Romania Jan 23-31

Our time in Romania was simply amazing.  We went to Romania to visit an orphanage partially supported by Kidstown International.  An organization that my father is on the board of and my family has been involved with for quite a few years.  If you don’t know anything about Kidstown International it is a private Christian run organization that funds orphanages throughout Romania, India and Nepal.  The orphanages are run as a family setting, the children there become part of a family and are not adopted out.  There are house parents that stay with the kids each night showing them the love of God. Here is their link if you want to learn more about this great organization http://www.kidstown.org 

Adam and I spent a week at Casa Dorca.  We chose this orphanage because my mother sponsors a girl at this location.  After a 3 hour drive there on a very windy road Adam and I had started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into, however after the first day we forgot about the long journey and were filled with the love of the children.  Although most of them did not speak english we all bonded instantly through just playing.  We played from the time they came home from school into the night everything from Barbie’s, blocks, ping pong, soccer, and many more games.    Every night we were exhausted but filled with joy.  We were so blessed to be a part of this home for a week.  Our hearts were yearning to take all the kids back with us to America.  However, these children are part of a family now and we couldn't take that away from them.  

When it was time to leave on Tuesday our hearts were heavy as we didn’t want to leave our new friends but we know that some day we will return and Casa Dorca will be forever in our hearts.  In the mean time we will be praying for the children and the house parents for Gods love and grace.

Athens Jan 16-23

We finally made it to a European country, spending over two months in Asia made us thankful to have some familiar food and be surrounding by more individuals who spoke English.  Athens was an interesting experience for us as the city is currently in a very low economic state  (unemployment is 1 in 4).  Everywhere we walked there were homeless individuals trying just to get by.   The part of the economy’s state that affected us the most was the daily strikes.  Each day the taxi’s or the metro would go on strike.  During the whole duration of our trip the metro was on strike.  Thankfully our apartment was in walking distance to all the sites in the city so we were able to walk everywhere during the day as long as it was sunny. 

Mars Hill

Arcropolis

Temple of Zeus

Athens is filled with many archeological sites and we covered them all.  My favorite was not actually an archeological site but a small hill that Paul preached Acts 18 to the city of Athens called Areopagus or Mars Hill.  What a privilege we felt to be able to stand where Paul was in the biblical times.  It was amazing; from that spot you could see all of the city plus the great Acropolis (temples of the athena the greek god) and the ancient agora (market place) .  Once small but crazy facts we learned that  that 50% of all Greeks live in Athens.  You can probably see from the pictures above that the city is huge.  

China Jan 7-16

From 90 degree weather to 16 degrees is the change we made from Bangkok to Beijing and we did not handle the cold very well.   On the news it stated that the days where were there they experienced record highs for the pollution count in the air.  We felt it every day as we were walking around.   While in China we visited the great wall, summer palace, the Forbidden City , the temple of heaven and the zoo.  One of my favorite memories was at the zoo, there was this little girl all dressed in pink and when she got to the panda enclosure she freaked out.  Screaming “ panda panda panda” it was like her whole life was changing in this one moment.  She was mesmerized by these magnificent bears.  

We spent the rest of our days haggling at the local markets.  Adam spent 30 minutes one day being yelled at by a women who desperately wanted him to buy her bag and she must have had some pent up aggression from some other circumstances during the day.  Everywhere we go we say we are from Canada as we did just move from there.  After may talks with local shop keepers we found that in China they do not really like Americans.  They say that Americans are hard bargainers and want everything for so cheap.  They may now think that about Canadians as we were on a mission to pick up a few things for the Orphanage we were going to visit and wanted a good deal.  It was interesting though to hear them talk of Americans in that way.  Little did they know that I was an American. 

The only air pollution free day we had was during our visit to the great wall.  Outside of the city we could see the sun shining. We took a chair lift to the top and then tobogganed down the mountain after hiking the wall for a while.  We concluded the day by visiting the summer palace in the middle of winter.  From the pictures below you can see that it wasn’t the greatest idea in the freezing cold.

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Going down the Great Wall

Getting ready to go

Playing on the Great Wall

Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven

The girl in pink was the one most excited about the pandas

Forbidden City

Changing of the flags in Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square

Summer Palace Frozen Lake

Longest Corridor in the world at the summer palace

Chaing Rai Jan 1-7

Adam and I flew to the city of Chiang Rai to see where our friends Rusty and Lynette Polinder work with the Akha hill tribe.  Although we were unable see Rusty and Lynette while we were there, as they were flying in from the states the day we left, we had an amazing time enjoying their city.  Chiang Rai reminded me a lot of Lynden, a quite city where you can walk everywhere.  We spent our days exploring different temples and seeing the various hill tribes.  On our last day there we went to the Akha youth development center where Rusty and Lynette work.  We enjoyed seeing what the center is doing and meeting all the wonderful people who work there.  Below are pictures of around the city and our trip out of the city to see the white temple, black house, a hill tribe complex, and the golden triangle.

Black House Complex

White Temple

Black House Pet

Chiang Rai has beautiful flowers, they reminded me of home

White Temple

Local Temple

Black House

Black House

Akha Tribe preformance

Karen Tribe Member

Karen Tribe Member

Myanmar Boarder