Friends, and homage to one friend in particular

Yesterday I was on Buzzfeed, a website with a lot of random posts about all sorts of things, when I came upon one entitled: “Twenty-nine truths about growing up in multiple cities.”  While some of them were not particularly applicable, others had a ton of significance to third-culture kids such as myself.  One of them said: “You have tons of close friends, but they all live REALLY far away.”  Story of my life let me tell you.  When I leave Europe in December I will have spent time in six different countries.  I will have been able to stay with friends in four of them.   There are people scattered all over Europe who I love, and nothing would be better than having all of them together.  However, that is not the case, and it can be hard to have friends who you don’t see for years at a time. 

            Today a friend of mine ended her internship here in Brussels.  I was headed to Germany tonight (staying with the Morans, thank you again!), so we ended up taking the same train to Germany, and we talked about how we will probably not see each other again for several years.  There really is nothing we can do except do our best to stay in touch.  However, my time in Brussels was so much fun because of Amelie.  Everything from Spades to going to Bruges to the Atomium was made more exciting because I had a friend going with me with whom I enjoyed spending time.  Thanks Amelie, and here’s to friends!

Spades

One thing that I have really enjoyed about working a "real" job instead of going to school is the separation of my life at work and my life outside of work.  When I am done with work at six, I am done and there is no homework that I need to do.  This means that once I get home at six, I basically have as much free time as I want until I go to bed.  Some of this free time is spent talking to a certain someone who I love (hint: her name starts with R and ends with -ebecca), but i also have time to do other stuff.  One of the main distractions that I have found is playing games with some of the people that I live with, and one game in particular: spades.

Joel, Conchi, and Amelie.  Amelie and Conchi
were some of the first people I played with, and
 Joel has gotten really good, really fast!

  For those of you who don't know how to play spades, it's a card game for four people played with a 52-card deck.  Everyone gets thirteen cards, and there are thirteen hands in every round.  So, every hand you play one card.  You need to follow whatever suit is led, unless you don't have any of the suit, in which case you can play anything else.  The reason why it is called spades is because spades is trump, and beats whatever else is played.  Before you start the round, you bid on how many hands you are going to win, and receive (or lose) points depending on if you achieve your bid or not.  You are also playing with a partner, who is the person sitting across from you.  It really is a lot of fun because you have to pay attention to what everyone is playing in order to figure out how to gain the advantage in the game, but it isn't so intense that you can't have a conversation with the people who are playing with you.  Since being here, I would guess that I have played with ten different people (from five or six different countries!) and it has seriously been a great way to get to know people.  I have made some great friends, and we have laughed a LOT, all while playing the relatively simple but strategic game of spades.

Ireland

Man, what a weekend!  So I realize that I have not posted, for which I have to apologize.  These past couple weeks have been a little crazy. 

 Me with the Fingleton family

This weekend I got to country number four:  Ireland!  Whenever people ask our family about traveling within Europe, and which country we always liked going to the most, I always responded, “Ireland.”  This country is definitely near the top for sheer beauty, and we have some of the best memories from here (Get your trousers on!  I can’t go to the island until you get your trousers on!)  This weekend, I spent it with the Fingletons.  Way back when, he was one of our favorite missionaries in our ward in Germany.  I seriously can remember three names of missionaries in Germany: Elder Wendel, Elder Grimm, and Elder Fingleton.  Elder Fingleton replaced Elder Wendel in Bitburg as Elder Grimm’s companion, and they were just fantastic.  Now “Brother” Fingleton is married and has a beautiful family, with whom I had a great weekend.  I got there Friday morning, and they took the day off to spend it with me.  We went to this beautiful area called Glendaloch, about an hour outside of Dublin. It was an area with lakes surrounded by mountains where a monk built a monastery hundreds of years ago.  It was all misty that day, and it was great to walk around and talk to them.  His parents were also there telling the history about it all, although I did promise to not check anything they said on Wikipedia when I got home J 

Isn't this beautiful?

That night there was a football (NOT American football) match between Germany and Ireland on, so we watched that.  I think Elder Fingleton supported Ireland, although he would have had every right to support Germany as well.  Germany ended up winning, 3-0.  They ARE one of the best teams in the world, so it made a certain amount of sense for them to win.

Saturday Elder Fingleton and I headed up into the city center of Dublin to go to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells.  It’s one of the oldest copies of the Gospels that there are in existence, since it was written and illustrated (since there is tons of artistic elaboration in the book) in the ninth century. 

Elder Fingleton told me that this
is the library that they modeled the Jedi library off of
in Star Wars.  Can't you see it?

It was beautiful to see and recognize the sheer amount of effort put in by those monks to laboriously copy the scriptures without the help of a printing press.  How awesome is it that you can now get any scripture you want on your phone or tablet?  Although we certainly don’t have as beautiful of copies of the scriptures as they did.  Afterwards we did some shopping and went back to the house, where we got in some HALO.  I swear, I don’t think I can travel anywhere without getting in some HALO.  It’s a wonderful thing J  That night there was a concert put on by the Heritage Choir from St. George, Utah.  Apparently they are the choir for the St. George tabernacle.  So, sort of like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but on a smaller scale J  We then went to a birthday party for one of the their friends, where we had a good time talking about a variety of topics.  I have to mention that later that night I was in mourning since Michigan lost.  I absolutely HAD to stay up until the end, only to watch in horror as Michigan lost in quadruple overtime.  Ugh, to Penn State no less…I do think the record is still like 9-3 Michigan over the last 12 meetings or something…

Sunday we went to church, where I got to teach Primary!  I had an awesome time doing that.  I felt like I could give back to them since Tracy, Elder Fingleton’s wife, is the Primary president.  I got to teach the 7-9 year olds (?), and it was so cool to see how they all knew the answers to what I would ask, or how they knew the Articles of Faith.  Elder Fingleton is in the bishopric, so afterwards we had to do some bishopric-y stuff, and got home and had a delicious dinner.  I must say, the dessert was certainly my favorite!  Afterwards we got to talk, which was probably my favorite part of the weekend.  We hadn’t seen each other for over ten years, so we had a lot of catching up to do.  Being able to do that was a lot of fun.

This morning I left beautiful Ireland and my friends there to head back to Brussels, where I quickly snapped back to reality thanks to the mean customs officials.  I don’t know if I look suspicious, but I always get such a hard time from them!  I can’t wait to go back to Ireland with Rebecca at some point (and trust me, it will happen!).  Thanks Fingletons, for an amazing weekend!

This is me playing with Isabelle.  She is seriously
adorable and can't wait to grow up to be a princess :-)

So I tried REALLY hard to not get people in this
panoramic picture, but apparently I was unsuccessful...
still doesn't take away from the beauty of it all.

            

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I live for the weekend :-)

Ugh, I am so sorry that I have not posted nearly as much as I should be of late.  I suppose every three/four days would be a good time, but lately it has been every week or so, and then most of the time it merely details my weekend.  The reason for this is pure and simple:  the weekends are what I live for.  Seriously, it feels like this internship is just a medium through which I can go and visit people in various countries in Europe.

Malham Cove

  
This past weekend I left Friday afternoon to go to England.  Because of travel restrictions, I am only allowed to be in continental Europe for 90 days.  However, my trip is going to last 96 days.  So that means that over these three months, I need to go to either England or Ireland for six full days.  I know, rough, right?  :-)  I went to go see the Mechams, who are an AMAZING family I knew in Poland.  They lived in Lublin when I was serving there, and made my time there an incredibly happy time. 

  I had an absolutely INCREDIBLE time with them.  

First off, they were wonderful enough to come pick me up in Manchester, which is two hours away.  Even more wonderful, they drove me back- at 3:30 AM on Monday morning.  Then, we went on this really cool hike in Yorkshire called Malham Cove on Saturday.  It's this huge face of limestone rising out of the dales of central England.  We were also joined by Pawel, a friend from Poland who was baptized in Lublin when all of us were there.  He has been living about an hour away from the Mechams, and decided to come up for the day.  When we sat down to dinner that night, it felt like I was back on my mission:  dinner at the Mechams house (we always went on Wednesday night), with Pawel there so that we could have a lesson with him in the home of a family united in the gospel.  It was so great to talk to all of them about how their lives are.  We had fun chasing sheep (see video below) and ducks, and also pounded pennies into the wood. It's a tradition in this part of England that you make a wish and then pound a penny into the wood, thereby making sure that the wish will come true.  If I had to guess, I would say that we were probably paying the wood fairy that lives in the tree to use its powers to make our wish come true :-)   

We also played games, which is definitely one of my favorite things to do.  Watch out Morans, I got a warm up!  I got to play HALO with Cole and McKay (who did WAY better than I expected by the way.  They definitely gave me a run for my money!) And then on Sunday, some friends of the Mechams came over and we played with them as well. 

Three guys with X-Box and HALO:Reach around?  Yes.

  
I have to mention the food.  Don't get me wrong, I love the food that I have at the place where I am staying.  It is extremely nutritious.  Like...vegetables every time we sit down for dinner.  I don't think I have eaten this much salad in YEARS.  So, I was pretty much craving some meat, cuz I'm A-MURican!  I was in heaven when we had hamburgers Saturday night and chicken tacos Sunday night.  I was singing the praises of the Mechams then, let me tell you!

  
This pretty much goes back to the post from last week about friends.  I am so incredibly grateful for the friends that I have in Europe, and for the chance I have to see them again.  They make my life so much richer and happier, and the Mecham family definitely did that for me this weekend.

Cole, who isn't afraid of anything and a boss!

McKay and me, who came close to kicking my butt in HALO!

Bailey and me.  Check out those shades!

Top of Malham Cove.  Isn't it beautiful?

First try with the panoramic view on my phone.
It's pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

Pawel, an awesome guy who I had the
chance to teach in Lublin.   Last time I was with him
I was wearing a tag and had a companion!

(Former) President and Sister Mecham.
These two are like family to me, and treat me as if I was.

Thank you guys!!!!