Beach day and some other random happenings

On Friday night I checked my messages at 3 am, after a nice phone call with Val. Renee had messaged me, did I want to come with them to the beach? I wasn't so enthusiastic at that time in the morning, especially as I had to get up early in order to check if she had replied... but it was such a great great day. Warm sand and flats, toes in the ocean, excellent company, it was really good. Plus some nice girl talk which I've really been missing since Val has been gone...!

Such a sweet, beautiful girl! 

Earlier I was looking for an email, and along the way I found these two pictures. These are my two absolutely beautiful sisters! After spending the day with a few younger children I couldn't quite help posting a picture of these sweet girls!

Anyway, on Saturday in Vlissingen (I think that's what it was called...) they had a lot of choirs performing. So we saw 5 or 6. They were dressed up, and for the most part singing Dutch folk songs, Abba, or church music. Very cool!

This was the morning, not quite as nice as the afternoon.

This was absolutely amazing, walking over the top of this hill and seeing grass, dunes, beach and blue sky as far as the eye could see.

Yesterday (Sunday) was also a really nice day. I could understand a bit of the sermons at church, and then had dinner at a young couple from my Bible Study group, and a games evening with a bunch of others after that! The evening ended around a fire outside in the warm(ish) evening air, with good conversation and some pretty good stories. It made for quite a late night (which seems to be the new normal), but a good end to the week! (Here Sunday's end the week, and the calendar week begins with Monday!)

This past week I also got to play a 300,000 euro organ in the church for a few hours. It was so nice!!

I just saw this picture this morning, and it also fit in I think with the sermon yesterday, if I understood it alright. It is so comforting that God orchestrates times, dates and events to fit into his masterpiece melody for our lives.

Hope you all have a vonderful goot veek!

Maastricht

Last weekend we went to Maastricht. It is a tiny town, nestled cozily between rolling hills. Church steeples dating even to the 1200's tower over orange roofs. Tiny cafe's line each side of the street, and small shops are along every road.

This is what happens when Kaia gets tired after walking uphill for about 30 seconds...

Look before you leap?

A famous landmark of Maastricht. This red is not painted, the rock is actually this colour. We climbed this tower.

There are so many old churches here. This organ is a bit of a different style than I have seen before. 

I believe this was the city gate. This town is right on the German border, and was quickly taken by the Germans. There was little military artifacts to be seen.

It was also Ascension Day, and it was quite nice to hear the choirs and see this procession! Walking through the old churches on such a day was quite amazing.

View from the church tower.

Tiny brick streets

Hundreds of kilometers of underground caves. They mined this area first for building infrastructure. Later it was used as military defense.

Some sort of military structure

The University! This is where Kaia was originally planning to go

Happy tourists

That big symbol on the ground on the left is painted on the cement (above picture)

I would like to tell you about this guy, Ayo. He is from Nigeria, the son of two missionaries. He also went to missionary school. He is now studying at Erasmus with me to get his Business Degree. He wants to take this degree back to Nigeria, and combine it with his missionary education in order to help out his country in some way. He has a high pitched, very frequent and absolutely contagious laugh, and is really quite an amazing person!

Getting to know people like this is a huge part of travel I find. 

Combined with a bit of study, quite a lot of cooking for friends, and some jogging in the rain it was a very nice week.  

The Ardenne

Good morning all!
I am very sorry for my inconsistency with updating posts lately! This was already two weekends ago I believe. It is about a 2 hour drive from Rotterdam, in Belgium. It is called 'The Ardennes'... any WW2 buffs recognize the name? This is where the Germans came through with their tanks and all the rest, bypassing the steel and concrete wall erected I think it was further North. It was quite a swampy area, so quite impressive that they managed to make it through.

The area is pretty much like a Canadian new growth forest. It was sort of like walking through cut blocks for 8 hours. Except that it was flat, no hills at all. And I wouldn't have had a strained muscle from jogging 10 kms the night before if I was in Canada... And the people in Canada know how to not get lost and wander around a forest for a few hours.... haha but it was pretty great overall!

It was quite entertaining for me how the others thought it was so amazing! I am quite sure that if they come to Canada they will be pretty much blown away.

Belgium dark beer! (gross by the way)

And a lovely friend

We had a heat plate in the middle of the table, and had a 'barbeque', as the Dutch would say! 

Quieter Times

Things have been a little quieter lately, but in a nice summer evening relaxed kind of quiet. The weather has been, as the Dutch would say, heil mooi, very beautiful! 27 degree days topped by powerful flashing storms at night.

The Maclean's left two days ago, and I think are probably having a spectacular time in America! Today a Philipinne classmate came for dinner. She brought along a coconut pudding with corn for dessert... it looked really quite nasty but was tasty enough to keep the leftovers!!. The night the Maclean's left, a friend was over (whom she would probably adopt if she could), and he took me to the Kinderdijk on her orders to make sure this girl ( ahem the word 'naive' I found out is pronounced the same in Dutch and in English:) stays out of too much trouble... We went by scooter (similar to a motorcycle), and in the warm summer air it was absolutely beautiful! Driving I think it was about 50 kms instead of about 30 while getting lost didn't even seem such a bad thing!

And tonight the kitchen is kind of desperately calling me to clean it, so I came to find this distraction before putting on some nice music and doing that :) And then a much-needed early night is definitely in order for tonight!

Enjoy the pics!

So peaceful every time!

 

One of De molens

We really had issues with both smiling nice on the same photo, so for both our sakes (and maybe for yours ;) I cropped the pics.

 

 

My 'tour guide'. Except that I had been here before, it was his first time. Plus we got pretty lost on the way there... But these people are really amazingly kind in a very genuine way (especially if it involves free food :) Wait, is that genuine...? More and more they make me realize how Canadian I am, but they have a ton I can learn from! Being in a different culture in this way is really a character-shaping experience.

 

On the way back we noticed that the area was pretty much deserted. This was probably due to the rapidly approaching darkness behind us. Along with the thunder and lightning came a heavy downpour. Even our shelter almost got flooded. So finally we were able to leave I think around 11ish. The air was still so warm, it was quite amazing. While in bed last night I was awoken around 1 am with a huge crash, and constant flashing white light that even came through my window covering. Seeing God's power like this probably would have been more amazing if it had not been 1 am, but it was absolutely incredible :)

 

Playing piano in church on some friend's Profession of Faith. Quiet guitars and drums accompanied beautiful voices, it was a very nice service.

Hello summer, woohoo!

Sunday afternoon relaxing

These two also came for dinner and this happy tourist had to take a picture :) They have beautiful smiles, very kind hearts and great personalities.

 

  God is good, life is beautiful!

Cologne

 

Last weekend we went to Cologne, in Germany. The first day was quite nice, but it rained pretty hard the second day. We stayed at a Couch surfer's place, and they showed us around a bit the next day. Our general impression of Colgne was that it was a very nice city to live in. It wasn't so much of a tourist city, but still very nice to walk through, especially along the river.  Here's the pics!

German. beer. is. nasty. I don't know how people can drink enough of this stuff to get drunk, but on our way home while we were waiting for our train (of course we missed it, so had to wait an extra hour) we just watched all the drunk people go by. I'm not sure if it's just a Saturday evening thing for everyone to be drunk, but it sure was amazing how many people could hardly walk!

The famous Dom tower, which is Cologne's biggest attraction.

We visited the 'stadhuis' museum (town house). This is a candle inside a car light. I guess it's pretty ingenious!

A real star, worn by a real Jew only 70 years ago.

A copy of the Torah

Dom Tower

Again here's all the 'lover locks'

A beautiful evening!

We found a playground. 'nuff said :)

The next morning we visited an Ancient Roman museum. I always thought I didn't like museums, but these two were amazing! I think I was the only one in our group that really thought that though. The first museum I found Kaia sleeping on a bench upstairs, and the second one the other two were mostly standing in one place looking only at eachother...

This is the statue of Appolion. I recognized the name from the Bible as well, an ancient Greek god from Paul's time.

 

The river god of the Romans. It is unreal to think that people used to pray to and worship these hunks of stone, now chipped and worn with time and sitting lame in a museum.

More gods. The one on the left I believe is a coffin for a famous military general or something. Most of the coffins had altars on top.

Even though it is blurry make sure you take a second and appreciate this :) It took a very long time to take this shot!

Hope you all are having a good week!

Kim