Impressionists, Weddings, and Sundays

This is going to be the "newsy" post (ugh, and can I say how frustrating it is to try to type quotes on a British keyboard? Their quotation marks are switched with the @ sign so you have to press shift + 2 to get quotes!). I promise that I'll also try to get a profound, thoughtful post up in the next day or so too.

I finally posted pictures from my Greenwich trip a few weeks back - I've decided that Kyeong-Ah needs to be my personal photographer on every trip, especially with all the cool special color effects she does.

On my day off this week, I went to the National Gallery of Art with Alice, Lahn (my roommate) and a cute little Hungarian community member named Reka. They had a special exhibit on Impressionists there and I got to see some of my favorite Renoirs and Monets - and discovered some new favorites by Pissaro. Very excellent way to spend a day

Yesterday was a day that we've been anticipating for the last two months - a wedding of two former community members. Szabi (a Hungarian) left before I arrived, but Rachel has been my co-worker and Portuguese tutor for the last two months. It was an absolutely gorgeous wedding, but we all breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was over. The service was chock full of community members singing, playing, praying, and speaking - in Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish, and English :) The sweetest thing was to see the parents of the bride and groom try to get to know each other with very rudimentary English. I think the only reason it worked was because they were all fluent in God's love :)

I finally figured out that life here doesn't ever fall into "normal". If we aren't experiencing a huge rush of new people for the beginning of term, then we have a third of the community gone on retreat, a wedding to arrange, worship night to organize, or new community members to induct. It definitely keeps life interesting :)

Sadly, I discovered last night that my Brazilian brothers just don't have the cultural background to truly appreciate the Princess Bride - but at least now Pedro can't go around saying "As You Wish" without knowing it's double meaning :)

This is the office where I work. Sundays are my favorite day. I spent some time in prayer in the chapel, enjoyed meals with my friends, cleaned my room (much needed, I got a call from my roommate while I was at work saying, "I couldn't believe how clean our room is!"), and planned the prayer service I am co-leading next week. After working three hours, I went to church and enjoyed a great service. Sundays always remind me how truly blessed I am.