Oh, bliss.....

There are few feelings more pleasant than sitting out on your balcony on a warm evening, watching the sunset while eating a delicious dinner that you cooked yourself, accompanied by a good book and the sound of crickets chirping.

Summer is the best.

Xin chao, summertime!

This summer is shaping up to be pretty extraordinary in its own way. Here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks:

1. Working with refugees is interesting, because a lot of them speak little to no English. As I was taking a Vietnamese girl to the doctor last week, I learned how to say "hello" in Vietnamese: "xin chao." (I also learned that my pronounciation was ridiculously bad). I've also been really touched by the generosity of my own church. Last Sunday, I announced that one of our new refugee families was arriving to a completely empty apartment, and the response was overwhelming. Person after person came up to me after both services, offering their time, manpower, and tons of donated furniture and household items. It means so much to me to see people who aren't just sitting in those seats hearing the gospel every week, but actually living out the gospel through their willingness to sacrifice and give...I kept thinking of Matthew 25:35, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me..."

2. I got a public library card, and it makes me absurdly happy. If anyone has any wonderful summer reading suggestions, let me know...I'm out of the habit of reading fiction just for the fun of it, and I'm trying to develop that skill again. In fact, I'm about to head down the street to Starbucks to read Correlli's Mandalin and Henri Nouwen's Finding My Way Home (confession: I have trouble focusing all my attention on one book at a time).


3. My friends are growing up. One couple just had a baby, another just moved into their first home after returning from their honeymoon, another is getting married in a week. It feels strange....I keep asking myself "HOW AM I THIS OLD ALREADY?" I'm so thrilled for all of them--and very excited to meet this precious new little one very soon.

4. One of the benefits of having friends getting married: I get to eat a lot of practice wedding cakes, and they are oh-so-good.

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new favorite book: Mudhouse Sabbath. I absolutely love this, it's by a girl who converted from Judaism to Christianity in her college years, but wants to integrate all of her Jewish traditions and heritage into her Christian faith. I love the beauty and ritual of Judaism, and it's really neat to hear someone else who wants to see the same fusion of religious practices.

new favorite song: "The Ballad of Love and Hate," by the Avett Brothers. just lovely.

Prague: one year later

A year ago today, I landed in Prague.

It's pretty hard to believe it's been a year. That day we landed was so awful....I remember being more sick, tired, disoriented, and unshowered...all I wanted to do is be clean and be asleep, and I couldn't do either one. Not only was everything in a language I didn't understand, but I had also lost my voice during orientation, so I couldn't introduce myself to any of the new people I was meeting for the first time.

I remember thinking that day: "I will not survive a whole summer here. Why did I do this, why did I come here?" It's almost funny to remember those first few days now, because things changed so quickly. Within a couple of weeks, I couldn't bear the thought of ever having to leave. I fell completely in love with that city.

That's not to say it wasn't difficult. It was without a doubt one of the most challenging times of my life in so many different ways. I was stretched and pushed and grew beyond what I could have imagined, and growth is rarely pleasant. Nothing brings out all the nastiness inside you like culture shock. All the customary layers of niceness are stripped away and you're left with how you really are, how you really relate to people in tension, where you really run when things get too hard. I saw things about myself I didn't want to see.

I think it took all that to see how much God loves me, how valuable I am, how safe and cared for I am, how not alone I am, how I am free to engage impossible situations even if I might (and do) fail.

I miss Prague so much. I miss all those experiences that taught me so much about myself, about the world, about God. I look out my window and I miss the view from my flat on Eliasova, at the little kitchen table where the sunlight poured in on my daily breakfast of chocolate Muesli. I want to walk out my door and see breathtaking architecture around every corner and the many little kavarnas (coffee shops) where I spent so many hours pouring words into my journal. I miss our sweet little church and all the loving people there. I even miss the small things, like hearing the woman's voice who spoke to us every time we stepped inside the metro doors: ""Ukončete prosím výstup. a nástup, dveře se zavírají. Příští stanice....(name of your next stop here)." I actually found an short little YouTube clip that is purely of that recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBaOzeNK0KE&feature=related&pos=14. It'll take you to lots of other videos that show you more of the Praha metro, too.


More than anything I miss the people. I met some of the most incredible, brave, adventurous, unique, talented, intelligent, loving people during that summer, and I feel honored to know them.

This summer is certainly turning out to be quite different, but still so good, in ways I couldn't have planned. I'm learning how to love my own city, to find beauty in the small things and the ordinary days.


I'm also pretty thrilled to be headed back to the Czech Republic for short visit before my semester in Scotland. I feel incredibly blessed to have experienced that city once in a lifetime, much less twice....

I want to write a thousand more memories, but I am falling asleep. Go look up pictures of Prague and make yourself blissfully happy!

I reached a strange milestone this week

On Tuesday I was babysitting two wonderful adorable little boys, ages 2 and 4. We spent a sunny morning playing in the park, surrounded by a billion other small preschool aged children and their mothers. One mom started chatting with me, and smiled as she pointed to the boys I was watching.

"Are these your sons?," she asked, in a tone that implied she was expecting me to say yes. I think my jaw dropped a bit before I shook my head and said "No."

I have now been mistaken for the mother of two small children.

really, it's june already?


I've been on the move so much these past few weeks that it's been hard to make myself sit down and write. Summer has definitely begun with a bang.

After moving into my new summer apartment, I spent this past weekend at the wedding (and surrounding festivities) of my dear friends Sam and Gina. Sam and I met as freshmen on our first day at college, so it feels very surreal to think of him as a married man. The fun thing about being young is being free to dance with all your friends all night at a fancy wedding, even when no one else is dancing! We kicked off our high heels and had a delightful time on the dance floor all night after stuffing ourselves with a remarkably extravagant spread of wedding food. I like the metaphors in the Bible that compare heaven to a wedding feast...

After returning from the glamorous wedding, my roomates and I spent the rest of the weekend scrubbing our house from top to bottom. It was utterly exhausting and kind of sad to see it empty and bare. Funny how a house doesn't feel like home any more when you strip it of everything that made it yours.

I've also been getting used to my new job with the refugee organization. It does seem far more like a real job than what I was expecting (now if only I could find another job that actually pays me). I've been working several 9-5 days with them, doing a lot of administrative work up in a lovely loft office downtown, tutoring kids, and going to community awareness meetings. Ironically, though I can't find a job myself, I spent a lot of time researching job leads for a few new refugees and (if things go well) found them all jobs within two days. I still feel really excited about that...in a short period of time, I've seen that small victories seem hard to come by in this line of work. In another twist of irony, I'm also writing an employment curriculum for a new class that will begin this summer, teaching refugees how to search for, apply for, interview for, and keep jobs. It's a lot more responsibility than I thought I would be taking on, but that's really exciting to me. It's great experience, since I can really see myself working with non-profits at some point after graduation.

Okay, there's more I want to write about, but my eyes are barely open. More sometime soon, I hope....
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Listening to: the new (not-even-yet-really-released) derek webb song, obtained through a tangled web of clues and controversy and exciting methods of marketing. boy, when derek causes a stir, he really does it up big....i can't wait for Stockholm Syndrome to finally come out.

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