Feist and Canada

My wonderful husband bought us tickets to see Feist this weekend for my birthday present. So we are headed to London, Canada tomorrow for what should be an amazing show. Feist is awesome, she is one of my favorites right now. You have to check her out if you haven't already:

Kate Nash- Nicest Thing

She is my new favorite.

The "One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song"

This is amazing.

Lunar eclipse & Going to Spain

My dad and I took pictures of the lunar eclipse last week, it was pretty cool. Doesn't it say in the Bible somewhere that the moon will turn blood red at the end times?



I am flying out to Spain at 4:00pm today. I will be in Barcelona for a week visiting my best friend Anna Keeler. Pray for safe travels and a great time!

Poás and Grecia Viaje

I went to Poás Volcano today, It was a really cool day. God's creation blows my mind. It is one of the few active volcanoes in the world where you can actually walk up to the edge of the crater. It is considered to be the biggest crater in the world. It smelled like cold fart because of the lake of molten sulfur and an altitude of 8,884 feet. It was a really breathtaking view. I also went to a cute little village in the Volcanic mountain range. I ate lunch with a Mexican couple and had a cool conversation. Well, pretty much any conversation I have in Spanish is cool to me because I am so happy and proud of myself that I even had a conversation. Guess what we ate? Beans and rice. AHHH.

Volcan Poás from far away. Doesn't look like there is too much going on over there. The stuff in front is a coffee plantation.
The crater.
All of that steam smells like cold farts. And it was blowing right in my face.
My attempt to prove that I was there, but the cold fart steam took over and you cant even see the crater.
This church was brought to Grecia, Costa Rica in pieces over the course of two years. It was a gift from Belgium, they made it metal to protect from the volcanic ash.
Inside the church. It is called Iglesia de la Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.
On the way home. Mi linda Costa Rica.

I am so going here in February

Travel Travel...

I have so many small trips coming up, I turned down an opportunity to go to the Carribean Coast last weekend because I just felt like I needed some chill time. I'm already far from my real home, and then to do so much traveling on top of that, it really wears me out. Blah. There are so many little trips coming up.

Nov 16th, 17th, 18th- Going with a friend Lucia (Korean Missionary that I work with at the Foundation) to Volcano Arenal and hot springs for three days. 4 hour bus ride.

Nov 24th- Going with Lucia and some other friends to Volcano Poas for the whole day. 2 1/2 hour bus ride.

Dec 1st, 2nd- Going with the family to the beach for a few days as a goodbye thing. 2 hours away.

Dec 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th- Going with Val and Steph (my sisters here) to Nicaragua to translate for a mission team from Ohio. 8 hour bus ride.

Dec 12th- Flying home to the United States of America where I will speak English, eat chicken fajita roll ups from Applebees, and have a cell phone once again.

Tan emocionada, voy a hacer poo poo en mis pantalones

So I have three friends who I have been my best friends since middle school, and one since we were 4 years old. Audrey, Anna, and Kirsten. This year, we have scattered to all different parts of the globe. I of course am in Central America until December. Kirsten is in Mount Pleasant, MI going to school at Central all year. Audrey is going to Central for the fall semester also, but in January she is going to school in England. Anna is an Au Pair in Barcelona until June. The longest I have went without seeing these girls has probably been about two or three weeks. When I get back I will see Audrey for two weeks, then she's off to Europe.

So I asked my friend Katy what she thought about going back to Europe for spring break (We went to Paris last year together). Of course she was all about it. We are going to Barcelona for a week to visit Anna and Audrey is going to meet us there! To make things more exciting, my dad told me today that he wants to come with us!

We of course are changing planes in Amsterdam once again, just to keep the tradition going.

And for those of you who didn't get it, the title of this post means "So excited, I am going to poop my pants."

No problem, I'll make you a ticket

I was on the phone with Ryan today and Carlitos told me to ask Ryan when he was going to come visit his house. Ryan said "as soon as you buy me a plane ticket." Carlitos came back to me a few minutes later with these:


He is so cute. I would love it if life was as simple as it seems to be for a 7 year old.

Un Fin de... Muy Loco

Holy Moses, last weekend made a great story to tell my future grand kids someday…

A group of 5 of us from the school decided to go to this town in the Nicoya Peninsula named Mal Pais. There were beautiful beaches, the sunsets were amazing, and we met some really cool people. First we took a boat taxi from Jacó to Montezuma on Friday morning. It was crazy because this little boat was like catching air on every wave that we hit. Our butts hurt SO BAD but we were laughing the whole time. We made it to Montezuma, which is this gorgeous little hippie town, ate lunch, and took a cab to the other side of the peninsula. It was gorgeous, undeveloped, REAL Costa Rica.

We arrived at our hostel, it was amazing. There were hammocks everywhere. Minus the moldy pillow, our rooms were really nice too. They were two story apartments, the boys upstairs, Bryony and I downstairs. There were no windows though so I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. We found Leffe Brune in the little store right next to our hostel, so we drank good beer and watched the sunset Friday and Saturday night. There were people there from every corner of the globe. Hostels are so cool here because all of the same types of people are staying there. I have met so many people that speak so many different languages so I have just asked them all how to say “I love you” so I can take a little bit of that language with me. So far I have 9: English, Hebrew, Swedish, German, Swiss German, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Spanish. We just relaxed in our hammocks the whole weekend. It was great to get out of Jaco and not have to see any old tourists in there giant beach hats and obnoxious voices. The old tourists here are just crazy. They don’t speak a lick of Spanish, so they treat the people here like they are stupid for not speaking English. They like raise there voice and do some form of crazy sign language to get what they want. Then they just get frustrated and like walk away. Sorry, but you are in Costa Rica?

So we set out at 9 AM Sunday from the hostel. We couldn’t just take the ferry back because it didn’t leave that morning. The plan was to take a cab form Mal Pais to this little town called Cóbano, catch the 12:45 bus, then take that bus to Parquera, catch the 2:30 Ferry across the gulf of Nicoya to Puntarenas, then catch the 4:30 bus to Jaco from Puntarenas. (look at the map of the Nicoya Peninsula posted below)

So we caught our cab to Cóbano ok, it only costed about $3 each. Then we tried to figure out this crazy bus sign in Cóbano, prayed that a bus was coming, it looked like it was written in like sharpie marker. We went to a soda for some quick lunch. While we were there this guy kept asking me and Bryony for a hair tie. I knew he just wanted to know where we kept our purses because he was trying to steal our stuff. The waitress told us to watch out because he was sketchy. He kept telling me that he didn’t want his girlfriend to see him with his hair down... Good one.
We made it on that bus ok and arrived in Parquera. Everyone on the bus was going to the ferry. This place was like the New York Stock exchange on steroids. We had to catch the ferry because it was the only way we would make the bus in the Puntarenas. We ran to the line but it was like 2:15 and the ferry left at 2:30 there was no way we were going to make it where we were at in line. Cars fit on this ferry too, and all of the people with cars had to get their tickets first before they sold tickets to the people who were just riding themselves over. Bryony and I came up with the brilliant idea to sneak into the car line and act like we didn’t speak Spanish and see if they would give us our tickets. We got to the front and they rejected us, and it was like 2:25. We were almost screwed, but Bryony (a 5’0 British girl) decided to just bust through these like 200 pound Costa Rican women and just scream for 5 tickets at the window, she did it after getting elbowed in the face, and we got our tickets! We sprinted onto the ferry just as the horn was blowing and they were closing the gates. We were cheering we were so happy, we didn’t want to get stranded there. So we rode this awesome ferry passing these islands all over the place and jumping fish.
We made it to Puntarenas at like 4:10 and we had to travel to the other side of the island to get the bus, so we thought “ok we will just have to take a taxi.” To our luck there were no taxis in sight and we ended up sprinting down the busy beach street while people are yelling "Vamos! Andale!"to make fun of us. We had heavy backpacks so it was more of a waddle sprint. We ended up making it to the bus stop and it was 4:30 on the dot, and no bus in sight. Another driver told us that the last bus had already left. I honestly wanted to cry, and just then it started pouring raining to add to our hopelessness. This crazy guy named "Louis" introduced himself to us and he was like "hey man I got a friend he take you to Jacó for 50 dollar." We were like umm no thank you I don’t want to be robbed and killed today. We found out from this street vendor that we could take a different bus up into the mountains, and then intercept a bus that was coming from San Jose, basically flag it down.
So we take a 5:00 bus to San Mateo in the mountains, and the bus driver dropped us off on the side of this rainy dark highway. He was like "Walk. that way, you catch a bus." I was thinking “holy crap, we are honestly going to walk like 25 kilometers tonight." So we are walking towards Jacó on this dark rainy highway with semis blowing past us every 5 seconds splashing more water on us. Keep in mind its pouring raining this whole time, like sheets of rain. And we are all in flip flops. We stopped and ate some fries at this little soda and just laughed at our circumstances. We started hiking again and right then a bus to Jacó came zipping by and we waddle-sprinted to flag it down. It was sooo packed we had to all stand up, we were soaking wet too. It was a good laugh because we were all thinking, there is no way this is happening, we are actually going in the right direction? We finally made it home at like 9. I couldn’t believe I was still alive. I at least got to see a lot of Costa Rica in one day. What an experience, like I said it will be a good one for the grand kids someday.

Here are some pictures from the weekend and a map of where we were:

I can't wait to be a Tica instead of a Dutchie

Last Sunday was Liz's birthday so Katy and I surprised her by driving her to see Copeland play in Toledo. She had no idea where we were going and she started to think that we were kidnapping her when we passed Williamston. By the way, don't go to Toledo, all that's there is a creepy gas station, and a run down venue with poop on the walls, seriously. But the show was great, we were 2nd row and they were amazing.

On the two hour drive back home, I got to thinking about Costa Rica. I'm so freakin excited. I'm going to be learning spanish, living in a 100% Latino (Tico) community, and becoming a part of a latino family. I leave August 15th, and I'm coming home in late December.

I think I've figured it out...?

It's been a season of life for me where I have done a lot of thinking. Recent events have made me see that I need to do some more planning on what I really want my life to look like, and what dreams and goals I have that are really realistic. I feel like I have finally come to a point where I've figured some stuff out, and that feels good. Italy is a no go. I think that my previous desire to go there was a combination of me freaking out/being selfish/having unrealistic and useless goals. I'm now planning on going away for a couple of months this fall to learn Spanish and do some missionary work in Latin or South America. I am excited that God has put this desire in my heart. I live with my parents and go to LCC, I have some growing up to do. I feel like this type of thing, pushing myself far outside of my comfort zone, spreading the gospel to people who have never heard it, is exactly what I need to grow as a person, and to also draw closer to God. So keep in mind that I just decided all of this over the past 48 hours and really had a change of heart after hearing Noel's message tonight. Please pray for what is in store for me, whatever that might be.

Sacré-Coeur

When I was in France, We went to the Sacré-Coeur. It is a giant church that sits on top of the highest point of the city, and you can look down on the whole city of Paris. When we got there it was like 10:30 so it was really dark. You could see the Eiffel tower in the distance and the lights from the city were beautiful. It's name means "the sacred heart" and it was seriously the most beautiful man-made place I've ever been. When we went inside to pray, there were candles lit everywhere and no one was allowed to speak at all. There is a massive painting of Jesus with his arms open across the ceiling of one of the domes. I was sitting in the pew with probably 50 other people around me, but I felt like I was by myself. I'm sure the other people felt like that too. It was so freakin beautiful, and I couldn't think about anything else but the beauty of what Jesus did for us. It is so beautiful. Forgivness is so beautiful. And when you see something that just takes your breath away, something about the beauty of it makes me remember how beautiful the cross is. I want to go back to that place, but oh yeah.... I live in Holt, MI.

A few pictures from Paris

Destination: Paris

So, I am going to visit a family friend who lives in Paris in 4 days. I have so much stuff to do before then because I'm going to be missing a week of school. I have set a goal to get all of that stuff done before Thursday night. I can't wait until Thursday comes and I will be stress free and France bound. I have never been to Europe. A good friend of mine, Katy, is coming with me. We plan to go jogging around Paris in the morning, take millions of pictures, play soccer in the park in front of the Eiffel tower, go wine tasting, say a prayer in the Notre Dame Cathedral (God will hear it better in there), and discuss theology while watching the sunset on the Seine River. It is going to be awesome to just get away from the routine life I have here for a week and clear my mind. Also, I just checked the weather and it is supposed to be in the mid-upper 50s while I’m there! Yes! I have an 8 hour plane ride on the way there, and about a 10 hour one on the way back, including a 5 hour stop in Amsterdam (hopefully we will find a way to leave the airport and accidentally get stranded there and never leave). I have so many books I want to read; hopefully I will make a dent on them there as none of my school text books will be in sight, I refuse to read anything about argumentative essays or abnormal psychology while I’m there. I’m praying for good health as I am just getting over a cold and my sister and dad both have the flu! I’m staying away from them the best I can. Pray for my travels and feel free to be jealous because you will be in Michigan and I will be sipping fine wine on the banks of the Seine. Mwahahaha.

Oi, lienda,
Bella che fa?
Bonita,
Bonita, Qué tal?
But, Belle,
Je ne comprends pas français
-Jack Johnson

I'm not sure what that means... something about being beautiful and not understanding French.

With love,
Franny

I want to go back to Kentucky

Yes!

My passport came in the mail! I was worried that it would come late. I'm going to Paris in 2 1/2 weeks! Despite the fact that my picture is extrememly unattractive and I will have to keep it for 10 years... I AM GOING TO PARIS.

Panama City here we come!

I leave for Florida in 2 days. I can’t wait to hear that ocean!
We beat St. Johns yesterday 3-2 and we play Lumen Christi tomorrow… they are a good team. It is kind of weird playing outside mid now after I have played in the center my whole life but I think it will be a good adjustment once I get it down. From how we played yesterday, I think we are a solid team.

Meaps are OVER! They were so hard! These past few days have gone by so slow… I just want to be on the beach sipping a cold drink.

Well I’m going to go pack for FLORIDA and do some other stuff… See ya!