Okay, so I know I said that the Germany stuff would be coming soon, and it will... just not yet! Basically it's 11:40 pm, I just emailed my amazing mother my last two essays so that she can "bleed" all over them - note: my mother does not physically injure herself to do this, she just uses a red pen and her brilliant editing skills to make my papers look intelligible. - Anyway, so I'm hyper, I have tons of energy because once those last two papers are edited and turned in then I am done! Haha... that's such an exciting thing to say, I will have over a week to rock London like there's no tomorrow... Yea, super hyper and I have no idea what to do to calm down.
Quick update on life... things are going well, most of my lectures finished this week, I have one left on Monday that I can go to or not... my choice. I turned in two essays already and had a not-so-wonderful expereince with one of the receptionists in the psych. office, don't get me started on her, I'll just say she made me cry and I have to go see her again to turn in these other two essays (pray for the best). I went and say the London Symphony Orchestra once again, this time with Midori as a guest and they play pieces from British composers... I loved all of it... I went bowling the other night with some friends and Spanish exchange kids, we all had a great time and it was only 2GBP per game, that crazy! I sucked, but that's okay, we all had fun anyways.
OH MY GOODNESSS... and then the next morning I saw Chronicles of Narnia, oh dear goodness I loved it so very very much. I was excited to see it even before any of the Biola kids who got to go to the exclusive premire on the 8th before it was publicly released on the 9th (how you ask? it released on the 8th here, and with the 8 hour time difference, I basically say it at 3am your time on the 8th). This is what happens when I'm hyper, I post random things about time differences and information that probably no one else cares to know. Oh well, the movie was amazing, go see it! Yes, they cut a lot of the story and I am dissapointed about some of the things they cut, but... everything else makes up for it. The dynamic between Lucy and the Fawn is astounding. Lucy was perfectly cast, she pulled all the right heart strings... I could go on but you all should see it for yourselves and make your own judgement. Moving on...
Things that are coming up for me: Christmas shopping will hopefully get finished tomorrow, I get to see the LSO again, this time with the choral so that should be amamzing; there's talk of going iceskating in the open air somewhere... but we'll see; amazing Christmas concert at Royal Albert Hall that I know I'm going to get all emotional at because it's the day before I leave; and some other stuff but that's all I remember right now.
Right now I'm not ready to come home, I was ready when I had 5 essays to write in the matter of two weeks, but once I was done with 3 of them I didn't want to come home, and now I really don't. I have a good idea, everyone should move to London! Yea, it wouldn't work I know, but it would be interesting. I do miss my family, and it is hard to listen to Christmas music without having close friends and family around; but I'm afraid that once the holiday is over I will be ready to come back here. Oh, conflicted feeling are never fun!
Anyways, there's a brief snapshot of what's going on over here. Since I am basically done with my work I can focus more on getting info up about Germany, and if you're lucky I might bust out the lsat four days on my travels before coming to Roehampton (I know they should have been posted long ago, be patient with me). Well, goodnight and I hope that everything is going well on the home front. Lots of love to you all!
Cheers!

And even more photos! I'm really exciting because the internet actually wants to work now.
Here's a link to three albums:
Wndsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath; Edinburgh, Scotland; My favorite place in downtown London
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=qyghf15.vuknl59&x=1&y=-qxd93y
More updates to come!

So just real quick here's a link to some more photos... I hope you enjoy them. I'm going to bed now, it's nearly 2am... and I'm tired.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=qyghf15.dgtp4od&x=0&y=-kykr2
Hasta!

So I will get to my Germany trip eventually but first there are about a million things on my mind, particularly after reading Vanessa’s blog from the past month. Things are getting pretty hectic around here and I’m finding that procrastination is my doom… but that’s not really what I want to talk about.

The other day I was having a conversation with Sierra and she was telling me that one of her friends from high school had just died in a car accident. She said she Googled her to find here obituary and the first hits were for her blog and her wedding website. How tragic that she never got to see the day of her dreams fulfilled, it was all gone in a second. Another heart breaking thing is she was a Mormon… do I honestly believe that because she wasn’t a Christian and didn’t accept Jesus as the one who paid the price for her soul that she is now burning in hell for all eternity? I don’t want to believe it; I had the same questions when one of my friends died of a drug overdose. I couldn’t cry about it then because if I did then that just meant that I was somehow admitting to something that I didn’t want to be true. It’s all great and fine in theory and when you write it down on paper. I mean honestly how many papers have I had to write at Biola that include John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” Paul and I have been trying to work out what it is that we believe so that we both know where each other stands on particular issues and we both agreed that Jesus is the only have a relationship with God. It is how that actually plays out in the world around me that I have a hard time with. God is a God of grace, love, and mercy, but he’s also a God of justice, and righteousness; he wouldn’t be the perfect being he is without having a balance of all these characteristics. This also just brings me to the question that seems so cliché at Biola, “What about the people who never even hear the Gospel message, like the people in deepest parts of the rainforest?” I have no idea what happens to them, I think that it’s one of those things that I just have to trust that God will hold those people accountable for what they do know. But what about in this case, and my friend who died years ago? I don’t even want to think about it anymore because it hurts too much, I feel like there’s no hope! When Dan Elkins passed away a year ago I was totally heartbroken but I knew in the back of my head that I would see him again one day in heaven, but that hope is just not there in this case.

On another not so related topic… while Sierra and I were having this conversation we got on the topic of faith. I had always grown up in the church thinking that the people in Jesus’ time were totally faithless and I didn’t understand how they could see Jesus perform miracles right in front of their eyes and then just turn a blind eye. But if I’m honest with myself I find that I do the exact same thing. I have heard countless stories of people praying for healing and God touches that person’s life and none of the doctors can explain how it happened. While in Germany I was told another one of those stories where the Tonnes (the people I stayed with) were visited by their neighbor whose son was in a horrible car accident and was going to die that night or the next morning because both of his lungs collapsed and he was severely brain damaged. The Tonnes prayed for his healing and that night things drastically improved. Today he is back in school only a year behind his peer! I look at that story and think, “Praise the Lord, that’s a total miracle!” But do I actually let that sink in and impact the rest of my life? No, I don’t, I let it stay as story and not a living testament that God is still alive and moving today. I am just as faithless as those people who saw Jesus’ miracles.

There are so many other things running through my head right now that I don’t think I can handle writing about them right now. Possibly more of my thoughts will come later on. I know that I am not the only person who struggles with these things; the question is what should be done about it?

Until next time…

Okay, here's the rest of my Scotland trip and I am working on getting the Germany stuff up so look for that in the next couple days too!
I guess I’ll just pick up where I left off…
12 Saturday
We woke up pretty early and I showered in a wonderfully hot shower. Then we went for out “typical” hostel breakfast of toast, cereal, and tea. While we were there we saw the creepy men from the night before but we basically just avoided their table and they left us alone. Jamye, Annie and I then went into town on the shuttle (boy was it freezing we got in the van and all the windows totally frosted over so we couldn’t really see the sights as we were driving by, bummer). We decided to go to the “most photographed spot” in Edinburgh according to my tour book so we started hiking in that direction. Before we arrived in Edinburgh we knew that it was going to be cold, rainy and very very windy… thank goodness it was only cold and breezy, but even that was pretty unbearable. After a ½ hour hike around we finally came around to the street that we wanted to be at and much to my dismay it actually wasn’t anything very special at all. But, we decided that it still was pretty and just moved on from there. Along the way we came across a cemetery, I really like cemeteries, Sarah Hunter, that’s all your fault once again! Anyways, we went in it and it was huge it went on for days and days but I only allowed myself to stay for a little while, one of the biggest tombs we say dated back to the 1600’s, pretty crazy! We then decided that we would go up to the castle and have a look around there. It was quite a hike to get up there because it basically is the high road (also called Old Town) in Edinburgh (but not the highest point, we did that later). Once we got up there we found out that it was 9GBP to get in and we didn’t really think that it was worth it to go in so we decided to walk down the main strip instead. There were tons of shops and little hole in the wall place and it was so great to walk down the cobblestone road. We were all getting pretty hungry so we stopped at a jacket potato shop where I had the largest potato of my life. I didn’t even eat ½ of the potato and I was totally stuffed! We then continued to walk down the main street again and we came to this really cool looking building at the end of the street it looked very modern and was mostly silver with light oak accents. We finally figured out that it was the parliament building, what a totally awesome government building! We then got to the end of the street where the palace for all the royalty was (I think that is was called the Hollyrood House or something along those lines… I should probably figure that out and get my facts straight… ehh I’ll do it later). Anyways, it was closed so we decided to take a hike in the “park” that was off to the right of the palace, one of our books said that you could have a great view of Edinburgh up there so we started our hike. We thought that we were going to die! It was so cold and we were climbing up hill with the wind whipping around the rocks trying to knock us over. I felt like I was Frodo Baggins trying to climb the cliffs with Sam and Gollum, seriously it even looked similar. We finally got to the top of the path (which was still 100 feet below the top of the rocks) and we were happy to find that there was a decent view from up there we spent a while just walking around the flatland/hillish stuff until it was almost dark. It was so calming to be up there above everything and we had a great time watching 4 kids run around the rocks and through the tall dying grass. Before it got to dark (it was only 3pm and the sun was already ¾ set) we decided to head back down, which was a much better trek than our initial ascent. For this walk I felt like Maximus in Gladiator as he is walking through the wheat after he dies, it was very peaceful but still freezing cold. It made me really want to watch Gladiator. Once we got down we headed back for the city and on the way we passed the parliament building again and all along the side of the building there were different quotes by famous people and there was a passage from Psalm 19, it was really cool to see that on the side of a government building (definitely not something you would see in America). I needed to find a bank to get some cash so we went over to new town and Annie really needed to sit and take a breather so Jamye and Annie stayed at Costa Coffee while I tried to go get money. It was quite an adventure finding the cash machine because the directions that two different people gave me were wrong and when I finally asked a guy in one of the shops where it was I found out that I had been going to wrong way. That was a little annoying but I finally got the money and we went back to old town so that I could buy some things that I had my eye on throughout the day. Around 6:30 we went to where the shuttle for our hostel was supposed to come pick us up. Unfortunately there were a ton of people already waiting because the shuttle was running behind so 45 minutes later we were finally on our way back to the hostel. Once we got there I was officially hungry and bought a pizza from the little shop and cooked it in one of the many ovens that we had in our kitchen. The more I was in the hostel the more I loved it, you could do anything you wanted in the kitchen and the shop had a lot of really great stuff for cooking. There was a small group of us just sitting and talking while I ate (the other girls were still full from their potatoes) and that when Jamye commented that my face looked swollen. I went to go check it out and sure enough I had bigger checks that were kind of blotchy and my normally well defined jaw line was basically gone. I had no idea what had happened, I just figured that I got a little bit of sun poisoning. I felt alright so we all went to see what movie was playing, and you’ll never believe this but it was Gladiator! Isn’t that totally insane? So we all watched that and once that was finished we asked them to put on Erin Brockavich (sp?). As the movie played I felt myself getting hotter so after the movie I called home and asked Dr. Mom if I was going to die. She said I wouldn’t die but she didn’t know what was going on so I took some drugs and hung out in the room. It was really hard for me to be in there for very long because there was so much talk about marriage I thought that I was going to barf, alright not really but I had heard enough for a little while about getting engaged and when weddings were going to be. I decided that the famous “ring by spring” is quickly turning into “ring by Christmas,” so sad. Paul called at that point and I was most pleased to be preoccupied by our conversation rather than the girls’. I went to bed pretty late but once I finally fell asleep I had a good nights sleep.
13 Sunday
I woke up around 8:30 and showered, ate, and packed up my stuff to checkout. Once we were checked out the girls and I decided to go down to the water which was out the back side of our hostel. None of us had been down there yet so we didn’t know what to expect but it was absolutely amazing. We walked down to the water that was about 50 yards away and I got to touch the freezing North Sea. The water was pretty calm and there were some rocks that we climbed around on. Before we were all totally frozen to the bone because of the beach breeze we went back up to the hostel and got a ride into town. We didn’t really have too much more to do there so we walked around and did a little bit more shopping before catching our train back home. The train ride was wonderful and so beautiful, most of the trip the sun was in my eyes but it felt so good! I saw tons of miniature horses and was really frustrated that every time I tried to take a picture there wouldn’t be any close enough for me to take a picture of. It was relatively peaceful in our carriage because the reservations that we got were in the “quite carriage” so that people could sleep if they wanted to.
I had to be at a concert at Barbican Hall that evening so we had planned to get back in plenty of time for me to go home, change, eat, and be on my way again. But things got rather interesting on our carriage about 10 minutes before we came into the station. Earlier there were two men who were checking tickets (for real checking tickets not just the normal asking to see it and then move on) and they were being very specific in what kind of tickets people were supposed to have. The three of us were fine but I guess there were several gentlemen a few carriages down who didn’t have a ticket. A man and one of the ticket people came through our carriage and the next thing I hear is the ticket man yelling at the man (who ducked into the toilet at the end of the carriage) to come out at once or he would lock him in there until the train got into the station. There was quite a commotion for a few minutes and then the other ticket man came through and jokingly told all of us who were paying attention to what was going on that we should “always remember to have a ticket.” As we approached the station an announcement was made that no one was allowed off the carriage until the transport police were on the platform. Luckily it was only a couple if minutes that we had to wait on the train but we were already quite late in arriving because of the whole ordeal. I rushed home (well as fast as public transportation would allow) and ran to my room and changed faster than I think that I ever had before and ran back out. There was a ton of traffic but I made it onto a bus that was a ways down the street and ate the sandwich that I had bought earlier. I got to the concert hall 5 minutes before it started (that was a miracle because the tube took 10 minutes less than it normally would have).
The concert was phenomenal, it was a tribute to Tschaikovski including Romeo and Juliet. It was great to be one of about 30 teenagers there out of 2000, everyone else was at least 40, many over 60 and quite a few native Russians there. It was a great evening and I was so thankful I made it. I think that he might be my favorite composer but I don’t know if I can really make that bold of a statement. I came home and went to bed after a rather exhausting day but very excited about everything that had happened.
That's all for now folks!

So, I suck... I know... things here are a little crazy right now.
Jeanette arrived a few days ago (actually it was Friday, it seems like it was yesterday) and we have been going nonstop since she arrive. All the Biolans went to Ely Cathedral and Cambridge for our BBST course which was really awesome. Sunday we went to church, I took Jeanette to see Parlaiment, Big Ben, London Eye, went to the aquarium and then heard an organ recital in Westminster Abby. I was going to show here the lions in Trafalgars Square but that didn't work out too well because they were having a snowboarding competition there. Who does that? honestly there was a half-pipe of snow in the middle of Trafalgars Square... Londoners are crazy people! We tried to eat in Chinatown but I got a little turned around so we ate at a random icecream parlour/Italian place. Monday, I went to class and the British Library; Jeanette went to the Tower of London with Sarah, another Biolan, and then we met up for dinner in Chinatown. Today I went to class and then went on an adventure to get a printer cartridge (they are soooo expensive here!); then we went to Buckingham Palace, walked through St James Park (I love it there!), tried to get in St. Paul's but it was closed and then we tried to go to a church that I was told "never closes" (b/c it's a church with no roof and there's a garden in it) but it was closed too, lameness. Anyways, we then went to Trafalgars Square again to see the lions with a much better result; although there was still snow melting everywhere. We then ate at Garfunkles (which still has one of the greatest desserts I have found since I've been here) and came back to Roehampton, we watched Count of Monte Cristo while I did my laundry [with a small break to talk to Paul (:] and then we just hung out. And now I'm here, in the computer lab but I will be going to bed now. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, but I get to go to Germany (and drink it up!, oh wait, contract...)! Yea!!!! So until next time, have an astounding day and I'll let you know how Scotland and Germany were when I get back. Cheers!

Once again I am here for the weekly update...
Actually before that... thank you all for the comments; you have no idea how encouraging they are to me! Mark, I love you, you’re an awesome brother and I really appreciate knowing that you are keeping tabs on me! Okay, so my past week...
8 Tuesday: Class... blah blah... Went to the British Library again. It was actually quite productive, some of my sources came in and they were so amazingly helpful! Exactly what I was looking for (isn't it great when life works that way?) Anyways, that night I went to the Bar for the Pulp Fiction Quiz night. It was only a quid to get in if you dressed up so I sort of cheated and dressed up as Stella Pritcher from Italian Job... in other words, I wore jeans and a black zippie with my hair pulled back in a ponytail... I tell you, it's hard to look like people in the movies! Hehe... Basically what happens is you get into groups and then you are asked a bunch of different questions regarding movies and whoever got the most right wins some money! Sadly, the Charlie's Angels (my group... the girls were the angels) didn't win anything. Throughout the night people got up and sang karaoke and the night ended with a Pulp Fiction dance off... Good times.
9 Wednesday: You know what I have no idea what I did in the morning, I know that I spent about 5 hours in the British library... more sources, more writing, more happiness! I got back and was in great mood... I read my Bible the whole way back, good times... that is until I walked into the hall and the girls were panic stricken wondering where I was. I knew that I needed to be back for Sierra's "Almost Famous" party at 9pm but evidently we were supposed to go to Hard Rock before that... yea I don't think that I was there for that conversation! Anyway, I felt really terrible about having them worry. To say the least they have my cell number now so that they can call me (we should have exchanged that a long time ago). We ended up eating pizza and then we all got dressed up as rock stars, or at least as close as we could get... my converse are at home... it made me miss them. We took groupie pictures and then watched Almost Famous. It's basically one of Sierra's favoritist movies in the world so she set up her room with a ton of candles (shh, don't tell anyone!) and we had great punch stuff and digestives (they're cookies... nothing gross).
10 Thursday: I would really prefer to forget that this day even happened at all... but alas... it happened. I woke up and went to class, before I left I tried to find my Student Oyster Card (it's my travel card that gives me a 30% discount on transportation... I bought it two days ago and it was good for a month). I went to lecture without it and came back and totally tore apart my room… but of course, it wasn’t there. I knew that I lost it either on campus or on the bus right before campus so after calling a bunch of places and looking and asking around campus I decided to report it as lost/stolen. When you do that they refund you some of the money back but if your card is found there’s no way to reactivate it. I was okay with that since I didn’t know where it was… I was pretty upset at this point; there were a ton of things that I needed to do around town and particularly at the British Library. So I finally made my way there late that afternoon and when I left I called the bus company again and they had my pass! I was totally excited, because it wasn’t just my bus pass that was gone, it also was my Roehampton ID card and a couple other important cards. So, I spent the entire day beating myself to find out that really my cards were in good hands. Now to deal with the repercussions of reporting my card as stolen… I come to find out that I need to reapply all over again! Unfortunately, it take 3 weeks to process the application, I’m only here for 5, which means it’s not worth it. I can home around 9pm after getting my pass and wanted to crash… talk about an emotional rollercoaster… I haven’t even told you the half of it! However, once I finally got home I needed to do laundry because I was leaving for Scotland the next day. I tried to do that and couldn’t anywhere close by because everything was locked so I had to take a hike to do it. Meanwhile I am supposed to be in Annie’s room planning when we were going to leave for Scotland… oh just recalling it all is making me stressed… I finally got to Annie’s at 11pm, having just started my laundry. They had already planned everything (praise the Lord!) So I basically got the summary and what time we needed to leave. I went and checked my email while I was waiting for my laundry and heard from Vanessa which was great! Once my laundry was done (around 2am… grrr) I called Paul while I packed and he can attest to my totally delirium at that point. I finally made it to bed around three. What a long day… it just wouldn’t end…
11 Friday: You know it’s funny; Annie, Jamye, and I have been planning on going to Scotland this weekend for about a month. By the grace of God is was the exact weekend that I really needed to get away and have a vacation from London (I know many of you think that I have been on vacation the whole time, but it’s different when you live there and explore instead of visiting and exploring… does that make sense?) Anyways, we got to the train station and stood in the queue for forever, while there I had one of my not so brilliant moments. Since we were in the train station I knew that there shouldn’t be any smoking, and yet I got this huge whiff of smoke. I looked at the girls and said, “whoever is smoking needs to be taken out and shot” Jamye got this horrified look on her face and she grabs my face and say, “she’s standing right behind you” Yup, true story, the woman took one last swig of her cigarette, blew it in our direction and put it out. I nearly died… note to self, don’t do that again. Once on the train I felt a bit safer, nobody came and attacked me which was good. We had a long train ride (really it was only 5.5 hours but it felt like all day!) We left at 1 and got there around 5:30 and it was already pitch black outside. We made our way outside to the shuttle that our hostel ran. While we were waiting 4 Biolans came walking us. It turns out that we were staying at the same hostel! We got to the hostel and asked to be put in a room with then so we were in an 8 bed room with 7 of us Biolans. We definitely stayed up too late because of that but that’s okay. It was great! Our hostel was so cool it had a movie room, a TV room, you could buy internet time and our beds were really comfy with privacy curtain across each bed. I was very please especially because it was the cheapest hostel that we’ve stayed at thus far. We went into the kitchen/dining area and played some spoons. While there these polish men (who were drunk) came and tried to talk to us but they only knew maybe 50 words in English and they had no regard for personal space. Finally, we gave up trying to play, they were creeping us out too much. So we went to bed around 2am after a fun night of cards and chatting.
Alright, so it’s late, I’m tired and I have to get up early… I hate to stop right in the middle of my trip to Scotland but hey just see as a teaser… something to wet your appetite for later. I will write again when I can, hasta!