the six amigas or whatever

For a lot of this trip to make sense, I feel  it's important that you know a few things about the girls I am traveling with. They are wonderful and funny, quirky and brilliant. Strange, charming and absolutely lovely. They have seen me groggy and trying to get to the airport at 4 a.m., tired after a long day, and frustrated with the fact that I still can't read maps.

And yet, they choose to love me anyway. There's something about traveling with and living in a community this small...It doesn't leave any dark, shadowy places to hide things. It shines harsh, honest light on every part of who we were and how we treat the people around us, and it has been incredible to watch us learn how to meet each other where we fall short.

Plus, I'm quickly figuring out that it's more about those things and less about the places we go. Although that part is pretty sweet too.

1. Steph. My roommate and personal cheerleader. This girl has more energy and encouragement than she knows what to do with.  She does things like get flowers for me after a long day of class presentations or surprise me with ingredients for a roommate cooking night just because I mentioned how much I wanted to use the kitchen a few weeks ago. She's also a morning person, which is convenient since I'm not. She lets me talk her ear off really late at night as we both try to process this incredible trip and even brings me coffee from breakfast when I decide to sleep through it because she's just that great. She asks me hard, good questions, and decides to find the fact that i'm all over the place endearing instead of highly irritating.

2. Jess. A seemingly normal girl who is actually just as strange as me. Jess is a dessert girl, and will always say yes to coffee and a pastry, so naturally, we get along well. She describes her dream style as "flower child bohemian meets rocker chic," which confuses the rest of us, who are slightly less savvy with fashion lingo, but we all agree that she is, indeed, half hippie and half rockstar. And although she's great at making anything more adventurous and fun, Jess has depth and wisdom beyond her 21 and a half years. She is rooted and steady, which makes her a fantastic listener and friend. Jess is one of those people who teaches you to float through life a little more, and I am a firm believer in the fact that everyone needs one of those.

3. Mads. The listener. And arguably our most valuable player. Madison is good at making anyone feel understood without uttering a single word. I think she's the easiest of us to be around because spending time with her is energizing. She is patient and kind and gentle with all of us, even if she's frustrated that we're running behind schedule. She doesn't want to talk about the fact that the fondue place we just ate at was really sketchy and weird and that I really shouldn't drink wine in warm restaurants, but instead just gives you water and a hug, which is what you really need. Mads is good at loving people consistently and WELL. Plus, she doesn't have class on Thursdays so we usually get to go on little train station dates which is kind of the best.

4. Kels. The nurturer. Kelsey is pretty much a more responsible and collected version of myself. We love to talk about Pine Cove things and introvert things and how much we both love Jessie Carver. We probably should have become friends a long time ago, but I guess it worked out okay. She's a little hard to get to know at first, mostly because she's so determined to get to get right to the heart of people. She just asks you so many dang good questions, and all of a sudden, you realize you've been doing all the talking. Kelsey lets the way she loves Jesus pour into all her conversations and interactions with people, which is wonderful and challenging. She likes to vandalize things, snapchat and drink coffee from a cute french press that doesn't actually belong to her in her spare time.

5. Lissa. Our resident hipster/Austin girl /cool, flannel-wearing girl. Lissa is basically up for anything all the time. She's a perfect mixture of being serious and silly, which makes her one of those people that you want to bring everywhere with you. She loves books, black coffee and doing English major things like reading out loud in class, so she's automatically a great person to see the world with. Our favorite ways to communicate include passing notes during philosophy and making strange faces across the table, neither of which involve actual words. Lissa has mastered the wool socks under lace up boots with a cable knit beret thing, so I am trying to learn her ways. A christian hipster if I ever saw one.

So, they're alright. I guess.

thin places and clovers

3:45 a.m. came just as early as I expected it to. People shouldn't even be allowed to wake up then, but no one asked me when they scheduled flights out of Maastricht at 7 something in the morning.

The good news was that I was going to Ireland, so I don't really expect any sympathy for any of this. If you're going to wake up in the middle of the night, it might as well be to catch a flight to Dublin for the weekend...so it's okay that you don't feel bad for me. I don't really feel bad for me either.

Packing was a little different for this trip since we were flying, so we had cleverly (I'm just going to pat us on the back for this one) put all our big stuff in one backpack to check and had rolled up the rest of our clothes (thank you Tridelt for teaching me how to fit 5 zillion tshirts in a basket) and crammed them in our tiny carry-on bags. So now I know I can pack lightly, which good and bad because now my father also knows I don't need as many clothes when we go places.

Anyway, we all made it out to the cab on time and headed to the airport. When I stepped up to the counter with my boarding pass in hand, I learned something horrible:

I had filled in my boarding pass with "Katie" instead of "Katherine," which is the name on my passport. So yes, that's my real name for those of you who didn't know, and yes this is a stupid rule. So now I was supposed to pay 160 euros both ways to get to Dublin, and considering that our tickets had cost us about 1/10 of that, I knew it wouldn't be worth it. Fortunately, I asked the woman at the counter if she could make a call to confirm the fact that I couldn't get on the plane without paying all this money, and it turns out that it was all fine and dandy. Praise the laaaawd.

It was all uphill from there. Once we landed in Dublin, we hit the ground running. After figuring out the bus situation, we got a bus pass for the three days and went to Brewley's for a lovely little Irish breakfast of pancakes and lattes. Also, Kels and Steph got porridge with Irish honey, just like the three lil bears. Cute people and cute porridge. I love it.

Then we were off to Trinity College Library, which is far and away the most beautiful library I've ever been in. After wandering around the library and filling our lungs with the smell of old books, we went back to our hotel to check in and drop our stuff off. This is why it's important to travel with people who are into the same kind of nerdy stuff you are.

Having had a little more than 3 hours of restless sleep the night before, I was about to fall over, so we took a nap break for my sake before finding our way to the Guinness warehouse. This was obviously a little out of my element, but the warehouse was one of the most fun and interesting parts of the weekend! We finished the tour at the top of the building, which had a view that overlooked all of Dublin. After dinner at one of the best restaurants I've eaten at so far, we went back to the hotel and were asleep by 10. Also, I got a certificate that says I can "craft the perfect pint of Guinness." My mama is proud.

The next morning, we woke up early again (although it's all relative I guess...it wasn't 4) to go back to the city center, where we would be departing for our day-long tour across Ireland. The Irish countryside was incredibly green, and the rain that sprinkled on and off throughout the day felt perfectly Irish.

After stopping at a few castles and in Doolin for lunch, we finally made it to the Cliffs of Moher. The Irish call these cliffs a "thin place," which means it's a place where they believe the veil between heaven and earth is a little thinner. I don't think thin places are just supposed to be scenic--there's something about them that makes God's presence more palpable. Something that makes you stop and pray. According to random and  unreliable things I've read about it on the internet, you can't really "look" for a thin place--it finds you.

These cliffs were that for me. I don't think these pictures do them justice at all, but the ones with people in them seemed to come the closest because you can see the sheer size of what we stood beside. We had about two hours to spend exploring the cliffs, and we spent all two hours climbing around and trying not to get blown over the edge.

So that was magical Ireland. And I got back home without paying 160 euros so there's that.

A love letter to Switzerland

Dear Switzerland,

I've never seen beauty like yours. I didn't know mountains could actually take the breath right out of me before I met you. The alps and their snowy peaks, the heavy fog that hung right outside our window in the mornings, the dark-stained wooden chalets that sprinkled the mountain. You are as close to a real-life snow globe as it gets. Filled with pine trees, chocolate, flannel and snow...swoon.

I don't want to jump the gun, but I think we might be soulmates.

You have a charm I can't quite put my finger on. Everything about you is just so effortless and lovely, and it seems that you have everyone else under the same kind of spell. During our short stay, we met so many people who came for a few days and stayed for a few weeks--a few months even. Believe me, if I didn't have this school thing going on, I would seriously consider spending the rest of my semester with you.

Your adventurous spirit inspired me, and considering all the rock-climbers, skiers and hikers, you must have that effect on a lot of people. Seeing your beauty made me want to take a stab at being brave, which is I guess what translated into my jumping off the side of a cliff. When the whole paragliding thing kind of fell into our lap, I knew I had to see you from the sky. Running down that hill and into the air is about as close to flying as I'll probably ever get, and experiencing you from those heights made me jealous of the birds, but also thankful for the fact that I don't have wings because I probably wouldn't ever come down. Or fly south for the winter or whatever.

Just know that you are such an incredible picture of our God's creativity. Everything about you pointed me back to Him.

Don't worry, I'll be back soon.

Love and eskimo kisses,
Katie

the middle of nowhere, germany

For those of you who know me really well, this probably won't come as a surprise...but I've come to realize that I love the still parts of this trip the most. Don't get me wrong--this little adventure is not at all about being still. It's about moving up and around mountains and oceans and about seeing new people and new places halfway across the world. It's about growth, about being tired in the best way, about changing. But it's been the train rides, the long, snowy walks to our hostel, the moments when we have a split second to soak it all up that really resonate with me.

I think it's because these moments are rare. It's because they meet me in the middle of nowhere, Germany, when I'm standing out in a blizzard and remembering how little I am. They find me on a train ride through the French riviera or beside the black forest, when I realize how much beauty in the world I haven't seen yet. How much I still need to see.

While the pace of this trip as a whole has been exhausting, I've been tired in the best, sore the day after a good workout kind of way. It's been challenging, for sure. Being tired, hungry and lost a lot of the time in strange cities will do that to you. But the Lord has been faithfully reminding me of the opportunity I have to serve those around me by choosing patience, joy and gentleness. Every. Single. Time. As I've gotten caught up in unfamiliarity and inconsistency, I am learning so much about what it looks like to stay close to my source and so much about investing in my community here.

SO. Germany was interesting. In an attempt at spontaneity, we googled "German cities by water and the black forest," threw them in a hat and chose one at random. After throwing the first few out (hehe)...we finally decided on Titisee and Stuttgart. We were really rooting for the black forest, and I'm not really sure why. I think we were imagining fairies and forest creatures. Maybe.

We woke up early to catch the 6 something train ride to Titisee, which is when this magical, snowy train ride through the black forest took place. When we finally connected our last train, we promptly got off at the wrong stop and realized we couldn't get back in the next hour or so. We killed some time inside a chocolate shop and played in the best snow I've ever seen. Once we got back to the right town, we were pleasantly surprised to see that Titisee was, indeed, a magical little lake town, covered in a thick blanket of snow. Still carrying our backbacks, we found our way to the lake we had seen on google images and found this.

Although you probably can't tell from the photo, the frozen, desolate lake was actually beautiful in its own kind of way. We found shelter from the snow in a tiny German restaurant, where we spent a lot of the afternoon eating spatzel, black forest cake (IN THE BLACK FOREST, GET IT?) and drinking hot chocolate while we watched the snow fall and relaxed. After dinner, we went back to the train station to catch the train to Stuttgart, where we would be spending the rest of the weekend.

First off, the hotel we were staying at was about a mile from the train station, which probably would have sounded a lot worse four weeks ago when I wasn't used to walking anywhere. The strange part about this little journey was that we ended up trekking through a residential area. Past a high school track, past little neighborhood streets. We walked silently, for the most part. Enjoying the peace and quiet of the snowy streets. Breathing in cold air is wonderful when the rest of you is warm.

When we arrived at the hotel, the lobby was dark and completely empty. Once we finally figured out the German area code, (there were lots of shambly attempts at this) we called the number (displayed on a very tiny and unimportant looking sheet of paper) and were directed to a tiny metal box, where we punched in a series of numbers. A key fell out, and were were directed to room 212, which the key would open...where we would find another keep for room 312. We then proceeded up an unlit flight of stairs and walked down an empty hallway to room 212. It was all very spy movie/horror movie, which was funny in hindsight but significantly less funny in the moment.

The next morning, we enjoyed the best breakfast ever and set out to explore the city of Stuttgart. After a little snowy shopping and sightseeing, we finished off the day with dinner at a great German restaurant (normal meat and potatoes finallyyyy) and spent the last part of the night at a trendy little college bar near the university.

Not too bad for drawing it out of a hat. Although we probably won't be doing it again any time soon.