Colosseum, Beach & Lasagna

Rome, rome, rome.
such an adventure. crazy. let's see if I can remember it all.

It all started by getting in the train towards the airport in Hannover after picking up Renee and saying goodbye to Cecilia and her mother. It was the first train that had two levels that we had been on, so we rode on the top part! When we got to the airport, we checked in an went through security. At security, they took away my sunscreen, which was a bummer since I had barely used it :( but oh well. We only had our backpacks with us, so there was no way I could put it in my checked in bag. We waited at the gate for a few minutes, filled up our empty water bottles that we got through security with tap water and started our flight towards Rome! for the first time, they were going to charge us for the drinks at the airplane! We flew Germanwings by the way. So we were glad we had our waters. The flight was short and just amazing. We got to see the Alps from above! I was so overwhelmed, I cried. I just couldn't believe my eyes. Something I had never even dreamed of. When I first knew I would be going to Germany this summer, I never even thought that I would be able to go to Rome! And now beautiful Alps from the sky, overwhelming joy. I just felt God's immense love surround me and I just couldn't help but cry. Two verses came to mind.
 "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" 1 Corinthians 2:9
 "I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible." Matthew 17:20
God reminded me of his immense love and power to build such an amazing creation and of the strength of faith. Me and Ariel were filled with joy. Praise God! 

(Renee was sleeping, she had woken up at 4am to catch a train to Hannover and missed the tram from university to train station, so she was exhausted from running in the rain to the train station, she was glad to have made it thou!)


When we arrived in Rome, we took a bus to the main train station "Roma Termini." We proceeded to check in to our hostal....which at first seemed really sketch. Everyone in Rome just stares. We later learned than by walking fast makes everything safer in Rome, such as don't getting hit by a car and not getting pickpocketed. Anyways, our Hostal was actually really nice. It was called Coconuts and was on the 7th floor of a building. It was only for girls, which made us feel safer, since Rome seemed really sketch. They lady gave us our locker with the four keys to the elevator, hostal, main door building and locker key. We changed into summer clothes and headed out to explore the beautiful city. 

Church, Folklore & USA game

I know I am not done writing about Rome yet, I am still working on it....its long crazy adventure haha.
but today was good. I have to share it.

A few days ago I contacted this girl on facebook named Saskia. She met my rly good friend Beth in the USA when she was a foreign exchange student there. She lives a few hours away from Erfurt. I haven't rly met any christians here in Germany yet, so I was talking to her about that and how she handles it and she searched for a church in Erfurt and sent me the link. Since we stayed in Erfurt this weekend, I felt that it would be the perfect time to go meet some christians here!

I didn't rly want to go by myself, and since my roommate Ariel is a strong Christian, I invited her to go with me.....okay okay, more like guilt tripped her, kind of? haha. I know visiting churches is not the most fun thing to do, especially when we knew we wouldnt understand the pastor's message. But I told her that we needed to find some community and I knew God really wanted us to go.
So even though it took Ariel 30mins to get out of bed....we went to bed late last night and she was rly tired....God gave us strength to go this morning! Church started at 10...but we kind of left late and got lost finding it....we arrived after the message....but got to experience some worship and some prayer. It was great! Afterwards they had some coffee and soup for the people.

Double Rainbow, Lüttje Lagen & Schützenfest

On Friday, Me and Ariel got on a train towards Hannover, Germany. There we had the blessing to stay with Cecilia and her family for two days. Cecilia was an exchange student last school year at McNeil High School. Her host family was my good friend Kayleigh and since Kayleigh also comes to the Uprising and Gateway, I met Cecilia when she first arrived around August! Cecilia has such a blessing for a family. Her mother knows English really well and her little sister wants to learn spanish. Her little sister Carlotta borrowed us her room for two nights. She stayed with Cecilia and me and Ariel had our own bed in Carlotta's room. Their house was so cute! It made me want a cute European house! Everything was organized, clean and super cutely decorated. The bathroom was huge! Cecilia picked us up at the Hannover train station with two of her friends, Iliel and Sandra. The girls were super nice! Later on we met more of Cecilia's friends. I can tell they had missed and love Cecilia. The girls were excited for the festival that started that day. It's kind of like a fair mixed with a festival. It is called Schützenfest! Its kind of like Oktoberfest but this one happens in the spring in northern Germany. The main cities have it for a week and we got there in perfect timing for this years! Love when God plans the trip, we had no idea! So me and Ariel were there for about 45 minutes since we had to meet my teacher Christina somewhere else. But at Schützenfest we all rode this one ride that went in circles and all crazy things and had blasting good music! It was a blastttt, we were jamming while screaming haha. It was rly long and super!

Leipzig

Leipzig is a city bigger than Erfurt that is an hour and a half away from here. Everything to see is within walking distance of the main train station. My roommate Ariel loved Leipzig, even better than Munich she said! There is music everywhere and a ton more tourists than Erfurt. We got to see some awesome buildings, so much detail! gorgeous. We went into the church that Sebastian Johann Bach started playing at and he is very well known in this city. We also found a small festival with music and tons of people, it felt welcoming and alive. We found a small coffee shop that just blew Ariel's mind away. She is obsessed with coffee and this store was just for her. They had coffee from all over the world. She was overwhelmed. We finally decided which one we wanted a had a cup of coffee! It was really good! I had bought a chocolate Milka with caramel previously, so coffee with chocolate was an excellent combination :)

Neuschwanstein, English Garden & Bayern München Stadium

München is beautiful, breathtaking and welcoming. 
Everyone speaks english, which is convenient for all the tourist. I missed saying my few sayings in german haha. To start our trip, we walked from our apartments to Erfurt main train station (Hauptbahnhof), which took us 45minutes. We each brought one backpack for the weekend. Our train left from Erfurt at 5am saturday morning, we took an IC to Fulda and then transferred to an ICE to our final destination, München. The total trip was about five hours. We all struggled and got a few hours of sleep as much as possible. It is hard to sleep at that time, since there is day light on this part of the world that early! I had to wrap my jacket around my eyes and put earplugs in to be able to attempt sleeping, I am not exactly sure how successful it was. Transferring trains was hilarious, for me at least haha. Our first train was running late and we had no idea if the other train was waiting or what platform it was on. So we heard the announcement in german saying something and the only word Christian and I picked up was "acht,"which is eight. So we figured that meant platform and since people starting to run, so did we and we headed to platform 8. Seeing everyone run, half asleep with their backpacks on not knowing exactly why or where we were running was hilarious. Miraculously, we found platform 8, got on and found our seats that we had reserved. We were glad we had reserved the seats, maybe it would have left without us otherwise? we don't know enough about the system to know for sure. We made it to München to find a ton of people in the center of the city "Marienplatz!" To our surprise, it was München's birthday!!!! There was a stage, where actors dressed up were being announced and people were cheering and cannons from a top building were being fired. An amazing welcome and great timing to go visit München! It was raining a bit, but we all had umbrellas or ponchos, so we were good. We visited St Peters Church and it was gorgeous! Filled with gold everything. The church was very well taken care of. We paid 1 Euro to go up to see an amazing view. We went up 306 stairs!!!! I had my backpack on so it was such a work out!!!! My friend Megan had to motivate me to keep going, but I made it! So worth itttt!!!! We stayed a good time up there, enjoying the beautiful view :)
 Kristin had her "Rick Steve's Guide to Germany" Book so we followed Rick's advice and went to eat at this fancy looking restaurant where the waitress was dressed as a typical Bavarian lady. I tried the München bratwurst and it was different, a little too soft but good! It was really pale, but with their special mustard it was pretty good. After the late lunch, we checked the the Residenz Museum, which has different tours that you can get into. I think they have three. We didn't really know, but we just wanted to check it. So two of us checked some amazing rooms, I think there were like a TON and were BEAUTIFUL from what I heard. I got to go into the Treasure room! Definitely a girly kind of tour, in my opinion. I got to see some amazinggg crowns and jewels. I didn't even think stuff like that existed. It blew my mind how much detail went in to every single piece! It reminded me that I am a princess ♔! God is the king, and I'm the princess, we all are! It also reminded me of Haggai 2:8 "The silver is mine and the gold is mine,' declares the LORD Almighty." :)
After that, we checked-in to our youth international hostal. It was pretty good, it was clean! Ariel, Evelyn and I decided to go to the store next door called Karstadt to check it out. We all got really cute scarfs that kept us warm for the rest of the trip.

Prayer, Spaghetti & Festival

Our teacher is hilarious, he likes to pick on people. And of course the first day of class, he decides to tell the class my middle name just for the fun of it. For those of yall that don't know, my middle name is Beatriz. I never really liked it. And no one really knows about it. I think is funny that it comes up here in Germany, because my middle name comes after my greatgrandmother, her name was Beatriz. She was a native German. My father was always really close with her and he admired her a lot. She passed away shortly before I was born and my parents wanted to give one their daughters to carry her name. But it's kinda cool that it came up and it just remembered me that there is some part of me that is German! haha

Today's class was really cool, we had to play charades (kind of) to try to communicate. Our class is nonverbal communication, so it ties in!

After class, I felt like grilling some chicken and sausages. Our other roomies wanted to make some pasta, so our dinner was set! We spent like three hours just bonding. The topic of religion came up and we shared our different beliefs. One of our roomies is agnostic, so it was very interesting seeing what she believes in. I got to share with them why I believe in God and how I have seen Him work in my life and how there is no room for doubt, He is real. I loved the fact that God just made an amazing atmosphere for all of us to express without anyone having to feel attacked. The same friend also told us what she has been going through and even started crying. After listening, I asked her if I could pray for her and she agreed. She even said that maybe if that worked for me, it will work for her. So I am glad that she has an open mind, so please keep her in your prayers! My roomie Ariel was

Döner, Martin Luther & Concentration Camp

I know it has been a few days that I haven't blogged but I didn't have wifi here for a few days, so yeah.
But it has been pretty fun!!!
Practiced some of my german when ordering for myself and others. Asked people to take a picture in german and asked for the check to pay :) I am so happy they understand right away too! I am looking forward to more german encounters haha.
Miho, one of my suit-mates, and I talked in German for awhile like basic stuff of course but it was good! She is so nice, she even wrote out for me in a sticky note some words that I didn't understand. The other day, she let me borrow her favorite movie, The Devil Wears Prada in german! And I watched it with subtitles in german, sooo good! Def helped :)

We had Döner Kebab and Bratwurst! Both native from germany, even if the Döner was made by Turks it was created in Berlin! In my german class we had a few lessons on Döner Kebab and it was awesome to finally taste it, it was BIG and DELICIOUS! :) And since its fast food, it was cheap!

This morning we toured the city and I learned that Martin Luther studied in this city!