the long long long walk

What a crazy day! We're staying with the Princiottas at a US military hotel called Edelweiss. It's beautiful. Last night we went out to eat in the quaint German ski town, and I had an ostrich burger and Weissbier. We walked back to Edelweiss and had more drinks and finished watching a world cup game. Anyway on to today!

The hike...
*We set off at 9:30 on a near-perilous journey for our feet
*Saw an old bobsled course used from 1910-1960, including in the 1936 Winter Olympics...4 people died from the course!
*Trekked through a BMW motorcycle - the bikers are much less intimidating than US Harley riders.
*Continued to the gorge sandwiched in the Alps - It was powerful, exotic, and dazzlingly blue.
*The gorge and river visit could also include a horse and carriage ride or a cable car trip to the top. But we did neither.
*Time: 9:30 AM til 5 PM
*Distance: Mostly unknown. After discussing this with Kristin, our best guess is at least 15 miles. Whoa.

We concluded our journey with a trip to the hotel hot tub and sipped on beers. We went out to dinner again, ate superbly on more typical German food, and then retreated to watch a legendary World Cup match.

Ghana vs. Uruguay:
1st Half: Ghana 1-Uruguay 0
2nd Half: 1-1
Overtime: 1-1
Final minute: Mysterious free kick awarded to Ghana results in multiple shots on goal. Uruguay defender (Suares) handball blocks a shot on goal and receives a red card. Ghana takes the ensuing PK and totally misses, hitting the crossbar!
Penalty Kicks: Uruguay keeper stops 2 PK's
Final: Uruguay miraculously wins, moving into the semi finals. Unbelievable ending to the match. Tragic for Ghana. Africa is out of the World Cup.

Good night!

The German Alps

We met horses on the long walk

The Gorge

ice cream

Had a great stay at Erin's! It was an easy transition to life in Europe...Comfortable home, small and manageable town, our own German translator. Now we're heading to Munich only to be picked up by the Princiottas. Kristin's family friends will take us south to Garmisch.
Today we confirmed an observation I've been having: ICE CREAM. So many Germans are always eating ice cream. Not just kids, but adults too. It's quite the contrast after being in HK for 3 years where the people there don't have much of a sweet tooth. Despite my extremely diminished intake, I thoroughly enjoyed my ice cream sundae.
Burn Notice: Enjoyable, witty and addicting
The Jansen Directive: OK thus far, but I hope it gets better
Travel Music: Dave Matthews Band, The Best of What's Around.

Heidelburg highlights

Went on a day trip to Heidelburg with Erin today. It's a beautiful little city with its own castle and restored stone bridge. We received the "regurgitated tour" from Erin, who went on a tour last week with her company.

History tidbits:

• Biggest wine barrel in Germany (195,000 liters!)
• Perkeo - a drunken wino jester that died when he was given a drink of water. We proceeded to eat at a restaurant named after him in his honor
• Posed with a bronze monkey that points his butt at a tighta$$'s statue (Carl Theodore)
• Walked along Germany's largest pedestrian street... that cars can drive on
• The castle also has an archway supposedly built overnight for the queen's 19th birthday
• One of the churches used to have a wall dividing it in the middle so Catholics and Protestants could share the building but not their company, or their beliefs in Jesus

Insights:

*German girls are way taller and look more intimidating. Asian girls are extremely dainty in comparison. Also, though the average German is fatter, I applaud the amount of bikers peddling all over the city. Finally, all German public transportation is quieter than Hong Kong. It's on the verge of eerie or creepy, like I just walked onto the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

New TV show:

*Erin introduced us to Burn Notice. We're going to back to her place to rest and watch some more.

the scandalous bronze monkey

romantic archway for the queen's 19th birthday

this was the smaller barrel, not the 195,000 liter one!

To Germany!

Just spent a couple of hours in the Beijing Airport and watched Netherlands beat Slovakia in the World Cup, drank a beer, and played cribbage. Our next leg of the journey was darkly foreboding. With most gates available, the predominantly white person flight was corralled into a dark underground gate, and we had to take a bus to our plane. Racism? ;-)
However, the plane is fantastic compared to our first flight. I always enjoy the individual TVs on the backs of seats. Frankfurt, here we come.
...
I actually slept! It was a bit fitful, but better than usual.
Weird moment: Kristin used my toothbrush. She NEVER does that
*Kristin: Darn me for forgetting!! I've had to use it twice now.
...
Just got on the train and there's no room for luggage! However, the biggest surprise is how quiet the train ride is. To be fair, it's 6:30 AM, but it's still nothing compared to the noise of the AM rush in Hong Kong.
Note: Let Kristin stare at the trees while it's early
Theme Music: Wilco!!! :)
...
Met up with Erin Arndt, and she's kind enough to let us crash with her. She went to work while we promptly took to eating Haribo gummy bears. Between flying and our sugar crash, Kristin fell asleep on the couch while watching the Office. After waking, we went for a run around the town to exercise and explore. Currently, I'm sitting at the Bistro Saxophon in Weinheim.
First German food: Hausgemachter Wurstsalat mit Pommes and a Hefeweizen beer :)
(Translation: weird meat salad and fries)
Kristin had spaghetti and a Weinheimer Riesling. 1/2 German at least!

wurstsalat - yeah, worst salad indeed ;)

leaving on a jet plane

Kristin and I finished packing today. Before heading off to Europe for a month, we made The Office a priority in our lives and watched 4 episodes. Silly us!
*Kristin: This is a high priority, I needed my fix for a month!
Very stoked about the trip, but not about the plane ride. Decided to take Kristin up on the idea of limiting technology, ie my iphone, on the trip by deleting almost all my apps, especially the games. I'm sure it'll be surprisingly good in the end.
*Kristin: I think so too... I'm trying to avoid internet
Books: Today I began Robert Ludlum's The Janson Directive. Should be fun and thrilling.
Weird moment: Kristin witnessed a girl go into the men's room in the HK airport :)
Tidbits:
-Air China = ghetto flight on a leased Air Macau plane
-Food on flight was surprisingly simple and good
-Chinese lady next to me bought a 1400 RMB belt
-Kristin and I had a lengthy conversation about our various faith statuses and faith crises.

school's out for the summer

grant finished school about a week and a half ago. i finish my school year at church on sunday.

and i am SO ready for this summer!

we leave on monday night for europe for a month!

our itinerary:

-fly to frankfurt

-see erin

-train to munich

-see dotti and steve princiotta

-go to prague for the world ultimate championships!

-vienna and venice with jon-e and lily

-rome with lily

-paris with donna

it's going to fly by. i'm so excited for the break and also for all we're going to do and see.

then, right after we get back, grant goes under the knife for his 2nd knee. it'll be a busy 2 months!

a "world" expo

we went to the shanghai "world expo" this weekend. we were already in shanghai for a frisbee tournament, and grant took an extra day off, so we thought, "what the heck."

here's what i learned about the world:

*moldovan wine isn't that great

*bulgaria has a ton of history that i know nothing about

*the ARV drug for HIV was developed in the czech republic

*the caribbean countries had nothing to display on their shelves, but lots of pictures of beaches

*zimbabwe has nice waterfalls (but there was no information about the country at all!)

*sudan's first exhibit was their peace agreement from 2003 (ironic?)

*somalia has sharks and camels (displayed together)

*chinese people push and shove and push and shove some more when they're in a line

*and they're not afraid to queue for hours and hours and hours to get into a pavilion, get a stamp for their fake passport, and move on to the next one.

*in 5 hours, i'd guess we saw less than 20 foreign visitors to this "world" expo.

i realized it felt a bit like a massive version of epcot center in disneyworld. all of the countries show their glossy, pretty side and sometimes even perpetuate the stereotypes about their country! the exhibits that we saw were all really slick with no real content. and did i mention the lines?

youth sunday

We had our youth Sunday this past week. 6 of our students led worship, 4 preached, 3 gave testimonies, 6 ushered, 3 helped with the tech team, and 3 more did other parts of the service.

it was really awesome to see our kids serving and to hear what was on their hearts.

here's two links:

our service trip video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm_eN-9g0Qo

our youth sermon: (click on the one called "an example for all believers.")

http://www.unionchurchhk.org/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,13/Itemid,60/

a week in rural china

last week, i (with 3 other chaperones) took 16 youth from our church to bangbing village in yunnan, china. if you can see on the map, it's very near the myanmar border.

it took us 2 flights and over 7 hours on a bus (total) to get there.

we helped build sinks at a middle school, picked and made tea, taught english, and played with kids.

the worst part? no toilets or running water for 4 days/3 nights!!

the pictures might tell more than my words would. these are courtesy of 2 students' facebook albums. i didn't take a camera :-)

2 trips to the Philippines in 2 months

yes, it's true, the Philippines is officially our "most-visited" destination. several reasons for this:
1) flights are cheap to Manila
2) life is cheap when you are there
3) there's a huge ultimate scene and, therefore, lots of tournaments

trip 1: chinese new year
Coron, Palawan

Coron is gorgeous. it's a small town and not highly built up. we tried scuba diving, did a lot of snorkeling, and rented a boat to "island hop" around to different sites. truly one of the most fun vacations i've had in a fairly remote area!

trip 2: my birthday!
Boracay Island - home of the white beach

Boracay is the same as always: white sand, clear waters, ultimate, great restaurants and bars. The tournament was fantastic, and we had a great group of friends to hang out with post-games. Boracay is a great place for "developed" vacations - almost anything is available.

pictures are on facebook. i find pictures on blogspot too difficult to deal with. sorry!

"is there anybody out there?"

that was one of my favorite burlap to cashmere songs when i was in high school. i'm still not sure what the point of the song was entirely, but that's ok.

my point in quoting it is wondering if anyone follows us! i know that i'm bad at remembering to update, and grant's even worse, but it is definitely hard to be inspired when you're not sure if anyone's there.

regardless, our holidays were good. christmas eve was a beautiful evening of church services and dinner with friends and their family. our candlelight service at church was really amazing, and we had a group of friends join us. we got home and opened all our presents before we went to bed. i guess we are still little children!

christmas night, we flew to bangkok, en route to chiang mai where caroline becker was waiting for us! she'd come to hong kong for a few days, and then we met her and her friend in northern thailand. it was beautiful - clean air, mountains, warm days, cool evenings. i was really bummed to only stay for 3 days, and grant stayed for another 2 weeks after.

i spent new year's in kunming with our good friend anna - working on a service trip for april, playing ultimate, and generally relaxing. again - clean air, mountains, but no warm days! i think that's the coldest i've been in 2 years.

that's us in a nutshell. 2 weeks from now will be chinese new year, and we're headed to palawan, philippines - specifically, coron town on busuanga island. then, for my birthday, we're going to boracay for a tournament. i don't think i could celebrate my 25th birthday any better.

camping out... in the living room

Greetings followers of the Franke blog!

Today was a sunny, warm day in December, and I just went for a 2-mile run with Kristin. It was the first time since my knee operation that I was able to actually RUN! It felt great. I remember just after my surgery in September how I thought I'd never be able to move my left leg freely again. However, with each week, there seems to be subtle improvement, and I'm slowly progressing. In hindsight, I can more clearly see why the doctor and all other torn-ACL-friends say it's a long road to recovery, but I should have hope for a full return.

But that's not exactly what I wanted to tell you.

I really just wanted to say that Kristin and I have been sleeping in our living room since Halloween. Yep. We moved the mattress from our bedroom into the living room, and we've been camping ever since. There was no reason for it, just an adventure. However, I think we're realizing that it also means we haven't had people over to our place in over a month. It would be nice to host again and welcome back our friends' laughter to 11/G. Adventures are fun, but eventually they have to end so that you can start a new one.

thrillah in manila

that was the theme for this year's manila spirits - biggest asian tournament. i'm going to write this post in terms of wins and losses... because there were several!
losses:
*the women's final by 2 points
*a disc (but grant found it!)
*my teva sandals
*my sports bras and new shorts
*our mixed quarterfinals due to some sh***y calls by the other team. i could go into it in detail, but let's just say it was the worst spirit of the game i've ever played against!

wins:
*a lot of new friends from D-CUUP (our women's team from around China/Taiwan). here's a photo after the finals with Philippines. it's a bit small.

*more new friends on Ninja Cowboy Bear (my mixed team)
*a lot of games - 3 and 1 on Saturday for mixed, 2 and 1 on Friday for women's
*MVP for the women's tournament!! HUGE surprise actually...
*seeing tons of people from all over asia that i've met at other tournaments
*having a good dinner out with grant for his birthday
*good weather! only a tiny sprinkling of rain for a half hour

it was a FANTASTIC weekend. i've still got my fingers crossed that my clothes will come back to me. i gave up on the flip flops though :-(

thrillah in manila

this weekend was the manila spirits tournament - biggest tournament in asia, i'm fairly certain. for the first time, there was a women's and open division! 9 teams for open, 4 for womens. it was fantastic. my women's team was made up of players from beijing, taiwan, hk, and one girl from shanghai. we got to play in the finals and ended up losing by 2 :-( ah well, so it goes. my highlight moment was a stall-9, inside out flick, upwind(?) to the back of the endzone for a score. heck yeah.

mixed was on saturday and sunday, and i played with a team called "ninja cowboy bear" made up of people from all over. lots of beijing people (the captain was from there), singapore, philippines, japan, hong kong... good times. it was awesome because we did really gel together, and we worked as a team, even though we had some huge stars who could have totally dominated the game.

we made it into the quarters after winning our crossover against the beijing team. we were playing against boracay, and it was going really well (8-5) until the cap... then we just couldn't score. we only had to get to 9, and they got up to 8-8. at which point, all heck broke loose. on a bad throw from me, our player skyed his defender and came down with a disc, and a girl was also trying to get in the mix. he dumped it, there was a swing and a score. go ninjas. we started shaking hands, and the boracay captain noticed his girl on the ground yelling that she had called foul (or injury). no one heard a call, no one knew what the call was. if it was injury, it could have stayed with our guy... turns out she claimed a foul, so it had to come back to me. my mark fouled me, and then i threw it away on my 3rd try. they scored, game over.

someone was taping the game and showed it to us afterwards...

1) there was no foul: he skyed her by about 3 feet, she never left the ground and got in his way as he came down.

2) she never acknowledged any call. she played defense and then went to the ground AFTER the score.

our captain, not known for a calm temperament, took the video straight to the TD and the other captain. after debates, they agreed to talk to the girl and see if she stuck to her story. if she didn't, they'd figure out what to do next. what stunk was that she wouldn't admit to a bad call. so there was nothing we could do, and no acknowledgment of violating the spirit of the game. SUPER frustrating end to our run, especially because they got destroyed in the semis, and we would have had a chance at making the finals against the other team. i voted we put the video on youtube, myspace, friendster, facebook, etc :-)

but, overall, it was a REALLY fun weekend and great to see all the ultimate players we know from all over since basically every team was there (32 mixed teams, 6-700 players!). and now it's back to the real world until the next tournament...

for those still following along...

i realized that neither of us have updated this blog in quite awhile... though, were you expecting grant to do it? nope, me neither. i also realized that there are still a few people out there who read this. (hi jon-e!)

grant's recovering quite nicely from surgery. he walks without a limp 90% of the time, he's been on the bike every day this week, and he's hoping to play ultimate by the end of february. this is what his physio has told him, so it's not just an obscure date that he chose. meanwhile, he's helping run our fall league and doing ridiculous write-ups after each week.

i, however, am still playing ultimate. my league team is 5-0 so far. whoo whoo! jake-e did a great job drafting almost all my favorite people. he also did a great job recruiting a new girl who's a BEAST (even though she'd never played). last weekend was the HK tournament. team Party Tram won the team costume award. yup, ninjas. and we had fire, courtesy of our resident amateur magician, jeremy. it was definitely fun to be playing a tournament again. i forgot about what a high i get from tourney weekends! good thing manila is next weekend...

professionally, jobs are good. grant's u-14 soccer team is doing well, and he survived planning camp. now he just has week without walls in a few weeks. he's doing a "boys to men" week. manly things like war games, go karts, hiking and camping, the works.

youth group has been going alright. lots of crazy boys in the 11-12 age range... it's a good time.

cheers,

kristin

grant's surgery

we spent monday and most of tuesday hanging out at the Matilda Hospital in hong kong. this hospital is most commonly known as where the wealthy have their babies :-) however, we were not having a baby... grant was having surgery on his knee having his acl replaced and meniscus trimmed.

i had a request for all the funny things that happened or that grant said, and i thought i should post them.
*not only do they give you an open back robe to wear, you also get "special underwear." these fashion statements are best described as one-size-fits-all mesh adult diapers. i'm not sure why you can't wear regular underwear.
*at this particular hospital, patients also got warm, fluffy robes to stay modest.
*quotes from grant, post-op, that he has no recollection of
-"am i still in surgery?" (about 10 minutes after being in the ward, after the recovery room)
-"cutler is a huge waste of money. what a jerk!" (after being told about the bears game and cutler's interceptions.)
-"you don't want to see all of this. kristin gets excited about it, but you don't want to see it." (to the physio girl when she came to teach him to use his crutches)
*the physio then asked me "is he always like this?" to which, i said "yes..." and she replied "oh, i thought he was on morphine."

the craziest thing that happened was a typhoon came through while grant was in the hospital (on the PEAK!), and the winds went nuts. it went up to a T8 in the evening, so I opted out of heading all the way home across the harbor (traffic and transportation were going to be CRAZY) and called our favorite hong kong family, mike and sheri. they laughed at me, because they'd just been talking about if i would need a place to stay. there was still a t8 in the morning (which meant no taxis), so i stayed around, watched nfl, and ate waffles. it was a GREAT morning, even if I did feel guilty for ditching grant!!

now he's at home, resting, icing his knee, and hobbling around. his most recent facebook status post: "immobility challenge #1: going to the bathroom"

an awesome date followed by unpleasant consequences

last night, grant planned our weekly "date night." there's a pretty fancy restaurant right under us (or just about) that we regularly walk past called O'Carol's. on mondays and wednesdays, they're having a "ladies eat free" special (if you come with a gentleman). the set menu is an affordable price, and you're only paying for one person. so, we had an appetizer of foie de gras (sounds better than goose liver) and salmon, a seafood and mushroom cappucino, and a main course, followed by coffee. lovely, really. we went home for our own dessert (fruit and nutella!), watched the office, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
until it was bedtime.
then both of our stomachs felt terrible: borderline pukey feeling. you know the one. i'm not sure either of us slept soundly last night.

a great date night gone sour.

in the groove

grant started school today, and i'm gearing up towards the start of the school year and the youth group calendar. i've got quite a bit to get done, but i'm at a bit of an impasse... wanting to get students' opinions on activities, waiting for dates to be confirmed for events, etc. we're also hiring an intern this year which should be exciting - and nervewracking! sometimes, i barely know what i'm doing, and now i'll have to help someone else do stuff too! i'm really glad to have an extra head to bounce ideas off. that might be the biggest asset to me personally, though she'll be helping with other (much-needed) areas in the church.

singapore open was last weekend. it was hot, tiring, and lots of ultimate (imagine that!). we had an awesome group of women, including 3 students from the US, a solid, if short, group of men, including a notre dame pickup. we went in seeded pretty low, and finished there (16th) which is really unfortunate. we lost a lot of games we shouldn't have, and that's always frustrating. overall, i think i played pretty well considering i haven't seriously played since june. i even got to be a cutter since we had solid guy handlers and the women had better mismatches in the downfield. that took some getting used to, but it was fun, and i played pretty well in most of our games. my fitness level was definitely lower than usual, so that's high on my priority list to work on. in our last game which was a bit less serious, i put up some decent long passes and ok pulls - gotta work on those for the women's team. grant played well too. he was on the d-line a lot, and they played a lot of zone, which is his LEAST favorite thing, but he still played really well...especially given our recent absence from disc. in quarters though, he went up for a d over a girl in the endzone and came down really wrong and hurt his knee. he's going in to the doctor today, and we'll see what happens. the good thing: she dropped the disc. the ridiculous thing... after laying on the field for a good 3 minutes trying to move over to the shade, eventually getting some ice and moving to our sideline, one of the other players came out with a cramp or some small injury. the captain says, "grant, go in!!" grant replied with, "are you RETARDED?!" i've gotta say, this kind of move defined much of our weekend.

anyways, beach ultimate continues which is lowkey and fun for awhile longer. i'm ready for that - fitness, throws, but non competitive. league will start soon enough, and then the hk tourney will roll around. decisions to be made.

we're past the jetlag which is a good feeling, our house is almost cleaned up from arriving and traveling, but we have no food in our fridge. must work on that!

we're totally open to any and all visitors! come see us in asia :-D

welcome home

we landed in hong kong yesterday where it was 95 degrees out, and the haze was incredible. we made it safely to our flat where we discovered that the air conditioner in our main room isn't working. luckily our landlady is on top of this for once and is sending someone today. it's bordering on emergency.
i woke up at 2 last night, lay in bed til 3, gave up til 4, and slept til 7. so far, i'm doing ok, but it's only 9:30 AM.
the smells of hong kong are making my stomach churn while i'm jetlagged. i forgot about that sensation.

but, we're mostly unpacked and glad to be back... now back to work

back in the us of a

grant and i made it safely back to the us. for grant, it's basically been two years since he's been in the us. i was back last fall for a week.
we flew business class. yay for upgrades!! we had enough miles to upgrade one direction, and it was freaking AWESOME. if i can figure out how to do that every time i fly long distances, i will.
the first thing i noticed about the midwest: the flatness. coming in over wisconsin, illinois, chicago suburbs, everything was flat. none of the buildings rose above the treelines, adding to the flat effect. none of the interesting skylines of hong kong (mountains, buildings, etc) for sure!
the second thing i've noticed is size. the largeness of everything! cars, grocery stores, roads, high schools, department stores...
it's crazy seeing how big my brothers and sisters have gotten! erik is just about the same size as chris, and his voice is about as low. rachel is apparently in the midst of a huge growth spurt. mikey wants to be called "mike," and katie is more of a little girl than a toddler.
oh how time goes on!

i did realize that there is basically NO ONE in elkhart that i know anymore, except my friends' parents (who i wouldn't exactly call up as friends!). apparently we all got out...