To The Students

Its raining now.

It is one day after you all have left. The school is once again eerily reminiscent of those first weeks when we first arrived in Denmark. So much has happened this year, and yet at the same time I feel like it has gone by so fast that I haven't had a chance to do or say anything worthwhile. I will miss you more than I am able to express with simply words. You have become such a close part of my life it feels like something inside of me has left. I am relieved I won't have anyone asking me to open their door (at least until I get to WWU) or drive them somewhere. But at the same time would give anything to take another trip to McDonalds with a few of you piled in the back of Bamse. Unfortunately I know that once I am back in the States, I will begin to recapture my old life and slowly many of the memories will begin to fade. As life continues for myself and for you I am reassured by one thing, even though we are no longer living at the same school, talking about the same things, or going to the same school functions. We will have the this year as a bond between us and will always be able to look back fondly on such a fantastic year.
God Bless,
Jeff

I wish all of the students that I met at Vejlefjord the best in life and I hope we meet again, if not in this life when we get to Heaven.

Nearing the End

It's hard to believe but my time here in Denmark is rapidly coming to an end. I only have one more week of school, then most of the kids will be leaving and I will have to say goodbye to them. Some of them probably for a lifetime. I do want to make it back to Denmark someday and hopefully I will be able to meet some of the friends I have made this year.  The kids here have truly become my good friends and family. I will miss them so very much. I have learned a lot about myself this year and I knew for a fact that teaching is the right career path for me. Though now I'm sure if I will stay in the states. There are pros and cons to teaching both places. But we'll just have to see where God sends me.
There is one kid in particular I am going to struggle to say farewell to. His name is Mathias. At the beginning of the year he was hyper and annoying. He was hard to spend any time around because it took so much of your energy just to deal with his. But after spending some time with him, he began calling me big brother. At the beginning it was weird for me, but then it got to the point were I considered him my little brother as well. I have seen him grow so much, he can control his hyperactivity more, he is easier to be around, he listens, and he respects others. I have learned so much about him and his life. I am so glad I have had the opportunity to have him in my life. He truly is part of my family now. Saying goodbye is going to be torture, but nevertheless I have to bear it.

Mathias. If you are reading this I wish you the best in life and hope you don't forget me because I will certainly never forget you. You are the little brother that I never had. Thank you and I love you.

When in Rome...

In April I had the chance to go to Rome for a few days with a few other missionaries. It was a long weekend and we got some people to cover our duties so we could enjoy Italian food for 5 days before we had to return to miserable school food. Without any problems we arrived in Rome at 11:30 pm and had to take a taxi to our hotel. For some reason I can never seem to book hotels with easy access to the airport or metro stations. This trip was no exception. Though our hotel was very nice for what we paid, we were in the middle of a business district / ghetto. So "Rome" was a 20 minute journey away. The hotel didn't have a shuttle service, but did have a car that we could book to take us to the nearest metro stop.
When we arrived at the hotel after a long day of traveling we were all so excited to fall back into a cloud of pillows and down comforters, instead we fell back on a concrete slab and nearly broke all of our backs simultaneously.

Our first day out on the town was Friday. We had a tour booked at the Coliseum. Though it was nice to hear a little of the history of such a fantastic piece of history, I will admit I was taking pictures and simply admiring it more than listening to our guide. After seeing the coliseum we needed food. Something we were looking forward to since landing. Though the tourist office was unable to give food advice they hinted at a restaurant down the road. So we stopped at the first place we saw and devoured fantastic pizza and pasta; though my dish was a little cold. Then we ventured out to the rest of the touristy sites in town. The Trevi fountain, Spanish Steps, and some of the bigger plazas along the way. At the Spanish Steps there was a festival of some sort and an outdoor concert.

I was stoked to see the Kony campaign still hanging around in Rome :)

Getting back to the hotel was a little bit of a gamble. The hotel's car would only take us to the metro station. Getting back was up to us. So we hoped on the bus that we had seen drive by our hotel hoping it would take us there as well and not the other direction. After what seemed like the longest bus ride of my life, through the ghetto no less, we saw our hotel out the window. After a long day of walking we returned to our rock hard beds.

The next day was our tour of Vatican City. We had planned on grabbing a bite to eat before our tour at 1:30 but the bus took so long to pick us up we didn't have time. Besides, we wanted to see about adding something to our tour. Once inside we found a cafeteria which we though would save the day. Instead we found the most wretched pizza on the face of the earth. You'd think in Italy we might have pizza that is at least homemade, not a frozen pita bread with tomato paste smeared around in unappetizing clumps. But after our failed attempt at satisfying our hunger we entered the Vatican museums. Some of the rooms and artifacts were indeed interesting, but our main purpose there was the Sistine chapel.

After walking all through the museums and seeing the Sistine and St. Peters we decided it was time to relax a little. We got some real food and headed back to the hotel for some pool time.

On Sunday we decided to find a market. One of the girls read that there was a big market in the Trastevere district of Rome... Whatever that meant. So we set out in search of the big market. But of course on Sunday the buses run different, so we had to get on a bus we had never been on, running a route we had never seen, and our only instructions were it stops near the metro. That last bit scared me. Near is a relative term. As it turns out we missed our stop. But the bus driver said that the bus eventually stopped where we needed to go. After another long bus trip we arrived at yet another Roman ghetto and began walking. After walking for a half an hour we decided to turn around. By the time we figured out which way to go we decided the markets were going to be closed and we gave up searching. We headed back to the hotel defeated. After getting up early to catch the bustle of the market, sitting for so long on a bus, and then walking so much we were beat. Since we had already seen everything we wanted to see we headed back to hotel.

Monday was our last day. The forecast was for rain. Since we didn't really pack for rainy weather we figured we would just go to the mall since we didn't want to just wander around in the rain. When we woke up, I noticed the weather looked promising. So I told the others I was going to take all of my camera gear and go on a hike. They decided the weather didn't look promising enough. So they went to the mall and I headed off into Rome. I wound up walking just under 7 km (4.5 miles). I had the greatest time! There was no rain the whole day, and by 12 o'clock it was sunny and warm. I was really able to just walk around the back streets of Rome and take as long as I wanted setting up a shot. The best pictures I have of Rome came from that 6 hour journey. This is some of what I got:

SPQR is the Latin abbreviation for "The Senate and People of Rome"
it is written, carved, and engraved everywhere.

We had a great trip!

This Post Can't Wait!

Koenigsegg. To many of you this name means nothing. To me it is the name of my favorite supercar. Hailing from the great land of Sweden (Don't tell anyone from Denmark I said Sweden was great.) you can't deny the first time you even see a picture of one of these cars, you can feel the passion and craftsmanship put into each and every one of these handmade beauties.

I have liked Koenigsegg since I came across a car-picture website in high school. When I realized that their factory was only a few hundred Kilometers from Vejlefjord I told myself I had to get up there this year.  I thought it wasn't going to happen but on a reward trip to Copenhagen for staying in Danish class all year we realized we were only about an hours drive away.  I couldn't say no. I convinced Jill, our Danish teacher and good friend, to drive up and visit the factory. Not knowing if we would see anything or if it would even be open to the public.  We embarked up to the small town of Angelholm, Sweden. We finally arrived at an abandoned military base. The sign out front was big, but there was no other signs on the main road.  Very easy to miss if you weren't on a mission to find it. After taking a few pictures we went up and opened the doors to the main office. We were greeted by a nice receptionist who told us we were not allowed in the factory or to see any cars because they were all custom-built and the customers didn't want anyone to see them before themselves. She tried to talk her boss into letting us just see one, without pictures but he wasn't going to budge.  So she said she would call to Stockholm and see if there were any for sale there we could see.  When she came back she said there were a couple in Malmo we could go see. That was only an hours drive away, much better than 8 to Stockholm.

Before we left the factory for our drive to Malmo we went into their small shop and decided to buy a few little things to remind us of our trip.  As we were in the middle of paying for things, one of the other missionaries said, "Is that him?" The store manager said, "Yes, that is Christian von Koenigsegg, the owner/founder/CEO of Koenigsegg." Three boys in that room instantly turned into little girls. If you didn't know better you'd think we were 13 year olds meeting Justin Bieber.  We asked Christian if we could get his picture.

After talking many pictures with him, we started talking and mentioned we were all from the States and were spending a year abroad as volunteers and had driven not only from Copenhagen, but from Vejle to see his cars. I don't remember his response exactly because at this point I could hardly breathe and it is all kind of surreal.  But he said that if we had come all that way we couldn't leave without seeing something. So told us to bring our cameras and follow him to the workshop.  The first thing we see when we walk in is this:

After a good 15 minutes of talking with him and taking pictures of the car he said we could go watch one of the new models the Agera R get Dyno tested. Unfortunately the technician had just finished the test, so we didn't get to hear anything up close but we got to see one of the only Agera Rs in the world right now. This particular car has been ordered by someone in America, but he wasn't allowed to say.

After saying goodbye to Christian we returned to the shop to finish buying our souvenirs and collect all the belongings we had just dropped in our frenzy to meet Christian von Koenigsegg.

I am one happy man.