Prayers Needed - I'm Coming Home

I was supposed to come home on June 17. But it seems God wants me to come home earlier. My Grandpa suddenly became very sick last week and had to go to the hospital. On Monday it became very clear that he doesn't have much time left to live. My wonderful mom spent hours yesterday making dozens of phone calls and managed to get me on a flight tomorrow. I'm so glad she did. My family is much more important than gallivanting all over Europe. I had a wonderful, eye-opening, and educational time here in Europe. As the blog has testified, I've had quite a number of adventures here! But I don't at all regret my decision to come home. I wish I could be on a plane right now instead of tomorrow. There are many sad moments, in between all the crazy busyness of wrapping things up. I never realized it was so much work to leave a country. There are a million things to do today, which is a good thing because I'd probably go crazy if I had to sit around being bored. Also, God is giving me so much strength and peace right now. There are joyful moments too in these difficult days. I'm so happy that I get to see my family again tomorrow. I've missed them so much. And I know that going home as soon as possible is exactly what I need to be doing right now. And I'm so happy to do that. I also want to thank my Rotterdam friends from the Ichtuskerk. They heard I was leaving soon and promptly arranged a goodbye party for me last night. I had a really good time there, and got the chance to show them all how to make Canadian smores. They were a big hit! I really hope I can see my Dutch friends again someday. I better keep this blog post short though. I've been busy all day, but I still have half a million things to do by tomorrow (forgive the exaggeration). Please keep me, my Grandpa and Grandma, and all my family in your prayers.

Paris!!!

On May 8 a group of six sleepy but excited people piled into a car at 4:45 AM.  Why?  Because we were going on a day trip to Paris!  And yes, we were perhaps just a little crazy to undertake such a trip in one day, but we sure had a blast!

The first thing we did was find our parking garage (easier said than found in the streets of Paris).  It's quite amusing and nerve-wracking to see how many cars have dents in the bumpers.  I think it must be pretty close to half, if not more.  And that makes me really shake my head at the number of Lamborghinis in Paris.  The cost of fixing one of those would probably pay for my entire university education. 



After parking we set off on foot for the metro station.  Oom Gert Jan's French is quite incredibly good.  I, much to my frustration, could not seem to recall more than a pair of sentences in French.  Three months ago I could get by in French.  I could easily write a page of French about any topic I wanted.  But now I've been focussing so much on learning Dutch that all my French seems to have hidden away not to be recalled.  All that comes to my mind are Dutch words.  But fortunately I can still understand if, people speak slowly, and reading French isn't a problem.  Still, it would have been handy and fun to be able to say something too, especially after all that work for five years.  But I'm sure that if I studied French a few hours it would all quickly come back.

Anyways, we bought metro day passes, waited for the next metro to come, and then all hopped on.  I am so glad that Oom Gert Jan was there to be our navigator, because looking at those confusing metro maps I wouldn't have a clue where to go or what to do.

Our first destination: the Eiffel Tour!

 

From a distance it doesn't look super special.  The only special thing is that it's THE Eiffel Tour, and quite possibly the best-known tourist attraction world wide.  So that made it pretty exciting.

 

 

The close you get the bigger and more beautiful it looks.  Once we were underneath it I could definitely tell why so many people would travel thousands of kilometers to see it.

 

After that we headed to our next sightseeing destination.  On the way we stopped at a posh little café to get some coffee (or hot chocolate for the non-coffee drinkers). 

 

And then it was off to the L'Ouvre.  It used to be a palace of the king of France, but now it's a huge museum.  I cannot imagine living in such a huge building.  It would probably take two days just to walk around the entire first floor.  And then there are another three or four, or more floors on top of that yet.  And this was just one of the king's palaces.  It makes 24 Sussex Drive look... well pretty insignificant.

 

Me at the L'Ouvre!

 

Our next stop was Les Invalides, yet another beautiful building with a gorgeous gold dome.  Beneath the dome is the burial place of Napoleon.  In the picture below there are lots of people looked down to his grave, and you can also go down and then in order to see it you have to look up.  He really was egoistic, because he wanted to be buried so people can 'bow' to him or look up to him.

And here I'm standing by a Napoleon figure and trying very hard to look serious (and failing miserably).  I never could keep a poker face.   

 

Oh yes, and there's also a magnificent chapel there.  And I saw this random thing with really dirty water.  I was wondering why anyone would put that in a church when I saw some people come up, dip their fingers and cross themselves.  Apparently it's holy water that's supposed to get you out of purgatory sooner.  But purgatory doesn't exist, and it's quite sad that people think they please God by doing that.  Still, it was fascinating to see that for the first time.

 

 

Next stop: L'Arc de Triumph!  That is one very gorgeous piece of architecture.  I also didn't realize how very central it is in Paris.  All the roads go straight out from there in every direction.  I  haven't seen such long straight roads in a very long time.  In the Netherlands most roads are very curvy and random, which makes finding things very confusing sometimes.

 

And the monument below has an amusing story.  It's covered with hieroglyphics, and Napoleon stole it from Egypt!  It must have been quite an undertaking carrying that huge stone thing all the way to France from Egypt.  But there it still stands.

 

I think this is another picture by the L'Ouvre.  But I'm not entirely positive.  All those famous buildings sort of blend together after a while.  In any case, it was very beautiful, and so were the flowers.

 

This bridge is covered completely with locks.  The idea is that you buy  a lock (and there are dozens of vendors selling them) and then write your name and your true love's name on it and clip it onto the bridge.  Then you will live happily ever after together.  I wonder if the bridge will fall down eventually from the weight of all those locks.

 

And this is a sideways picture of me walking beside the Seine River.  I may have done something my mother would never let me do- walk along the ledge.  But it was so tempting I couldn't resist, and don't worry, I didn't fall. 

 

And then our final two stops: Sacre Coeur, a gorgeous church with incredible stained glass windows, and les Champs D'Alyses de Montmartre, which was also a beautiful church.  There we even got to watch the choir singing and the bishops (or whatever they call those fancy men in robes) walking around.  There are also places everywhere in the church where you can buy candles, or pamphlets, or souvenir tokens.  I wonder if anyone from that church ever read Mark 11 where Jesus is so angry that people sold stuff and turned his temple into a 'den of robbers'. 

 

So that was our fantastic day in Paris!  We left around 7:30 for our long drive home and arrived around 12:30.  Normally it's only four hours but there was major traffic on the highway due to construction.  We were all pretty stiff by the time we got back to Rotterdam.  And boy did I ever sleep well last night!

 

But wow!  What an adventure that day was.  Thank you very much to Renee and Oom Gert Jan and Tante Joke for taking Kim and I there!