Blessed Weekend

We have weekends off and so I´m spending Saturday (today) relaxing and not-procrastinating. I´ll take this time to kind of explain our schedule for the weekdays.

I wake up between 5 and 5:45am so I am outside of the castle by 6am for a quick workout. I am usually joined by two of my roommates and 1-2 others may come. There is usually only four of us. The workout now consists of situps to warm up the core before our short jog. The jog to town is 2km but the last part of it is a monster hill. Some people call it slow death, but it´s more of a quick death to me. Both Wednesday and Friday I was able to make it all the way up the hill without walking. And after the hill, we walk and jog back. I tend to walk the downhill parts since I worry about my knees (I don´t want to have to go through the same thing gma has gone through!).

So after the workout, we stretch and most people shower, but I wait till night to do that so I just change my clothes and wash my face and then there is breakfast from 7-7:30. It consists of bread and cereal and there is butter, nutella, honey, jelly, and milk, tea, and coffee. On the weekends, they have hard boiled eggs and fruit as well, but only on the weekends.

Mondays at 8am we have an all-base worship service. It will be different every week since someone different will lead it each week. Wednesday at 8am we have an all-base intercession - prayer for one particular international country. This week, we prayed for Nepal and heard from a missionary who lived in Nepal and has future plans to do outreach there.

Tuesday, Thursdays, and Fridays, we start at 8:30am with a worship/devotion led by the our base leader Lucy. Lucy is from Brazil so it can be fun trying to figure out what she is saying. Oh and everything is translated so if someone speaks in English, it is translated to German and same with German into English. It doesn´t quite make things twice as long and I really like it. The natural pauses that people take when speaking are filled with the translation. This part of the day is kind of like a mini, interactive sermon. So far, Lucy has encouraged everyone to think and I think that´s so cool. A lot of Christians don´t think and just follow and are ignorant, but here at this base, thinking and science and problem solving are encouraged.

Everyday at about 9:15am we start our photography lessons for the day and that goes till about lunch at 1PM with a half hour coffee break at 11am. I feel so spoiled for having a coffee break. It´s wonderful. I´m actually not allowing myself to have coffee more than once a week so I often have rooibos tea. They usually have fruit at the coffee break as well. It´s quite lovely.

Lunch is from 1-2. It has been a hot meal everyday and it´s very different everyday. One day we had chili and tortilla chips, and we had pasta another day, and potatoes one day, and we had breaded fish hamburger type stuff on friday. Sometimes there is a little salad. And there is always bread.

2-4pm is Work duty. we got to pick work duties and I chose to be on the garten team. I did not spell that wrong since garten is the german word for backyard. And the castle has a very large backyard! So for 2 hours a day I get more exercise (YAY!) shoveling compost, pulling weeds, raking leaves, mowing, whatever needs to get done. Our garten group is really awesome and we all pitch in a lot. Pretty cool.

4-6pm is reserved for special activities, announcements, dark room time or field time. Or in my case, frisbee time.

6PM Dinner. Usually bread and meat and cheese and maybe some small salad.

7PM there will be days with mandatory activities, but most evenings we are free and I take that time to read, and write and study german. I´m not as social as many people here bc a lot of these kids have never been away from home. It´s sometimes feels like being back in the dorms again with everyone getting to know each other and staying up till 2 am hanging out and on one of the 5 computers that the 40 of us have to share and the one phone that 40 of us share. It was so noisy last night at 10pm that I just put in earplugs and went to bed. I think I´ve been going to sleep between 10 and 11:30pm everynight. I usually shower around 9PM and then read till I go to sleep.

That´s my daily schedule. weekends are much more relaxed especially since a lot of kids left for Dresden or Herrnhut to take photos and eat out. I don´t want to spend any money and I just wanted to rest and get some stuff done today so I´m chillin in the Castle all day. We have journals and journal questions to give to our one-on-one and I started and finished my journal this morning and finished Loren Cunningham´s book, `Is that You, God?´ I liked it. It was cheesy, but I liked it. And now I want to work on a powerpoint presentation I will give on the History of the CCD, but my computer needs to charge so I´m charging it and using one of the common computers to write this blog.

This week in photography we´ve been making pinhole cameras. They are really cool. You basically make a camera out of garbage. I don´t like the two pinholes I´ve made so far, so I´m going to make a new one when I find the right materials. It´s easy to make and so this is pretty fun and it´s fun to see how they come out!

Alright I love you guys! Thanks for reading.