matt.nolson

#2

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:07:15 GMT

Yep, I'm not dead!

I've had almost no free time over the past two weeks. We are halfway through week to of campers!
I've been having an amazing time. I had forgotten the funny things kids say and do, its awesome.

some highlites:

1. The trampoline. We got a new trampoline last year and it sits outside one of the bathrooms. One of my jobs in the evenings is to clean the washrooms, so I usually reward myself with a good long jumping session, its awesome!

2. Swimming lessons. I don't teach, but i get to go around and help the instructors and hang out with kids who are cold. It's usually the kids from the youngest section at camp who get cold quickly, they're 5 or 6 years old. So i get to wrap them up with blankets and talk with them until they're warm enough to build sandcastles, its really great. I feel like its a great opportunity tp really show them how much i care and how special they are.

3. Waterfront. I really love all of the people i work with down at the beach. It's a really good dynamic between us and we have a lot of fun. Theres a good mix of guys and girls, just enough to keep each other in check.

Some prayer requests:
1. Enthusiasm, some times its hard to be excited about cold water, but we need to be in order to keep the kids excited.
2. More campers to register for the last two sessions, because our numbers are wayy down.

Thanks for reading!

-Matt

Camp

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:17:27 GMT

Hey all!
Yea, its been a while, sorry. I'm at camp now, been here for a week and a half.
I came up on tuesday the 23rd, which was the first day of senior pre-camp. All of the leadership team comes up for 3 daysbefore the regular staff to prepare activities, clean, and prepare spiritually for the summer. I'm the swimming director again this year, so I;ve been working hard on getting all of my paperwork and awards in order as well as helping to set up the waterfront with the rest of the waterfront team.
All of the regular staff came up on friday the 26th, its beena blast meeting new people as well as hanging out with old friends.

It's been way too crazy and busy and fun for me to tell you about everything that has happened so far, so I'll just bust out a few highlights.

Last sunday was our fun outing, we went to Orillia to go roller skating! It was such a blast! It was all decorated like a 50s dance hall and they had sweet oldies playing over the speakers. It's kind of hard getting used to roller skates after using blades or ice skates, but once you get the hang of it, its sweet!

Another highlight was our commisioning service which happened earlier today. Our director, Kate, gave a little talk about where we need to be getting our strength from this summer. She talked a lot from Ephesians where it talks about how we need to let our roots go down deep to anchor us into God's love. It was really encouraging, and really set my focus going into the summer.

So theres a little taste for ya, I've been having a really great time!

Some prayer requests are for energy, for safety at the waterfront this summer, and for our camper numbers for the last couple weeks of the summer to be boosted.

thanks for reading!

Matt.

Salzburg!

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:55:13 GMT

Sooooooooooo, our punishment got moved to tuesday, so I was able to go to Salzburg today!

The city itself wasn't the most exciting, I think all European cities look the same. But this weekend they have a huge Christmas market open. There were streets packed with vendors selling all kinds of stuff, food, christmas decorations, wood carvings, jewelery, everything! There were also about 70 billion people there to see it, so it was a little hard to get around. Right when we got there I bought a huge cheese pretzel, it was at least a foot across! So we poked around the stalls for a while until we came across the beloved H&M! After wandering around in there for a while we went and explored some more of the city. We took an elevator up to the tops of one of the cliffs surrounding the city for a cool view, but that got old fast. So we went and found the Mirabell Gardens. I was reqally suprised to see that the still had lots of flowers out even though its December. The gardens are huge! I can imagine that they must be spectacular during the summer. But, once again, that got old fast. So, we went to look for Tubbs, one the guys here (a nickname), who said he was going to stand at one of the churches with a free hugs sign. So we found him, and he had a bunch of extra signs! So obviously we had a huge free hugs party in the middle of the crazy crowded Christmas market! It was really funny, everyone thought we were crazy.

Anyway, back track, as far as second-to-last weeks go, this one was great! I went snowboarding again on Wednesday and loved it once again! The speaker this week was one of the senior staff members here named Eis (its not "Ice" and its not "Eyes" its kind of in between, try it!)
He spoke on the Gospel of John, but he took examples from the book and spoke more about life issues that applied to us. I found it way more interesting! I can't remember who we have this week, i'll let ya know.

Last night was our last social night (sob sob). We had christmas party with gingerbread house building and a white elephant gift exchange. Our gingerbread house was basically just a pile of crackers and candy, it all tastes the same in the end right? At the the end of the gift exchange I ended up with a catalogue, a bottle of expired whipped cream and a thing of microwave popcorn. hoozah.
Remember the Krampus? Last week was the parade, but last night was supposed to be the actual night of the festival. They're supposed to roam the town scaring people and stuff. But it was a little rainy/snowy out and when we went to see there were only a couple around, so we just went to the Tenne to dance!

Tonight we have a guys night with pizza and a guy movie.

Anyhoo, If i forgot anything, I'll just tell you in a week!

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:23:53 GMT

This weekend was really great! Friday, we finished our lectures with Rob Whittaker. He was really interesting to listen to, and he spent a lot of time on practical application which was cool.

Our social night was a snowball fight, kinda lame sounding, but we had a bunch of fun! We spent and hour and a half attempting to make snowballs out of powder, not to successful. So it turned into a tackle-and-push-faces-into-snow fight, still a lot of fun. then we finished off the night by watching Home Alone in the lecture hall. Everyone brought their pillows and we stole all the cushions from around the school and piled on the floor with hot chocolate and junk food to watch the movie. It was so great, it totally felt like christmas time!

Saturday we went snowboarding on the mountain finally! Oh my word, what I've been missing! All of the groomed runs were really icy and crowded, much like at home. But there was one section you could go on that was all natural snow and obstacles. Lots of little tree runs and drops and stuff, so we stayed there most of the day. The groomed runs were a lot of fun too. They're so long! And there are so many different lifts around up there.I ended up turning in a little early because my legs were so sore and I was starting to get a headache. I decided to just ride the Gondola down because its a long way to snowboard down. It was awesome! I was alone so it was nice and peaceful and you can see so much from up there. So i got back and my headache got really bad and I felt sick, so I went to the eagles nest, set up some stuff to download, and took a nap. I think I was just dehydrated because by dinner I felt way better.

Saturday night was wild! There was a local festival called the “Krampusumzug" parade. Its based off an old tradition and myth about St. Nick sending out the "Krampus" to beat the bad out of people before Christmas. They closed off the main street of the town with fences and charged people to get in to watch. Obviously, we just snuck around until we found a place to watch for free. Basically, it consisted of a couple hundred people dressed in these creepy costumes running down the streets trying to scare the people watching. It's apparently not Satanistic at all, the school encouraged us to check it out, but they all have horns and their carts and stuff were decorated with skulls and there was lots of fire, it was kind of weird. There were signs all over saying that you enter at your own risk. They all have little whips made out of sticks and they would smack the fences and occassionally the people watching. We were standing beside a group of rowdy teenagers who would yell at them and try to grab them and pull their masks off so their was a bit of fighting going on their. They got smacked up quite a bit, one kid was bleeding pretty good from a smack across the face, weird. So that was just the parade. This friday, the 5th, is the actual day of the festival. Apparently all these guys come back and roam the town getting drunk and beating up everyone they meet. I've heard a rumour that we're not allowed out. I'll let you know!

So after that we went to the "Tenne" which is the big hotel/club at the ski hill and danced the night away.

Sunday, we had out normal service in the morning, then for the evening service we had a worship night. We had a lot of sings so we practiced pretty much every afternoon during the week and then half of sunday afternoon. It went really well and was lot of fun to be a part of.

Then this morning, we had a bit of a suprise for us at breakfast. Hans Peter, the director of the school, got up and had an interesting announcement. Word got around to him about the abandoned hospital we've been visiting. Did I mention that? Theres an old hospital up in the hills here that someone found. most of the poeple here have visited it at some point, its really cool and creepy because theres so much stuff left in it. So I went a couple weeks ago just to get some pictures. Anyway, he wasn't to thrilled to hear that we had been there and said he wanted to meet with the people who had been. I think he was a little suprised when more than half of the students showed up to this little meeting. I guess I never thought that it was bad to go visit and take some pictures. Bottom line, we have to spend out saturday putting 4000 newletters into envelopes for him, not fun, but I guess theres nothing we can do. But heres the killer: our trip to Salzburg was rescheduled for this saturday, and I was signed up to go. But, all of us who signed up will not be allowed to go, PLUS we still have to pay for our seat on the bus since it has already been ordered, so that means I'm out about 25 dollars. So I was really looking forward to seeing Salzburg, but it doesn't look like it's gonna happen. The only hope is that the newsletters don't arrive on time, which he said is a possibility. So I'm trying not to make a big deal about it, but it really stinks.

Anyhoo, theres an update for you.
see you all in two weeks!

Sweet Weekend

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:58:27 GMT

This weekend was an absolute blast! Friday night we learned some traditional Austrian Dancing. There's a farmer from a nearby village who is good friends with Tauernhof and he came down and played the accordian and showed some moves. It was pretty funny and a lot of fun.

It had been raining all day, but during the dancing we noticed it had started snowing outside! Also, pretty much all of the staff had gone home for the weekend so the only person around to enforce lock-up was the RA who wandered in from the snowball fight at about 12:15, 45 minutes after curfew and told us to be quiet with a wink. So we ambushed people in their rooms and locked people out in the snow and got snow everywhere through the house before finally going to bed around 1:30. It was great!

Saturday we woke up to about 8 inches of snow outside and it was still falling! So we went outside and put snow down people's coats and stuff. Then in the afternoon, it was pretty much complete whiteout because it was snowing so hard! So we went sledding! We can hike up the mountain about 10 minutes to get to an amazing tobogganing hill. It's really long and really steep. All we had were garbage bags and 2 tarps, but lemme tell you, you can fit a lot of people on 2 tarps! After every run everyone looked like snowmen! So we kept that up until it got dark then went for dinner.

After dinner, a couple of us went to a local concert near the school. It was pretty interesting. I'm used to shows at home having a couple bands who all play different kinds of music and have a lot of fun, but here, they all sounded the same and played really loud metal. Only one of the 4 bands was impressive, but it was still a fun show. There's no laws against smoking inside here, and everybody smokes, so we came back reeking like smoke.

By sunday we had at least a foot and a half of snow, so obviously we went tobogganing again!

And yea, I think we'll go again this afternoon!

the speaker this week is Rob Whittaker who is the principal from Capernwray Hall in England. He's talking about evangelism and so far has been great.

See ya all in 3 weeks!

0_o

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:46:40 GMT

Week 8 down.

Or lecturer this week was Derek Burnside from England speaking about The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. He talked a lot about Pentecost and the different theories about how we get the Holy Spirit. Is it when we become Christians or is it a seperate later experience?
Then he talked about the difference between baptism of the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit and a bit about Spiritual gifts. I really enjoyed his lectures and found him really easy to approach which was good. He was also the first lecturer to actually test us. He opened his time here by giving us a letter written to us by a friend asking some intense questions about the Spirit and our task was to write a response based on what we learned. Nothing too crazy, I'm still amazed they can call this school. The speaker for this week is a guy named Steve who works at Bodenseehof, the torchbearer's school in Germany. He'll be talking about Proverbs.

Yesterday our day trip was to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. I was pretty hesitant about going, it's not exactly a place I really wanted to visit and I wanted to go snowboarding again. But I ended up going. I'm not really sure how I felt about it. Being in Canada, all that kind of terrible stuff doesn't seem too real, but being there really hit me. We had a self guided tour with little radios that we could listen to at points of interest. We were able to see pretty much everything, some places were closed for renovations or had been torn down over the years. Is was really surreal to see the gas chambers, ovens, gallows, and other stuff. I don't really know how to explain how I felt being there. The bus ride home was completely silent.
We followed up our visit by watching "The Hiding Place." Seeing that movie just made everything more real than before. It was really uncomfortable to sit through.

So that was Saturday, today we had our normal morning service and then 8 of us immediatly took off to the Dachstein for some more snowboarding! It was a gorgeous day so unfortunately it was really crowded up there. But we still had a lot of fun. I went off some of the jumps they had used in the competition last weekend, which was a bad idea. It's extremely uncomfortable to be sitting here right now!

thats about it!

Snowboarding the Dachstein

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:08:09 GMT

Today we drove out to the glacier near hear, "The Dachstein", to go snowboarding. It wasn't any bigger than the hills we have in Ontario, but the you look at the scenery. The glacier is 9000 feet up in the mountains, so once it cleared up, you could see everything! The sun was out and we were above most of the clouds and surrounded by mountains. It was incredible!

The had 3 lifts- all t-bars which took some getting used to. A little embarrassment never hurt anyone right? The hills were fun. They had 2 snowboard parks, but there was a big competiton today (part of the reason we went). It was awesome seeing some of the guys there, they were crazy! So yea, it was a really good day, we had about 5 hours on the hills and it was clear for i guess 3of those. Then the fog rolled in and you honestly couldn't see 10 feet in front of you! It made it all the more interesting.

This week's lectures were done by the former principal of the school here and his topic was "Christian Ethics." I thought he was going to talk about stuff like drinking or homosexuality or some of those really pressing issues, but he actually spoke on the 10 commandments. So it wasn't what I expected, but it was still really cool. the 10 commandments are one of those things that I've always read and thought that it doesn't really apply to me because I'm a good person and they're ancient history. But he applied them to everyday situations and brought up things that I never thought about. For example, it says "do not murder" but what about murdering someone's reputation? or someones self-esteem?

I don't know what nextw eeks is about, but I do know that it's week 8.... woah!
I can't really decide if time is speeding by or not because it seems like it is, but thinking back on everything that's happened, it seems like it's been forever! I'm definetly missing home a lot, but I'm also scared to say goodbye to all the people here. i know there's still plenty of time left, but ya know...

Anyway, thats about it.

-Matt

Watch yourself.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:52:42 GMT

So remember the Pilates entry? Well the inhuman beast of a woman who is the pilates instructor has a husband who happens to be an inhuman beast of an ex-semi-professional boxer.

He's been running boxing classes weekly for the whole time I've been here and I only became brave enough to chekc it out until today. It was actually a lot of fun, we did about an hour of cardio, running, and pilates. Then we shadow boxed for a while, thats just boxing without actually hitting each other. Then we actually got to use the gloves and spar for a bit. It was really cool, it took us a couple minutes to realize the gloves didn't really hurt, so we could actually fight.

Thats all, just don't get on my bad side.

Venice: check.

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:00:47 GMT

Alright.

Venice.

Where to begin?

It was seriously the most beautiful city I've ever seen.
They havent tried to modernize it at all. Everything looks like I would imagine it looking in the 17th century. The water may be disgusting, but it is actually a really nice colour. All of the buildings are really colourful.

I'm a sucker for history and old things, so It was awesome being there.

Friday night we got to the train station at about 9. We bought a 72 hour boat pass which was the best thing ever because we could hop on and off the boats whenever we wanted for our whole trip. It also helped because we would have had to pay for the boat to get from our hotel to Venice every day anyway. So the first night we just took the boat around the city to our island and explored there for a bit. Saturday we woke up good and early and went to the city. We got off on the tip closest to our hotel and started walking towards The centre ( St. Mark's area). we walked through a bit of the city park, then followed the main road right along the waterfront. It was good and sunny so everything looked amazing. We got to St. Mark's square to meet up with the whole group at noon. If you don't know what St. Mark's is, google it. It's the huge basillica and tower in the center of Venice. It was flooded that day because of high tides and rain the day before, so that was kind of funny. They had all of these raised walkways set up atound the outside so that people could get around, but they were super crowded. The water was only about ankle deep, so we just took off our shoes and waded!

You had to pay to get into most of the cool stuff, so I bought a museum pass that let me in most things. Saturday I saw Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basillica. They were both really decorated inside, lots of paintings and carved decorations. Sunday I saw the Jewish Museum and the Art Museum.

Mpost of Saturday was spent wandering through the little alleyways full of shops. We had maps, but they were no help. We really just wandered until we came to the Grand Canal or some big church or Palace and found where they were on the map. We found the Rialto Bridge finally. You get a really great view from up there. Then we took the boat to Murano, the Glassblower's island. That was a really pretty island. We wanted to go to the Glass Museum, but we found out we only had about 15 minutes before it closed, but we decided to go anyway. It ended up being really small and not very interesting, so we got through in about 10 minutes. The weay back was covered in little glass shops. Apparently Murano glass is special, because I've never seen such nigh prices for glass trinkets ever!

We went back to the mainland for dinner and got some awesome pizza. Then headed back to the Hotel.

Sunday, we saw the Jewish Ghetto and some museums in the morning and explored the other half of the city for the afternoon. There's a really cool market the we spent a lot of time at. It was a really chill day, we went slow and just took it all in.

Dinner was pasta, really expensive and not much different to what we get at home to be honest. Then we checked out St. Mark's at night and explored a little of the area again. It was so cool at night. The fog was pretty heavy and the city isn't very well lit, so it was really creepy looking. I could totally picture pirates and sailors walking around everywhere.

Over the weekend I had a total of 9 scoops of Gelato, that stuff is amazing!

So now I'm back, clean shaven for no-shave november, and reasy to get back into the routine!

-Matt

Venice?

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:35:33 GMT

AHH! I'm in Venice!

It's so weird being here because it's always seemed like some crazy mythical place that doesn't actually exist, but now I'm here.

we haven't seen anything, we were only actually in the city for 15 minutes. Our hotel is on one of the breakwater islands about 10 minutes from the actual city. So we have free breakfast tomorrow and then we're going into Venice for the day!

Lookout! An Update!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:56:36 GMT

Yes, yes, I am still alive.

I haven't posted in a while because honestly nothing too exciting has happened.

I've realized that the reason the time here is going by soo quick is because every day is exactly the same.

Breakfast/read bible/lecture/tea break/lecture/lecture/lunch/lazy/exercise/internet/cards/hang out/dinner/duties/lecture/chill/bed.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend. We have Friday-Monday off for a travel weekend. I'm going to Venice with a bunch of friends which should be really cool. I'm excited to break the routine and see some more of Europe.

Last week's lecturer was Peter Reid, the principal from the German school. It was incredible, but everything he spoke on was exactly the things I've been wondering about during my time here. He said he was speaking on Collossians, but he didn't spend a lot of time on the words, but the themes and stuff. He talked a lot about what it really means to call yourself a christian. He spoke a lot about God's will vs. our desires and about living our faith. It was really interesting. I had a really good conversation with him about how complicated I thought faith was, but it turns out that its a whole lot simpler than I thought. A lot of stuff he said really gave me peace about the decisions I need to make about the future.

This week, the school director, Hans Peter, is back and talking about the first 2 chapters of Acts. So far he's been talking about what happened at Pentecost which is really interesting.

One of the other outreach groups invited a bunch of kids here to attend a lecture, which means that they added a lecture at 5:30 this evening, its kinda dumb, but oh well. I guess I'm here ot learn. So I'm sitting here waiting for it to start and downloading the new Emery cd on iTunes.

Ok, Lecture is over, Emery is downloaded, dinner is calling.

Later!

Ice and Castles.

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:13:38 GMT

Time is flying by. Has it really been a week since I posted about the last hike? Unbelievable.

So today, our day trip was to the Werfen Ice Caves.

They were stunning to say the least. The entire system of caves goes 42 kilometers into the mountain. The first km is the part you can visit and the most spectacular. There were no lights the whole way in. Every 10th or so person on the tour carried a sweet old-fashioned miners lamp and the guide lit a really bright light to show us the exciting parts. I was blown away by some of the natural structures in there. I felt like God had hidden this little piece of beauty in the middle of the mountains just for us to find and marvel about. Parts of it looked like a river of ice, in one spot it was 24 meters thick! Unbelievable.

We had some time to kill after we finished in there, so we went to visit a nearby castle. It would have been really expensive to go in, so we explored the entrance way and tried to hike around the outside to see what we could. It turned out we couldn't really see anything. But it was still pretty cool.

Oi! Dinner time!

-Matt

Worst afternoon ever.

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:23:40 GMT

I am in soo much pain. It hurts to breath, to laugh to sit up, to lie down, to swallow to move at all!

I'd like to say it was John's idea, but I was secretly excited to do it. I dont know why. I thought I was strong, that I could handle it. It looks like I was wrong.

I watched the other do it first. They all did alright, it looked a little painful, but they all laughed about it afterwards. I thought I was ready.

Well, its been 24 hours and I can say for sure that I was not ready. I hurt all over.

If anyone even mentions it I cringe.

The very word sounds so simple and easy.

Who knew one word could bring so much hurt.

One

lousy

little

word.......

Pilates.

Just to add on...

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:28:45 GMT

So I totally didn't mention anything about the amazing hike we went on when I posted on saturday.

We actually hike up a mountain, like the whole thing. It was amazing, the view from the top was indescribable. I was in awe.
My feet were a million times better this time thanks to insoles and band-aids.
The only reason I went on the hike is because Julie promised fabulous apple strudel at the top, and when I went to order mine, they were all out, and Julie had the last piece! Arghhhhhh!

Sunday, I went to the local protestant church for the morning service. It was really cool even though I didn't understand a word of it. There was a really cool pipe organ and a choir that sounded awesome! It was a great experience.

Our lecturer for the week is great! He's a little old Scottish man with a fantastic accent (the Germans here cant understand much of what he says!). He's speaking about Ecclesiastes for the first part of the week and Daniel for the next. Our first lectures this morning were really good! Ecclesiastes is all about how life is meaningless without God. He says that it is the best book in the bible for people to understand because it is so honest and straightforward about life. Today was just an intro, I'm excited to dive in further!

I think thats it.

-Matt

Week...........3?

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:22:06 GMT

Three weeks down.

I'm actually having the time of my life here!
I love the people, the staff, the town, the scenery, the lectures, the laughs, the hikes, all of it!

This week was reaally warm. There's a river that runs through the town and you jump in at one point from about 10 feet. Its great after a run or a game of Ultimate Frisbee. I've gone in 5 times.

Friday was another social night for us - Capture the flag and a bonfire! We walked practically across town to this huge field. It was dark already and we were all dressed in black and carrying big pieces of wood for our campfire, I think we scared the civilians. We walked past this huge sketchy warehouse-looking building at one point. There were no lights on but there was machinery on inside and this huge door kept creaking open and closed. Scary!

Capture the flag was fun. Since we played in an open field, there wasn't a lot of sneaking. But it was still a blast! We lost, probably because most of our team was in jail for most of the game.

The campfire was great tooo! We had smores which was awesome of course. John and I tried to lead some camp songs, but I think most people thought we were slighty crazy. It was just really great to hang out around a campfire again.

In lectures this week we had two different staff from the school speak on Romans and Phillipians. I had some trouble paying attention during some of the morning ones, but I found the lectures really interesting. My new Bible is getting really highlited and marked up!
This week, we have our first guest lecturer, John Allen. I'm not sure what he's speaking on, but people seem excited that he's coming. Should be good.

Tomorrow we have no morning service, but there's the option of going to the local church. I'm not sure if I'm gonna go yet. It would be interesting, but obviously I wouldn't understand anything.

Anyway, thats it.

I miss all you guys at home! Save me some Thanksgiving turkey!

-Matt

2 weeks down.

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:01:02 GMT

So 2 weeks are gone already, unbelievable!

The first week went by so slowly but this second week fleeeewww by!

It snowed last night! everything down here melted, but there is about 2 feet up at the top of the mountains!

we hiked up a mountain again. The way up was terrrible! We were supposed to be hiking up and then riding gokarts down, but we found out just before we started that we couldnt because it was snowing. It was steep and slippery and my hiking boots sttiiiillll arent broken in so my heels were in agony the whole way up. Honestly i was really angry and grumpy the whole way up and i just wanted to go back down. I prayed a bunch of time and asked for my boots to stop hurting, but nothing happened. But then on the way home, we went down on one of the ski runs and had sooo much fun! We ran and slid and rode garbage bags, and threw snow and laughed a lot, and I got halfway down before i realized my boots werent hurting anymore. It really shows how God doesn't always answer prayers in the ways we expect.

I've been hearing that the ski season should start at the end of october which is so exciting!

I love the people here because there arent really any "groups," we all hang out together most of the time and you can join anyones circle or conversation whenever. Its awesome.

We finished our old testament survey on thursday and i'm gonna miss it, it was so interesting. On friday we had a guest lecturerer talk about creation verses evolution. It was interesting, but honestly, all he did was repoeat all the arguments i've heard about why evolution is impossible, he barely talked about creation and why it makes more sense at all.
I think this week we start Romans.

Anyway, thats about it.
Later!

Week 2.

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:47:06 GMT

The sun finally decided to come out!

Yesterday we had a morning service til about 11 and then free time til lunch and all afternoon off! Everyone broke out the shorts and sunglasses for the first time and we just hung out in the yard playing ping pong and beach volleyball, it was great!

A couple guys went mountain biking, but I decided against it, mostly because i never realized it was going to cost me around 80 euro, or 120 dollars for a bike, safety equipment, and lift ticket. I'm very glad I brought my own snowboard....

Last night we played a huge game of "Mafia" which was a lot of fun.

Today is nice and warm again, I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna do yet...

Our lecture this morning was really interesting. We talked about the flood and stuff. One question I've always had about this story is how all the animals fit into the ark. Well, Hans Peter, the speaker, showed us that although there was probably almost 11,000 animals in the ark, they only took up 15% of the available space!

He also talked a bit about "The Nephilim." Thy were these giants that lived back then. One theory about them is that when God threw the devil and his angels to the earth, some of the angels became almost human and made babies with humans to create the Nephilim. He also said that this may be where the ideas in Greek Mythology come from, very interesting.

That is all.
-Matt

Just a day in the life.

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:36:00 GMT

Today we went on a crazy hiking trip up to a mountain lake.

So we hopped on the bus and drove way out to our starting point.
It was there that we were informed that we would hike up, hike back, and then walk all the way back to the school. great.

The hike up was pretty good. The path followed this river, which was all downhill, so it was basically waterfalls and rapids all the way up. It was gorgeous. Then we finally got to the lake.

Now, how often do you get to sit beside a beautiful Austrian mountain lake? Not very often.
Now, how often do you get to swim in a beautiful Austrian mountain lake? Thats right.

About 8 of us took a dip in this freeeezing cold lake. It was so bad. But I think I am hypothermia-free, so all is well.

Then, half of the group went farther up the mountain and half the group headed back down and back to the school. Two other guys, Derek and Troy, and I decided to hang out at a little restaurant by this lake and we had some awesome hot-chocolate and soup. then we walked down the mountain by road and then tried to find the way back to the school.

4 and a half hours later, we finally made it back to Tauernhof. It was the most ridiculous hike/walk i've ever been on.

We walked through, mountains, meadows, forest, pastures full of cows, peoples driveways, and more! It was really nice for the most part.
My hiking boots aren't quite broken in yet, so my feet were sore for most of the trip.

So we finally made it back, then I had an amazing warm shower and a huge dinner with brownies for dessert.
And now I'm either gonna watch a movie or just go to bed.

tootles
-Matt

Finally Here!

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:49:25 GMT

So here I am, finally here at Tauernhof. We got here after lunch on sunday (sorry I couldn't update earlier).

It is soo great here! Its only been 48 hours but it feels like I've been here forever! I've learned the names of most of the 70 or so people here. There are 27 Canadians! There are some awesome people here. We've played a couple intense games of settlers of catan and uno. Uno is great because apparently other countries have their own rules, so I've some different ways of playing. There is a lot of stuff to do here. John and I have been running for our part of the fitness plan, so we have seen most of the town here and sort of know our way around. There are opportunities for hiking, climbing, swimming, all kinds of sports. This weekend a bunch of us are hoping to go mountain biking!
The food is great, the breakfasts are kind of small, bread and cereal. In Austria lunch is the biggest meal, we've had chicken sauce and tuna with rice so far. The dinners are kind of smaller, but really good. We had pizza last night! That was exciting.

Our days consist of breakfast, 2 lectures, lunch, free time (Bible reading, fitness, email, seeing the town), dinner, lecture, hanging out, and then bed!

The speaker for the next 2 weeks, Hans Peter, is great! He looks like he should be playing guitar in the Eagles or something. We have been looking at the first chapter of Genesis and he has given us sooo much information about how this chapter is the basis of the Christian faith, its very interesting.

Anyway, I've wasted enought time on the internet for today.

Later
-Matt

Now onto Austria

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:12:58 GMT

We've been lucky to have internet in all of the hotels so far! So you get to hear more exciting stuff!

So I thought the mountains in Germany were cool

And then we got to Austria today, and the mountains here are even better! They're huge and pointy and rocky and snowy and sweet!
It's amazing

We went and dropped some stuff off at the school, which freed up a bunch of room in the vehicle. We also set up our bank accounts. The school is honestly right next door to the gondola up the mountain! We went up to have a look and get lunch, it is gorgeous! you can see for miles and miles! I had this gross Sausage wrapped in bacon for lunch, it was sickening.

Anyway, Austria = good. I think I'm gonna like it here!

-Matt

Day 2

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:46:51 GMT

First things first, I figured out my laptop problem! woohoo!

Today was our day long castle trip, it was awesome!

The first castle we saw was called Schloss Linderhof. It was kind of small but every single room had gold every where! The other one we saw was much more impressive, it was called Neuschwanstein. It’s the castle that inspired the Disney Castle. Both of the castles were built by this crazy king in the 1800s with a serious ego issue.There is a bridge you can hike to that gives you a sweet view of Neuschwanstein. So we went and this bridge was soo sketchy! It was about a million feet in the air across this gorge and it was a metal body with just wooden planks across it. John was being a jerk and bouncing on the planks and stuff. lame.

Sooo, that was cool. The mountains are absolutely stunning! It was very sunny, but there was just enough mist to make it look even better. The mountains are absolutely stunning! It was very sunny, but there was just enough mist to make it look even better. We visited a little mountain town. They hold a world famous "Passion Play" every 10 years. That's a play about the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus. So they have a massive theatre in the middle of town that holds something like 8,000 people, apparently it sells out one year in advance. The town was really nice, most of the buildings had murals on them and there were lots of wood carving stores all over.

So it was a sweet day. We were super adventuresome and had Mexican food for dinner.

Tomorrow we head into Austria. School starts on sunday and I'm really excited to meet some people who speak english!

Peace
-Matt

Stage One.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:50:52 GMT

Here I am in a little hotel room in Munich, Germany! It is 5:45 pm local time, i think that's 11:45 am toronto time! I am currently running my laptop off of battery power as I failed to notice that my laptop cord is 3-prong but my power converter is only 2-prong. Hopefully I find a solution to that...

From what i've seen Munich seems like a nice city. Lots of old statues and churches which is cool.
It's really weird knowing that everyone around you speaks a different language. I'm kind of scared to try communicating with them.

This is what we know so far:

Ausfahrt - Exit

Einfahrt - Entrance

thats about it.

Th flight last night was alright. I didn't sleep a wink! I just had a three hour nap but I'm still pretty exhausted.
I kept closing my eyes and then seeing flashes from the stupid tv and getting distracted from the sleeping business.

We're about to head out to explore and hopefully find a translator or something to order dinner.

Later!
-Matt

Yo

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:32:22 GMT

Hey, I'm heading out to Schladming, Austria to attend the Tauernhof bible school.

Hopefully I'll be updating this blog regularly with what I've been up to, what I've been learning, What I've seen and all that junk.

If I start neglecting this, please send me messages telling me to smarten up.

That's it.