ok, its been a while, but between school and work i have no time.

Disney sucked eggs. First of all, we didnt have to be there, so there was no need to be there. Second, you cannot perform 30 songs in under 3 hours while crammed onto narrow risers under hot lights while its 40 degrees out. Third, Disney is cheap. We paid $80-$100 a room that had 2 small beds, a small bathroom and is supposed to sleep 4. Not only that, you had to pay outrageous prices for food. Oh thats not all either, you only get 2 tickets a day regardless of how many times you perform. Lastly, I had those horrible shooting pains again. So I went through all that s*** for nothing because I didnt get my tickets.

ok, done venting for now.

Wow, its been a whole year since i started this. Even more incredible is that i've made it alive to see my 17th birthday. Go me!!!

Too bad i'm not 18, i really wanted to vote. Oh well, i guess that means once again we are relying on the ignorant eligable voters in this country. Actually you know what really scares me is the fact that these "ignorant" people would have been deported if they applied for naturalization. We are leaving the future of our country in the hands of these people, and worse is that theyre the majority. That's all i'm gonna say about that.

Oh, for those who want to get me something for my birthday, cds and gift cards are greatly appreciated.

Ok, I think I've caught up on my sleep...

Anyways, both of Dave Hunt's CDs from M-Fuge rock!!! I was expecting just worship songs that we sang during the week but a couple of them aren't his. And even cooler is that they don't sound at all alike. Another thing that makes this great is the song that he did entirely on his guitar. It sounds like there's a whole band. All he's doing is plucking, strumming and tapping it. Its awesome.

We're back from Germany and very very tired.

Anyways, I'm sure you'd rather hear about the trip than how tired we are. Ok, we got on and off the planes without any problems and arrived at the Cologne airport i think at around 6 pm. Derik, Tyler and some other girl took us to the hostel (you wouldn't belive how nice it was). We checked in and ate. Then we had to (believe me, they wouldnt let us sleep) stay up until 10 for the welcome ceremony. Everyone was already put into track groups. I was in Holland with Tim, Jason, and Lea.

The next day was pretty cool. We woke up around 7 and got breakfast (sandwiches, can you believe it???)  and by 9 were in our quiet time areas. 20 minutes later we went up the the big room to do bible study and back down to go over bible study in our track group rooms. Then it was back upstairs for the evangilist training for an hour. We then ate lunch (about 12:00) and got ready for our track groups. At 1:00, we went upstairs for the sendoff ceremony and left at about 1:45. My track group went to Hans Bockler-Platz, which is an extremely huge park (possibly the biggest park in Cologne). We took 2 trams and a train (I'm an expert now at train and tram surfing) to get there. Once we were there, Derik showed us around the place (took nearly 2 hours to go through the entire park). You wouldn't believe how many people strip down to their underwear at the park, and no one had a problem with it either. Here, you would be arrested for public indecency or raped. After being showed around, we sat  by a tree and had church for 45 minutes and then prayer walked for an hour. We left the park at 6:00 and ate dinner. TURKISH FOOD ROCKS!!! Doners and Turkish pizza is sooooo good. My group went to the same resturaunt almost every night. Afterwards because Jenn made us, we had the best italian ice cream. We got back at the Hostel at 7:30 and went up for the worship service. I was doing fine the entire day staying awake but once i sat in that room, i nearly fell asleep. I feel bad for Landin because he's trying to keep us awake and everyone's nearly asleep. After the service, we had our own church group time (its about 10:30 and we have to be in our rooms at 11:00, not much time for anything) and then went to bed.

The next few days were pretty much the same because all my group did was prayer walk (it rained a lot and no one was at Hans Bockler-Platz). On Tim's birthday we got everybody to say Happy Birthday to him whenever they saw him. At our church time, we gave him  presents and told him what we liked about him. He got this awesome bible that was enclosed in metal.

I think it was on Friday that our group finally met someone. There was a large group from Africa i think earlier in the week but we didnt see them again. We met this guy from Morocco and this other guy who could speak broken english. The next day we were supposed to play basketball with him and his group but he didnt show up. We played with the guy from Morocco and Chad and Ben met some guys who sounded English. We played with them for the next two days. On our last day, Lea and I were playing ping pong on the tennis court and these two guys from Morocco let us use their tennis rackets and balls. One of them was extremely nice and the other was weird. The sad part is that we only met them right when we were about to leave. Curfew was extended an extra hour because Dave, the worship leader was giving a concert and they called the police on us so we only heard 2 songs. So for the last hour i was saying good bye to everyone from my track group and got pictures and email.

The next morning we checked out of the hostel by 9:30 and went to the Holiday Inn by the airport. We went back to the airport so we could catch the train that would take us to the cathedral. The cathedral was so big and gorgeous and awe inspiring. The floors are huge murals and the walls are tall. The flying buttresses and the stained glass windows drew your eyes to the ceiling. Don told us that thier purpose was to bring our eyes to the heavens and God. We then went to go climb the tower (which is 509 steps. by that time we've all climbed about a few thousand steps). It was totally worth it because of the view of the city. We came down singing 99 bottles of beer on the wall and some German guy told us to shut up. When we got down we stood because our legs were shaking like crazy. Tim ended  up sticking his head into the holy water (dont worry, i got pictures). We sat down for a few minutes and were drinking water after that and was yelled at in German by a priest. All the priests were wearing jeans and sneakers under their robes. We spent another hour as a big group in the cathedrale. Half the group went up the stairs and another half walked around. Sarah, Alyssa, Megan, Joann, Joe and I left and we ended up going to H&M because everything was half off. We didnt get anything because there were freakishly long lines. We then went to this German Pub and split up again. I HAD A BEER THERE AND LIKED IT!!! After another hour in the pub we decided to leave and go explore the city. Half of us stayed and the other half went. I left because i was soooooo sore and falling asleep everywhere. I bought a ton of swiss chocolate (for some reason i couldnt find any german chocolate) and we got back at the hotel around 11 pm. i took a shower and slept for maybe half an hour when the other group got back. We packed and then slept for a little while. We left Joann and Joe at the hotel and left for the airport the next morining. I dont know what was with the planes but we nearly missed two. Going to Amsterdam was fine. The airport there is huge. We had to go through customs and everyone there were late to board their planes. We had to run across the airport to catch our plane. It wouldn't have mattered that much though because we sat on the runway for an hour because the brakes were messed up and so they used the back up ones (not exactly comforting). We got to Detroit late and had to recheck our bags and go through customs. My bag took forever to show up. I was circling around bagage claim for 15 minutes. Finally we got on the plane to Florida and I actually fell asleep on it. It was only 5 minutes because the flight attendants woke me up with the pretzels and drink. We got home at about 10 and went to go get our bags. Mine was already out of bagage claim when i got there. Half of the groups bags were still in Detroit so we had to wait another hour for them to fill out the forms. Rae's dad got us to the church pretty quickly, in about an hour. Then i got to go home and sleep for 12 hours straight. Thats pretty much the jist of the week. Talk to me and i'll tell you a lot more.