Andy – Blog

Just a quick note, I forgot to add to the other post:

It looks like I might replace my spain plans with plans for germany. Last week I made a lot of friends from various parts of germany. It would be cool to go and visit them.

Hullo again, thanks for your comments, and maybe emails but i havn’t read those yet.

A small correction: the house I live in is called ‘Tilleul’, its named after the tree in the courtyard.

Sam: Yes they prepare a vegeterian option for those who need it, its not fancy but it certainly exists.

This week has been a good week, the house I live in is much more homely, we have a washing machine, real tea, and a space to hang around in. We are incouraged to live in community with the other 10 boys who live in the house, rather then with the visitors. Partly because if I had to make friends and say good bye every week I would be an emoitional wreck in a month. I have said enough good-byes in the last 2 weeks for now.

Now I am a perminant, I work morning and evening. This week  I organise people who clean toilets in ‘point 5′ and in the late afternoon I help prepare special meals in the El Abioth (sp?) Kitchen. I have most of the early afternoon free, except some days there is a bible study or a meeting with a contact brother.

We have breakfast and lunch togeather in the house, and dinner in the community (where the brothers live) with some of the brothers. Lunch and sing a song and then eat in silence for the first 10 or so minutes. With classical music playing. It is nice, and kind of funny. We get better food that includes more veges now, which is lucky, I just need to learn how to eat less.

Well I could describe lots of things, but I wont. It is harder to get to the internet now that Taize is busy with people for holy week. Once a week is all I am likly to achieve.

My deepest love and blessings, I will now go read my email and facebook.

I would like to be able to write something to share what is so amazing about this place, but I do not have the time or the words to talk about what happens on the inside. Instead I can at least describe what Taize is like for those (most) of you who have not been here. What I get from Taize I think will only be shown in my life later,  right now there are too many thoughts.

You will have to excuse my engish, I am one of the only native english speakers here, and already I can hear my english changing. My vowels have changed, I talk slower and have a tendency to use simpler words and end sentences with “no?”.

Taize is a simple place, it is not yet a busy season, so there are only a 100 or so people visiting. The spring is only just beginning so it is cold in the morning and after the sun sets. There are no leaves on the trees. Taize is in the middle of the french countryside.

I sleep with 5 other guys in a the ‘barracks’. All the visitors eat meals together inside or sitting in the sun. We attend prayers three times a day in the church. We have small group meetings in the morning, and in the afternoon we help with work around taize, I am helping repair the floor in a big meeting tent. There are also workshops on different topics in the early evening before dinner.

Everyone comes to taize for somthing, not everyone who comes are christains, some are here just for peace and quite, some are here to ask questions. But what is increible about this place is that everyone is so open about what they are thinking. It is a blessing to meet people from so many different backgrounds.

The community of brothers is ever present but disconnected from the visitor community here, they attend prayers and take workshops, but other then that they leave us to ourselves, and we leave them alone, so they an  actually have a life.

One important idea in taize is shared prayer, though we can have arguments or disagreements, when the prayer bells ring, we all go and seek God together. The prayers involve beautiful songs in lots of languages I struggle to pronounce, and silence.

Taize is not a comfortable place, the floor of the church is hard, the seats we eat at are hard and have no backs, the showers are simple, the mattress are thin, the food is… simple. But everything is as much as you need. The simplicity of life here hurts a little, but is very satisfying. It leaves room for thoughts within.

I am rather famous here, I’m the ‘person from new zealand’, ‘new zealand? wooooow’. People love my accent, which is a bit of a strange experience. It is almost 8:15 and the bells for morning prayer are about to begin ringing, I will try write something more interesting in the next few weeks. Next week I move into ‘Teal’ - ”tee-aal” with the other ‘perminant’ boys.

I love you all. Thanks for all your  comments, I am reading them.

-Taize. Local time 8:10am, Friday 19 March.

Well, I don’t know much about Paris yet either, I got off a plane, walked through a big airport, found a train station,  found a machine that sold me some kind of ticket, went through a crazy tick-spitting machine, got on a train, some nice lady told me the other train was better, got off the train, got on another train, got off the train at gare du nord(the first place the train stopped, thank you Nice Lady!), followed the sign through crazy train station to the metro, went through more crazy ticket machines, got on metro, got off the metro, walk out of the station, down the avenue, missed my street, turned around, found my street, found hostel, checked in, slept. Thank God.

I avoided going to find dinner last night because I really didn’t have the energy to work out how to get food, pay for it, not spend a fortune, that kind of stuff, anyway I figured I’d eaten enough in the past 2 days. Thank you Korean air. Breakfast was on the house this morning, so I haven’t actually spent any money since I left NZ, except for the hostel, and for this Internet.

Today I have to work out how to get to Gare De Lyon, how to actually buy something like lunch from, how to use the TGV. Hopefully the final result is that I arrive in Taize tonight.In hindsight, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have planed to have an extra night in Paris, to get used to the fact I’m further from my known world then ever before.

-Paris. Local time: 8:50am, Sunday 13th

…and in the last 36 hours I’ve ticked off a lot of them. For the first time I’ve left New Zealand, crossed the equator, traveled on an internation flight, gone to the bathroom at 38000 feet, stayed in a hotel, been in a foriegn country. I’ve traveled further, faster and higher then ever before, I’ve seen the sun rise to the south, I’ve had the most consecutive hours of daylight ever.

Anyway, Incheon Airport is big. Its kind of build on reclaimed land between two islands, around it is flat land which either has nothing but grass, or big buildings. I know nothing more about Korea, having stayed here for 16 hours, then I did a week ago except that it is cold, and has this wierd misty weather so you can’t see anything far off.

I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Incheon, about 1 minute by bus from the airport, Korean air kindly paid for everything. I, not having ever stayed in a hotel, had fun trying to work out how to make the lights in my room go, and how to make the shower go, and how to stay in a room without accidentally using something that isn’t complementary. Dinner and breakfast were buffets, of a western style, and I think perhaps Korean chefs do better western food then well… westerners. I ate too much.

Today I am going to Paris.

Oh Caleb you asked me to tell you what Korean Air was like, since I have nothing to compare it to, all I can really say is this: The hostesses were nice, the food was pretty good, they served two meals, and plied us withorange juice the rest of the time. The meals I had were: fish and rice, which came with a chicken salad, a bread roll and some hunks of melon. Later I had a beef and mashed potato, which came with a standard bread-roll and a green salad and some apple shortcake type thing. We were on a 777. My seat was on the isle at the front of my section, so I could stretch my legs, a luxury I might miss this trip. However this time I get a window seat, so I’ll make the best of it. I am rationing To Kill a Mocking Birdto make it last to Paris. They show tv more then movies.

Thanks everyone for your sweet sendoff. I love you all. I am not yet lost or dead. Things are looking up.

- Incheon Int. Airport. Local time 1:00pm, Saturday 13th March.

The last 24 hours I’ve been packing, and being absolutely petrified about everything.

Now everything is as close to packed as it needs to be, and I’ve realised this:
The worst that can happen is that I’ll loose everything I have and all my money and get stuck in some foreign place, alone.

But I’ll still be me, I’ll still be able to choose to laugh or cry or make the best of it. I’ll still have God. Life could still hold as much potential for joy and adventure as in any other situation. Really the only things that can fail, are my plans, and they were never as good as God’s anyway.