Birthday!

I celebrated another year of being alive- go me!- on Tuesday. It started out quite early- we had pancakes at ISB which meant a 6AM wake up! It was really fun- they all knew it was my birthday so they sang happy bday and all that good stuff. I was the designated pancake flipper of the day but did not get to eat any cuz we had so many students we ran out of cakes! good problem I guess! Then we went to the office and at lunch Claire, one of the HS students, brought me up a cake she had made! it was delicious! and very thoughtful-it made my day! Then at night a bunch of friends got together for dinner, pot luck, and games. They had asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said- carrot cake with cream cheese icing and to play games- no one ever plays games over here! It was really fun and funny to see peoples personalities come out- especially those who really don't like games-i didn't think those people existed til I moved over here-but they do! Here are a few pictures from the evenings festivities. Here are Janet, Fiona and I. The party was at Fiona's place.

Everyone chatting whilst standing around scrumptious food!

The spread- including carrot cake, pumpkin bread and spinach artichoke dip- my favorites!! thanks all of you wonderful cooks!

Me after I blew out my candle- take note that everyone has those noise makers you usually have at new years- cuz this was my new year!! it got REALLY loud for a few minutes while everyone went crazy with their noise makers.

Halloween is celebrated at weird times and in different ways over here. There are only a few neighborhoods that even do trick or treating. The way it works is if you live in that neighborhood and you would like to hand out candy you sign up ahead of time so they can put your house on a map they give out. Then if you want to participate by actually going and getting candy you are supposed to drop off a bag of candy at a drop off point the day before. Then those people distribute all the candy to the houses that said they would hand it out. All very interesting. So we went tick or treating Thursday in Overijse. We went with Paul and Janet and their kids as well as about 7 High schoolers. Here are 2 VERY small pics that you can click on to make bigger.

then Friday night one of the schools had their Halloween dance and they asked us to chaperon. We made it a girls night and invited some of our friends along- here are Cassandra, me, Fiona, Celine and Liesl. After the dance they all came back to my place and we ordered pizza and watched "When Harry met Sally." Fun girls night.

Really!! In what reality is this my life?!!

Seriously! There are so many time I think to myself, "Who would have thought?" So here is the reality of the past few weekends in my life. 2 weekends ago ISB had their homecoming so the teams from Paris came up to play against them Friday and Saturday. I have some dear friends that do YL in Paris- the Usrey's. Since they are AMAZING YL leaders they decided to take the 3 hour drive and come watch their friends play. Bonus for me cuz they got to come and see my apartment, we shared some tea and then after the games we went out to eat! Liesl joined us after the games and we went to Le Klepto(sound a little shady-i know!). We had such a great time and the older lady and gentleman next to us seemed to really enjoy our fun as well:) Here we are after enjoying a nice long dinner together!

Then last weekend it was off to Hungary for a ladies weekend with the all the women who either work for or has a spouse who works for YL in Europe. We stayed in a cute little town called Szentendre which is just outside Budapest. The 3 of us who came from Brussels had a very early start-we met at 5:30 AM to drive to the airport. When we got there and checked in the woman asked us if we would be willing to get bumped because they had overbooked. It would mean we would actually get a direct flight(instead of the layover one we had) and we would get 175 euro. I said yes but turned to Liesl and Janet and cynically said, "yeah but they never actually need you to get bumped-they always just ask." and the lady behind the counter started laughing at me. She told us to go to our regular gate and if they needed us to be bumped they would let us know there. So we were sitting there enjoying some lagging conversation(it was too early) when we hear our names called over the loudspeaker! I started to actually believe that perhaps we would get bumped since they usually only call the people who actually do get bumped. SO we walk up to the counter with smiles on our faces thinking we are about to get a direct flight and 175 euros only to be told they don't need us to get bumped-BUMMER!!! so we had to have a layover in Munich which ended up being like 2 hours longer than it was supposed to be because of fog there. Anyway we got to Budapest 2 hours late but it was well worth it when we stepped outside to GORGEOUS weather!!
Here is a picture of me in one of the little alley streets in Szentendre.

When we went up this alley we smelled something wonderful and found this little stand with a long line. So we paid our 300 whatevers(I don't remember what the money was called) and got this funnel cake like thing that was lovely!! This is my friend Kate pointing out our scrumptious pastry.

There were tons of little churches in the town- they were all really quaint but this one had these beautiful fall leaves out front!

This is just at one of the shops selling painted pottery.

Saturday night we went into town to eat at a Hungarian restaurant. It was really cool. The main room had tons and tons of musical instruments hanging from the ceiling and walls. We were in a smaller rooms that had doors to close it off. Apparently they had been warned that YL women are loud:) Here is my little table. Again I ate with the Usreys(2 weekends in a row!) as well as Kristy. Kristy did a great job of entertaining us with here hysterical stories!

SO that really is my life. Yes I do work in between the many travels:) It still amazes me the places I have gotten to see and experience while I have been here. But I have to say that the best part of last weekend was just being with women who totally "get it." They know exactly what I go through on a daily basis-living in another country and doing ministry. 4 times while we were there we got together and did worship and then our friend Paula talked to us. She challenged us with the question, "Who do you run to?" The last day we all got to celebrate the things God has done in our lives over the past year. It was truly a privilege to sit in a room full of beautiful, wise, Godly women and cry with them and cheer with them over the things God is doing in and around them. What a blessing! It is always good to be reminded of the bigger picture when sitting in the midst of it.

No Leprechaun's!

So my Ireland adventure was a success. I flew into Shannon where mom and dad and Aunt carol and uncle ed picked me up at the airport. I didn't check any bags so I was out of the airport before actual landing time! Pretty good Ryan air! We wound our way through the Irish countryside- not for the faint of stomach -and got to their "house" around 11:30pm. The next day we headed off to the Cliffs of Moher- it just sounds ominous!! They were gorgeous! Here are just a couple of picks. It was really windy and a few times sprinkled on us but for the most part it was actually quite nice.

Here I am going where I shouldn't:) go figure!!

After the Cliffs we drove along the coast for a few hours just taking in the amazing scenery. I was a little obsessed with the cemeteries- they really do have tons of these Celtic crosses everywhere.

On Tuesday we decided to do the Ring of Kerry but needed a hearty english breakfast to get us going! SO we stopped in this cute little town and ate in a little cafe- really we did not get an english breakfast that morning- just some great scones, bagels, and other breakfast delights.

This is some of the scenery along the ring of Kerry- I took tons of pictures but you get the idea- it's gorgeous!

That night we stopped in Kilarney just to walk around for a bit. This is my favorite store of the night. Great little book store with an upstairs. When I went in books were just crammed everywhere-gotta love it!! When I am old and gray I am going to own a little bookstore in Ireland-decision made!

This is my last day in Ireland. We went to the town of Innis for a little to walk around. This is Dad, Mom and I outside a flower shop.

This is my favorite picture of mom and I. It is in the Bunratty Castle that we went to. They also have an amazing folk park museum where they have brought in homes from all over Ireland. In some of the houses there were actually older women baking bread! Yummy!!

Here's the outside of the Castle.

This was in the Folk park part. They had all these little shops that you could go in and see what they would have been like during different time periods. They also had all of these bike sitting around. They weren't chained or anything. Just propped up against walls and things. To bad the tires were flat or we coulda raced down mainstreet!

So GREAT trip. Makes me want to go back and explore Ireland a bit- and for 35 Euro round trip- Why not?!!!