Thai Food & Paris Awaiting.

Today was such an awesome day. After three amazing lectures this morning, I skipped our usual free lunches, and went for Thai food with a friend. There's this delicious thai restaurant just down the street from the school. Our first choice was to indulge ourselves in french-fry pizza (yes, cheese pizza covered in french fries, you heard right!!!) but Germany has such weird hours for restaurants. Most only open at 5 PM. But this Thai place was open and it was the perfect place for some much needed, one-on-one, girl-talk.

To be honest, (does anyone else feel like I use that phrase alot? "to be honest?" Ah well, I guess I'm just an honest person) here at this school you meet so many people in so few days, that alot of the relationships are more on the...shallow side. Now, please don't misunderstand or misquote me. What I mean is that with most people, not all, but with most, the conversations consist of "dude, let's bike to Kaufland " or "what are you doing for travel weekend?" or "how about that lecture?!?" Other than our K-group meetings (small-groups) testimony sharing nights, late night bedroom talks, there's not much opportunity for intimate moments with people. There's always things to do, books to read, or places to see. Everyone, including myself is so caught up in trying to see everyone, and do everything that it's easy to just leave....depth out of conversations.

So what I'm getting at, is that this one-on-one girl talk I had at this Thai restaurant was absolutely amazing. We talked about so many things, that were actually DEEP and heart-filled. It was absolutely wonderful. I love learning about other people and their life stories. I have been craving this amount of depth for quite a long time, and I still am. I hope this is making sense.

I'm pumped that I had a chance to blog tonight! That makes me happy. I love keeping in touch with ya'll.
Oh one last ounce of news, we're offered a "Travel Weekend" in November and then again in the spring. Which is where we can choose to go anywhere in the world we want to, and I am going...to...PARIS!!!

How will I ever sleep tonight? :)

Astronomical Grace

I don't even know what to say. There's so much on my mind these days. The lectures spoken by Peter Reid are...amazing. Absolutely amazing. I learn something one minute, prepare to soak it all in, and then I'm bombarded with more words of wisdom. It's almost overwhelming...but it's a good kind of overwhelming. If that makes sense. I think I'm gonna start putting some of these things I'm learning on this blog.

Last night after dinner, something upset me. I'm not gonna get into, but I walked into lectures with a terrible mindset. One that said, "I'm gonna sit here, slouching in my seat. I'm not gonna write a thing down, because I just don't feel like it. Pffff!" Eventually I started pickin' up my pen and my posture, but only because I felt that it would look better, or more aesthetically appealing, and that I may as well just suck it up. Vain? Yes.

Then the teacher showed us a 43 minute clip on the projector. It was called "Indescribable" --a sermon preached by a man named Louie Giglio. Even though I had seen this video once before from my sunday school days, it still blew my mind. And to be honest, my mindset changed in a snap. His sermon was like a slap in the face, reminding me how small I really am, along with my problems, and how big God is. To put it boldly, God is HUGE. In the video Louie shows the very first picture ever taken of our planet earth. It's gorgeous, it's beautiful. Then he shows us a picture of the milky way, the galaxy in which our earth sits. Then he shows a picture of what our galaxy is sitting in. Then he showed a picture of something so amazing that I'm not even gonna try and describe it on this blog. Immediately I shook my head. What a fool I am for believing for even a second that my problems could even compare to something like that. What was bothering me before lectures, didn't mean a thing to me after this video. I felt like screaming to the whole world: Um, excuse me, but we are all just mere specks of dust in God's amazing creation!!

But what really gets me, is the fact that even though I feel so extremely small, along with my problems, concerns, issues, fears, and worries..is that God actually cares about them. He actually CARES. "You have kept record of my days of wandering; you have stored my tears in your bottle and have counted each of them." Psalm 56:8 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, because it reminds me of his love for me. Me and You.

I want to encourage to whoever is reading this, to watch that video (I'd link it to here, but Youtube is blocked here), and just let it be reminder to you. Or maybe let it even be a revolution to you. The stars in the sky are an example of God's astronomical grace. I mean, how could you look at sights like the stars, the sun, the moon, even the Swiss Alps and not believe that there was a creator?

Love Jenny.

10K Part Two

So...about that 10K race...

I RAN THE WHOLE THING!!!!!!

Oh man, I have never felt so accomplished in my life. I seriously could have ran another 10K after that, I felt so good.

Like, what an experience, running a 10K race in some little German town! Wow!

The scenery was gorgeous. We ran down cobblestone streets, weaving past little shutter-windowed houses,  in the grass, through a lovely aroma-filled meadow, I saw the tallest corn field in the world, and all the german citizens were cheering us on. At the end of the race they gave us hot tea in little plastic cups.

I recommend 10K races to EVERYONE. I officially love running.

I mean, if I can run 10K in one hour and five minutes, anyone can. :D

10K

So, yesterday I wrote the most amazing blog entry ever, and then the wireless cut out and only half of it got saved onto my draft. And of course I'm much too lazy/time-constrained to attempt writing anything up to par.

Yesterday was International night; I wore my Canadian flags and red war paint proudly. Today I went to a flea market. I bought a bracelet, and a miniature antique globe. And tomorrow...I'm going on a 10K run. So just to warn you, I may not be alive by this time tomorrow. It was nice knowing ya'll.

Guten Nacht. :)

A Day in the Life.

"Wow, it has sure been a long time since I've dusted off the old blog. For the sake of my family and close friends (and whoever else may be even slightly interested), I decided that I'm going to fill you in on what my daily schedule is like here at bible school in Germany. Here we go!
First, the appointed cow-bell ringer (its an obnoxious sound, but we remember not to shoot the messenger) goes through all the dorms and wakes us all up at 7:15. I get dressed in 15 minutes (easy as pie) and we all head to the dining hall for breakfast from 7:30-8:00. Each of us were given certain work duties that we do for 4 weeks, and then we all switch them up; some are granted cleaning floors, vegetable prep, scrubbing toilets (Heaven forbid I ever get that job!!!), and then there's me...dining hall vacuumer! I, believe it or not, along with a fellow man-friend, vacuum the dining all three times a day for 4 weeks. If my math is correct, this means I vacuum 84 times these four weeks, all adding up to 21 hours. WHAT AN HONOUR. My right bicep is gonna be bulging in no time!
Anyway, back to my exciting daily schedule. After I'm done my breakfast vacuuming duty, I have about 45 minutes to spare before lecture, so if I'm not socializing, then I'm reading my Bible or I'm walking down to the lake with my iPod. This morning the lake was coated with whispy fog and the 12 swans were disappearing one by one into this soft grey blanket. It was absolutely beautiful. It was probably the first time I had ever been alone since school started. (weirdly enough, I haven't been craving my alone-time nearly as much as I did last year. hmm...)
When 9 AM rolls around, all 108 of us sit ourselves down in the lecture hall. These lectures are awesome, that's all I'm gonna say. Oh wait, I guess I could include that during the morning lectures I'm extremely fatigued and always come very close to falling asleep. But it's all good.
At 10:10 we have a fifteen minute coffee break, which is when we all head into the Honeycomb for some coffee, tea, sandwiches, and fruit. (I LOVE FOOD) Then we have another lecture until 12:30, which is divided into two with a 5 minute break.
Lunch is at 12:30 in the dining hall. Which means that...you guessed it! Vacuuming time!! So from lunch time 'till 5:45 is free time. During this free time (frei zeit) I usually: bike to Friedrichshafen, shop at H&M, buy some Bounty Bar ice cream, bike some more, walk to Kaufland (supermarket), play volleyball, hang out in the Honeycomb, tan, go boating, jump in the lake, check my facebook for like a total of 5 seconds, read my Bible, and all of this includes being surrounded by incredibly awesome people.
After supper is finished, I vacuum AGAIN, for the last but not least time of the day. Then I usually play volleyball, or attend some kind of group meeting. We then have lectures from 7:15 till 9 PM, divided with a 10 minute break.
After lectures is either a) a super awesome & spontaneous sweaty dance party, b) a party in the sauna, c) jumping into the freezing cold lake, or d) owning people at Fuss-ball.
Then lights are out at 11 PM. Now, just imagine...what also takes place during this time, is me eating Crispy M&Ms, ice cream, and Bounty Bars any second I have free. I also STILL have a cold, how annoying. Oh, also imagine doing all of these daily activities with a dislocated rib. Yes folks, it's true, I'm pretty positive I have a dislocated rib. I was laying in bed one night, feeling my left rib, then my right rib, and then my left rib again. Talk about a huge difference. My left rib is definitely juttin' out or something. After I psoted my last blog entry titled "Cough" a friend emailed me and said that it could be worse than just a pulled muscle...in fact, it could be a dislocated rib. I googled it and sure enough, it's totally possible and the symptoms seem to match up. I'm too lazy/busy to figure out what I should do, but if one of you emails me and tells me that I have to go get surgery on it, then FORGET IT!!! I have zero pain tolerance. Plus, who dislocates their rib from coughing? Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be, waltzing into the hospital and having to exclaim "yeah, I'm just an intense cougher. No big deal." Sigh.
Oh, and I swear everyday someone comes up to me and is like "You have Taylor Swift hair!" And then I just melt. There's no greater compliment. Well...there is, but in all seriousness, it makes my day. (p.s- her new album comes out on the 25th!!)
Last week I hiked a Swiss Alp! I wanted to die meanwhile, but the view made it all so worth it. Like, wow. I will post pictures on facebook one day. One day...
Anyway, I left out a whole bunch of details, but that's OK. I'm just proud of myself for actually being able to sit down and write for a bit. I'm definitely behind on my Bible reading right now. I blame the amazing weather and the amazing people who are effortlessly skilled at distracting me.
This blog entry definitely does not portray my writing skill whatsoever, in fact I probably sound like I'm a little high-school girl writing her in diary about a boy. Ha haaaa.
Love you all, and good night! Hi Mom! :)

Cough.

One of the most exciting things happening in my life right now is this:
The past couple of days I've had a really bad cold. It's inevitable when I travel. So in the middle of the night I'll just be hackin' away (sorry to all my roomies). And so, this morning, I'm standing in the washroom, I cough once. I cough twice. And on the third time, something snaps inside of my upper left ribcage. All I could think was, "OWWW." And this pulled-muscle pain erupts in me like a volcano.
Walking hurts. Talking hurts. Breathing hurts. Eating hurts. Biking hurts. Sitting hurts. Vacuuming hurts. (in case you didn't know, my work duty is to vacuum the dining hall 3 times a day) Coughing hurts. (and this could be a problem, since I have a cold, and I can't stop myself from coughing. Ugh.)
So this morning after it first happened it was so bad. After breakfast I vacuumed, which hurt so bad, then I just lay in my bed for half an hour until lecture, in intense pain. And then I sat in lecture in intense pain. And during lecture, I tried to cough, and it hurt so bad that it didn't come out as a coughing sound at all, it was SO embarrassing.
And yeah, that is my life right now. Thank goodness for pain-killers.

Human Beings.

So, let's just say there is life on Mars. And these...Martians...these inhabitants of Mars, just heard rumour that there are humans on this planet next door called Earth. The Martians are not only excited because human beings actually exist, they're excited because they heard that these human beings are made in the image of God. See, Martians don't know anything about God. They've heard of his name and his power, but they haven't heard details; they're desperate to know what he's like and if he really could, be the Saviour of this world. And seeing human beings is their only opportunity to know who God really is.
So, a few of these Martians set out on their UFO and head on over to planet Earth, in the hopes of running into these human beings who are made in the image of God. Their UFO lands in a city called Watts, Los Angeles. The Martians step out from their spaceship and begin scrounging the area for humans. Then finally, they find one, a human being. It's lying helpless against a brick wall on the cold pavement, surrounded by its own excrement. This human being is drenched in alcohol and drugs. Confused at this mess they see, the Martians keep looking for another human being.
They come across a TV in a strore-front's window. On this television is a news report of a human being in Baghdad, a terrorist who killed 70 other human beings, along with himself. With their confusion growing, the Martians continue their search. Down the street, they enter one of the buildings to find it filled with women who are hurting. The Martians ask, "why are these human-being women so bruised and broken? Who did this to them?" They're then told that this is a home for women who have been abused by their husbands and who needed a place to run to, so that they can be safe.
When the Martians return back to Mars, they shuffle hesitantly off the spaceship and the inhabitants of Mars are all waiting to hear the news. "What is God like?" "What does he look like?" "He must be so good; so amazing!"
Slowly, the Martians reply..."God is intoxicated of disgusting substances, God is a person who commits terrorist acts and kills innocent human beings, God is a man who beats his wife..."
This is why God created Christians. We were put on this earth so that if someone were in search of human beings in hopes to see God's character through us, they would see who God really is. They would see that God is the opposite of sin; God is love.

I rephrased this story from what I heard in our lecture last night, and I just decided to share it with you. Let's just say, it made me think.

Cherrrmany.

So, here I am. And in case ya’ll didn’t know where here is, here is Germany. Exactly a week ago I packed my bags, hopped on a plane, and moved into my new home. I’m attending a bible college located in the southern region, along the border of Austria and Switzerland. I mean, I can literally see Switzerland, it’s right across the lake! I can almost taste its…Swiss-ness.
Anyway, when I arrived at this bible college, I was expecting there to be like thirty students at the most, and there was. Half of us rode our bikes into town and just explored the area (as if I hadn’t done that already). And suddenly when we came back for supper that evening, there were 108 of us in total. ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT. I was expecting small, not huuuge. But…I guess compared to the last university I attended, population 4000, this is quite small. It’s small, but not as intimate as I was expecting. Then again, it’s only been three days. Speaking of which, these three days, feel like months. I’m not in total shock though. To bring up my university days again, I remember feeling this way last year; I felt as if I had known my friends there for years, when we had only spent a few days together. And right now, I feel like I’ve been here for months, and I’ve been best friends with these people my whole life.
What's crazy is that when I went on facebook the other day, I was expecting for EVERYTHING to be different, because like I said, I thought that months had gone by. I thought half my friends were gonna be in relationships, some were gonna be graduated from school, and others were suddenly gonna have long hair in their pictures. So when I went on, I realized that only a few days had passed, and nothing was different. Weird, I know.
And wow, there are so many names to remember and so many faces to place. You have to constantly remind yourself not to take it personally if somebody doesn’t remember your name or where you’re from, since we’re all ridin’ on the same boat here. Believe it or not, there aren't any other Jennifers here! This is great, considering my name was like one of the top baby names of the 1990's.
Last Saturday and Sunday night, a bunch of students were able to share their testimonies, and Wow... I've never seen so many grown men cry. Everyone has such beautifully tragic stories to tell, and God has worked miraculously in their lives, and you can tell that he still is. I know that my time to share my testimony will be in a week or two, I can just feel it. But I'm not really scared to do so. (I know that when the time comes, my heart will be beating straight outta my chest, but whatever).
Man, there are so many interesting people here!! Sorry about this random post, everything is just out of order and unorganized. It's only because I'm so excited. It's also because internet is only available to us in one room of the building, and seriously, I'm never on my laptop anymore. Why would I be on my laptop when I could be jumping into freezing cold lakes? Or eating extremely crazy amounts of glorious German food? Or waking up at 6 AM to participate in aerobics? Or biking to town? Or visiting castles? Or hiking mountains? Or or or or or...the list goes on. Haha. So, since internet is scarce here, I've realized that I'm gonna have to pre-write all of my blog entries before bed (somehow...) and then post them super quickly the next day or so and try not to waste any precious time. I love blogging so much, and that's the last thing I want to give up. Oh and since everyone here uses skype, the internet is SO slow, making posting pictures utterly IMPOSSIBLE. It also makes skyping a little awkward, since everything you say is in a public room, and everyone looks like one big pixel. Haha.
Oh, and did I mention I'm sharing a room with 9 other girls? Yes, this is true. But it's awesome. I love sharing rooms, I've never had a problem with it. I used to wish I had a twin sister I could share a room with. Okay...enough rambling. This is honestly the most elementary sounding blog entry I've ever written.
I just wanted to let ya'll know that I'm still alive and loving life!!
Thanks for all your prayers!

The Jet's a Laggin'

I don't understand it. I slept so well my first night here. I mean, 14 hours, does it get any better than that? And then, there's tonight; I just can't sleep for the life of me. It's almost 2 AM and I'm wide awake. Maybe I shouldn't have eaten chocolate before bed--yeah, that would do it, that delicious stuff is loaded with energy. I've tried everything from counting my blessings like sheep hoppin' over that non-proverbial picket fence, watching lame German TV for about two seconds before realizing I can't understand a thing, reading a book, organizing my photos from today, listening to David Nail on repeat, showering, drinking bottled Evian water, watching an episode of Gilmore Girls...nothing works. I've often wondered what the lake looks like at night, maybe I should...nah. I may be adventurous, but I'm not stupid. So I then decided that a blog is in order.
Today was a fun day. I woke up this morning not having a CLUE of what I was going to do. I literally walked out the door with my feet leading me along. I can't even describe how cool it is to travel by yourself. It's as if you're on nobody's schedule but your own...or God's, but you know what I mean. You can do whatever you want; leave when you want, eat what you want, act how you want...it's really all up to you.
With my feet pulling me along, I explored the residential streets of the city and also walked the lake once again. On impulse, I bought a ticket for the Katamaran, which is a large boat, to sail me across Lake Bodensee to the city of Konstanz. With a few minutes to kill before my boat left, I climbed the 115-step Friedrichshafen look-out tower. Boy, I'm seriously outta shape. My legs are actually sore right now; how sad is that?

Konstanz was interesting. This was my second time there; my first time being five years ago. And once again, my geographical memory never fails me. I remember exactly where everything was! After walking the streets and soaking up all of the extraordinary architecture, I decided there was only one thing left to do: McDonalds. And it was sure excellent. Personally, I gave it a 9/10, only because the McChicken sauce had a different taste to it. I would have given it as low as an 8/10 had they not LOADED the McChicken burger with fresh, uber green lettuce! Mmm... Oh, and I always forget that their idea of water is sparkling mineral water, so I'm inevitably a little surprised everytime I take a sip.

After that life changing McDonalds experience, I decided to walk some more, you know, burn off some of those calories. In front of me I see a crowd, and I hear a man yelling, so I look to find a magician/entertainer guy speaking both German and English in mixed sentences. He seemed pretty funny, so I decided to watch. Suddenly, he spots me and takes my right arm, everyone watching, and holding it high in the air with my index finger pointed to the sky. "Hold it like that for awhile." He says.
He walks away and starts telling jokes and introducing himself to the crowd, and a few minutes later he says, "so, any volunteers?" Immediately I understand what just happened and my arm bolted down to my side. "Nooooo..." I say.
But alas, I'm pulled into the centre of the stage, and of course, the number of people in the crowd increases. He asks for my name,
"Jenni."
"Jenni! Where are you from?"
"Canada."
"WOW. Where in Canada?"
Replying with heavy hesitance, because there's no way he's ever heard of this place "...Manitoba..."
"Manitoba! No way!!!"
I nod, laughing.
"I actually have no idea where that is..." (crowd practically dies laughing)
So for the rest of the hour I was known as "Jenni from Manitoba, Canada!"
After soaking three torches in nitro-glycerin, he lights them on fire and makes me hold them. Now, I'm actually extremely terrified of fire. I thought my hair was going to light up. Cringing the whole time, he instructed me on my job, "throw one torch at his left hand, the second at his right hand, and the third at his chest." Ohh crap...the last thing I wanna do before school starts is ignite somebody and kill them. Oh, and did I mention we played this game of catch while he was riding a unicycle? Geez! It was pretty awesome; and for being his "volunteer" I made 5 euros in the process, also known as $7 Canadian, and a little girl gave me her Kinder-schokolade! "danke schon!!" I thanked her.

After, I went to H&M and went a little crazy once again. I love that store! My second favorite part of the day (the first being me throwing torches in Konstanz), was my boat ride back to Friedrichshafen. As soon as I sit down on the Katamaran, I pull out my iPod and turn it to "Strangers on a Train". Suddenly this...good looking, really good looking, guy sits down right across from me. And if you knew the lyrics to that song, Strangers on a Train, you'd understand why all I could think was, "oh my goodness, am I in a music video?!" Yes, it was a wonderful trip back.

When I got back to Friedrichshafen, I went to the market and bought myself two North American products. I'm in Germany and I buy such things, super lame, I know. But hey, mini Bounty-bites and 1.5L of Evian still-water is a good investment.

I'm finally starting to feel tired. This is good news. I'm gonna take advantage of this fatigue and hit the hay. Guten Nacht! (Good Night)

Germany!

Alright. Here we are again. Jennifer runs off on yet another adventure and apparently you're interested enough to sit in front of the computer to read about it.
I'm gonna have to admit right now, that this has been the smoothest, most organized trip I've ever been on, and I'm BY MYSELF. Even when I'm traveling in groups like with my friends, my siblings, or my parents, things don't go this smoothly. Maybe I was just meant to do this. Somebody please tell me I was meant to do this! You know I wouldn't argue with you! I'm also going to have to admit that it's really hard for me to sit down and blog about this, because I just want to go outside and run around!! I cringe at the thought of me sitting on my laptop when I could be out there on the German streets causin' some trouble instead. As long as I remind myself that I still have two whole days here to kill, on my own.
Let me start from the beginning. Last Sunday was my last full day at home, and it was definitely a full day. I went to church one last time, I drove with my family to drop my newly engaged sister off at the airport, I had a little farewell dinner with some friends at DQ, and then I went to a mini-family gathering weiner-roast. All in all, it was a wonderful day full of wonderful people and wonderful goodbyes and wonderful packing-procrastination. I tried packing that night, but the last two episodes of Gilmore Girls deemed more important to me.
On Monday after getting a little over six hours of sleep, I woke up at 7 AM to finish packing. And I did pretty successfully. But seriously, am I the only person on this planet who finishes everything last minute? Like who packs three months worth of clothes a few hours before they leave for the airport? Who does that?!
After I finished packing my Virginian sister and her family called, and we talked for over an hour! It was awesome. I even got to ask Alora "what does a cow say?!". :)
We had to leave for the airport a few hours earlier, so that I could go on stand-by for Executive class. The goodbyes were easy. Well, compared to last year when I moved to BC, they were easy. It's crazy though. Me moving a few provinces away to BC was a WAY bigger deal than me moving across the ATLANTIC OCEAN to Germany. Last time I was so nervous. Remember how I couldn't eat like weeks before? Well, food definitely isn't an issue this time around. And speaking of food, my first-class standby was accomplished. Oh my goodness. As soon as you sit down in your big comfy seat they give you a tiny glass dish of roasted almonds and cashews, a glass of champagne, and a menu. Who knew they gave menu's on airplanes?! After my gourmet mushroom-stuffed chicken meal, I was feelin' good. And I thought it'd be another 3 hours to Montreal at least. Boy, was I wrong! I didn't even get to finish my movie! All this first-class business sure makes time fly.

So when I got to Montreal, I left the terminal and went to the baggage claim and decided to go sit at the airport restaurant bar and see how many guys I could pick up. Haha just kidding, but I did meet a friend there, which was awesome. He definitely made the lay-over time fly by. It felt like I was in a movie or something, you know, running off the plane to meet somebody. Anybody seen Red-Eye? (haha...)

Later I got to my gate and heard my last name being called. "Fro-see, Fro-see please come to the counter." When I went to the counter, the gift of executive class was handed to me. YESSSS! This was the flight that I definitely wanted first-class for, since they have the chairs that transform into beds at the click of a button. I bet all the people around me thought I was some kind of weird-o. As soon as I sat down, I just sat there smiling. Just smiling. That's it. And then I flipped through my first-class booklet like a million times trying to figure out how my remote worked. And I looked beside me to find a little silver bag, I opened it and it was full of goodies: toothbrush, toothpaste, lip balm, socks, hand lotion, earplugs, a facial towelette, and one of those beauty-rest things you wear over your eyes. It felt like Christmas! Oh and when this salmon-delicacy was put on my table in front of me (that took me like a good half hour to set up), I said, "Sorry, I believe I ordered the ravioli..." and the flight attendant was like, "Yes, I know. This is just the appetizer." HAHA...I definitely gave myself a hard kick after that. Being able to lie down flat on an airplane was a new experience for me. I thought I'd be able to sleep for hours that way, but I only slept off and on for a good two hours. I even fell asleep during "Letters to Juliet". How could I, I love that movie. :(

I got to the Frankfurt airport expecting chaos. Because everyone had warned me, "ohhh Jenni, the Frankfurt airport is the most confusing airport you'll ever experience!!!!" and gave me millions of instructions on how to go about. So I got there, asked where my gate was, and got there in no time! I don't know what all the fuss was about. My flight from Frankfurt to Friedrichshafen was 35 minutes long. Talk about short and sweet. My first-class experience on that flight was getting off with my very own Toblerone chocolate bar. I got off the tiny plane, picked up my luggage and walked to the train station. A nice German woman helped me out with the ticket machine, and a few minutes later I stepped into the city centre of Friedrichshafen. Now all that was left to do, was to find my hotel. Easy as pie. Not. I went in circles at least three times and climbed up and down staircases pulling over 80 pounds of luggage behind me and on me, in sunny 24 degrees weather. I don't even want to imagine what I must've looked like: a sweaty tourist. After grabbing a map, I finally arrived at my hotel, my air-conditioned hotel. It's so cute. it has a single bed against the wall, a nice big window, a tiny bathroom, and an even tinier tv. But honestly, who has time to watch German television?

I pulled my laptop from my bag and logged onto facebook to notify my family that I had arrived safe and sound! Oh and when I found out that my laptop cord didn't fit into my power-adapter, I almost went into freak-out mode. Then I realized that if I put it upside down, and let it just sit in there nicely and don't touch the cord at all, it works! Phewwwww.
Changing into ripped jeans and loading my favorite fringe purse with a map, brochure, euros, my camera, ipod, and aviator sunglasses, I headed out the door. It was about 3 in the afternoon and the sun was hot and high in the sky. I explored the streets and recognized everything to a tee. It's been a good 4 or 5 years since I've been here last, and everything is exactly as I remembered it. I bought myself an Evian water, and a cone of Stracciatella ice cream just walked around. I had one of those "wow, I'm really here..." kind of moments, until I bumped into an H&M and went a little crazy. And while I was in the change-room, Taylor Swift started playing on the radio and I was pumped.

Seeing the sun go down, I decided to start heading back to my hotel. My plans that night were to grab McDonalds from the train station and eat it in my room, watching Bride Wars until I fell asleep. But, out of the corner of my eye I saw a restaurant called Pizzeria La Perla, and I was like, "oh my goodness!! I ate here five years ago!" I went inside and nothing had changed at all! I ordered the same pizza too, #301- salami and spicy tunafischen. I just sat there all by myself, reading through brochures and taking it all in. I ate a quarter of the pizza and brought the rest back to my room. I put in an episode of Gilmore Girls and fell asleep about two minutes in.

So here I am, 14 hours of sleep later, (isn't that insane?! I have never slept so well in my entire life), refreshed and ready for another day!
I'm super proud of myself. I know alot of people who couldn't do what I just did today. And the thing is, everywhere I go I feel safe. I haven't felt nervous about anything. I feel more scared walking in Winnipeg with a group of people than I do here, in a foreign country, by myself. Interesting, isn't it?
So thanks for all your prayers! They're definitely working. Oh by the way, to those of you who were wondering, I did not end up having a breakdown on the plane. Pretty much everytime I fly I end up crying up in the clouds for some odd reason. But this time, I never did!! I think that says something. :)
Anyway, I'm gonna go run around some more. I have NO idea what I'm going to do today. Everything will be an impulse decision, which is so fun and exciting I think. Haha. Thanks for reading!