Fridays, Peace, and Pride

I now have a "lost in translation" story to add to the books of them before me. Aside from announcing in my Norwegian language class earlier this fall that I "straddle" the bus instead of "ride" the bus, I haven't had that many slip ups.

In September, I decided to teach myself guitar so that I could help out leading worship. By November, I was struggling through songs but playing nonetheless. Since then I've been playing more and more and felt confident to start leading some songs in Norwegian. Sunday night was the first time I lead a song in Norwegian. It was at our student service. I only had to mumble my way through one part and felt pretty good about it afterwards. Tonight we had a prayer meeting at Brett and Cortney's house. We usually start off with a time of worship where I am playing guitar. With my new found confidence in singing in Norwegian, I decided to play that song again. Because it was a new song in my repertoire, we didn't have the lyrics on our normal sheet of music for people. Right before the meeting started, I took a few minutes to type up the words to this song and printed out a few copies for the evening. We had already sung a few songs when I started playing "Jesus Du Viste Veien" The first verse went fine [although looking back on the sheet now, I am finding several typos]. I start singing the second verse, and the mood of the room started to change. I look up to see that everyone is looking, pointing, smiling, and Kelly is trying hard to control a fit of laughter. Soon everyone is rolling in laughter. I stop playing, assuming it was something that I said while I was singing or the way I pronounced one of the words. With my face hiding behind my guitar to hide my embarrassment, I ask them what it was I said that made them laugh so hard. They assured me that it wasn't what I said that they were laughing at rather what I had written.

So the text was supposed to say:
Jesus du gav meg livet, Du gav meg fred

Which means:
Jesus you give me life, you give me peace

When I was typing up the lyrics I wrote:
Jesus du gav meg livet, Du gav meg fredag

Which means:
Jesus you give me life, you give me Friday

As if this weren't embarrassing enough, later on in the song I accidentally wrote "Jess" in a spot where "Jesus" was supposed to be. Word to the wise, never substitute your name in for Jesus' name in a worship song. It just doesn't go over that well.

On a slightly less embarrassing note, here is a video of me singing and playing at the Open Mic Night we had last Friday (oh how that word haunts me now). Hope you enjoy :)

Auschwitz

We were down in Krakow, Poland for a prayer conference this past weekend. Our first day there we had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz. It was a very sobering experience. For the most part, no one spoke the entire time we were there. To imagine that amount of devastation really was impossible, but being there brought it a little closer to home. It was an experience I will never forget.

"Work Makes Freedom"

There was an orchestra that would play right to the right of this gate twice a day to make sure the prisoners marched quickly enough and instep which made it easier for the guards to count them.









Flowers at the "Death Wall". The woman who was showing us around had an uncle that was murdered here for sneaking extra food.

The prisoners' flag.

Women's hair that was used to make clothes.

People were told to mark their bags clearly so they could be found easily after settling in their new homes.

Baby's clothes

80,000 shoes that were collected after the war.

Just behind here is where Rudolf Höß, the SS commander in charge of Auschwitz lived with his family which included young children. Their complaint was that during the time the crematorium was being used, they had to close their windows because of the horrible smell and the ash that would settle in their house.

The crematorium at Auschwitz.

Where Rudolf Höß was hung after the Nuremberg trials. Höß was the SS commander in charge of Auschwitz.

They left the chimneys of all the old barracks up, but the rest of the buildings were torn down. This is at Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

The rail that passed through Birkenau to the crematorium at Birkenau. They had the capabilities to gas and cremate 20,000 people a day.

The "Passage of Death" into Birkenau (Auschwitz II). This building was used in the filming of "Schindler's List".

A watch tower at Birkenau. If a prisoner escaped, they would kill his or her family publicly as well as murder ten people at random from his or her barracks. During the existence of Auschwitz, 700 people attempted escape and only 300 did it with success. It was through the testimonies of some of those who escaped that the devastation of Auschwitz began to be taken seriously.

Some barracks in the women's camp at Birkenau.

The SS destroyed the crematorium before leaving Auschwitz.

This is a memorial at Birkenau. Over six million people were killed during the Holocaust. Our tour guide gave us the comparison of the number of deaths on September 11th happening every second day for six years.

Leah er med meg i Norge!!!!

Yippe!!! I was graced by my first visitor over here in Norway. My cousin Leah flew in the same day that I returned from Germany and stayed until the morning of the 13th. We had an amazing, very relaxing time together. I wouldn't suggest visiting Norway in January due to the darkness, cold, and the fact that pretty much everything is closed that is interesting to see, but we made the most of it. It was great.

Leah and me at Lade.

Helena, Leah, and me on the boat on the way to Helena's place for the weekend. There is a video on the bottom of this page of our boat ride there. It was a bit bumpy at times but overall a good time.

Helena, Leah, and me in Bjugn, Norway, where Helena's family lives.

Me and Leah making peanut butter balls.

Downtown Trondheim.

Leah and I are expressing different levels of joy of being caught outside in the snow.

SNACK PACK LEFSE!!!

Angellica, Leah, Helena, and me having some fun with facials.

Sorry, the picture is kind of blurry but this is Leah and me on the back of the boat on the way to Helena's place.

Leah was my personal Santa and brought over gifts from the United States. We had our own little Christmas together. It was amazing.


This is the video from the boat.

ESC in Nuremberg

I've decided that I love the destination part of traveling, but not so much the traveling itself. After spending an amazing week in Levanger with the Berg family, Kelly and I took a train back to Trondheim around noon on Dec. 26th, unpacked, packed again, and met up with Brett and Cortney to catch a night bus down to Oslo at 11 pm that same evening. We made it to Oslo just before 7am where we met up with Fredrik, a student in Trondheim who went to the conference with us. We waited about three hours for our flight from Oslo to Munich.

Here is a picture of us when we got to Munich.

Downtown Munich viewing a proud display of sausages.

We were playing 'hide and go seek' in the square in Munich.

Remember this is 15 hours into traveling and on very little sleep.

A night shot of downtown Nuremberg on our way in.

This is me realizing how 'back-packing Europe' is not nearly as cool as people make it out to be. Those packs are heavy and walking on cobblestone streets up hill is tricky on the ankles.

21 hours into travel. We were at the castle we were staying at but couldn't find the door.

This was our neighbor castle.

After getting settled in, we went to the "Bratwurst House" for a great meal of brats, sauerkraut, and real German potato salad. The food was great, the waitress was terrifying. We were just happy to be there.

A daytime shot of where we stayed for the week.

Downtown Nuremberg.

Overlooking Nuremberg from up by the castle.

This sign for a barber shop made me laugh.

Strolling downtown with people from the conference.

Inside a church.

Emma and me inside that same church.

Emma is working with Students for Christ in The Netherlands.

We stopped at a bakery on one of our days out in Nuremberg and enjoyed some reasonably priced pastries for the first time since moving to Norway.

Me, Anne, Kelly, Cortney, Brett, and Fredrik.

Me and Kelly pondering what this sign was saying to us.

Outside the castle.

It's a German tradition to eat one of these jelly-filled doughnuts at the stroke of midnight on New Years.

Outside on the balcony enjoying New Year's fireworks. They were amazing. They were being shot off from all over throughout the city.

Still outside shouting our "ooh's and ahh's" at the fireworks.

The trip home was longer than the trip there. After a very short two hours of sleep on New Year's eve, we were on the road by 6:15am. We walked about a mile to the trainstation, took a 2 hours train ride into Munich, where we caught another train to bring us to the Munich airport. We killed a couple of hours there before flying back to Oslo. Kelly and Cortney stayed in Germany an extra couple of days to visit a friend of theirs, so it was just Fredrik, Brett, and me at this point. Fredrik then took a plane from Oslo to Trondheim, so the gang was down to Brett and I. We had to wait 9 hours in the Oslo airport for our night train (much nicer than the night bus). This was a banner that was hanging over the seats we were waiting in. I could have asked for a nicer banner to stare at for that long.

It's hard to see in this picture, but each of those tiles have a bunch of tiny holes in them. Brett and I were debating how many wholes we thought were in them. Unfortunately, after a long discussion and some serious attempts at counting them, we realized he was talking about the square tiles on the left, whereas I was looking at the longer rectangular tiles to the right.

After awhile, Brett pulled out his camera, zoomed in on the tiles, took a picture, and proceeded to count the holes on the picture. I was pretty close. I guess 50x125 and it was actually 62x134. Disclaimer, once again this is 16 hours into travel.

I was really cold so I broke out the sleeping bag and warmed up while waiting. We caught our night train around midnight and made it back to Trondheim at about 7 in the morning. I made it back up to my place, slept for about 2 hours (the first time I had slept 2 consecutive hours in the last 2 days) before I had to go and pick up my cousin Leah from the airport. By the time I got back from the airport with Leah, I had been traveling for about 34 hours on essentially no sleep. Between Leah's jet-lag and my exhaustion, we both slept VERY well that night.

The conference in Nuremberg was really an amazing time. We had different morning sessions where we would all gather together and in the afternoons we would have electives you could sign up for on different topics. We had a speaker from England for the night sessions. It was a great time to gather together with students and leaders in SFC from all across Europe. It is tradition that the last evening of the conference there is a talent show, "Bunte Abend". This year, Brett put together a special 'Scandinavian Hand Dance', for those of us who are just a bit too reserved to really dance. He has a video of it posted on his and Cortney's blog, http://cortneyandbrett.blogspot.com/ at the bottom of their post 'European Student Conference, Nuremberg Germany' if you want to view it.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year.