alaska

so now that i've been on a cruise i realize what a wonderful way it is to travel. You get wonderful accomodations, great service, awesome food, shows every night, awesome scenery on the trip and amazing stops along the way. All for quite a good price when you look at everything you're getting.

so why am i telling you this? well, sandy and i are thinking of going on a cruise to alaska leaving from seattle on may 20th. it's under 1000 dollars and really, after you pay deposit, that's only like a hundred bucks a month. anyway, you should all come!!! i don't know who you all is, but i thought i'd throw it out there, because i think it would be really fun to have a bunch of people you know on a cruise at the same time.

so if anyone was looking for some holidays around that time, you should sign up!! :) just a thought.

textbook truth

I was reading through one of the books I have to read for school this fall called Psychology: through the eyes of faith. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I loved it and it inspired me and challenged me in so many ways. anyway, there's one chapter on behavior and attitudes-action and faith. and at one point, it suggests that at times faith follows action. action follows faith naturally, but it is talking about feelings as well and we needn't wait to feel a certain way to go do it, because oftentimes we never will. Anyway, I wanted to throw a quote that's included in the chapter from C.S. Lewis:

"Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material world is the only reality: disbelieve in Him and you must face hours when this material world seems to shout at you that it is not all. No conviction, religious or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all (these doubts) in the soul. Only the practice of faith resulting in the habit of faith will gradually do that...
People ...are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is... act as if you did. Do not sit around trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."

Another quote later on from the authors of the book:

" The principle has its limits, of course. W can become so preoccupied with doing things that we no longer have time to quietly receive God's Word of grace and direction for our lives. Like the Pharisees, we can sustitue our deeds for God's act or think that any kind of action will do. To say that action nurtures growth in faith is not to tell the whole story of faith. But it does tell part of the story."

One more quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 'The Cost of Discipleship':

"Only he who belives is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes...Jesus says: 'First obey, perform the external work, renounce your attachments, give up the obstacles which separate you from the will of God.' Do not say you have not got faith. You will not have it so long as you persist in disobedience and refuse to take the first step."

Okay, so these are just a few little glimpses of what I've been reading and thinking about. Wish I could write it all out! But I would love to know anyone's thoughts on this: feel free to comment!

My new friends!

After the sad events of last night and after sleeping next to an empty (but very clean) fish tank, i decided it was time to get some new ones. So Theo and I went to the pet store and bought eight new fish and then we named them all (okay i didn't really because i suck at naming things, but i was the final authority on whether the name was good.. haha) look how clean the tank is! They're all really happy and it's really cute because they all follow each other around in a little group.

So their names are Ugfi, Bubbles, Grover, Nemo, Diva (has an orange line around the lips so it looks like she's wearing lipstick), Marble, Sinatra and Max!!

Soon I will go buy more so we can have dumploads of fish in the tank! Yay for fish!

very sad

my fish tank was green and it was gross and i felt bad for the fish.

the green, dirty tank looked gross in my room.

Gabby had no side fins left and her back fins were almost gone.

i thought i'd surprise my fish and clean their water.

i know you're supposed to do gradual water changes as to not shock them.

but i wanted the green water to be gone.

so i went through the tedious process of emptying forty gallons of green water into my toilet and then filling up forty gallons of water in a bucket in my shower.

i scrubbed all the plants and buildings for them.

dumped them into the clean water, and they were happy.

the tank hasn't been cleaner and looks great.

i came home and they were all floating around sideways.

now my last three fish are dead, sitting outside in my garbage can with water waiting to be thrown into the field of dead fish.

my fish tank is clean, but it is empty.

this makes me very sad.

Venice/Burano

A few final pictures from the cruise

sunrise at 5:30 am















Ronny






















Peter




























A volcano/island in the middle of the sea. Woke up in the morning went on the deck and there it was!
















Every night there was a different towel animal on the bed.




































Everyone we had dinner with: Cathy, Janet, Sammy, Terri, Ronny and Julie. As well as our servers Yulius and Made.















Me and Jo
















Dancing on the ship. The one older woman in the middle is Rose. She's 80 and goes on cruises and i honestly think that by the end, everyone knew her and was friends with her! She was great! And she was always going to sit with all different men and would always bring them out on the dance floor in the evenings! haha! she was a hoot!

Dancing on the Ship

Pics from the boat

This picture down below is us playing family feud on the boat! Every family got to go up and if you lost a round you got kicked out. We stayed up there for seven rounds and broke a new record!! YAY!

Seventh Stop: Mt. Etna, Italy

Our final stop was in Messina which is in Sicily in Italy. We took a two hour drive to a live volcano, Mt. Etna. The volcano has three peaks and it has had a few big lava eruptions in the past. It was really cool driving up the mountain, because you could see the hardened river of lava as it wound down the mountain from the last eruption. Very interesting indeed. We couldn't really understand our tour guide because her English wasn't so good, so that was too bad. By the time she finished a sentence it had taken her so long that you forgot what the beginning of the sentence was. But all in all, the volcano was beautiful and I'm glad we got to go!

Sixth Stop: Malta

The first thing I learned this day was that Malta is a country. Felt a bit geographically bad that I didn't know that before, but now I do! And it is as a matter of fact that island on which Paul was shipwrecked on his way to Rome. I knew I recognized the name of it somewhere! Anyway, Malta is a country that has been the brunt of many wars. So there is a lot of things that are destroyed and a ton of history there. We went to the capital and for the moment the name of it has disappeared from my mind! Then we went to the old capital, Mdina. It was interesting comparing the two and seeing both as well. As the boat pulled into the harbor, it was the most beautiful sight, as you can probably see from a couple of the pictures! Anyway, time i Malta was good and I'm glad I got to visit that country!

Fifth Stop: Ephesus, Turkey

Kusadasi (the port where we were) was probably my favorite stop! Had the best tour guide that we had our whole trip and everything we saw was great! Besides the sweltering heat of course! :) Our first stop was in the mountains at the place that's been declared as Virgin Mary's house where she lived in her later years. Then we went to the Ancient city of Ephesus and walked through all the ruins. It was so neat to be there and imagine what it must have been like a couple thousand years ago! Only a fourth of it is excavated, so there's much more. After walking through the ruins and stopping to look at different things, we went to a Turkish carpet demonstration. I think they must have rolled out at least fifty carpets for us! I wasn't too jealous of them having to roll them all up again! After that we headed back to the ship again.


The city's gate entrance at the top of the hill. It's narrow so that when people came with all their products, they would have to pay them to help, because their wagons and such wouldn't fit through! Good business mind!



The Library of Ephesus



The entry into Ephesus. The sea and port used to be close by, but over the years it's receeded and is a lot farther back and now it's all land.


This is the arena where Paul preached before a mob started and seized him. He was talking about the one true God and all the merchants of idols where angry because he was taking business away from their stores.

More Pictures from Ephesus

One of the early brothel advertisements

Fourth Stop: Santorini, Greece

In the morning, our cruise ship pulled into a harbor area which was surrounded by mountains and on top of the mountains were all white houses with the blue roofs. This is where a lot of pictures from Greece come. We took walking tours through two different little villages and it was neat to just walk row upon row and see all these white houses with their bright blue roofs and doors! Between all the houses were just narrow walkways. It was neat. Afterwards we went to a beach which had black sand. The water was very refreshing (for my feet at least...) We had the option on the way back of going down the mountain on a donkey, but we decided to go to the cable cars instead. I'm a bit sad we didn't take the donkeys, but after having talked to some of the people who did take the donkeys down, I'm kind of glad we didn't! But everything here was absolutely beautiful!

More Pictures from Santorini

Third Stop: Olympia, Greece

Our third stop was the historic ruins of Olympia in Greece where the first Olympics took place back sometime before Christ (don't remember the exact date..) The ruins and excavations were absolutely amazing to see! And to imagine what life must have been like back in those days and what the city must have looked like. It was great to get a bunch of the history behind it, but also be able to just walk around and look at everything.