Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a Pirate's Life for Me!

This last weekend, the Discovery team took a kayaking trip on the Baltic Sea! On Thursday, we jammed all our stuff into kayaks and sent sail for parts unknown. The first day was foggy, making navigation tricky and when dark began to fall, we were forced to find a camping spot on a nearby island even though we we were two kilometres short of our objective destination for the day. Friday was a beautiful sunny day, requiring us to pull out hats, sunglasses and sunscreen to combat the rays. We managed to make up the two kilometres from the previous day and reach our second destination in good time. The third day, Saturday, we awoke to a blanket of fog; I was leader of day that day, which means my partner Melanie and I were given the map and our destination for the day and had to use our compass skills to get the group there. Along the way we also had to fill up on water at a small town and choose a lunch spot. At times when we paddled, we looked around and all we could see was water and fog. At other times, shadows would emerge out of the fog and resolve into islands or large rocks. It was surreal. Timo, the Discovery leader, said he was very impressed with our navigation skills because we always knew where we were and where we wanted to go and then we went there. Sunday, we headed back to our original departure point, stopping for lunch on the way, and then cleaned out the kayaks and headed back to Holsby.

It's hard to describe what exactly we did on the weekend because it just seems so simple. Timo woke us up since we were again without any watches or other electronic devices; we packed our sleeping bags and sleeping pads and clothes, took down our tents, ate breakfast, cleaned up camp, and launched our kayaks. The rest of the day we paddled and paddled and paddled, stopped for Fika (snack break) which we ate in our kayaks, ate lunch on an island, and paddled until we reach our evening's destination. Sometimes we talked, but it was difficult to talk on the water with so much space in between and it wasn't always easy to go exactly the same speed as someone else to stay beside them. Sometimes we sang Christmas songs or Disney songs. Most of the time I just lost myself in the paddling motion and my own thoughts. The evenings also followed a routine: arrive, pitch tents, cook dinner and start a fire, debrief the day, and hang out around the fire until we felt tired enough to go to sleep. Finding a place to camp was challenging because we needed to find a place where we could pull up ten kayaks, flat spaces for five tents, and a place to make a fire; preferably the spot should be out of the wind, although we weren't very good at considering that.

I learned that cold feet are not normal and not healthy and numb is really bad. If your feet are cold, your socks are probably wet and you need to change them; you dry socks by putting them on your shoulders on top of your bottom layer but under any other layers you are wearing so your body heat pushes the water out. The best way to warm cold/numb feet is skin to skin contact, rubbing them, warming them with your hands, or putting them in someone else's armpits :D .

I didn't bring my camera with me because I was afraid it might get wet, but I stole some pictures from Facebook to give you an idea of what it was like and I'm going to try to get some more from a friend as well:

Nothing but fog

Emelie

Melanie

Sunshine and Shades 

Danielle

Moonrise

Another foggy day

Me!

The last two weeks seem like a blur so I'll fill you in on a few highlights, in no particular order, as I remember them.

Wednesday morning last week I woke up to discover that I had another tick :( . This one had taken up residence in my belly button. I showed EJ, the girls' RA, and asked her if she could take it off me. She managed to get most of it but not the jaws and while she was working on getting it out with a needle, I started to feel really light-headed and needed to sit down really quickly. After the world stopped spinning, we decided we'd wait for someone else's advice before we dug the rest out. That evening I asked Timo about it, and he said it really needed to come out because he didn't want it to get infected on the trip. I asked EJ to try again, and she got more of it out but after half an hour there was still a piece left so I had to ask Timo to give it a try. He tried for another half hour before we gave up and he told me to wash it really well and keep it clean and keep an eye on it. I think it probably came out on it's own a day or two later because it was gone when I pulled the scab off on Monday. Now I'm a little paranoid about getting a tick, but not paranoid enough that I always remember to check for tick every night.

I don't know if I wrote about this or not, but by left knee has been bothering me since our last Discovery trip. Most of the time it's fine, but whenever I try to do much running, it starts to hurt and then continues to hurt whenever I go up or down hills or stairs. I gave it nine days off before trying to run again last Monday only to have it start hurting again after fifteen minutes. I've not given it another nine days off or so, but I can still tell it hasn't completely healed because it feels slightly bruised when I press on it. It's not actually that painful, just very frustrating that I can't be as active as I want to be. Please pray that I'd be able to stay off it until it's completely better and that I'd be able to learn whatever lesson God is trying to teach me through this.

Steffi, a friend of EJ's who was a student here two years ago, came to visit for a week. She was also an 'older' student when she was here (23 years old) and also in Discovery so I enjoyed talking with her, hearing some of the things she learned here and her experiences on Discovery.

I've enjoyed spending time with Trista, one of the staff here who is the mother of six-month-old twins Hazel and Huxley. I enjoy talking with her and holding the babies, and we've taken them for a few walks, too.

At Adelfors, I've enjoyed talking with Angela, a woman from Germany who is studying Swedish and English with the goal of studying in Sweden afterwards. English is often a struggle for her, but we get along okay and she teaches me the occasional Swedish word or phrase, too. Last week EJ brought string to make bracelets so we did that together while we talked. Angela is probably in her mid-thirties or early forties so it's been cool to hear some of her life experiences. Tonight we're going back to Adelfors so you can pray that God bless our conversation and our relationship.

This week, our speaker is Peter Reid, the principal at Bodenseehof, a Torchbearer/Capernwray school in Germany. He's talking about the life of Peter the apostle and so far it has been really challenging. Please pray that the lectures would be more than information gathering but life-transforming. We get bombarded with so much information and so many ideas and challenges that it's easy to forget the ones that have come before. We had reflection hour today where we got to sit and think about what we learned, but I feel like it wasn't enough to process what we've been learning.

Yesterday I went bouldering (rock climbing a low heights without a harness or rope) on a small rock close by with a few other students. The rock had basically three routes, one that was pretty easy, one that was impossibly challenging for me, and one that I'm making some progress on. Unfortunately, one of the times that I feel, I scraped my hand so I had to quit. Hopefully I'll make it back there before the snow comes.

We've had the warmest November in 100 years; today is the first time we've had frost since our backpacking trip. The warm weather looks like it's coming to an end, and I've heard rumours of snow for Thursday.

I hope you enjoyed this random collection of anecdotes. Hopefully I'll blog again before life gets away from me, but we've got a few assignments due next week and I'm falling a little behind on my Bible reading. Have a great week and remember that God's presence is always with you!

~Quarki