europe 2013!

HELLO FRIENDS!

wow it has been quite a while since i last blogged. this is certainly the occasion to re-start, though, if there ever was one. 

I AM IN EUROPE. for those of you who don't know, i'm here because my good friend jonas and his lovely fiancé a.c. (short for ann-christine) are getting married in only 11 days! brady and i are here to celebrate with them, see some of europe, and reconnect with some good friends. david, from the other trek team, will also join us in a week! this will be a great time. i am so excited!

so far this has been insane. so busy and so little sleep and so much soreness. 

on monday, august 5, i got up at 6 sleepily showered and ate, and made it to the airport for just after 7 with brady at my side. after saying goodbyes to my family (including my wonderful french-exchange sister), we made it through security and boarded our plane in good time, and, 3 hours later, made it to montréal safely. then we had some not-so-lovely adventures with rental cars, traffic, and a new city, finally making it to see my oh-so-lovely sister (who is in montréal for that student french exchange program i mentioned earlier, by the way) whom i have not seen in over a month! so it was FABULOUS to see her, and to see some of montréal, which is a place i hadn't been before, for the record. we walked and métro-ed and talked and ate - it was a lot of fun! such a blessing to be able to see her there - and so awesome in general to see her again! :)

this girl is good lookin! i have missed her. <3

after returning the car to the rental place, we made our way back to the airport to catch our flight to paris! we happily enjoyed some well-priced airport pizza (which was delicious!) and then boarded! 6 hours later, which were filled with too much sweating, plane air, and definitely not enough sleeping, we made it through customs into this continent that is so new to me! bonjour paris! 

my french certainly came in handy as we figured out the parisian métro, the luggage storage facilities, the euro change-maker, many street signs, and speaking with numerous french people! (french is a beautiful language, by the way. i love hearing people speak french - and so 2 french cities in one "day" was amazing! we also had lunch at a cute little indian restaurant in an alley called "passage brady". we laughed about that for a bit. (which was our sleep deprivation talking, by the way)

the little indian restaurant!

we then walked to cathédrale notre dame, which felt too far away for my sore and blistered feet, but was a cool experience nonetheless. i was a little zombie-ish (read: a LOT zombie-ish) all day though, which was too bad, but such is life when you are sleep-deprived. VERY sleep-deprived.

notre dame! (both pictures)

then, to our surprise, the train we were to catch to stuttgart, germany, was 15 minutes early without notification, so we barely made the train with only 2 minutes to spare after a little bit of panic and a bunch of running through the train station with a good number of crazy looks sent our way. 

the next 4 hours took us from france to germany (CRAZY!) and i slept through most of it (which was a huge blessing!). jonas and a.c picked us up from the train station, took us out for food (my first donair!) and then back to a.c's apartment, which is where we are now. it was so awesome to reconnect with jo and meet a.c - it feels like only 2 weeks ago i said goodbye to jo on the last day of trek instead of the year-and-a-bit it has actually been. what a blessing real friends are. jo and a.c have been so generous and kind with their resources and have been so hospitable. 

we are safe, showered and fed. life is good. we are blessed. i am pumped to see what all the next weeks hold. God is so good!

soon,
tejal :)