Its summer time but it doesnt feel like it at all most days. it usually only gets into the 60's during the day and its really chilly at night. apparently the warmest time of the year is a 2-3 week stretch during april and may. the rest of the "summer" is normally cool and rainy. strange. but its nice that it wont be so hot its gross.
since the last time i wrote a lot has happened. i spent a weekend in belgium with my friend franck and his family. great people. natalie and rachel also went with us. the first night francks dad drove us around brussels and we ate real belgian fries, so good! brussels is a beautiful city, and not flat like amsterdam. i got kissed by a morroccan waiter, not the most fun part of my trip but funny, and franck got mad. he acted as if i initiated it. i just thought it was custom to let guys kiss you, on the cheek, but he moved as i went to sort of kiss his cheek. more of like a smoochy face with no contact, but he moved his face and got me on the corner of the mouth. ick. but other than that, brussels was awesome. the next day francks sister gave rachel and i a walking tour of his little hometown. cute place. then franck drove us to liege where he somehow knows everyone in the whole bloody city. everywhere we went someone would walk up to him and start talking. liege is not a small city either. so it was a fun weekend, saw a plane that had skidded off the runway just 5 yards from our traintrack. scary. and had some really, really good belgian waffles. it was a fun weekend.
what else....we have been bombarded with new staff. mostly american girls, as usual. but we have another girl from australia, a dutch kid, a girl from china, girl from germany and another old staff member coming back from south korea. so the house is a little more international, but still feeling quite american unfortunately.
i've extended my time here to september 2nd, i WILL be home then. i bought my plane ticket last night which is the most nerve-racking thing in the world for me to do. i hope i made the right choice, i really want to do what the Lord wants. this is the last chance i get to do this so im going to get everything i can out of this experience and enojoy and learn and hopefully grow. it should be a great time.
lots of old staff are leaving, its going to be hard to be here without them. heiko, debora (my roomate), jakob, jose, and martijn are all leaving. in a couple weeks i will be the only original staff member from 2007. i still have a few friends here but no one as close as these people. ive lived with them for 8 months and we've become like family. it will be very difficult to come home and not see these people everyday, especially when theyre all so far away. (i didnt mean for that to rhyme.) so please pray that this transition and my re entry back home will go smoothly. i know it will be hard, its unavoidable. but i dont want it to affect me in a really negative way. im looking forward to coming home, but i will miss my friends here so much. but it will be so good to see old friends again. in 70 days ill be back home.
