Nesting?

A deep thought after digging around in a few veggie gardens the last couple weeks (P.S. I really would like to have a vegetable garden one day.) I was over at Ron and Lee's and told her I would help pick some stuff since they had so much and she couldn't do it all by herself. We ended up collecting two full plastic grocery bags of green beans, I think 4 stuffed with cucumbers, five or six green peppers, a few ears of corn, and a handful of cherry tomatoes.

As I was out there discovering cuc after cuc hiding beneath huge prickly leaves, I couldn't help but think of Luke 10 where Jesus says, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." And that is when he tells the 72, "Go!" If lettuce doesn't get picked at the right time it starts growing really tall and it tastes really sour, if you just leave a vegetable on the vine, eventually it will just fall off and rot. That is what happens to hearts ready to accept Christ, or ready to dig deeper when there is no gardener around to help. How sad is it when someone takes the care to cultivate the soil, find the best there is, plant the seeds, water, and fertilize the little heart, and then no one is there to harvest.

I think it is very interesting that right when Jesus told the group of 72 disciples to pray for more workers, that is exactly when he sent them out. I think whenever we pray for more workers, more missionaries out in the field, we should immediately ask ourselves if we should go. Are you willing? Are you looking for opportunities to water, or plant seeds, or harvest every day? You have to constantly look under the big prickly leaves and in the corners to find the ones that are ready.

Sorry it's been so long. From my return home at the beginning of August I quickly headed up to Alaska for two weeks with mom so we could spend time with Dad and Jared. Then cousin Parker, Darby, and Aunt Janice came up for a long weekend-their first Alaska experience. It was awesome until Darb broke her wrist and collar bone on the 4 wheeler. Poor lady, at least she had two injury free days first. When I flew back into Seattle I went North to visit with friends, had a couple meetings for work, and started on support raising.

By the time I drove into Anacortes the first night and found Sarah and Miranda's house, I was feeling so exhausted, disconnected from the world and the people around me I was just ready to finally rest in the arms of a good friend which I hadn't done for a long time. I was not excited when I saw a big group of people through the window in the house but praise the Lord, before I could get my stuff out of the car Miranda came out and we just hugged. It was the beautiful, long, don't care if you stink, good friend/sister in Christ hug I had been waiting for. I cried. What can I say? the next day we celebrated Sarah's birthday and then it was off to B'ham.

It was awesome being back in Bellingham my old, rainy college stomping grounds. So many people have scattered since graduation but I got to hang out with Missy and Kurtis and help a couple people move.

Upon my return to the Tri-cities, I unpacked, repacked and headed to Dallas, Texas for a two day ministry support raising training. Wow, it was already September by then! Mom came with so while I was in class 10 hours each day she got to visit with an old friend and hang out by the pool.

I got back and started my fund raising for real, hard core. I was at the Tri-cities base camp for a couple days, planned, preped, and, as usual, repacked so I would smell pretty and headed to the Portland area for about 3 days. What a joy it was to see more of my favorite humans on the planet! Pull weeds, pick fresh veggies, cook together, laugh together, and laugh uncontrollably just like the good old days when we were roommates--except now there are multiple fiances around; crazy!

Back to the TC base camp, got to go to my old church, the church picnic, hang out with the youth group. Wow, that made me feel old; I didn't know almost any of them. Lots of phone calls, stamp sticking, and people meeting, more veggie picking, and yes, you guessed it, repacking. On Friday I finally got to drive over to YD Adventures Stonewater Ranch to meet with my boss, go to Adam's wedding and see lots of YD friends. Oh yes, and dance like a crazy person. I love it. On Sunday before heading home I spent the day climbing up at Castle Rock with Kurtis. It was my first trad climb in over a year which made me a bit nervous. I became slightly more nervous after a hand hold failed causing a melon sized rock to fall. Yay for helmets!

Based on the last sentence and following picture, I should note that we wore helmets the whole time, until we made it safely to the top where there was no longer any rockfall hazard. Just in case that looked a bit suspicious. : )

Sick of the Oerchkatzelschworf (not really)

So on the down side, I've had a sore throat for over a week, and in the last day or so it has turned into a full fledged cold with a nasty runny nose and a cough. A perfect combination right when I am shaking hands with all my new co-workers and for spreading sickness to all my new students. Luckily I actually brought a box of non-drowsy nasal decongestant. Yay! I hear teachers get sick more than people in almost any other profession. Sweet! I can take it. Bring it on!

On the up side, I got to go rock climbing on Sunday! WooooHooooo! One of the teachers at my 1st school, Johanna, climbs too. When I was introducing myself to one of her classes last week, I told them that I climbed and so after class she invited me to Innsbruck for the weekend. On Saturday night we went to a rap concert, in German. Then climbed most of the day on Sunday. Johanna and I have a pretty similar climbing ability, but we went with some friends of hers that are really very good climbers. I don't have the European rating system completely figured out yet, but I'm sure they were easily climbing 5.12. I on the other hand, after not climbing most of the summer, I spent a lot of time hanging on the rope. This can bit a bit embarassing, especially with people you don't know, and especially when you are hoping they will invite you to go limbing again. Unfortunatelly there wren't many easier climbs in that area, but it was still fun, and at the end of the day, we found a couple that I could do. So I got in one successful sport lead and one tough, but doable route on top rope. It was a nice end to a hard but super fun day. It was so nice to be outside with other climbers and I think we will proably do it again. Maybe next time Johanna and I will go without the pros so we can actually feel good about ourselves :) Another positive thing was that I learned a lot of new climbing vocabulary, like "Sloper" which is "sloper" in English, or "Hang-dog" which is "hang-dog" in English, one really hard one to remember was, "Boulder" which is "bouldering" in English. There are a few words that overlap, but actually I did learn how to say other things that actually were German words like: Rotepunkt-redpoint, Henker-bolt, mehrereseillaenge-multi-pitch, or sichern-belay. Now you too can show off your awesome climbing vocab auf deutsch.

I have now been to 16 different classes since last Monday and have 9 more to go before I start seeing students for the second time. That means I have repeated my name, hobbies, homeland, and other such important information 16 times (or more, depending on how well the students are listening). I also always get to explain that I am from the Washington that's in the Northwest and not the one where all the cool politicians hang out. Some of the most popular questions that students ask me are: What do you think of Bush? How old are you? (To which I reply, "how old do you think I am?" just for the fun of it) Have you ever met/seen a movie star? and Can you say, "Oerchkatzelschworf"? (not really sure on the spelling) Which is the word for "squirrel tail" in the Tirolian dialect. The first time a class asked me, of course it caught me off guard, but since almost every class asks me if I can say it, I now have lots of practice. Most classes are quite impressed with my ability to say it, especially when they think that I can't speak any German. Today in one class, before they asked me if I could say Oerchkatzelschworf, they asked me if I cold speak any German. I promptly told them that the only thing I knew how to say was Oerchkatzelschworf. They actually laughed quite a bit over that one. I think I have won that class over with my charm and wit.

There was a class the first week that I don't think was so impressed with me. Evidentally they were disappointed because I don't look like an American. Naturally, I was curious what it was that didn't quite match up in their minds. Turns out that I shouldn't be blond and my shoes were a bit strange. I think there was more to it than that, but those were the only details I could get out of them. I did tell them that I dress a bit differently when I am the teacher than when I am hanging out with friends, etc. Oh well, what can I do?

It is pretty cool, because now when I walk down the street I frequently see my students, although usually they recognize me first. Since there are about 300 of them so far, I have trouble remembering their faces much less their names. But they say hi to me and I had a nice conversation with a group of them while we were ordering Donner Kebabs in town. A couple girls also said hi to me and I asked them if we had had class together today. They said no, that they just saw me at the school. I thought it was prety cute that they started talking to me even though they hadn't actually ever met me. We talked for a minute and when I walked away I think I heard one of them say that I was nice (yes!). Hopefully they will still think that when I start giving them homework.

Well, tomorrow I am presenting my first real lesson for the whole period on the U.S. school system, so I need to get to work. I am a bit nervous but excited. I am actually really enjoying my time in the classroom so far and look forward to trying out my lesson planning skills.

Tschuss! (Bye)

Stolen bikes, stress reduction, and packing euphoria

Well I'm one day away from leaving Washington. Last weekend I got to go to a staff reunion for Youth Dynamics Adventures, in Leavenworth. There were summer staff there from 25 years ago, including the founder. Unfortunately, no one from my first summer was there, so that was kind of sad (Next time we need to represent! You know who you are). But it was a great weekend and plenty of old friends, from my second summer and beyond were there. On Sunday I finally got to climbing without dealing with rain, hail, or getting lost. My friend Miranda and I climbed in the morning and I finally got to do Classic Crack, a famous crack climb in Icicle Canyon. Another friend, Kurtis came to join us after he whitewater kayaked Tumwater Canyon in the morning. Eventually Miranda had to get back to the ranch for a trip (she's on summer staff this summer).

Kurtis and I tried to find a 2 pitch 5.4 trad route that we saw in the guid book. To translate, that means it takes two rope lengths to complete it. Grade 5 climbing requires both hands and feet and as the number increase after the decimal, the climb gets harder. For example, a 5.3-5.5 is pretty easy, most beginner can start with 5.6 or so, if the climb is top roped (which means the anchor is already set for you). The hardest climb I've ever done is a 5.10 and the hardest climb ever done is 5.14. "Trad" is short for traditional, which means that instead of having an anchor already at the top, or having bolts screwed into the rock that you clip into as you climb (sport climbing), you bring pieces of gear that you wedge into cracks that act as mini-anchors as you climb. It is more challenging than sport climbing because it takes longer to place the gear, and you have to trust every placement that you make.

I am just learning how to trad climb so we picked an easy one. It turned out that to get to the offical climb we had to climb 3 pitches of about 5.4 terrain to get to the base of the actual route. So the whole thing took longer than we thought but it was really fun. The last couple of times I had gone trad climbing in the spring, I was really getting frustrated because I felt like I couldn't trust my gear, but I was trying to climb harder routes so I would get sketched out. I lowered off of the first 5.8 I tried trad, which made me trust that one piece of gear holding me. And I down climbed off of a 5.7 within a couple weeks of eachother. So I was starting to get pretty frustrated, especially since I can climb stuff like that easily sport or top roped. So maybe the two month break from it was enough to separate myself from the frustration. And I purposly picked something ridiculously easy so that I wouldn't get freaked out. It wasn't till halfway into the climb that I realized that I was just having fun, I wasn't worried, I wasn't scared. And I was learning. We would give eachother feedback on our anchors and gear placements, which was encouraging and I just got to pactice the transitions between pitches and good stuff like that. Oh yeah, and I finally got to use the cams I bought with my graduation money. It was pretty rad!

I completely forgot to take my camera out all weekend but hopefully I'll be able to highjack pictures from other people.

Last week I was getting pretty stressed out about my move to Austria. I'm excited about being there but I have this dread in the back of my mind that makes me wonder if it's going to be like my host family situation when I was in Germany. When people ask me what it was like bing an exchange student in Germany for a year, fun is not the first word that comes to mind. Challenging, testing, arduous come to mind first. Much of what was amazing about about that year is sort of soured by the difficulty I had geting along with my host family. I went in thinking that I was a pretty easy person to get along with and that I was flexible and willing and able to make things work even if they aren't ideal. I got along with the two littl girls and the dad but it seemed like there was always something I could do a little different or a little better before the mom would be content. This was exasperated by a couple of misunderstandings after Christmas time. The bike they were letting me use got stolen while I had it locked up at the bus stop and even though I said I would pay for it, she went on about how it was their son bike, they trusted me,... There were a couple other misunderstandings and by that point I was getting a bit depressed and was talking less, so that's when my host mom decided that using the silent treatment on me would solve the problem. She literally wouldn't answer me if I talked to her unless it was absolutely necessary. It was so absured. Anyway, I finally decided to change host families, and had a really great last couple months with the Mingers.

Even though I know that that was a unique situation (hopefully!) it makes me apprehensive about the coming year. I don't want to have misunderstandings with the teachers in my school, I want to get along with my landlady, I want to meet people and makes friends and find a good church and feel connected. It takes so much time though. Just about when you are starting to feel comfortable somewhere, it's time to move on. It happened when I was in Germany; I really got close to my friends on a trip we took on spring break, and I found a good church a month before I left. Then I started over again when I went to community college for a year. By the time I strted as Western I was ready to got comfortable somewhere and hang a round for a while. And I really did. I love Bellingham, the people, the place. I miss being there already, I miss all my B'ham friends and old housemates already. I love being in a town that feels like home, and that's what Bellingham is for me. Long runs on the Interurban Trail watching the sun set over the San Juan islands, BBQs and frisbee down at Boulevard Park, jazz night every Tuesday at Boundary Bay Brewery, with kayak roll session beforehand when my knee was still good, sitting on the fridge eating ice cream out of the container late in the night with everyone saying "I should be studying right now", sitting on the roof drinking wine coolers : ) and talking about our summers....so many good memories. It's hard to start over when you have something so good.

I think some of it is just laziness. Making friends is hard work, especially when you know that you have rad ones, who you have already convinced to like you, back home. You know, it's not easy persuading people to like a strange girl like me, they think I'm strange.

I had a couple restless nights last week worried about next year. Then I just happened to read in Psalms, "But you O Lord, be not far off; O my strength, come quickly to help me" (22:19) and "I will fear no evil for you are with me." (23:4) I forgot the big picture. I forgot, that my joy in life or feeling of purpose isn't dependent on my situation or whether people like me or not. And maybe it won't all work out the way I want it to, but that's ok as long as I let God guide me.

So as I was reminded of that, my stress and fear have diminished some, replaced by more excitement.

After sorting through all my things, deciding what to take what not to, what to have handy to mail later, and laying it all out on the spare bed, I packed everything into my two bags. I was afraid I would go over the 50lb per bag limit but I must have learned something from my last year abroad, because I can take almost 20 lb more of stuff if I want to! I packed far better that I thought. That means I can take some more teaching materials and refernces and maybe some of my ice climbing gear or snowboard boots. I am going to repack everything today and redistribute the weight, but knowing that everything will fit with extra room is such a weight off my shoulders (ha ha, but really)!

I'm really sad because there are quite a few people that I was hopingto see this last week or so that I didn't get to. I wanted to go to Bellingham and down near Portland/Vancouver. If I didn't get to see you, trust me, it's not that I didn't want to, I would have very much loved to see all of you guys, but alas, it will have to wait for another time. So know that I love you all, and that my love is not diminished by my not coming to see you. Although, I feel like a bad person. This is where I come in and say that you should come visit me in Austria : ) OK? All the cool people are doing it. 9 out of 10 Becca's recommend travelling to Austria for good health (the 10th Becca is an alter-ego, so you can pretty much ignore her).

Tomorrow I will fly from Tri-Cities to Seattle to the other Washington (DC) spend a week in Virginia and North Caroline with my mom's family, then on Monday the 10th I'll fly to New Hampshire for a week for Jon and Kristin's wedding, then on the 17th at 10pm I'll fly out of Boston to Frankfurt, Germany and then to Innsbruck where I will take a train to Landeck.

Woo Hoo!