Lorraine's Current Whereabouts.

Hello everyone!

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Sorry, I don't have the means to upload pictures right now and I don't know when exactly I will, but I just wanted to let you all know why I haven't been replying to your emails for a week...

I have been in Serbia! Belgrade, more specifically. A team of 10 students from Bodenseehof and 4 staff members all piled into vans and drove from Germany (16 hours! wow!) for a week-long mission trip. We worked with the Roma people (more commonly known as gypsies) who live in the absolute poorest parts in the city. We are talking, living in sheds made up of cardboard boxes and pieces of scrap metal. It was really eye-opening and really really really reminded me of my time in Mexico. Then we all drove back. Another 16 hours. Then I slept in a room at school, woke up early, and hopped on a train (the first of five) with my friend Owen to spend the rest of break with him and his family. And hopefully to learn some French!

I don't know how frequently I will be able to use a computer with internet, but I will be back at school and in the computer lab on January 5th!

More pictures of paintings.

More Pictures

You guys are all gonna get super pictured out. There's a ton more comin.

Lovely shot of Big Ben with Westminster Abbey in the background. Classic London!

This is my sing team! We are called The Mustard Seeds. We like to laugh. From left to right it's me, Jordan (went to London with me), Lisi (room mate from Austria), Peter (Kenya), Jenessa (Canada), and Caroline (Kenya).
This is my friend Audrey. Laying in the backyard. All the girls used to do this in clusters back when it was warm enough to be outside for extended periods of time without several layers and extensive physical activity. Super fun.
This is where I do all of my painting! It's actually supposed to be a tea room kitchenette, but I have sort of taken over and everyone just calls it the paint room now. I might have to clean up a little bit now though because they just installed sinks and counters and stuff so people might actually use the room more...bummer. The next pictures are all of paintings I have done since being at Bodenseehof. I probably won't make comments about any of them, but they are some of my favorites...

The Rest of London...

Ok. Sorry. Long time. Chord. Ugh. Still can't find. Borrow. *Sigh...

This is not in London. This is in my dorm. But I thought I looked like a rock star. Do I look any different from September?!

This is a nice little corner of Stansted Airport where our little gang spent the night. We all basically sprawled on the floor and on that bench. Not so comfortable, but VERY adventurous :-) From left to right, Aymee (Canada), Owen (Florida/France), Alex (Bellevue. Yes, WA), and Jordan (Minnesota).
We were about to cross the real live London Bridge and it got a little windy. Maybe I should go for a real mohawk next time... whaddya think Mom? ;-)

More with the London Bridge. Aymee, Alex, and I.

This is the kitchen of the little house we stayed in. Unfortunately, the hostel we had hoped for was out of rooms so they offered us some rooms in a house that they owned. It was being rennovated and pretty much in the ghetto of London, but it wasn't too bad. Pretty dirty, also not super comfortable, but again, VERY adventurous.

London, Part One

Tag! It seems as if I have temporarily (I repeat, TEMPORARILY!) lost my camera-computer-connector chord, so I am going to have to tell about and show pictures from my trip to London in a 3 or 4 part series. Hopefully by the time I have shared all the good pictures my travel buddies took, I will have found my chord and be able to share my own pictures :-)

So the picture featured above (wow. corny voice.) is me. Sitting on a HUGE statue. In Trafalgar Square. There is this giant tower thing in the middle, which you can see the base of in the background, and then these four identical lions positioned around it. At first I saw them from a distance and planned on climbing on their backs for a perfect picture pose, but it turns out that the back was just as tall as I am. That sort of put the caput on that plan, but this pose is a nice alternative :-)

There was an entire monument dedicated to the animals that have served in British wars. If you look close, you can kind of make out the words. I couldn't resist a picture ;-)

In Hyde Park (where the famous Peter Pan statue is!) there were TONS of birds gathering around the side of the river. We didn't have anything to feed them, but I was able to trick them into coming close. It was incredible how not-shy they were...a couple friends even touched them.

I was SUPER excited because we were sitting in Dominoe's Pizza, awaiting the arrival of our first real, thick-crusted, normal-sauced, extra-cheese pizza in almost 10 weeks!

Here I am with my friend Aymee from Canada standing in a real live authentic red British phone booth! It was kind of weird though because these things are ALL OVER the city, but I never once saw a person actually using one...hmm...perhaps they are more novelty-type items nowadays...

Sadly, all for now...but I will seach for more pictures on different cameras AND my own cable!

Tschüs!

!!!

I AM LEAVING FOR LONDON, ENGLAND IN 3 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week...this week...

Servüs!

Sorry, no recent (decent) pics to share, but I did just finish up a fairly busy (and fairly wonderful) week here at Bodenseehof. Every autumn Bodenseehof has a week of school-wide outreach where everyone in the school is basically put into teams (such as our sing teams and drama teams) and scattered all over Germany to put on English camps, youth group events, and evangelical programs and, well, this past week was it! I (along with my sing team, The Mustard Seeds...for the parable, hello!) was assigned to stick around school and help put on an English camp called 5 English Days. It was for students from the ages of 12-15 and was a nice break in the monotony of 7 straight weeks of lectures. We were able not only to tutor the kids in English, but also sing worship songs, give testimonies, share about Jesus and the Bible, and best of all simply make friends with them. We actually expect a bunch of the kids to show up for Bodenseehof events later in the year and since we are neighbors with a few of them we are planning on doing fun stuff in town with them like going out for ice cream and going to concerts (have any of you heard of Boss Hoss?!). Overall, it was a really great week, hopefully just as great for the kids as it was for all the staff.

AAAAANNNDDDDDDD...

THIS WEEK I AM GOING TO LONDON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I leave on Thursday evening with a few friends and will be there until Sunday evening. It will be a pretty quick trip, but we have all kinds of exciting things planned and it should be a very grand adventure...look for the pictures!