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Monday, August 27, 2007
While last weekend seemed rather rainy, this weekend was filled with the sunshine of friends. We started our weekend early by having Elli over for the night on Thursday. The highlights of that night included us girls kneading pizza dough by throwing it across the kitchen to each other (we only missed a couple times), doing headstands in our room (until dad told us to stop making so much noise), and learning a couple German phrases. Friday night, we had the Cloherty's over for tea. After torturing them with hundreds of photos from our trip to America, we decided to take a walk up to the school basketball courts. While I'm pretty sure we shamed the name Hoosier, we had a great time playing around. Then Hollie drove us around the block in her new car before they had to go home. Alastair and Margaret McEwen came over for lunch on Saturday. We talked and laughed for a few hours with them and then got picked up by the Wetzels (Elli and her aunt and uncle) for a sport night at their church. We played soccer, volleyball, and badminton. Well...at least we attempted to. After going 10 weeks without a single 7 C's meeting with the Glovers, we finally decided to just show up at Matt and Justine's door last night. We procceded to drink Matt's famous coffee and solve all the problems of the world from about 8:30 until Matt finally took us home at midnight. Thank the Lord for the blessing of good friends.       [us girls, Elli, and Benji--who totally showed us up in handstands]     [us girls with Hannah, Hollie, and Georgia Cloherty]   [me and Elli at the sports night]   [walking Elli home last night after church and before we walked up to the Glovers'] Charity | 12:15 pm Comments-[ comments.]
Friday, August 17, 2007
So, Maria and I pretty much outlined the book of Genesis in biology class yesterday. It was quite the interesting discussion. "So, like, what do Buddhists believe about evolution?" (classmate) "Uh, I really have no idea." (me&Maria) "Well, I was thinking about doing my English paper on Evolution vs. Religion." "You mean...Evolution vs. Creation?" "Oh, yeah! That's great! You know all about that stuff, right? So what does your religion believe? Christianity, right?" "We believe that God created the universe in 6 days." "Wow, you really believe this? You guys live in a completely different world than I do. But keep going! Here, write down everything you know." "Uhh...don't you want to ask me questions or something? I mean, I don't know what you want to know..." So we started with what God did on each day of creation and went from there. I told him he could just read the Bible, but, of course, he said that would take way too long. We talked about dinosours, the fossil record, the Flood, the age of the earth, geneologies...you name it. We got onto other topics related to Christianity, as well -- especially when we talked about the origin of sin. "See, that's the part that seems so harsh. I mean, saying that everyone is basically evil?" "Well, think about a little kid. You don't have to teach him how to sin. A little one-year-old will go and deliberately do what you tell him not to do." "Hey, she's right. I have a granddaughter just like that!" (Yes, we have a lady who is a grandmother in our class. She's only like 40, but still.) We talked for about half an hour -- mostly during our break. There were some great questions, comments and points of discussion. It was pretty neat -- defending our faith and even going on to share the gospel. When we first started these classes, we had several discussions about Christianity. But once people found out how "weird" we were, they kind of laughed at us and then stopped asking us questions. So it was encouraging to have this opportunity again. I asked the guy who started the discussion if I could read his paper when he was done. It will be really interesting to see what he adds and takes away from what we said. "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." --1 Peter 3:15-16 Charity | 9:18 am Comments-[ comments.]
Monday, August 13, 2007 Promised Photos What an excuse for a post, eh? Now that you've read about it, you can see exactly what we did in the city! Unfortunately, we weren't able to go again this weekend...but I think we are going to watch a movie with Elli tonight. We are so excited about our new friend -- and so very sad that she is going back to Germany in less than 3 weeks!  Waiting for the train in Frankston. It was COLD!  After talking for the first 40 minutes or so, we decided to listen to music. Elli actually liked some of the same artists that we do.  Maria and I didn't have the luxery of seperated headphones...  We finally made it to Flinders Station. People, people everywhere!  We walked by the Pixar Studio building and had to get this photo by the famous lamp and ball.  We were trying to decide who was cuter here...  We were a little hesitant to take photos inside the cathedral.  The train station is pretty cool looking.  We were tempted to ride one of theses...but walking is a much better way to see the city (not to meantion a lot CHEAPER!)  This is actually a rather cool looking lamp post, but here's a much more lovely close-up of our faces.  We had to take a Starbucks stop. Elli said her friends in Germany would love to see a photo of her at a Starbucks in Melbourne, Australia.  Like I said, we had waaaaay too much fun with the elevator...  We tried SO hard to get this photo in the elevator. Somehow we thought turning the camera up-side-down would help. Notice Elli's camera in the bottom left? She got a much better photo (like one that included both of Maria's eyes).   Elli the photographer, Maria the navigator, and Tamara the poser.  Cuteness runs in the family you know...  This was another one of those rather-difficult-to-take photos. Can you see all four of us poking out there?  Elli had her first taste of an Ozzie pizza (salami and cheese with egg on top -- YUM!).  And THIS was when we got all the strange looks. We were laughing so hard!  One of the many trams we used to travel around. Well, I guess that's it because Blogger isn't letting me upload anymore. Hope you enjoyed getting a little glimpse of our fun! Charity | 7:35 pm Comments-[ comments.]
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Sorry about the last post. I was very jetlagged and a little emotionally worn out. I'm finally in a blogging mood once again, and I'm wondering if I actually have any readers left. Yesterday afternoon was one of the best I've had here in Oz. I've had many grand days here, but yesterday had some extra thrill to it. Maria, Tamara, and I went with our new friend Ellie to Melbourne for the afternoon. We trained there and back, chatting the whole way there and practically sleeping the whole way back. Picture this: three Americans showing a German girl around an Australian city. Yep. We had a very good time. We did a lot of walking around, snapping photos, laughing, and figuring out which trams to take where. We went inside Saint Paul's cathedral, which was absolutely gorgeous. It was kind of sad, though, with all the Catholicism. I couldn't help but keep the phrase "graven images" in my mind while walking through the glorious building. After a bit more walking around, we decided to take a little Starbucks stop. Then we decided using the elevator we saw there was a must and went up and down a few times, laughing hard and taking lots of pictures. I asked Ellie if she thought we were crazy, but she said she was having a great time, as well. I don't know how excited the people waiting outside the elevator were, though... Pizza was sounding pretty good, so we stopped at La Porchetta for dinner. After that, we spent about 15 minutes trying to get a picture of all of us jumping in the air. It never really worked, but it was definitely worth all the laughs and the looks people gave us. We had to make one more stop before we got back on the train: this lovely little ice cream shop that we went to with the Glovers, Blakstons, and Allen and Zachary when we went to the city for my and Tamara's birthday celebration. We took a tram all the way down one street, only to find that we had to walk right back up because the ice cream place was across the street from where we'd started! I was exhaused when we got back home but also really excited about the time we'd had and the possibility of going again. Who wants to come next weekend?? I'll try to post some of the fabulous photos we took at some point. **Side note: we miss you Americans dearly and we're glad for all the love from you Australians. God is good to us. Charity | 9:39 pm Comments-[ comments.] |
My life is not my own, for I belong to Christ.