Neckarzimmern 5/30/09

This is going to be a short entry, but as a warning, it'll probably be more God-related than my other posts.

Being with the saints at the conference has been really good. Again, I've been having the experience that being with them is like being with family (or even better), and it's true even when we don't speak the same language. There are people here who speak only Russian and German, or only Dutch, and it still feels like we have this connection. I don't know how to explain it.

I'm actually dreading going back home because my experience with God here in Europe has been so awesome, and my situations back home have been dragging me downhill. What's encouraging is the fact that the Lord has been telling me that I have to be able to enjoy Him no matter where I am, so I guess I have to just have faith in this matter.

The conference is on the Testimony of Jesus, centering on this aspect of the book of Revelation. Most people come to the book curious about things like the Apocalypse, but the conference is focused on how we need to be the expression of the Lord in the end times. This is seen in the golden lampstands in the book of Revelation, where gold signifies the divine nature of God. The lampstands signify the believers (Revelation is a book of signs).

This is kind of off topic, but the food here has been really good - a nice change from the expensive Parisian food we've been having. Everything is meat and carb based: we've had spaghetti and meatballs with a good vegetable soup today for dinner, and sadly, I don't remember what we had for lunch. I guess I'm pretty tired because we walked around for a long time in the hills trying to find our cabins - "Finnenhauser" = Finnish Houses. It was beautiful, but exhausting. Plus, I've got some pretty gnarly blisters on my left foot. I won't gross you out with pictures of it, but I will show you a picture I took on the campgrounds (another one is at the top):



What's cool is that they have a Holocaust memorial right on site. The pieces of the memorial look like tombstones (I thought it was a graveyard at first), and the whole thing is so cohesive and well thought out. I'll take some closeups tomorrow, but this is a picture of the whole thing:



I kind of wish there was a tall building I could take a picture from. It's arranged in a Star of David.

It's not late right now (by our Europe standards), but I'm going to sleep because I might actually get 8 hours tonight! It's been so long since I've had more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep, and I'm a little excited.

Hello Germany 5/29/09

We got our bus tickets for the Euroline, which were a lot cheaper than flying. I think it came out to about 30 Euros a person, as opposed to 200 Euros a person. Now we have more money to spend on the rest of the trip!

Here's a funny story about the first time I got to use my German on the trip: As I was falling asleep, I unconsciously put my feet in the gap between the seat back and cushion of the seat in front of me (it was really hard to get comfortable). I guess they touched the butt of the girl who was sitting in front of me because she grabbed my foot (which jolted me awake), and said to her boyfriend, "Fusse!" That means feet in German.

I leaned forward and said, "Es tut mir leid," which is German for "sorry." She kind of just smiled and nodded, and I was too awake at this point to fall back asleep so I took a note of this in my journal. I was hoping that the first time I used my German would be a little more grand than this, but oh well.

I finally got to sleep a while later (after doing a few crosswords), and woke up two hours later when we stopped for our first pee break. I was pretty thirsty at this point because I left my water bottle in the hold under the bus, and I hadn't drank water since we left for the metro station in Paris. Not smart. Anyway, the picture at the top was taken at the rest stop. It amused me.

Right now, we're two hours from Stuttgart, and I can tell that I'm really going to like the part of Germany we're going too because everything is soooo green outside! Here's a picture which doesn't do what I've been seeing justice, but I'm going to post it anyway:



It's nice to have a change of scenery from the huge cities we've been visiting. As a side note, I'm pretty grungy right now, and my teeth feel like crap because I didn't have a chance to brush them. I'm seriously considering taking a hobo shower at the Stuttgart Station. I guess I'll try to sleep a bit more before we have to figure out a way to get to Neckarzimmern from Stuttgart. This is the least planned out part of our trip, and I'm a little excited for the adventure!

So Long, Paris. 5/29/09

We got breakfast with the girls, as planned, and a funny little thing happened: I tried to order a black coffee without milk, and instead, I just got warm milk. I ordered in English, too! It wasn't like I was trying to practice my French or anything.

We saw the Notre Dame after breakfast, and all I have to say is that it was really dark inside. You can pay money to light candles (we didn't), and there are confessionals. The architecture and atmosphere were really interesting to me because they made me think about what people thought about God back then. On the one hand, the Gothic nature of the cathedral depicts an angry, awesome, worthy-to-be-feared God, but one thing I noticed was that there are little hearts hidden throughout the structure. So at least they realized the matter of God's love. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.



We went to the Crypt Archaeology afterward because it was adjacent to the Notre Dame. It was pretty fascinating inside because you can see what ancient Paris was like. They have the ruins, and they even had models that showed how Paris developed throughout the ages around the Seine River:









I guess it was cool because we saw present-day Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Next was the Arc De Triomphe/Champs Elysee. The Arc De Triomph was crazy and totally worth seeing (Thanks Jen!). The structure itself was cool, but what was even cooler was the way traffic flows around it. It's the largest roundabout in I-forget-where, but what's insane is the fact that there are no traffic lights or lanes. People just drive in where ever, and it totally looks like the cars are going to collide and people are going to die Final Destination style. Look it up on Youtube. I forgot to get a video, but I bet other people did.

The Champs Elysee is a big shopping district, and I think my sisters would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did. We kind of weaved in and out of the side malls, but it was cool passing by a real Louis Vuitton store in Paris. No, I did not go in. I don't have the money for that kind of stuff (no Kanye West here).

This was supposed to be our easy, relaxing day after a long day of walking (see previous post), so we headed back to the hostel after this, chilled, and ate some fruit. David and I started singing some of the hymns we learned and tried to come up with harmonies to some of them. We might try to make a CD with some of the other bros later in the Summer.

We did this until Aleth, Rebs, and Jen came back from their escapades at the Palace of Marseille. Apparently, the gardens there are gigantic and beautiful. I guess I'll save that for my next trip to Europe.

We went to eat at that small Kebab place we went to on our first night in Paris, and I ordered something that was totally better than the panini I had the first night. It was a Grec Nos Sandwich, and I loved it because it had no cheese, a lot of meat, and pretty good sauce. I got the fries with Samourai sauce again, which I'm getting used to. I don't think that's a good thing, though.

On the way back, I got a small sketch of the Louvre with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and I'm going to watercolor it after I get home and finally have the time. I just realized that the day after I get back I have to drive down to Socal for my friends' graduations, and then immediately after I start volunteering for a construction project. A little off topic, but this is the busiest and happiest I've been in my entire life.

Here are some of the lyrics to the songs we learned in London and sang today. I didn't memorize them all, but I'm sure I can look it up somewhere:

Song One (I don't know what the title is)

I never thought that God would be enjoyable,
In my experience so indescribable,
But when I opened up my heart to Him,
He came to me and filled me to the brim.
Oh Lord You're wonderful, You're wonderful.
Jesus, Jesus.

*I modified the words a bit. I think It fits better this way.

Christ is the Tree of Life

Christ is the Tree of Life,
Eating Him always satisfies.
Christ is a river,
Fountain of life and pleasure.

Eat Him and drink Him,
Christ our enjoyment.
God is our treasure,
He is our joy and pleasure.

We're about to head out to the metro station to catch our overnighter bus to Stuttgart, but we took these group pictures and hardcore pictures with our packs:





I will update when I get to Germany or on the bus, depending if I can sleep or not!

'Scuse My French 5/28/09

I woke up at 8:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. Too excited! Breakfast was awesome for being free: we got baguettes, coffee, orange juice, and croissants with a chocolate cream filling:



Minor inconvenience, but nothing worth really complaining about: we had to switch rooms because another group wanted to occupy the same floor of the hostel. We had to move up 6 floors, but the "hike" was worth it. The new room is a lot better and cleaner!

After breakfast and our little move, we headed out to the Louvre. The homeruns for me were the Mona Lisa (SO HARD TO GET A DECENT SHOT), biblical paintings from the Italian Renaissance, and the statues. Again, I took a lot of pictures*. We couldn't find the Venus De Milo (I wanted to see it because of that Simpsons episode where Homer eats the gummy one), but overall, this museum was awesome. I'm really happy I got to go to both the British Museum and the Louvre. The amount of history contained in these places is almost overwhelming - we spent about three hours in each museums, and didn't see everything. I think if we tried to, our heads would have exploded.

Next on the itinerary was the Eiffel Tower. We walked up to the second level (a heck of a lot of stairs), and then took the elevator up to the top. The view was amazing, and here's a shot from one of the faces of the tower:



As always, the walk back down went a lot faster. We were starving by this point, so we stopped by a restaurant that was serving steak and fries (steak frite), which is apparently pretty popular here. Again, the fries were served with mayo, so I asked for ketchup. I figured they already knew I wasn't French, and I didn't feel like having a heart attack in Europe.

We stopped by the hostel afterward because I filled up my camera card (1 gig) and needed to pick up a fresh one. Plus, we needed a short breather from all that walking. We took a little rest, then headed out again to see some smaller sights and find a place for dinner. A lot of the places were outside of our budget, but we found a small place that was serving three-course meals for 20 euros! Actually, this is a lot of money (about $30 US), but Paris is pretty expensive. A bonus was that they served escargot, which we wanted to try when we were in Paris. The place was called L'uberge du Champ de Mars (I have no idea how to say this properly), and I got escargot, roasted duck, salad, and pear sorbet. It wasn't the gourmet French food that you see in movies like Ratatouille, but the portions were big and it was delicious. Anyway, David and I had a pretty good talk here. In some ways, we're really similar.

After dinner, we walked back toward the Eiffel Tower to see it at night. I knew that they lit up the structure at night from our tour of it earlier in the day, but I didn't know that there was a spinning beacon of light at the top. It's pretty breathtaking. Here's a shot of it and the Seine River at night:



It was pretty late at this point, so we metroed back to the Hostel.

Surprise! Aletheia, Rebs, and Jen moved back to our hostel because a room opened up and the other hostel was shady. We caught up, and shared our more interesting Europe stories thus far. I guess the discussion got pretty loud because one of our neighbors came and knocked on our door. We opened it to apologize, and it was an older dude wearing a tee and whitey tighties. I was sitting on the floor, so it was at eye-level for me. I swear, I had to close my eyes and picture the Eiffel Tower again to wash that image out afterward.

That pretty much killed the mood, so David and I headed back to our room, showered, and are pretty much ready to sleep.

Thanks to Jen's advice, our plan tomorrow is to check out the Notre Dame, Arch de Triomph, and Champs Elysee (I've been saying this during our whole time in Paris because it's fun to say). SHOMPZAYLEEZAY. We head out to Stuttgart at 10 PM tomorrow on an overnighter bus which will arrive the next day at 7 AM. I kinda wish we were flying, but we couldn't find a cheap flight from Paris to Stuttgart. This is a pretty good option, though. Hopefully the seats are comfortable.

Night!

*My Paris album is here.

Rocky Start in Paris 5/27/09

This is the first time I totally knocked out on a flight. Usually I have trouble falling asleep on planes, but I didn't realize that I fell asleep and I even missed takeoff! That's usually my favorite part of a flight because I love the feeling when the plane first lifts off the ground. Anyway, it was a pretty smooth flight - Easyjet is a no-fuss, cost cutting airline (which is why their tickets are so dirt cheap) - but it wasn't a bad experience.

We got off the plane at Charles De Gaulle at 9:30 PM and took the metro to Gare De Norde. That part went fine, but after we left the metro station, it took us over an hour to find our hostel. We got directions to the place ahead of time, but Google Maps kinda screwed us over - to make a long story short, it basically told us to turn left/right at LOCATIONS, not STREETS, which doesn't help if you don't know the area/are visiting a foreign country for the first time. Anyway, we gave up the tough guy act after walking through a few shady neighborhoods, and asked for help. An old professor looking guy was the best pick out of the characters on the street, and he even had a map. The guy was super nice, and told us how to get to our destination. Thank God David speaks a little French.

We were pretty beat, but hungry so we dropped our stuff (said 25 pound packs that we lugged around for the past 2 hours) off at the hostel and went to look for Aleth, Rebs, and Jen at the hostel they got moved to. Their hostel had a curfew/non-friendly receptionist. Darn.

So we got food instead. We ended up at a kebab place that was still open (it was past midnight at this point), and EVERYTHING in there had cheese on it. I got a panini with fries because it had the least amount of cheese on it, and David got something that had a heck of a lot of cheese on it: on top, between layers, etc. I forgot what it was called, but here's a picture:



The panini was ok, but the cheese was kind of putrid. I've been taking these lactose-intolerance pills, so let's see if they work! Another thing that I was having trouble getting used to was the fact that fries are served with mayo. It's like eating fat and dipping it in more fat...yummmm. Heart attack...

They had this pretty good sauce for the fries (Samourai sauce), that was basically mayo with ketchup and tabasco, and that was pretty good. The flavor was great, but it was still a little too thick and greasy for my tastes.

After our midnight snack, we took another shady walk (our theme for the day) through Pigalle, a neighborhood with a lot of pimps. We got approached by two, who handed us cards of their girls. Not interested! Haha. We made it back to the hostel in one piece, took hot showers, and washed our laundry in the tub (very necessary at this point in our trip).

I'm going to sleep soon, but totally looking forward to free French breakfast provided by the hostel. The only downside is that it's served between 7:30 and 9:30, so that means less than 6 hours of sleep again followed by a day of walking like 10 miles. Oh well. Gotta make the most of our trip here.

The plan is to spend tomorrow (or today, now) visiting the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. If tonight was any indication of how the rest of our stay here is going to be, Paris is going to be realllly interesting!

Last Day in London 5/27/09

So we finally got a taste of real London weather: miserable, windy, wet, and cold. We woke up around 9, had awesome omelets courtesy of Sam, and then headed out to watch the changing of the guard. It was pretty interesting, but would have been a lot nicer if it wasn't raining. Anyway, it was one of the last things we wanted to do in London before we had to go to the airport.

We walked from Buckingham Palace to the Science Museum, but there was a fat line all the way around the corner. It didn't seem reasonable to spend half an hour waiting in line for something on our last day in the UK, so we kept walking.

We ran into the Imperial College, a science and engineering school in central London. It was pretty cool inside. They have a pretty good mechanical engineering department:



And it was pretty funny because the engineering students looked just like engineering students in the U.S. You know what that means if you're an engineer. I guess engineering is the same everywhere.

I'm really considering going to school in Europe in the future now. I'm stuck at Stanford for my M.S. degree (5 quarters), but I really want to come to Europe to work on my Ph.D or M.D. It's funny. I graduated from Berkeley and I'm still on the fence, career-wise: Engineer or Doctor?

After we toured the Imperial College, we passed by the backside of the Science Museum and surprise surprise, no line! We walked right in, and saw the main entrance where people were still piling in. Hah. I guess we got lucky. Anyway, I wasn't that impressed with this museum. It was free, but not hands-on enough. There was one floor of exhibits where the kids could actually touch things (expectedly, it was also the most crowded), but the other floors were full of exhibits behind bars/glass cages. The Exploratorium is soooooooo much better.

It was getting close to the time we had to leave for Luton Airport, so we stopped at a small cafe for a quick pastrami sandwich, and then to Sister Ching's place to pick up our bags. We left them there because her place is close to the train station, and we didn't wanna carry our 25 pound packs all day.

I had my first (and last) slipup at the Tube station! I lost my pass after getting off the metro, and was kinda mad at myself because I didn't want to buy a new one for 7.20 pounds, but this nice old lady tapped me on the back and told me she saw me drop it before the escalators. I ran back, and it was still there! Felt touched by an angel.

I'm on the rail right now to Luton Airport, and nodding off. We're taking Easyjet, a discount airline, to Paris CDG Airport. I'm gonna miss my London friends, but I'm really excited for Paris.

This is a reminder for myself: Sam likes spicy food, and he misses cheetos from the states. They don't have them in London. Stefan really likes college t-shirts. So...get a fat thing of flaming hot cheetos and Cal/Stanford t-shirts to send to them!

Little bit more of London 5/26/09

So I woke up at 10 today. That was the best night of sleep and the latest I've slept in in months. The best thing is that I'm fully adjusted to London time now! No jet lag. I guess the secret is to immediately follow the eating schedule of the place you're at, and don't take naps. Just push through until local bedtime.

Interesting thing happened on the metro this morning. We were informed that the Jubilee Line (a line of the metro) was closed due to a passenger incident. "Interesting," I thought. "Maybe someone yakked on the train." We've already run into some dumb drunk Londoners - Last night a group of them saw Sam, David, and me (three Chinese guys) on the metro and started yelling "Konichiwa," trying to get a reaction. I was getting pretty pissed, but we reached our stop and got off the train. Anyway, back to the "Passenger Incident."

Later on the train for another metro line, the intercom came on and said, "The Jubilee line is closed due to a passenger under the train." Uh...Seriously? I guess they don't sugarcoat these things in the UK.

We got off the metro and walked to our first experience of real London food: Fish and Chips! This is one of the only things Londoners know how to cook. Everything else is pretty terrible, aside from meat pies. The fish and chips were bomb. Huge portions, good fries, malt vinegar, and lemon. I probably won't enjoy the ones at Pier 39 anymore.



After the deliciousness we went to the British Museum. This is kind of sad, but I've always wanted to go here after seeing The Mummy. I still can't believe this place is free - I might come back and live at the museum. They have the Rosetta Stone (SO COOL! That's a picture of it up top), parts of the Parthenon, the whole Neriad Temple, Assyrian Lion Hunt Friezes, Mummies, and a whole lot more. I took a bunch of pictures here*. The funny thing is that we saw a bunch of sculptures and friezes from Greece that were missing their heads. Under the pieces, the caption said "The heads of these statues are in Greece." So Greece just has a bunch of statue heads in some room? We spent about 3 hours here and didn't see everything.

Next, we had our second "British Experience": Tea! I got a real cup of Earl Grey, which was pretty darn good. David got a small machiato, and it was pretty small. The smaller the coffee serving here, the stronger it is, though.

We people-watched with our tea and coffee for a while, and then met up with Stefan who got off of work at 5. We kept strolling around London, and walked through Regent's Park, where Queen Mary's Garden is located. There was a huge rose garden here, and a lot of them had really interesting names. I can't remember them now (should have jotted them down but I didn't have my handy dandy notebook).



At 7, we started to head to Ace's House for the prayer meeting. Ace is the director of IBM's Europe division, but you wouldn't know it unless someone told you. Totally down-to-earth, unassuming guy. Anyway, it was really good to be with the brothers and sisters again, and to get a sense of what's going on in Europe. I realized I forgot my bible at the Geh's house (where we had small group the night before), so after the meeting we went to go get it. They realized that we hadn't eaten dinner, and Lucy made us some awesome curry and chow fun. See what I mean? It's pretty cool to have family everywhere.

That's one thing that's really impressed me, only two days since we've been out of the States. I came across this verse while reading my bible on the plane to London: 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. I never really doubted my salvation, but it's nice to have this little faith-building experience. Like I said before, I didn't "know" these people two days ago, but when we met, there was an immediate connection and it was so easy to talk to them. Like we've known each other forever. Anyway, that's my two cents.

I'm beat. This walking 10 miles a day thing is pretty cool, but I sure am ready for bed by the end of the day. I'm getting some pretty gnarly blisters, too. I should have brought better shoes.

Night!


*Pictures from London are on my facebook page.

First day in London 5/25/09

We arrived in London at 9 AM. Interesting thing, though. The flight was supposed to last 8 hours, but I guess we were with the wind so the flight only lasted 7 hours. I thought I'd get 7 hours of solid sleep, but some parents behind be couldn't get their little girl to shuttup so I slept in short intervals and watched Monsters, Inc. and played memory in between periods of interrupted sleep. Fun stuff.

From London Heathrow Airport, we took the Tube (what Londoners call the metro) to London Bridge. The ticket salesman for the Tube was so polite it was almost funny. "May I have an all day ticket for the Tube?" "You may... Here's your change. Have a nice day now!" I've heard the service here is either extremely good or extremely bad. I guess I got extremely good service.

Our introduction to Central London: We got off at the London Bridge stop on the Tube, and when we got out, people were dressed up as ghouls. We kept walking, and found their source: The Tower Experience. One of the major sites in the area is a haunted house themed around the London Tower. To draw people in, they fake decapitate people in front of the entrance. I have a video if anyone's interested. Midgets are featured.

Stefan picked us up, and we went to his and Sam's flat to rest before heading out to lunch. London food is bad, but because of the influx of immigrants, there's pretty good cultural food. We got Thai food for lunch, and it was GOOD (spicy!).

Afterward, we went sightseeing along the Thames. Little fact: It's pronounced the TIMS. We saw the London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare Globe, London Eye, and the Parliament Building and Big Ben in Westminster. The thing that surprised me the most was the relative size scaling of these sights. The London Eye is HUGE, but photographs small. The Shakespeare Globe is small, but looks big in pictures. I just gotta say. Being slightly jetlagged and having only 3 hours of sleep, this is the most tired I've ever been in my whole life. I swear, I was about to fall asleep while WALKING several times during the walk along the Thames.

After the sightseeing, we went to a smallgroup meeting in London, and learned two new hymns. Being with Christians here has been really sweet. Everyone treats you like family, even though you're "complete strangers." It's an awesome experience.

Anyway, I'm beat, but I still can't believe I'm in London right now. The funny thing is that I'm 4000 miles away from "home," but I don't feel like I'm that far away. I think it has to do with the fact that the city feels like Berkeley, and I'm with people from church=Family.


Last little fact before I crash: People here don't know how to tan. It was a sunny day here, and people were laying out in the sun, getting burnt. Not hot.

SFO and Cleveland 5/24/09

(written at the airport in Cleveland, Ohio. That's a picture of the Rockies, which I've always wanted to see in person, or at least from the air)

I have a good feeling about this trip. The first flight was pretty smooth, except for the rough landing, and we had some pretty interesting convos on the plane about family, God, and life. We also talked to a pretty cool lady named Gigi on the plane. She knew something about EVERYTHING. Transportation engineering, biology, mechanics, history, literature, etc... Such a fascinating person. And she likes to travel, too. She was giving us tips on how to assimilate in Europe, and it seems pretty helpful. When in Rome, live as the Romans do.

We adjusted Chris' idea a bit at SFO while waiting for boarding. Basically, Chris had this pretty awesome idea where we'd put wristbands and headbands on statues we saw throughout Europe and take pictures of/with them. Cool idea, but I think what we're going to end up doing will be slightly more amusing. Maybe. Pictures will still be taken and posted.

So...here's my opinion of Cleveland: This is the most boring city in the world. Evidence: The airport has three Cinnabons, 10 Hudson News stands, 5 bars, and burger and pizza restaurants. There was a small rock and roll hall of fame store, but that only lasted for about 5 minutes of a 4 hour layover.

The worst thing is that there are NO ASIAN PEOPLE, which means that we've been getting a lot of stares/weird comments. Examples:

1) "You're gonna have to use the restroom if you drink a lot of water." Ok...that one needs a bit of context. Basically, we were going through the bag check, and we still had some water in our backpacks so we chugged it. The security guy saw us, apparently, and had to comment. I wanted to say "Yeah. I know how my body works," but I figured that I shouldn't give the guy attitude. I still needed to get on the plane to London.

2) "Macht schnell!" - We were the last people off the airplane. You thing just because you're speaking in German we can't understand you? It pretty much means hurry in German. Jerkface.

3) "Woah. You're Asian." - No comment.

So basically I hate this city, but thanks to Chris' text (after I complained about the terribleness of the city), I now know that you have to pass through a tunnel to get to the light. I am SO looking forward to Europe. It's going to be awesome.