{time travel: my way}

It happened. 

Tonight on the way home from Benj's first scrimmage of the season, on a long and dark country road.

The night was clear, the Big Dipper was sparkling and the evening was just beginning to cool down.

I rolled down the window. All the way. Cuz, why not?

The wind blew my hair in every direction at once, and I let it go.

I closed my eyes to enjoy the moment, and for one tidge of a second I was transported.

I was taken 5000 miles and four months back.

Back to a similar night, with similar stars and similar temperature.

It was a night that I'll never forget, and will always cherish.

The ride was fast---much faster than tonight's. 

The laughs were many, the screams were present, and the road was long.

For just a moment I was taken there.

Right back to the maiden-voyage of Adventura.

-Sarah

Romania, Part ONE! :)

In Dulles, waiting for departure

Wow. Before I went on this trip, I had always majorly scoffed at everyone who came home from a mission's trip and said they had been "changed". Honestly, I had no patience for it. But coming home from two weeks in Romania, I can say in perfect truth that they were two of the best and most impacting weeks of my life. So much happened, so many iron bonds were formed, and my heart underwent so many changes, I'm finding it difficult to choose where to start....that being said, I shall start at the very beginning because when all else fails, logic is on our side. A quick warning: these will be long posts full of pictures, stories, and tid-bits, so sit back and enjoy 'em! You wanted updates, I give you updates!

Ahem.

The flight from DC to Paris was long and completely strange. We left DC at 10 PM American time, but somehow as we crossed the Atlantic and various time zones, we ended up in Paris around 11:30 their time which was like...6 in the morning American time? At any rate, we were awakened by the flight staff for breakfast at what felt like 3 a.m. Definitely an exotic sensation! We were flying Air France, and believe me, I delighted in hearing all the accents! Yes, I gloried in actually being in Paris...until I had to sit in the stuffy, overcrowded Charles de Gaulle (Sharl dee-gull) airport during the layover. Dan Tate was our voluntary Facebook-Quote-Keeper (and took most of these bombdiggity photos), and has me down as saying, "It felt like a greenhouse, and I was growing way too fast." Pretty much...yeah. :D I did not enjoy Paris as much as I hoped to. But then of course I didn't get out of the terminal. The toilets were nasty, and that soured my whole impression.

Because everyone eats while in Paris, right? 

From Paris to Budapest, Hungary, the accents got thicker, the plane got smaller, and my heart got thumpier. We landed in Budapest and I felt for certain how utterly American I was. My travel-journal (religiously and awesomely kept) describes the moment:

"From Paris, we took a tiny, disagreeable plane to Budapest where we were unceremoniously dumped and made to feel entirely foreign by the total lack of anyone speaking English. We gathered our luggage and wandered to the front door where I then began to second-guess whether Pastor John had or had not got my email with the information of our flights. Oh, it was a rotten moment."

^Yep. Accuracy there. {One quick note about the travel-journal: I became the group historian, and kept the thing so closely that when I left, I found my page-count at something like 104 pages, complete with illustrations. *high fives all round* This means y'all get first-hand impressions from the excerpts: things I would likely have forgotten or described differently had I waited till I was home to write them. Enjoy!}
But Pastor John was there eventually with two drivers (Branson and Mr. Frederickson) and we piled in and were soon acquainted with one of the hallmarks of the entire trip..."Verrrrry bad roads." :D Another spot in my journal is ornamented with a drawing of a car zig-zagging down a skinny, pot-hole-pitted road and the description:

"But the ROADS! Oh my gosh. If you are going to drive in the opposite lane, why not just change the law and make it legal? If you saw our van's footprint from any given stretch of road after the main highway it would look like this: (insert illustration) Absolutely bonkers. (our driver) appeared to be fully confident that driving in the left (wrong) lane to pass 4 eighteen-wheelers was a perfectly normal thing! We seemed ever to be in immediate danger from head-ons or fender-benders. I was happier asleep, while at the same time enjoying our peril."

Yep, this pass occurred at about 80 or 90 kilometers an hour

The road-terror was the first thing about my impressions of Romania to change: by the end of the trip, the "potty roads" held some of our fondest memories. Roads in America are so terribly boring. Adventura would never have been born were it not for the terrible state of the village roads...but that belongs in another story later on. :) Suffice it to say, I love dirt roads full of reckless potholes and reckless-er drivers.

We arrived  at the church and were installed in our apartments and fed the first of our legendarily enormous meals. Our chef was a fellow who, before he became a christian and cooked for God's people, used to cook for the last Dictator each time he came to Arad. This means that our chef could cook like nobody's business. Poafte Buna! ("good appetite")

The first night I wrote my slightly-homesick, disgruntled entry in my journal, which is why you get the first two excerpts above that don't sound overly enthusiastic. The next day was Sunday, and were immediately dunked into life as Pastor John's sidekicks which included three distinct services on Sunday. We were blessed to have a translator part of the time, but for the majority I just listened to the sermons in Romanian, and sang along with the songs as they came in Romanian on the screen. That was so much fun and excellent practice: the tunes were easy, and I could practice my Romanian pronunciation without the inconvenience of everyone else listening. And let it be here recorded that our dear Pastor John speaks way more English than he ordinarily lets on! We got on swimmingly through the first day of church-work! For some reason I neglected to write anything about that first Sunday (probably too exhausted) so I can't recall if we actually shared testimonies and music...at any rate, that was the kick-off day to what became three weeks of playing the VonTrapp family: our main source of ministry in Romania ended up being going around to a different village church every day of the week and conducting a children's service, and then eating dinner, and then conducting an adult service.

                    

We would sing loads of songs (often accompanied by a borrowed guitar) and then give testimonies which would be translated to the people. I'm just giving you the basics now, because later on I will elaborate on how terribly special these times became. *sniff sniff*

I think perhaps my favorite aspect of this trip was the fact that we weren't on a "Tourist Mission's Trip". Pastor John isn't your typical missionary with houses to build and wells to dig and chickens to distribute. He is a pastor and his son, Cristi (they deserve their own entire post later on) is a pastor, and they have a sprawling area of ministry (Cristi travels all over Romania and Europe to preach) and we plopped right into it and followed them at a breakneck pace. Truly, we were able to join into Romanian Church-Life on a local's level which was brilliant and unusual and perfection.

Monday morning we met Cristi (he'd been driving over 1500 miles that weekend, preaching in several places) and before the day was out, we knew we'd met someone really amazing.

 Cristi fit into our group with the ease of an older brother or an uncle or something. Seriously, we adopted him and swallowed him whole into our band of merry men. He is so much like a mash-up of all my hilarious male-relatives that we felt a deep kinship right away. So with Cristi to translate for us (and to make us laugh in the wrong moments) we began our daily schedule:

• 7:00- wake up
• 8:30- group devotions
• 9:00- breakfast
• 10:00 - 1:30- touring sites with Cristi or exploring Arad with the Bales
• 2:00- lunchtime
• 3:00 - 4:00- group practice/prepare testimonies
• 4:30- leave for villages
• 6:00 -children's/youth service
• 7:30- dinner in the village
• 8:00- Adult service
• 10:00- arrive back at the church
• 10:00 - 12:00- loaf, sing, laugh, go to bed

This is the daily schedule, and I will elaborate as time goes on. For now, enjoy this first peep into Adventura: The Romanian Trip Part One! And stay tuned for daily updates from now till we've exhausted to subject! :D If you leave comments with any questions you have, I can be sure to include my answers in the upcoming posts!

Wanderlust: The Travel Journal

Travel.

The very word gives me a thrill up one side and down the other.

It's no secret that Sarah and I are {pretty nearly} always battling a case of Wanderlust. In the past year I've gone on quite a few trips, and it seems that this year I'm looking at going on several more. What does this mean?

This means I need a travel journal.

I don't mean a "Today I did this, yesterday I did that, and here's my ticket stub to prove it."

I mean a good solid travel journal. The kind you could sit and flip through and relive the whole experience. I mean anecdotes and scribbles of description and conversation all spattered with ink and sketches, like this artist's notebook from The Weald.

I mean watercolor of a corner of a street in Italy (if I ever get there) or a sketch of a bookstore front in London.  I mean little obscure memories and noticings scrawled into the journal for keeps:

(source)

(source)

I think this one is awesome. Look at the care someone took!

Or this one!

I haven't found a journal yet in which to do all this. I would love a leather-bound journal with many pages of thick creamy paper...unfortunately those are the most expensive kind. :P But whatever kind of journal I do end up owning, I can just imagine sitting in some cafe sketching the people walking by, or the man playing a saxophone in the corner of the Subway in NYC. When traveling, you're always waiting for one thing or another--flights, tickets, food, transportation, entry, etc. So why not spend some of that time writing in your travel journal?

I'm not going to wait for NYC or Europe to do this. I'll start with road trips to places nearby. I'll start with anywhere and everywhere I go, because to prepare for this grand new idea of travel-journaling (and to hone and pick back up my art skills) I am doing a sketch a day for a year. Yes, yes, I know this is a challenge. But I will try my best and give it a go. :) I've done two so far....

Wow. It's been a long time. Obviously there is room for improvement. Neither the book or the teapot is is anyway symmetrical, and yet I love getting back to my drawing. I did miss it. :)

By the time I go anywhere of real importance, I hope to have my artistic skills sharp and clever to record all those wonderful adventures! Any of you keep/have kept a travel journal?

not in neverland///a growing up post

my "rapunzel" year.

it was crazy.

it was challenging.

it had deep grooves, and high mountains.

at times it made me wonder why?

but in others, it fit like a boot.

it flew by so fast my head's still spinning,

and yet at points it seemed to crawl by like a southern drawl.

As insignificant as a simple number change is, I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that in a few days I will be eighteen years old.

Nope, not at all.

18.

The year I've been waiting for since I was a little girl.

The point in my life where I'd refer to as "grown up." (yeah right!)

And the end of my minor-ness.

My minority.

Argh. The beginning of my Majorly years.

(you get the point)

It's the age that I looked to as if it were somewhere over the rainbow, but in actuality, has crept up on me.

And according to the majority of people out there, it's the curtains closing on childhood.

I don't know about anyone else, but that sort of intimidates me.

Not in a scared, worrisome way really, but more in that sort of "entering the unknown" kind.

I'm definitely a creature of habit, so big changes aren't a very easy topic, even though I know they're necessary. And, because of all these diverse and interesting feelings bubbling under the crust, I decided to chronicle some of the sizeable happenings since I turned 17. :)

-Received the awesome birthday present of a baby brother!

-said goodbye to my sweet black lab
- entered my senior year and all that jazz that comes with it
-finally got my learner's permit
-celebrated all of his "firsts" with Levi
-picked up my 15 year wish of a puppy
-joined in the excitement of a dear friend's wedding
-smiled big and watched the steady and sweet budding of Daniel and Abigail's courtship
-and am in the last days of successfully enduring a month without my 2 bestest chums ever. ;)

It's been a great year. A fantastic one, even. :) And now I'll begin technical "adult-hood".
(Just to clarify, this is not me throwing out all manner of childishness by any means! I'll be the same light-hearted, fun-loving Sarah I've always been. And truth be told, on the 6th I know I won't feel a ton different. ;) Anyways...

Here's to new seasons!

Here's to living life to the brim!

Here's to Birthdays!

"That's the funny thing about birthdays, they're kind of an annual thing."

(all pictures credit of Matthew Walker)