Currently Playing Hopes and Fears By Keane see related

Well, i'm back.  last weekend's travel was a bit of a nightmare with an 18 hour delay in Amsterdam and then 3 hours in Calgary but we made it.  And we of course met some interesting people...people always forge community in crisis.  we started to feel like we wer on a Lost episode.

A week ago today we stayed in my ancestral family home. 

My great-grandfather purchased this house in 1914 and raised my grandfather there.  My mom and 12 of her siblings we born in that same house too.  I even saw the title deed for the 1956 sale which listed all my grandfathers siblings, their spouses, and their livlihoods.  Amazing to discover such history.  I also met alot of family and they were absolutely lovely!  I even have a second cousin who is into weaving...  The most exciting part for me personally was to learn about our family history of serving the poor.  In Albania, Romania, Africa, and within the village.  This family has practiced God's bias for generations.

i hope you all enjoyed our trip...we plan to have a slide show at some point this summer.

well, this is likely the last update before our return home tomorrow.  we're ready to come home i think.  there's been alot to process with 7 countries in 5 weeks.  so many strange sights, beautiful architecture, odd people, interesting people, fabulous fashion, amazing baked goods, and cheap wine.  i said to shandelle this morning that i feel like i've more than satiated my desire for nice things and will be glad to go home to a simple life.  now, the key will be to figure out how to do that exactly...not so simple.

this afternoon we are taking a train ride through the country to head up to Friesland where i will meet some distant cousins and a great aunt and uncle perhaps.  we'll have the one night with them learning about my family history and i'll get to see my mom's home where she was born and lived until 1957.  i'm interested.  i can also imagine them disbelieving we're related when they see me...(for those of you who don't know i do not have a strong family resemblance).

so, for those of you from church i will see you on Sunday night!  i'm excited to be with you all.  and for the rest of you i'll hopefully see your faces sometime soon too. cheers.

amsterdam!  after a rather long train trip from Berlin we have arrived.  i had no idea delfware would be so astronomically expensive.  :)  actually everything seems expensive here.  the canals are wonderful.  these words, although they may seem cliche, embody the netherlands:

bikes, dikes, windmills, canals, black licorice, pannekoeken, and pot.

ah travel.  today the underground in Berlin was terribly confusing which got shan and i frustrated with the day, the city, and each other.  but in the end we had a terrific meal in a mid-eastern restaurant finishing off with some killer potent liquor shots on the house, and i got birks.  nice.

we never found Philipp but i may be back in Germany in September so i'll try again then.

we leave tomorrow for Amsterdam.  it's kind of daunting to just show up in the city and try to find a place to crash and hope we land in a cool neighbourhood.  on Friday afternoon we are heading to my mother's home where she was born and raised in Friesland.  we plan to spend the night with her cousin and to meet a brother and a sister of my grandfather.  i'm a bit excited about this, but i also can feel sorrow around the edges of my mind.  i guess choosing this is another acknowledgment that my mom is gone to the grave already eleven years and i'm still searching for her in ways i don't understand.

the pain in my back is subsiding.  thanks for your prayers!