Nürnberg Adventures

Nürnberg is my craziest trip so far. I left Munich on a cold Monday morning last week with no accomodation booked. I had planned to explore the city with a friend I met while studying in Brussels. Accomodation had been complicated to work out and communication between the two of us very slow. In the…

Leaving

I spent the last two days in Brussels numb. Numb because I allowed my heart to freeze rather than feel the pain. I did not want to leave. It was a hard week of goodbyes.  My closest friend and I planned to fill the weekend with the things we hadn’t done. But we spent most…

Look inside

I am still in the thick of study abroad. Only a month to go. But when I look at how much I accomplished in the first month of my studies, it doesn’t look so short. Living in Belgium has taught me so many things. Here is the spiritual update. I have questioned God and been…

Autumn

I know that it is Autumn. I have been looking forward to a cold Christmas. I’ve told myself 100 times that I will get two winters this year and so miss Spring… But my brain doesn’t understand. I am looking for the new flowers. My church choir started practicing Christmas carols and all the songs…

World-Changer

This is a post copied from a different blog by DAUGHTERS OF CAMBODIA (a super cool organisation). It was posted back in 2011 and over the years since it has had an impact on my life again and again at different times when I’ve been in different places. So I thought I’d share it with…

Ghent

It used to be the second largest port in Europe (after Paris), then it was a rebel city under King Charles V of Spain and at its peak it had 53 churches. Two friends and I traversed the breadth of this small city. We climbed the Belfry Tower to see out over the city and…

Friends from a different land

Tonight I went to help give food and clothing to refugees at one of the trains stations. It’s called Food4Friends, cause it doesn’t matter why they came here, they are people who need friends and food. The refugees arrive at this station and then have no where to go. I met a man who had…

Partying Studying

The weekend before midterms. How is it the middle of the semester already? My host family all abdicated the house. So two of my friends came over Friday night, bringing study snacks and brownie cake for desert, while I manned the dinner. We chatted and slept very deeply. 8am this morning, it was up for…

Berlin

One of the first things I noticed was the quite. I only heard twice the sirens of emergency vehicles over the whole weekend. There was plenty of construction work going on (like everywhere I’ve been in Europe), but it didn’t disturb the streets. Neither the shops nor transport systems had music. There was no noisy…

If you are wondering….

Life in Brussels has engulfed me. I have fallen in love with the city (predictable, I know, but it really is wonderful). Here is a synopsis of my first four weeks in my new home spread over two posts. Week 1: I arrived. The first three trains that could have taken me to my new…

Trains and bookstores

Today I caught a train in Brussels. Everyone said I never would. So, of course, I should. The vines hung down the stone walls like goo seeping towards the shower drain. Drawn by an invisible force – the chasm through the heart of the city, from which the city cannot be seen, what the city…

Days without rain

This is Belgium. This is Brussels. This is my uni. This is my home. The two and a half weeks have been magical. I have not written sooner because at the end of the first week it felt like I had only been here two days. The week went slower, but still I feel like…