From Venice, RE: Switzerland

I found myself walking along a path of freshly packed snow outside of the town of Murren. A foot and a half of snow covered everything, and it was snowing. I could no longer see any sign of the town, or any human construction, for that matter. I looked around at the mighty Swiss Alps towering over me. They are so majestic. Not only for their size, but for how steep they are. Centuries of glacial carving have left cliff faces that lead your eye straight up to the top. I thought of their grandeur and their immensity. Then the falling of a single snow flake caught my eye as it sailed past my face. Landing on my glove I gazed at its intricacy. So amazing. In that moment God was so unfathomable and so real. He is beyond comprehension and understanding, there in the biggest of pictures and in the tiniest of details. "How Great is Our God" has been in my head since.
Over a hundred pictures and many stories and details will have to follow about Switzerland, but it even exceeded my expectations, which had been set very high. It is a beautiful country and Interlaken is situated in a valley among three famous peaks. Gorgeous, peaceful, serene, and two free days to enjoy it.
It was a quick transition to Venice, but this is beautiful too in an entirely different way. I will have to blog more about that later, as my time here is limited. I am excited to be home three weeks from tomorrow, but I am also glad to soak up Italy and Greece. Please pray for my endurance and ability to engage with all I am experiencing. I am in Venice and it is hard to imagine. I need to sit and soak it up, to journal and think, to talk it out with people here and with all of you as soon as I am home. I am anxious to hear how you all are doing, and to share my experiences with you as well.
God Bless,
Joe

From Paris

So the keyboards here, as was the case in Belgium, switch around about 5 letters and most of the punctuation marks, so if there are random letters in this message, I probably hit the 'wrong' key.
I have not written in awhile -- time is flying by and I cannot believe I did not write at all in Belgium or from Bayeux, both of which were great. Typing is going frustratingly slow, so this may be short...
I am doing well, fighting a bit of a cold but other than that great. Becca is doing well--her birthday was yesterday and we had a really good day, from the night before being at the Eiffel Tower for her first minutes of her birthday to last night being out with friends getting dessert. Grandma and Grandpa, she said to thank you for the fabulous dinner and the beautiful necklace. I am anxious to tell you more about it later.
Weather has been colder, but nothing terrible. Here in Paris it is cool during the day and cold at night, but I got a new jacket in Bruge because the one I brought was California thick, not northern Europe thick.
I am anxious to write more when I can, and when the keyboard is familiar. Know that I am well and still amazed by this trip and learning so much, but also missing you all and excited to be home again.
Love you guys,
Joe

P.S. Dutch pancakes > French Crepes, and Belgian chocolate has no equal...yet (maybe Swiss chocolate?)

Bummer

So I am really bummed because I wrote a blog from here in Leiden, saw a mistake in it and hit what I believed was the Edit Button but was in fact the Delete Button, and it was gone. Bummer. (I should learn Dutch).

I only have a few minutes to fill in what I deleted, so I will be brief.
I am doing well, as is Becca. Healthy and having a good time. It was a busy week with our tests, but they are over and today we enjoyed a Free Day and opted to take the train up to the town of Haarlem to see the Corrie Ten Boom museum. She was a Christian who helped lead an underground resistance to the Nazis, hiding Jews in her house and finding them places to go. The book about her is The Hiding Place (Becca had read it, I have not). It was a great story and tour to hear, especially as it was a private, Christian museum and the volunteer tour guide really presented the Gospel of forgiveness, grace, redemption, and God's gift of strength very clearly in telling this woman's story. Very cool to see.
We also made our way to the coast today. Pretty, but overall an overcast day so nothing too special. Large beach with lots of shells. Cold water that didn't taste as salty as our water (yes, I had to taste it to see if it as as salty).
Weather has been cold. Definitely have seen frost on the ground in the mornings, and windy often during the day. I am very thankful for my layers.
Dutch pancakes are amazing. Not really pancakes, but more like crepes. And the dessert pancakes are especially good. Tonight we had a hot raspberry with whipped creme pancake, and it was delicious.
That's all for now. In Belgium (we will be there tomorrow) I hope to find an internet cafe with Skype (my sn is joefoster86 if you want to add me) and make a few calls to connect with people. The trip is flying by and I am loving it and learning so much. I am anxious to be home again, and hope that telling you all stories and showing you pictures will help me to digest all that I am seeing, learning, and doing.
Love you all,
Joe

From Berlin

Hey Everyone,
I do not have much time to write, but want to let you all know that I am healthy and doing well. I continue to be amazed at this trip and all that I am learning. It is truly a priceless experience. Classes have been amazing, and even studying for the midterm I had yesterday was good. Not really fun because of the pressure to perform well, but the material is fascinating.
Berlin has been amazing. One daz I took the S train (faster than the Underground and mostly above ground) all the way from heart of East Berlin to into the woods outside of West Berlin. The line of economic development between East and West is still apparent, and that land is beautiful. I got out at a random stop by a forest and walked through a tunnel of brightly colored leaves falling in the wind up a hill to a large lake. It was just beautiful, and really made me miss the prominent change of seasons that I have not really seen since Nebraska.
I continue to have a great time with this group. A few people I would not have imagined becoming good friends with have become great companions, and it is an amazing blessing to have Becca alongside me as well. It would have been incredibly hard if just one of us went on this trip, because the experiences are impossible to convey and share with someone who did not actually experience it themselves. I am anxious to share stories and experiences with all of you, but it will also be great to have Becca and other Europe semester friends around to really remember the trip together. Hopefully my words and pictures (I updated the captions finally on those that are online) will be able to communicate mz experiences as much as possible.
Well this internet cafe is closing, but maybe I will get more time to write later. Tomorrow is a free day, but we have another Mid-Term Monday and there are several sites in Berlin I am still hoping to hit, so we will see.
Missing you all,
Joe

Oh yeah

I updated pictures. So check it out. (see link below)

Poland

Poland is cold. With layers I am fine, but it is definitely the coldest part of our trip so far. We have seen 2 quite different cities here. Krakow (w pronounced v) is a cultural center that the Germans deemed "German built" because they had minor contributions in its construction a long time ago, so it was not attacked in WWII. It was the home of the Pope John Paul II before he was Pope, and Poles still think of him as "the Pope." He had a large influence in their faith--the Poles are very religious, attending Mass on Sunday at one of dozens of churches within blocks of our hostel I saw people coming to the service on time and having to stand because the seats were full. People came in and knelt and crossed themselves and the 8 year old boy in front of me was singing along by memory (in Polish, of course). It was a great display of genuine participation that was great to see after many Catholic churches seem "dead," especially in the states. I could write more, but people are waiting.
I am now in Warsaw but am taking an overnight train to Berlin tonight. Warsaw had 80-90% of its urban center destroyed in WWII, so it is very much a rebuilt city. When Poles rebelled against the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944, Germany replied by decimating the city. We saw a few of the buildings that survived, and many of them have obvious holes repaired with brick when it was a concrete building. Crazy to see.
We also vistied Auschwitz-Birkenau, about which there are no words but I could write volumes. I will be glad to share once home. I am learning a lot here and am also having a great time. It is great to soak in history and culture and then to be with a group of friends and having a lot of fun at the same time.
Our guide here in Poland, Gabrielle, is AMAZING. He is very intelligent and witty about his history telling and has been amazing. He has done a superb job in picking our restaurants for group meals, and even when I go out on my own or with friends Polish food has been very good, and pretty well priced, although we're told that the urban areas are much more expensive than rural areas.
Well I need to go, but I hope all is well at home and I will write more or call when I can. My new Skype name is joefoster86, and if you don't have skype you should really consider it. Free international calls as long as both people are on the internet. Quite a deal.
Peace be with you all,
Joe

From Prague, Part 2

So, as promised, here is another entry from Prague. I'll try to describe my feelings and thoughts about Bosnia here briefly. Lots of pictures and thoughts from my journal will come once I am home.
Overall, Bosnia is a very beautiful country, but our visit had very mixed feelings. We were led by a group that works for reconciliation, economic development (esp. with native agricultural workers), and tourism. They want to portray Bosnia as a great, safe, wonderful place to visit. And it is. We went white water rafting (mellow river overall though) through an amazing valley/canyon that was up in green hills covered with trees with leaves just starting to change color, and the water was drinkable, which is something I never would have thought about in Bosnia. At the same time, Bosnia experienced a war of ethnic cleansing among other things just 15 years ago, and many of its buildings and homes still show bullet and shrapnel damage, which is intense to see. We were told by our guide, a former soldier for the Bosnian army (the good guys, really, having studied the history myself) that if we had walked outside of our hotel room 15 years ago we would have been sniped merely for being in the open because Sarajevo underwent a 3 year siege in which Serbian snipers, artillery, tanks, and rocket launchers surrounded the city, covering the hills around it. They targeted anyone, hoping to weaken the city and its morale to the point of capitulation. That's intense, to live everyday, working, trying to buy what food was available, raising kids, in an atmosphere in which going outside meant risking your life. One image in particular that sticks with me is a 10-12 story hotel that still stands in the middle of the city completely bombed out.
Downtown Sarajevo is full of vendors and the language (Bosnian, which is pretty much as similar to Serbian or Bosniac as Texan is to Californian) is not at all recognizable as it is Slavic based. The vendors would know enough English to sell you things, typically, and were often very aggressive salemen and women. Also interesting, if I can use that word, were the number of beggars and their ethnicity--most were what most Europeans call Gypsies, who are more properly called Roma. They have darker skin and have never really been integrated into any European society. The Nazis targeted them as they did the Jews, and today they are very prejudiced against. Because they are different, from skin color to music and culture, they are seen as scapegoats for societies' ills and stereotyped as thieves and beggars. Many of them become beggars when no one will hire them, and many live in "homes" where the owners "rent" them a small space in return for all of the money they collect begging all day, which is really a cycle they cannot get out of.
Last note. The leader of our guides there was an American who did the "backpack around Europe" thing after college in the States, found out about the war in Bosnia, joined an anti-war protest group, and has been there ever since working with the people and helping those in need while trying to promote tourism and overall understanding of the Bosnian people, who remain so divided that even on paper, such as government forms, they may identify themselves as Serbian, Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim), or Croat. There is no box for Bosnian. That's just a glimpse of how separated the country remains and how much needs to change if there is to be a truly united Bosnia.
Hope that gives some insight into my time in Bosnia, and hopefully I will be able to blog again from Poland, although we are staying in hostels and I will have to find an internet cafe in the city.
Thank you again for your prayers and messages. Please pray for me and my group and we travel into Poland and visit concentration camps as we discuss the Holocaust and contemporary Neo-Nazi movements and the rise of Anti-Semitism, which is significant in Europe today. Pray that we may ask the hard questions, the theological questions of salvation and why we weren't born into a Jewish family in Europe, and why those who were were.
May God's blessings be upon you,
Joe

From Prague, part 1

So I have not written in this blog for awhile now, and I apologize. I named this entry part 1 because I am staying at a hotel with free internet, and I want to make it a point to write a few entries while here, especially because our hostels in Poland will not have such accomodations.
First, I posted my daily schedule online so I can focus more on my own thoughts and reflections on the blog, and not just a list of what I am doing. That schedule is here http://picasaweb.google.com/joefoster86. I may have a chance to put some pictures up too, but I am not sure.
That being said, I have a lot to share from Croatia, Bosnia, Vienna, and now Prague. It has been amazing. I have learned a lot and am slowly gaining an understanding of different peoples and places, and as I ask myself who a Bosnian really is, or who a Czech really is, it has led me to great reflection on who an American is and to what degree I fit the stereotype of American.
Health wise I have been pretty well. Our group took a hit and got sick for a bit in Bosnia, but it was shortlived and provided a needed mandatory break to really rest up for a day, and we did not miss any major excursions. As of this morning I feel like I have a bit of a cold, but it is not bad. I am taking the super vitamins Dad gave me and getting my rest and drinking a lot of fluids and all that, so no worries.
Classes have been amazing overall. I have an art test tomorrow I feel moderately prepared for, but it is only mid afternoon so I have plenty of time to study. Prague is home to a lot of Gothic architecture which is very interesting. Honestly, having gone through a dozen cathedrals already it is hard for them not to all blend together in my mind, but I have tried to see how each one is distinct. For example, the one we saw here yesterday has 2 gothic spires and 1 Baroque spire because it took so long to build the style changed. Many cathedrals are this way. Another church that really stood out to me was the church at Melk Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery and frequent lodging place of Austrian Emperors found along the Danube about an hour and a half from Vienna, Austria. It is a beautiful community and it is particulary amazing to see all the trees changing colors, just as they are here in Prague. Anyway, Melk Abbeys church is very very ostentatious and almost gaudy. Everything is gold or gold plated and highly ornate and decorated. Obviously all of these great cathedrals I am visiting cost a fortune to build, but this style, the Baroque if I remember correctly, really seemed almost ridiculous. It made me wonder how I would build a church. Would I use every precious metal and every beautiful material I could get my hands on and make the church as beautiful and glorious as possible as a way for church goers to get a sense of Gods majesty, grandeur, greatness, and beauty, or would I want to not use any excess materials and have it be a barren room because Gods beauty is not of this world and He might not want us to spend so much money on a treaure on earth. I think the latter until I remember when Jesus said there was a time for a bottle of perfume worth a years wages to be poured out to clean and annoint His feet with. It is good to think about, nonetheless.
As a side note, keyboards here switch the y and the z keys, and I cannot figure out how to produce an apostrophe or a question mark. The at sign is a similar difficulty. So forgive my little mistakes that I am sure I will not catch.
The weather has been surprisingly very very nice. Wearing a T shirt and jeans and having my jacket with me has been fine for basically the entire trip. We have had several days in which I wished I had shorts, and I have gone out several nights in a T shirt, jeans, and Rainbows. We have seen very little rain, and when we have it has not hindered our activities at all. One day in Bosnia was particularly warm. It was hot sitting in the back of a bus with no air conditioning but then very nice sitting in the shade by the river eating fish caught from that river earlier that day. Actually I believe that is the only time I have been served two whole fish on my plate. I have always had it fileted or fried, but eating it right off the fish was really good, and it was amazing to know that the fish had been caught in the river I was sitting next two and then thrown onto a BBQ just hours before we got there. By the way, most of Bosnias water is potable. You can safely drink its mountains river water due to the clean underground springs, which is a really weird idea for me, and I never would have thought of Bosnia in that way.
Quickly, I want to mention food. Overall, it has been good. Bosnia did a lot of very brothy soups that were rather plain but good, an almost entirely cabbage salad which is ok but nothing special and gets old rather fast, and then a meat dish of some kind. We had one dish several times. It is hard to describe. It is a flaky breaded material rolled up almost like a taquito but with a weird cheese in it, or that same cheese with spinach, or potatos. The potato one was by far the best because the cheese tasted almost sour, but that is how they eat it. Desserts were always really really sugary, often based on a sugar-water syrup kind of like honey. For example, I tried Baclava for the first time in Bosnia, and it was pretty good although it is even too sweet for me to eat much of it, which is saying something. Austria is much more Western and you can even tell as you drive from Bosnia to Austria. The foot is heavier--more meat, especially sausage and pork filets, but they also have good soups and apple strudel, which is amazing. We had Weinerschitzel our first night there, and it was pretty good, just a fried pork filet. I try to always make a note in my journal of what I eat, so I can tell you all more later. So far Prague has been good. VERY heavy, large portions when we have eaten as real sit down restaurants. Our first night we got served rye bread and large pretzels, and then ham lunch meat style rolled up with a mustardy horse radish inside of it, and then the main dish was half a duck, sauercraut, red cabbage, dumplings, a heavy moist and doughy bread, a piece of mushy ham, and a piece of sausage. Duck was great, sausage was good, dumplings were kind of plain and an odd texture for me, but pretty good and verz filling, sauercraut is ok, but saulty and mushy, ham was too mushy for me. Then they brought out a dessert that was either rubarb and or cherry filled breaded dessert. Also heavy. Bread part was moist and sweet, like a thick cake, and the cherry rubarb part was really tart and gushy-did not eat all of that part.
Ok. Well someone is waiting for this computer and I should go study. I wrote a lot more than I thought I would get a chance to but hopefully I will be able to write once more tonight or tomorrow. Love you all and miss you. Hopefully I will find a decent priced phone place soon to call home, but I have not seen one so far in Prague. Hope all is well, and thank you for your letters and messages and emails. It is good to feel connected to home when I am so far away, and I cannot wait to get home and be with you all again.
Grace and Peace,
Joe

London

Hey Everyone,
Today's my last day in London and I'm glad to say that I really feel I have done all I could do in 10 days in London. I have seen performances of Les Miserables, Stomp, Merchant of Venice, Lord of the Rings, Spamalot, Emperor Jones, and Twelve Night--I saw this last performance in Stratford, where Shakespeare was born and is buried. It is a beautiful little town with a huge park in its center. I saw where Shakespeare is buried, in a local church. Because church and state have been so merged here, often great men of the state, military, political, religious, and artistic, are given the honor of being buried in a church. The play was done by the Royal Shakespeare Company and was amazing. My professors told us we should never expect to see better acting of Shakespeare, which is a strong statement. I have visited the British Museum, where we saw Mesopotamian pottery and sculptures from 1500 BC; the Imperial War Museum, which presents such a detailed history of the two world wars that I could spend days there fully interested; Tate Britain, a museum of art of the last 400 years or so, which included a special gallery of landscapes (I have found I really like the artist Turner) that I really enjoyed; Tate Modern, a museum dedicated to Modern Art that I find harder to appreciate, but I guess it was good to see; and the National Gallery, where I did my presentation on Hans Holbein, the Younger--it went pretty well and I actually had other students in the history behind his paintings (he was the court painter for Henry VIII).
I have also seen some of the sites. I am staying at a London School of Economics Residence on the 6th floor and if I stick my head out the window I can see Big Ben and the Eye of London on the River Thames. We went to an Evensong service at Westminster Abbey and last Sunday attended Eucharist at St. Paul's Cathedral, at both of which were an amazing choir of men and boys, some of it in Latin and some in English. Hearing some of the Psalms song by such a great choir was amazing. Becca and I walked to Buckingham Palace through part of the enormous Hyde Park and then along the river and over it on the Millennium Bridge. Today I saw the Tower of London and the Tower of London Bridge, which is beautiful (the London Bridge is actually quite plain) after going through Harrod's, where we were amazing at the elaborate displays and the ridiculous prices. The food hall was amazing, but all very expensive. In the clothing department we saw a child's size leather jacket for £370, or 740 dollars. It was fun to see though.
We also made it out to Coventry and toured Coventry Cathedral, where the old cathedral was destroyed by the Blitz during WWII. Instead of rebuilding it, they left the remains as a place of remembrance and built a new, modern cathedral across from it with a huge glass wall so the old cathedral can easily be seen. At first I did not like the modern look and feel, but when the symbols and reasoning behind the building were explained to me, it really grew on me. When the old cathedral was destroyed the residing bishop found two burnt logs that fell in the shape of a cross, and set them up with the words "Father forgive" written on the stone wall nearby using a burned log's ash. Someone asked him, "Don't you mean 'Father forgive the Germans'?" and he replied "No, for we have all fallen short of God's glory and need His forgiveness. We are all at war" and ever since Coventry has been a major worker for worldwide reconciliation, from local communities to Northern Ireland and the Balkans--where I leave for tomorrow.
Overall London has been great, and I am keeping a journal so I can share more details later. And yes, I am taking pictures too, as is Becca. We'll combine them once home. The city is busy like I would imagine New York City and the diversity is refreshing, and in St. Paul's Cathedral during worship, remarkably beautiful.
I have appreciated those emails I have received with updates from home, and would love to keep getting them.
Grace and Peace,
-Joe

P.S. Please pray for me and my group as we will not be in an English speaking country until December and as we enter a country with a very troubled recent past--Croatia, and then Bosnia.

Pictures

Cambridge is nice enough to have free computer use for its guests, so I had a chance to upload a few photos. Because of the software available on these computers, it was easiest to put them up through Google, so here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/joefoster86/EuropeSemesterAsOf9407. It's just a few, but it will give you a brief picture of trip highlights. I will also try to write more if I get the chance, but we are only in Cambridge for two days before moving on to London. Hope all is well, and I would enjoy updates via blog comments or emails on how you all are doing.
Blessings on you,
-Joe

P.S. Hannah or Dad, I bet grandma would enjoy the photos if she stopped by or if you brought a laptop over for her.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

Hey Everyone,
Belfast is a crazy city. I had heard of "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland before, but it was always brief and just a general "oh the Protestants are fighting the Catholics" and the "IRA bombed someone again." But here, even today, the city is completely divided. There are Catholic districts and Protestant districts. The Protestants came from England centuries ago and are still loyal to England, whereas the Catholics lived here before Protestantism and typically do not want to remain part of the UK (as Northern Ireland currently is). Both feel that this is their land, their home, and they want it governed their way. The loyalists, which are the violent, militant Protestants (still loyal to Britain), frequently have British flags flying whereas the Catholic neighborhoods (especially those controlled by the Irish Republican Army) fly Irish flags and are full of orange and green. Although there has been relative peace here since 1999 (with one upset a few years ago), it is still entirely divided and Britain didn't end its direct rule of Northern Ireland until four months ago. There are huge walls separating communities, some much larger than the Berlin Wall, full of writing and graffiti. Gates remain open during the day but they close at night. People live in their own communities, meaning that Protestants live with Protestants and Catholics with Catholics. They never interact with one another, and there are still extreme tensions and hatred between the two. It's crazy to really see it.
Our hotel is right next to a loyalist neighborhood, which welcomes all passing cars with a huge mural of a paramilitary and a British flag letting you know that you are entering a loyalist neighborhood. Within such neighborhoods, the murals are everywhere. Most of them commemorate a victory or grief of the past, and it's very interesting to see murals of the same event in Catholic areas and in Protestant areas, but one group is celebrating the hero or victory while the other is defaming the villain and grieving the defeat.
While the peace seems promising on a political level, the people still live with the hatred and authority is still lacking. Only 5% of schools are integrated. The vast majority of public schools are "Protestant schools" and all the of the Catholics go to Catholic schools. It's just the way it is. And parents still always tell stories of when "that Protestant killed your uncle" or "that Catholic blew up my best friend's car." Our bus driver's best friend growing up ended up in a loyalist organization and is now in prison for killing 5 people. The number of deaths are great enough in this relatively small area that every person has a family member or close friend who has been murdered or severely injured by the conflict.
The police have been almost entirely Protestant up until recently, and thus very few Catholics trust them at all (rightly so, due to past events). The IRA had formerly filled the role of authority in Catholic neighborhoods, but now it is disarmed. Its punishment squads used to prevent local crime, and still do from time to time, but now their authority is lost so teenagers rob houses and stores and have no one to answer to. Last week a former IRA punishment squad kicked a group of kids out of a house they were robbing, and the next night the kids threw bricks into the IRA members' homes with a message of "What are you really going to do to us?" If the IRA members resume their full authority, worse things could happen. But at the same time there is no other authority to call on in that neighborhood. And when the punishment squads do still act, they are intense. Their scale of punishment is this: first offense of stealing, burglary, joy riding, etc, and you get shot in the ankle. Next offense, both kneecaps. Third offense, your elbows. (If worse crimes are committed, far worse things happen, stories I won't share here). And that's the ways it's been for 30-40 years here.
The city of Belfast was the center of this violence in Northern Ireland. There were so many car bombings and paramilitary-commandeerings of vehicles that 10 years ago only 5% of Belfast residents even owned a car. The buses were too easily targeted and "burned big" during riots that the city transportation gave up on buses and went only to their "black cab" system of taxis.
The city now is relatively safe. Where we're staying is in a pretty neutral area right near downtown. There's even a Westfield Shopping Center mall a five minute walk away. But a five minute walk in the other direction is in a strictly Protestant-only loyalist community.
I really wondered in the past when I had heard of The Troubles how Christians could do this to each other. But now it makes more sense. Most of these people, most of the Irish even, don't attend church at all. The Protestants aren't fighting against the authority of the Pope or transubstantiation. The Catholics aren't fighting because they believe that they are the only true church. The political agendas of each group have overrun any difference in religious conviction. On the bus (the UN has put in buses as a means of helping out and as a goal for reconciliation--hopefully Protestants and Catholics will have to interact, even if just seeing each other. Although this kind of integration didn't exactly help things in Sarajevo in the past) yesterday I asked a 17 year old boy in a Catholic school uniform if his school was Catholic. He said, "No. Well it's a catholic school, but it's not Catholic." It's understood that "Catholic" means republican and anti-loyalist, just as Protestant means unionist (union with the UK) and anti-republican.
Well, that's what I wanted to share about Belfast and Northern Ireland for now. It's a place in need of much reconciliation and right now the hope outweighs the hatred and despair, but it's not clear how long, or if, that will last. Pray for Northern Ireland.
-Joe

P.S. I am fine and am having a great time learning about all of this. It is very eye-opening and makes me realize how real struggles are and how easily I shrug them off. A 30 second clip on the news between sports and Paris Hilton is about hundreds of thousands of people who hate, and often still want to kill, each other. And often I don't even listen, and if I do, I don't seem to care.

Dublin, Ireland

Hey Everyone,
I am in Dublin, Ireland. The flights went well despite quite a rush in London while changing airlines. Dublin is a beautiful city. Having never been to Europe I keep marvelling at just how old so much of it is. We are staying at Trinity College, which was founded in 1592, almost two hundred years before our country was founded. The downtown also has a lot of old buildings-- a lot of restaurants, pubs, and little market stores. They use the Euro here (Northern Ireland is still part of the UK and thus uses pounds) so things are a bit more expensive but not too bad, especially because they alot us the equivalent of $10 for lunch and $20 for dinner, which is more than enough.
Yesterday we went out to the remains of a monastic community started in the 6th century. There is still a tall tower and the remains of a chapel and a gathering room. It was in the middle of the equivalent of a National Park, so we got to hike up and see waterfalls and lakes amidst the very very green hills. I was surprised that there were also sections of coniferous forest up there, but the most of it was as I had pictured---green rolling hills, and the grass is a brighter green than back in the US. It really is quite beautiful--I took plenty of pictures.
The food has been good too. We had kabobs one night (not what we call kabobs--it was a packed, dark-meat chicken in a pita-bread with a ranch sauce, a spicy sauce, and lettuce and onions. Last night we had our first group dinner and it was great--salisbury steak with salad and fries after an appetizer of chicken goujons--essentially chicken strips.
We went to Christ Church Cathedral this morning for 11:00 Eucharist. It is an Anglican church and has been for 1000 years. Beautiful cathedral and a very good service--they really have an awe and reverence for God. The music was also beautiful, with the organ and a visiting choir from Oxford. They even sang a tiny bit in Greek, which was amazing.
Well my time is just about up at the internet cafe--I will try to write again from Northern Ireland (going there Wednesday).
Cheers,
Joe

Intro

This blog will help me stay in touch with people while I am traveling in Europe this semester. I will try to update it weekly, if possible, but my entries may be brief. I will also try to check my gmail email account, but if I only have a small amount of time I will just post something here, so that everyone can see it by just going to my blog link: http://europesemester.blogspot.com. If possible, I will post pictures, but I don't know if that will be feasible at an internet cafe or internet pay booth. Feel free to leave comments or messages for me, as I would love to hear how things are going for you all.