot of fun pictures, laughed and talked together and cried while watching a movie we had watched together two or three years ago at her house =)
The last day Annica was here, she asked if she could come along to school with me and sit in on my classes. Afterwards, she told me that she was so impressed at how good I was at teaching and how I did it so naturally. That was really nice to hear! I just thought that I was doing as well as anyone else would have done...so it's nice to remind myself that this isn't something that comes naturally to everyone and that I'm actually good at teaching!

Once Annica left, I was able to get a week to relax and finally get over the bad cold I had.

And then this past week, I went to Holland with my mom to a 24/7 Prayer European gathering which I really enjoyed!! It always amazes me how small the Christian world is (it's so easy, at Christian events, to see someone that you've met before or heard of or with whom you have mutual friends!) and it's so nice how, even though you've just met a person, you connect so easily and act like family right away! That's so encouraging and so fun!
While there, I got to see a little bit of Holland (technically, it wasn't my first time in this country, but last time I was there was when I was 3 years old, so that doesn't really count), I got to make some new friends, and enjoy Christian community again, even though it was just for a few days. It made me miss JPUSA...

These 20 Days In Portugal

Moving to Portugal has been really weird and a little difficult. Right now I still feel like I'm just visiting and that I'm going to go back home soon.... And then when I realize that this is my home now I have melt downs and start crying and it takes me a while to get over it. I really miss all of my friends at JPUSA. I miss working with Erica (though I don't miss the actual work), I miss rooming with Hannah, I miss cooking/baking with Betty, and I miss being able to just go down the hallway or down the stairs and visit all my other friends. I miss being able to laugh or cry or just be with them all. I miss my room, I miss JPUSA church...I even miss all the crazy people in the community and on the streets and all the big city buildings!
It's so different here....all my friends live far away, I don't know my whereabouts, I don't know the language, and the country is so...unfamiliar! The buildings are unlike those in Italy. There isn't really any green grass here, just brown weeds. The trees are green though! There are a lot of palm trees and cacti and all kinds of other random plants.... And the sun is so bright, so strong, so hot. Ever since I got here, I've been tired, worn out, and have had a cold....

It'll all get better though. Once I start having a schedule in which I have routines and I'm actually doing things, it'll be a lot better. I'm already starting to get used to the heat. Now, as soon as my body gets to normal, hopefully I'll stop being so tired and will stop having this cold. They're probably caused by the fact that for the last 7 months or so I've just been so busy and have been going going going. And now my body is trying to recover.

I'm actually kind of frustrated with myself for feeling so sad and a little desperate. This could be so much worse. I could be in China, or Saudi Arabia or India, where the alphabet would be completely different, where I wouldn't be able to understand a word of what people were saying (I can sort of catch a word or two in Portuguese and can speak a couple of sentences) and where the country and culture would be 100% foreign to me (at least Portugal has a landscape and culture that are similar to Southern Italy). And I would not know anybody and be totally alone. (I have been SO blessed by all my parents' friends and colleagues who have welcomed me here and by an old Portuguese friend of mine who has been spending a lot of time with me and by an American girl that I met a couple days after I arrived here who knows exactly what I'm going through and who has told me wants to make sure we spend a lot of time together).
I've also been really frustrated about all the things I had to leave behind (or forgot!) which I really wanted to bring here with me (mostly CDs/DVDs with music and pictures and a lot of books that I was looking forward to reading).....but, really, I shouldn't complain 'cause I have everything I need.

I guess I just wasn't expecting to feel this way....but I guess it's normal to feel so lonely once you've moved out of a community where you've been surrounded with people all the time (so many of whom have become such great close friends). And I guess it's normal to feel so lost in a country that's not your own....

It's still annoying, though.

My 10 Days Before The Big Journey

During my transition from Chicago to Portugal I stayed with my grandparents (my Dad's parents) in Pennsylvania for 10 days. I left JPUSA on Monday, July 27, which was a total nightmare, and left for Portugal on Thursday, August 6.
The day I left was so terrible 'cause, other than the fact that I had been stressed out, sick and hadn't gotten much sleep all week, and had to say goodbye to all my closest friends, I ended up spending the whole day in the airport! First I was told that the flight was going to be an hour late, then it was going to be 3 hours late, and then it was canceled. So I ended up having to wait another 6 hours for the next flight to Philadelphia and had to drag my carry on (the wheels of which broke) to the other side of the airport. And THEN, I almost missed that flight 'cause I was busy helping a group of Italians figure out what was going on with their flights and baggage. Plus, I didn't have a cell phone or a calling card, so I kept having to call every Chicago number I had to try to find someone who would answer their phone, talk to me, and call my grandparents to let them know what was going on. By the time I finally reached someone I was in tears.

God was with me the whole time though. =)
Brach ended up giving me $10 for travel money even though I told him I didn't need it, so I was able to buy myself some lunch.
The book I had picked up to read during my travels was The Arm Of The Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle which I had never read before and it made me giggle when I read the first page and the story started out with a teenage kid wandering around an airport, trying to figure out what was going on with his flight which was having some kind of trouble. Also, the kid was going from the States to Lisbon. =)
When I finally reached the other side of the airport and was tired and worn out, a little girl was with her family and smiled at me. When I smiled back at her she started laughing and waving at me and then walked over to me, climbed up on the seat next to me, offered me some of her Goldfish (they're basically cheese crackers in the shape of little fish) and started pointing out the airplanes to me and kept smiling and touching my arm. I think she might have crawled up into my lap had her father not come over and taken her away.
And it was so nice to speak in Italian again.
All of these little things were little blessings that kept my spirits up.
It was so nice, once I got to Philadelphia and my uncle and aunt found me, to pass over responsibility to someone else and just fallow along and have them figure out where my suitcases had ended up.

While at my Grandparents' house I got to spend time with them, my Aunt Judy who lives with them, and my Uncle Mark and Aunt Mary who I hardly ever see since they live in Australia, but whose company I always enjoy. So I got to go thrift store shopping with my uncle, talked a lot with Aunt Mary, went to see a movie with Aunt Judy, cooked with Grandma, went fishing with Grandpa, and played Pinochle with everyone. It was really nice and relaxing and was a good familiar way to end my time in the States.
I also got to spend some time with all my friends who live in that area. My parents' church is about an hour away from where my grandparents live and I've made quite a lot of friends in the church in the past 7 years. We don't really keep in touch as much as I wish we did, but whenever we see each other it's like no time has passed and we have so much fun. I wish I had gotten pictures =)
Oh, and I ended up also going to the dentist for, what I though, was only going to be a check up, but which ended up being my first time getting a filling...well, actually 8 fillings!
See what American food does to ya? =P

At least my journey to Portugal went fine! I ended up having a window seat and had two guys (who I think were in their late 20s/early 30s) sit next to me and who were really nice. It makes it so much easier to travel when you have company with you =)

Lots Of "See You Later"s, But No "Goodbye"s

I'm so sorry I've been gone from the "Blog World" for so long and have not given any update on what's been going on with me. SO much has happened and I either have been too busy to post anything, didn't have access to the internet, or just didn't feel like writing. But no worries, I'm back now =)

Before leaving Chicago I had a lot of "last time moments" with different people. You could say that I had a lot of "little good-bye parties" spread out in two weeks...I don't like having big parties where I don't get to spend time with every person that's there and which just doesn't feel very personal and intimate.
Here's a list of all the different things I did =) : I got to...
- finally finish the Narnia series with Hannah by reading the end of The Last Battle (the last book) during a very cool thunderstorm and we got to watch Still Magnolias together for the last time.
- have a last girls' movie + sushi night with Ami, Carolyn, Betty and Nate.
- have a pizza dinner with my JPUSA family (The Switajs, Betty, Claire, Michael, Max and Melissa. Grits wasn't there).
- finally have a fried ice-cream night with the Claytons which was a lot of fun (and very yummy =P).
- have my last Gilmore Girls' night with Laura and Chrissi.
- have a little lunch with the girls' from my Project 12 class (though we missed Dora and Suzanne!).
-have a last dinner together with the McCormacks who were so sweet and really helped me out when I was having my meltdown two days before I needed to leave.
- go out to eat with Erica, Josh and Josh's sister Mary quite a few times.
And I had a nice worship time and mini 80's dance party with various other friends.

I also finally went to the Field Museum with Erica, Mary, and Joby (a friend of ours who wasn't able to stay the whole time). I had been wanting to go to this museum the whole time I'd been living there so I was really glad we got to go! We had a lot of fun.
The first exhibit we went to was the Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement which was very good. Most of the pictures were things I've seen before (rallies, protest marches, police hosing down protesters and beating them, too), but there was a couple pictures that really got on my nerves that I had never seen before (not that the other pictures didn't bother me, but these were things I didn't know about which kind of shocked me). One was a hotel owner pouring cleaning chemicals into his pool in which were a bunch of black protesters! (The explanation next to the picture said that once the people got out, he had the pool emptied, cleaned down and then refilled. UGH!) The second one was a man standing up in a room full of protesters and spraying two cans of deodorant above him. The irony of this one was that he had sweat stains on the armpits of his shirt!
Racism is something I will never get.... It's so stupid, it doesn't make ANY sense!

After that, we saw the hall of jade and various different ancient jewelry displayed in a hall way. They were beautiful!
Then, we got to go through the Pirates exhibit which was very interesting! So many things that we think we know about pirates are really just myths. Pirates didn't have people walk the plank and they didn't bury treasure and therefore didn't have treasure maps. They had democracy and equality on their ships (most of which used to be slave ships). People who didn't have rights on land were considered brothers on the ship, as long as they had skills.
They usually just intimidated ships, they preferred just stealing their stuff without violence and then leaving. If a ship resisted, however, they would attack, and then they would take their ship. They would then ask the crew what their captain was like. If the captain was a good man, they would let him go free. If he was a bad man, they would kill him.
Last but not least, we started going through the taxidermy exhibit (which was a little creepy, but cool), but didn't get really far. We saw all the birds and some mammals, but then the museum started closing and we had to leave...
Needless to say, I loved this museum!! I wish I had gone there more often during the time I lived in Chicago!!
I also really liked the Art Museum when I went there a year ago, but I can't say I was really fond of the Science and Industry Museum, though I'm sure it's fun to go to with kids.

So, anyway, I enjoyed my last times with all of my friends.
My last night I even got to spend time with "my big brother" Brach (who went through Project 12 with me and is dating my good friend Hannah) exchanging music and pictures. And then my good friend Betty stayed up late with me helping me get all my packing done (my suitcases kept being too heavy and I ended up getting rid of and leaving SO much stuff!). Then, the morning I left, a small group of people gathered in the lobby while I got my stuff, and through tears I said good bye and went to the airport with Betty and Erica. God knew that I wouldn't be able to deal with my bags being over weight so he changed the number on the scale! (It initially said it was over, but then it changed right away to the exact maximum weight I could have and my friends and I let out a sigh of relief and smiled at one another)

Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend time with ALL the people I wanted to hang out with for the last time. =( Between being super busy AND sick, I just wasn't able to...I have way too many friends in that house! =) And that is why I am going to miss it. Terribly.

I hate saying "good bye". Though, really, I know it's just "see you later"....