....and she speaks...!

Good (almost) morning, Canada!  haha...okay, its almost morning here...!  Well, most of what has happened to D and I you´ve already read, or will read, from D....is that a confusing sentence to you all, or just to me? :P anyways, I basically just wanted to write, to let you all know that im not dead or anything!  D just likes to write, and im totally fine with letting her!  haha!  Germany is my favourite country so far - cause we´ve been to soooo many...not! I love the overcast weather, the smell of wet dirt and moss, the old buildings mixed in with the new, the amazing hospitality of the Ralph and Ruth and, of course, the chocolate, cheese and coffee....the best `c` words in my mind!  mmmmm.... :) I am starting to get the travelling-jitterbug feeling once more, so Im super pumped for our next travel time into Italy and Greece! In some ways, its the unofficial beginning of our trip...where we will finally put our survival skills to the test....I wonder, will we fight with courage and rely on the instinct (thats for you, Jordy!  and maybe holly, cause i doubt the rest of you have seen that movie!  Its called Sidekicks and involves Chuck Norris, if youre wondering!), or will we walk away with our tail between our legs? Obviously not option B, cause we´re awesome (;P) and totally ready for this next phase of our trip!

I also wanted to thank everyone for their prayers....I have definitely seen God at work in this trip! its actually quite amazing just how much He does provide for our needs! It has been a growing and humbling experience, and i hope that both D and I will continue to be humbled!  For the Lord is good and takes care of those who love him!

Happy (almost) Valentines Day everyone!  I like to think of this particular day as make-someone-feel-extra-loved-day.....give an extra hug, smile, or hello, for you never know how far it can go (words of wisdom, from Anna K)! Here is an early hug/smile/hello from D and I to you!

Keep Safe!

Well. :)

Our time in Germany is almost up, and it seems as though we just arrived. :) Last time we wrote, we had just spent a few days here, and now its been more than a week!


On Monday, Ralph, Ruth and a friend named Jonathon went to Heidelberg, and it was BEAUTIFUL. You'll see some pictures of it below, but deciding which pictures to put up was hard. It was so beautiful, and definately felt surreal at times, just too good to be true. God's creation, the trees and mountains and rivers.. It was indescribable. :) This trip is largely about, for me, learning and growing in appreciation for things I take for granted. In India, it was simple things, like water and food.. and safety? :)  Here in Europe, its so different. Food and water are easy to come by, but a smile on the street? ..Not impossible, I've learned, but it seems not as easy as in Canada. :) I am also starting to re-appreciate the beauty in everything. Its true, Saskatchewan is nothing like the rivers and hills and old buildings of Germany. But I miss it! There is something so picturesque and wonderful about the golden fields and rolling hills. I haven't found anything yet that compares. I have had the Rawling Brother's stuck in my head for days. :) "Silver sage on rolling hills..." ..Mmm, beautiful. This trip is also largely about learning and growing in appreciation for things that I just have never encountered before.
Something I have defiantely never encountered before are castles. Jonathon, Anna and I explored this one for a good couple hours. It was incredible. HUGE and soo beautiful.

 Inside the CASTLE! It was breathtaking.. I could live there, probably. Why not. :)

Ralph and Ruth had a retreat they are helping to put on this weekend for their church, so it was Anna and I.. home alone. Bad news..? Haha, no. We are responsible adults. .. It has been really fun. :) We went out and bought groceries, (that was an experience.. but I'm sure we gave some people in the store a laugh, so thats good, right?) :) and wandered downtown, and came across a few fun looking parks!! So, we had to play on them for a while. We felt like kids again.. but then, we often do. :)

 Doing a little trick riding in some of the random parks we've found.. :)

 Probably the scariest piece of playground fun we've ever been on. I think we were too big for it.. :)

 This was the most bizzare playground.. Take a look at this slide (..?) and you tell me.. what was the logic behind it???

 Again.. it just didn't make much sense. What are you supposed to DO? :) But it was fun!

When we went to Heidelberg on Monday, we didn't get a lot of chance to look around, so on Saturday, Anna and I went back. :)  After we were done with the parks, :) we took the street car (like a tram) to Heidelberg. It was so fun! It was maybe a 40 minute ride, with all the stopping and such. It was beautiful.

When we got there, we walked around, and started discovering little pockets of absolute beauty. 

 The beautiful old buildings are my favorite. :) 

(Ok, the word "beautful" is getting QUITE overused. So, I'm going to start using some synonyms, ok? :) )

These buildings are graceful and grand. :) Yup.

 Notice how the cars are parked half on street, half on the sidewalk.. This is the norm in Mannheim and Heidelberg, anyways. (I'm not sure about the rest of Germany.) It is illegal to NOT do this. :) It does save space on the road, I suppose.. Anna was wondering, "Why don't they just make the sidewalks smaller..?" Hmm. Dunno.

We had packed a bag lunch, and after walking the streets for a while, taking numerous similar-looking pictures of beautiful old buildings, we decided to climb the side of a hill to eat our lunch. Whew.. Can anyone say, "Bad idea.."? Haha, NO. It was a hard climb.. but it was SO worth it! We wanted to find a nice picnic spot, but the pickings were few.. We got to where we almost gave up and eat our lunch on the side of the path. But then, we decided, "..just a few more steps, I feel like there is something promising right around the corner.."Alas. The perfect spot. With a beautiful view of the Heidelberg Castle, it WAS indeed quite perfect. Yay for perseverance. :) 

The view. Incredible. :) Purely pulchritudinous. (Its true. It means beautiful.)  :)

 It was a little bit hazy today, but this is our castle. :) (You can see a better picture of it online if you look up "Heidelberg Castle", but this is one WE took. :)

We had lunch, and then noticed that there was a pretty steady stream of people going up past us, and so, after we were done eating, we decided to follow the trail some more to check out what all the fuss was about. It was worth it, again. We found little gardens, and parks! More parks! It was a grand ol time, once again. I/we just love parks. :)

 This one was awesome.. So much fun! However, I couldn't tell you what it is.. :)

 Climbing some hills, just up from the park. It was so fun. :) I looove nature.

There was some really cool, old rickety stone staircases in the middle of steep, on-the-side-of-a-mountain fields. :) And there was a big tower with a spiral staircase that we immediately climbed. :)

 Our staircase leading up to..

 ..our TOWER! It was a great view. Simply sublime. :)

Beauty. Its everywhere! :)

  

Spring is springing in Heidelberg!!

..and not just in the gardens.. :) 

 Some pleasing, pink, pretty flowers. :)

 The view from one of the two bridges crossing the Neckar River, running through Heidelberg. The huge pink-ish building(s) on the right is the castle. Such a cute town to wander through. :)

It was a wonderful day, all-in-all. We got back and went for supper aaatt.. Pizza Hut! Mmmm good. "Pizza Made The American Way", it said on the outside of the window. :) Then came home and watched Monsters Inc and some Home Improvement. A gooood day. :)
We'll write more later!
God Bless,
Demara

The bells of Mannheim.

..Epic title, eh? :) I thought so. Anna and I were making breakfast yesterday morning, and the bells of a nearby church started tolling. It was beautiful. I though, "The bells of Mannheim. Hm. That would make an epic title for something." ..So, here we are. :)

Yes, we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday evening, around 6:00 pm, Febuary 4th. But let me back up a bit and give you some background on the things that happened in the past week. :) We left Goa on Friday, January 28th, and flew in to Dehli. We stayed one night there, and on the Saturday morning, we hired a taxi for the day and went to the TAJ MAHAL! :)

It was.. indescribable. You will just have to see it. So.. epic. :) We were back in New Dehli by 6:00 pm, and our train to Varanasi left at 6:55. So, we took the train to Varanasi, and that was a whole adventure in and of itself.. :) Very.. awesome. :) We arrived in Varanasi at about 9:00 the next morning. and.. WOW. What a stark contrast to Goa. Goa is very westernized, and tropical, lots of forest area, and relaxed, and just so beautiful. Varanasi is.. well, dirty, and not as pretty, people EVERYWHERE, and quite fast paced. It has its own beauty, but very different from Goa. We stayed there for 4 ish days, until Wednesday afternoon.

The ghats on the Ganges River.

On the last morning we were there, I woke up at 6:00. Not really sure why.. But I decided that since I was awake, I would walk down to the Ganges River, which is a 1 minute walk from the Guesthouse where Anna and I were staying, in time for the sunrise. It was beautiful. The sun rise itself was nothing much to speak of, it is so foggy and smokey, that the sun just kind of looks like a dim ball of orange coming up over a hazy city.. Not all that spectacular. But the River Ganges in the morning.. That was very worth getting out of bed that early. As I sat from my vantage point about a hundred feet away from the river itself, I observed many things. Boys playing cricket wherever there was a flat enough place to play, men and women doing their cleansing-of-sins rituals in the river, people doing their laundry, dogs and monkeys and cows and goats roaming freely wherever they like, men and young boys asking me if I wanted a boat ride.. (i did not..) It was very interesting. Varanasi is the 'spiritual hub' of India, and a tourist place for very different reasons than Goa. People come here to find religion, peace and to find.. themselves, I suppose. It was very interesting to see the different kinds of people in the city. And hanging out by the river was defiantely my favorite place to be. You saw many an interesting thing there.

The dirt road that leads down to the river, where you would put a boat in, is called a "ghat". The main ghat is called Assi Ghat, and its the main tourist place in Varanasi. I'm not entirely sure why.. :) But there are many different ghats along the river as well. 

Watching some people doing laundry by the river.

When we walked from our guesthouse to the river,  we emerge right in between the Assi Ghat, and the Burning Ghat. ..Yes, you can probably imagine what goes on here.. This is the place where they cremate the bodies before throwing the ashes into the river. Its very.. different from what we do in Canada, but it is a lot more practical than burying the bodies, because there are a LOT more people, and a LOT less space. So, this is just more efficient. ..However gross it might seem to us. Also, they believe that it purifies the bodies. There are only a few bodies that they don't burn, all because they are already purified. People who die by snake bite (because they have a snake god), pregnant women (because the baby inside is holy), animals (they are considered holy), holy men (they are already purified) and lepers (because thats unsanitary..). :) So, on our last day, Anna and I walked down to the Burning Ghat. It was very.. interesting. (I feel like I am using that word a lot.. probably because it very accurately describes life in Varanasi..) A very hard-hitting sight. If you are ever in India, I do reccomend going to Varanasi. It is so.. ..interesting. ;)

Anyways, we left that afternoon for New Dehli. It was hard to leave our friends, Vanessa and Corissa, behind!! But its exciting to finally be starting this journey on our own. :) We spent that evening, and the next evening in New Dehli, and then flew out on Friday at 1:35 pm, to Frankfurt, Germany! And here we are. 

And now for a completely different river.. The Rhine River in Mannheim, Germany! And an Anna very excited to be here. :)

.. Us. .. :)

The night of our arrival in Germany, the people we are staying with, (Ralph and Ruth, who are my sister's in-laws) took us to a German birthday party! It was quite an introduction to the German life. A very posh apartment, great food and beer, :) LOTS of people.. people who were very tall and very educated. The John Deere factory is very near to here, and lots of the people we met were engineers for John Deere.. crazy. It was a VERY huge contrast to India, which we had just come from a couple hours before. :) The next day was Saturday, and Anna and I slept in, then spent the afternoon down by the Rhine River, walking and taking pictures. It was beautiful. That evening, we met a guy named Jonathon, who is interning in Poland, and vacationing in Germany for the next couple of days, and also staying with Ralph and Ruth. Germany has made a very good impression on us so far, it gets a huge thumbs up in our books, no doubt about that. :) We love it. Also, we love the people we have met so far. Today is Sunday, and we went to church with Ralph and Ruth, and Jonathon, and it was so good! I love seeing how churches work in other coutries. Its maybe my favorite thing. :) I just love seeing the body of Christ in different cultures, and it reminds me that it is so much bigger than just me, just my church, just North America. Jesus is WORLD WIDE. And I love seeing that. :) After church, we went for a walk, once again, down by the Rhine River, this time adding the rest of our little family to the picture. We also had Ralph and Ruth's son, Stephen and his wife Uli with us. (So, that would be my brother-in-law's brother. And sorry, Uli, if thats not how you spell your name..) :)

We are already finding things that are just a little bit different from in Canada. :) But we're loving it!

("WC" stands for "Water Closet", which is what they call the toilet here in Germany. :) )

So, all in all, Germany is wonderful!! Tomorrow, we are going to a town called Heidelberg, near Mannheim. Apparently it is a beautiful city, and so I am quite excited.. I love beautiful places!! :)

We will write more later. :) Love you all!! God Bless,

Demara and Anna

Finally, a word from anna

Hello from India! Ha, so as most of you can see I pretty much stink at blogging. Cudos to D who does! India has been such an awesome experience! The culture here is incredible! If I was to choose one word to describe it, it'd definitely be colorful! Seriously, the people, the buildings, the clothes and the nature are so rich and cast! It kind of blows my mind! While I know we still have a week left here, in some ways it feels like an ending. An end to beautiful beaches gorgeous sunsets, an awesome god given guest house and of course the people! I love them all and definitely think of them as my goan family! I am super excited though to continue on our adventure and see varanasi and then the rest of the world...mwah ha ha ha...ha ha... Anyways, please keep praying for demaras luggage-that if will be ready and waiting for her in Varanasi like they say it will be! God bless you all and enjoy the snow for me! (A few snowballs thrown in my honor would not go unappreciated! :D)
love ANNA

The end.. ..or is it the beginning..? :)

I was thinking today about what we've done and what we've experienced here.. We have seen some cool things, and done some sweet stuff. It was wonderful day. :)

Yesterday we went to Old Goa, a town north of here, full of history and beauty. We looked at some HUGE churches and conveys. They are so beautiful. Mmm. :) This is one of the churches in Old Goa. So HUGE and beautiful! :)

Walking in Old Goa..

We then went and RODE AN ELEPHANT! It was fun. .. :) The biggest animal l I have ever had the pleasure of riding, that's for sure. :)

Then we went to a Spice Farm, and got a guided tour of a huge spice plantation. At the Spice Farm, I got to try climbing a bamboo tree. It was so fun! I'm definately not as good as the man in yellow shirt.. He was like a monkey!! So awesome. :)

Our last sunset at the beach, the day before we left. ..So beautiful, and hard to leave. :)

Also, I am REALLY going to miss the people here!! Richard, the best guesthouse host ever. :) Raj, the best Nepali cook ever. And his son, Baboo ( which is not his real name, but a "pet" name) the cutesy 2 1/2 year old Indian boy!!! And then there's John Martin.. The best waiter in the world, and our favorite Goan. :) And SAM! Hmm.. They might be tied for favorite Goan in our minds, actually. He was our waiter here at the gueshouse.. :( We will miss him for sure. I love these people. And to think we get to meet SO many more people on our travels!! I am SO excited.

..and now tomorrow we leave..! Crazy. And somehow.. I feel almost like we haven't DONE anything, you know..? I am getting tired of being the "rich, white people" who can basically do anything we want. Really. They love us. :) Sometimes, I wish I could change skin color and language and culture for one day and just BE one of them. I feel like we miss out on so much by being white tourists.. But anyways, we can't change who we are, nor do we really want to. It's just sometimes.. Well, you know. :)

Write more later, maybe from EGYPT!! :)

Demara

Island, fishing, boating, snorkeling.. WHY NOT? :)

Hmm, what can be better? ..like, really. We were tying to thig of something we can do to top this.. I can't!! We had a wonderful day. All for under $20 Canadian. :) 

We have a favorite restaurant called the Full Moon. We basically like it because of this one waiter who is awesome. :) His name is John Martin, and he is Portugese, but grew up in India. We was pnce stranded in Cuba for 3 months, then lived on an island off the coast of Goa for 3 1/2 months, and he is a "fan" of the Hell's Angels. (He secretly is one of them and us waiting for his boss to get out of prison so they can rule the bike work together.. :) ..oops. Not so secret now I guess.. :)) anyways, this restaurant also does boat excisions. :) So, we took them up on one and had a day of doing exactly as the title of this blog says. It was.. Amazing. I will miss this place.

So, this is our friend, John Martin, getting our lines ready.

Our first catch of the day. Yes,. I kissed it, and no.. It didn't turn into a prince.. :)

Yellow fish!! And.. it makes a funny clicking noise.. so, that explains Anna's face, imitating the fish..  :) Yup. What an action shot. :)

Snorkelling!! And YAY for underwater cameras. :) Beauty.

The Island we landed on after we finished fishing. This is apparently the same Island John Martin lived on for 3 1/2 months.. We're still not sure if he was telling the truth or not.. but it makes a good story! :) Its a beautiful Island. The locals call it Grand Island. 

Us, on Grand Island!! :)

Anna so strong.

Just.. lounging. :)

Our Inukshuk, Betty! :)  

Before.

After. ..  :)

Sam and Baboo!! These are two of our favorite Indian people. :) And no, he's not always tied up. :)

Actually, I was thinking about it, and I will really miss ALL the people here when we leave. Lyla and Susan, who own some shops we've bought things (me, probably too much..) at. John Martin, the best waiter in the world. Other then Sam, of course, who caters to our every need/want here at the guesthouse. And makes us laugh even more!! All the very friendly British folk we've made friends with here. All the neighbors we smile and wave at as we walk the 15 min to the beach very day. I will miss them so much!! It's sad to think we have only 2 days left with them. :( we will fetish every moment. The culture truly is beautiful. :)

Lots of love until we write again!!

(and I WILL get Anna to write some, I promise. I just like doing it!! :))

Love, and God bless.

Demara

Happy hob-nobbing! :)

Well. We have had a wonderful couple of days. :) When I describe what we did, you will understand the title of this blog. :)

Thursday started off bright and sunny and HOT, no different from any other day, I suppose. :) But THEN.. We went dolphin-ing!!! We took a taxi to a place about an hour south of here, on the river Sal. We got on a boat, us and about 6 British couples. :) The captain took us down the river, and out into the sea, where we proceeded to see... Any guesses...? Yeah. DOLPHINS! It was awesome. There were so many! With the few that showed off, of course. There was a baby one, too. So cute. 

The beautiful, unending sea.

Our meal that day..! :)
Then we went back upstream, and the cook on the boat cooked us up some fresh prawns and a large fish.. It was a beautiful meal. So yummy! And that was Thursday. So, that explains the "hobnobbing". :) We definitely felt like we were "hobnobbing with the rich", as Corissa put it. :)

Friday dawned very beautifully, and maybe hotter than most days so far! And it was my birthday. :) I definitely forgot all about it until I was going out in the room earlier then anyone else, and Vanessa rolled over and said, "happy birthday." .. With just about that much enthusiasm, too. :) We all went to the spa for the day, the girls treating me to a mani/pedi, and they all got a pedicure. :) It was lovely. Then, Anna and Vanessa spent all afternoon making a crossword for me! We have kind of become addicted to crosswords.. :) And they got a bracelet made for me with my name on it! A real, woven one, not just beads or anything.. It's beautiful. So, it is "happy", because it was my birthday, AND we got to hobnob with the rich some more. :) it was a great birthday. Thanks guys!! :)
AND to make it even better, (if it can get any better than this..) :)we jumped in some HUGE waves this morning!! It was so fun. :) I LOVE waves.

NINJA. Don't mess with this. :)

We love the sea, and the beach, and.. mud.

Hob-nobbing with the rich? Most definately. :) ..Thats some view, eh? :)

AAHH. :)

Anna whips out her epic, Chuck Norris ninja skills. Watch out... waves.  :)

Its not a photoshop job, honest.. We're just that awesome.  :)

..  Lounging.  ..

So, that's been our last few days. :) The only damper is that there is still no news on my bag.. But, we are doing all we can, and trusting God for the rest. Ease keep praying. :) I would LOVE to have it back before we leave for Egypt. :)

Hope you are all having as much in the snow as we are in the sun!! Miss you all. :)

God bless!!

Demara.