Semester break

'Twas a memorable time. Fulfilled my number two on the places-to-visit list, Ireland. We left on the 15th of Oct. taking a train to Graz, from which we took a plane (RyanAir for poor students) to London, where we took a bus to Liverpool and then to Manchester. It was the 17th when we actually got a place to stay and sleep. The day of the Damien Rice concert. It was great...I like his music but why do good artists have to have cheap words in their lyrics? Carrie Tree was one of his openers and man, I could not believe her voice. The moment she opened her mouth for the first time, I was struck. Good gracious. Enough said. I told Andrew to get her to Calvin College...the Heffners are always on the look-out for good performers anyhow. Oh, the owner of the backpackers' hostel/private room we stayed at got swindled, if one could put it that way. A guy let us into the house and we paid him, turned out he hadn't anything to do with the hostel. Very maddening, but the owner didn't ask us to double pay since another guy was also present, the one that was suppose to take care of matters while the owner was away...he did look kinda sleepy when it all happened. We left the next day for Dublin. Met up with the rest of the kids, the SOs Kelly, Janelle, Paul and Daniel. This was Dublin so we went to a pub. Dublin is choked full of pubs at every corner yet each was packed. Word of wisdom: don't step into any puddles on the street...it can be anything but water. But we did find one, not very smokey, so I was glad. British football was playing on a flat screen, so the boys were quite engrossed. Three had Irish Blessings, and I still think drinking is boring. Dublin is beautiful to me...it fulfills my new-found liking of cities with rivers and bridges in it. The Haf-penny Bridge was so cute (The Irish do not appreaciate us calling their city "quaint"). I thought it was kinda funny how one of the main streets (pub ridden) was called Bachelor's Walk. How appropriate. I love the cobblestone roads and parks and statues and narrow pathways lined by old shops. I like the friendliness and busyness. Stayed two days then it was off to Cork. The University College Cork was absolutely beautiful...they have a lovely green half old half modern campus. And they had a stream running thru and a bridge => We stayed with Alyce, a friend of Beth's from Calvin. She plays the fiddle :D We kinda took over her tiny room and left her with no floor. But it's all good..she's cool. We went to Blarney, about 30 minutes away from Cork. That was the Ireland I wanted to see...well, besides the city parts. I clambered in the castle, kissed the Blarney Stone and walked among the green green pastures of Ireland. I still have no gift of gab (that's why I kissed the stone), but that's ok. I think I took the most pictures there. That's when I wished I knew more about photography and had a better camera. It was there when I decided I had to come back to Ireland someday. But it was to London again two nights later. The good part of staying in places is you actually get to shower. London. We stayed at Oak Hill College--the place Calvin students on the Britian semester stay at. I would almost just do that semester because of that place. It's a seminary and the people are wonderful there. They were a couple of Concordia students there on an exchange program similar to Calvin's. Beth was very excited about that..being from Indiana and from the Concordia system herself. We lived on frozen dinners and pitas and hummus then. They were the cheapest food. We did not meet Ruth, Natalie's friend that I was suppose to stay with (we all ended up at the Oak Hill dorm) until the day we left London. We did meet Charlie, another seminarian. Natalie was right to talk a lot about him. He was really nice. His whole family was musical and very much walked close to God. It was really nice to see such people again. Heather the mum, Jessy the sister, Hannah and hmm..the twins...beautiful people. We watched Bend It Like Beckham (while the guys watched football highlights)...hilarious!
We saw Stomp which I recommend to anyone if you like percussions and Les Miserables. Now I know why people love the soundtrack...you have to see the musical to better appreciate the music. And I broke down for Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge on the way back from the musical.
I met an elderly gentlemen while I was reading in Borders. Beth and Andrew had gone for Rosie Thomas' concert at Broadwalk (I think that's the name of the place), so I amused myself with walking around the Piccadilly area of London, got lost and ended up at Holborn, two subway stops away from where I originally was, all in effort to find Borders. I struck gold when I saw (at another nearby bookstore) row and row of sheet music of movies, musicals, mainstream music, everything! on an entire floor. And there were books for the piano, drums, guitar...oh boy. But I also got excited over a whole shelf of linguistic books (I can actually recognize names and concepts!) in Borders, next to the religion/Christian books. I found Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son, which I wanted to read. I also saw Yancey's latest book, Rumors which made me wonder how "Rumors" was spelt in Yancey's book in the US, cause it was "Rumours" here. Anyhow, I sat on the floor reading Nouwen's book A New Beginning or something like that, and this guy comes up to me and asks me what I was reading, cause "I looked very comfortable and contected just sitting there and reading." His name was Tom, from Liverpool, and he asked who the author was and what Christianity was about. I was very surprised that he did not know. It was as though he had never heard of it before, yet I kept thinking maybe he just misheard me (he had to ask me to repeat stuff quite a bit)..so I gave the basics, and then he found out my major and started into a conversation about languages...he was quite well versed in Eygptian linguistics, or rather he sounded like he was since I have almost no clue about that. He kept squating and then standing up (remember he was an elderly guy) because we did talk for quite some time and I was sitting on the floor and when I tried to get up, he kept insisting, like a perfect English gentlemen that I stay seated. One thing that distrubed me about this meeting was my unpreparedness to answer his question about Christianity. I knew the facts but they were not enough. I was very mad at myself. But it makes me realize there is much I need to learn and do. I'm also dissapointed with myself. Hmmp.
After London, it was back to Graz again to take a train back to Budapest. The break had gone by so quickly that it all seemed like a dream to me. I feel very blessed, spoilt with all these rich experiences and opportunites. Never had I imagined all this possible and I am very thankful for them. I wonder what my future is and how I will be then. I wonder what my life is to be. I wonder what choices I will make. I wonder if I will know what is real, what should be, what God wants to be. Sometimes I think that I'm doing just fine, I'm happy and things are going well with me, like some weeks here. Then, in times like this, when I got back from break and got news about flight problems and stuff...I doubt my maturity, my capabilities and responsibilitiness and wonder if I am ok. I feel so naive then. But in the end, I think what I need is to know with my heart that God has not given up on me, and to listen for Him. I just need to believe in myself. I think I fear and worry to much. I just need caution. And I think I'm moving out of my box. I'm more sure of myself and I can get around without getting really lost in the sense of the word. I got to know Andrew, Kelly and Paul better on the trip, got to spend time with Beth and found out what I should be to Natalie. Man, I'm going to be sooooo sad when the semester's over. We won't see each other as much since most of the people I got to know on this trip that I really like are SR.s, and off-campus :C but let's not think of that now!

Update 2/19/2008: Looking back at my Hungary entries, I see that there are many gaps and holes in them. I lost the electronic and hard copy of my analytical journals (required for class, but I see the value of them now) from the many 10 second packing and unpacking for many many trips around Europe. I am very sad :( about that, I thought I had so carefully packed away the electronic floppy disks but I guess I somehow misplaced them, and I only hope that some CAlvin student would see them, and retrieve them and somehow find me and give them to me, if not, hope they enjoy reading my entries...cause I know I saved all of them on the Calvin desktops left in the Karoli Gaspar dorm. Anyhow, from this blog entry, I wanted to add for my own sake (memories fade), something that occurred during the semester break. We (Beth, Andrew and Natalie) had arrived in Manchester early in the morning, after an all-night bus ride from Liverpool. I really did not know what was going on and where we were going to stay...I just tagged...and looking back, am surprised I did...I knew absolutely nothing and still went along! Turned out we were staying in a house, room rented by this lady, whom I have no idea how they got in touch with her to find this place in the first place...it looked like a residental area to me. Here's what happened, we walked up to the house and rang the door bell...no one answered. A man came up (I have no idea if he was standing there, or just walked up, that's how blurr I was) and said he knew the lady and that she told him to expect us and that he could let us in. And he did, and we walked into the house and he told us to make ourselves comfortable and said if we want, we could take care of the payment now...and Andrew and Beth decided why not. Me, I just didn't think. We gave the whole payment for the time we had planned to stay there. Then we dropped off to bed...tired. A few hours later, or was it just minutes? The lady of the house came in, and from what Beth and Andrew relayed to me, the man was not in any way known to the lady and that we had given the bulk of our budgeted money to a con artist. It was a couple of hundred pounds between all of us. The lady was kind enough to not ask to pay...she was ready to give us the room for free (dumb tourists!)...we felt really stupid and gathered whatever bit we could (which really didn't amount to much) to pay her anyways.
The Damien Rice concert was that night. Again, I didn't know where we were going, I simply followed. We took a bus and then a cab, and I think the concert was at the university. We met Jeff at the waiting area (cafe?), he was visiting a friend in Manchester, thus, had been traveling separately from the Calvin group, but was able to meet up here as if I remember correctly, was also going to the concert. The concert was awesome. I fell in love with Damien Rice and especially Carrie Tree then (and the whole moody acoustic music genre). But here's the part I laugh each time I think of it. It was very late by the time the concert was over, we walked back to (who know where, I just followed)...talked and laughing very excited. I was still in tourist mode, staring everywhere (the buildings were beautiful, I thought, despite the lack of light to see anything)...and all of a sudden, WHAM!!! I thought I had ran right into a lamp post and as I was hitting right for it, exclaimed "Oh my gosh!!!" and recoiled...the next thing I knew, Andrew was holding me up, and this guy was saying to his friend in a very British accent "Good god you could have killed the lady!" What felt like solid metal was actually a very tall man (maybe he worked out a lot, cause he sure felt like it!). The man I had ran right into (and I was walking really fast to catch up with Beth and Andrew who were walking real fast/ or me trying to focus on walking and gaping at everything) was really concerned and I caught a glimpse of his face in the street light, he looked absolutely petrified. I said I was fine and ok. And just wanted to get outta there...pretty embarassed, cause of course it was my fault for not looking where I was going. Andrew totally knew it too, cause of the rest of the night and days thereafter, pretended to not look where he was going and rammed right into me, and then would start to laugh.