Random photos from Europe

Rome

Pantheon, Rome

Leaning tower of Pisa, Italy

Beine, France

Venice, Italy

Venice, Italy

Narrow passage in Venice

Loches, France

Bike ride in Lucca, Italy

Adventure!

You cannot travel Europe as a group of seven, on a shoestring budget, and not have some adventure (especially if you are a Beine, some would say).  We arrived in Venice yesterday evening, in the rain.  The guidebook said that EVERYBODY gets lost in Venice (with 117 islands, over 400 bridges, and changes that even our brand new GPS could not keep up with).  We got lost 3 times before even finding our camping accommodations.  We thought Italy would be warm in late May, so we went with the campsite (tent provided).  Last night, when the rain was coming down and the temperature was in the 50s, I wondered if I had made a mistake.  I asked for extra blankets but the place was packed and no more blankets were available.  I put on the hat that we bought in England (when we were cold) and shared Dave's cot to stay warm.  The boys put on extra clothes (and some were still cold).  Kylie did not have a roommate, so she decided at 1:00am that it was okay to take the blanket from the other bed (the midnight influx of travelers did not produce a roommate for her).

This morning, we awoke to more rain.  At least we did not awaken to a tent full of ants, like another traveler that I saw at 6 am (expressing her exasperation).  We went into town to find rain ponchos (we were not going to miss Venice for rain!) and some sleeping bags and a couple more hats.  We also decided to look for a camera.  You see, our point-and-shoot cameras that were pulled from the fire weren't working.  One boy forgot his point-and-shoot camera at our relative's house.  So, we have been sharing Nick's Canon camera and Kylie's point-and-shoot for the whole trip.  Then Nick's shutter gave out.  We tried all the tricks listed on-line.  We decided that it would be a bummer for our budding photographer not to take photos for the rest of the trip (2 weeks left), so we bought a new SLR camera (the Canon was quite old).  It took all morning, and the rain continued to fall.  We boarded the bus around noon for the center of Venice.

Then the rain let up, the sun came out, off and on, and we only needed our ponchos for short stints of drizzle.  The day was lovely.  We had a great time exploring the tiny cobblestone alleyways and canals of Venice.  Of course we crossed the Grand Canal in a gondola once!  We had a wonderful seafood/pasta lunch in a tiny cafe.  And we topped off the afternoon with a cappuccino and pastry (gelato for some) at a famous cafe called Rosa Salva.  We sat outside to enjoy the snack and soaked in the charm of Venice.  Dave did a stellar job leading us back to the bus stop on foot (no easy task!; ask to see our videos).  It was high tide and some of the customers at canal-side restaurants got wet feet as the water lapped over the edge of the canal.  Global warming?  Or has it always been this way?  We got to the bus park just in the nick of time: standing room only for the 25-minute bus ride home.  We missed the stop nearest our campsite, so our sore feet walked another 10 minutes from the next stop, and now we are taking a little rest.

So, tonight we hope to sleep a bit warmer.  We are so thankful for sleeping bags...and for the sun today...and for the camera--more great pictures to come.  Tomorrow, we take a drive through Austria and then go to the Romantic Road of Bavaria, Germany.  We are headed (over a couple of days) to the area that the Beines come from (Stukenbrock, Germany).  We look forward to a little rest as we get acquainted with extended family.

Ciao from the Beines + Kylie!

Adventure!

You cannot travel Europe as a group of seven, on a shoestring budget, and not have some adventure (especially if you are a Beine, some would say).  We arrived in Venice yesterday evening, in the rain.  The guidebook said that EVERYBODY gets lost in Venice (with 117 islands, over 400 bridges, and changes that even our brand new GPS could not keep up with).  We got lost 3 times before even finding our camping accommodations.  We thought Italy would be warm in late May, so we went with the campsite (tent provided).  Last night, when the rain was coming down and the temperature was in the 50s, I wondered if I had made a mistake.  I asked for extra blankets but the place was packed and no more blankets were available.  I put on the hat that we bought in England (when we were cold) and shared Dave's cot to stay warm.  The boys put on extra clothes (and some were still cold).  Kylie did not have a roommate, so she decided at 1:00am that it was okay to take the blanket from the other bed (the midnight influx of travelers did not produce a roommate for her).

This morning, we awoke to more rain.  At least we did not awaken to a tent full of ants, like another traveler that I saw at 6 am (expressing her exasperation).  We went into town to find rain ponchos (we were not going to miss Venice for rain!) and some sleeping bags and a couple more hats.  We also decided to look for a camera.  You see, our point-and-shoot cameras that were pulled from the fire weren't working.  One boy forgot his point-and-shoot camera at our relative's house.  So, we have been sharing Nick's Canon camera and Kylie's point-and-shoot for the whole trip.  Then Nick's shutter gave out.  We tried all the tricks listed on-line.  We decided that it would be a bummer for our budding photographer not to take photos for the rest of the trip (2 weeks left), so we bought a new SLR camera (the Canon was quite old).  It took all morning, and the rain continued to fall.  We boarded the bus around noon for the center of Venice.

Then the rain let up, the sun came out, off and on, and we only needed our ponchos for short stints of drizzle.  The day was lovely.  We had a great time exploring the tiny cobblestone alleyways and canals of Venice.  Of course we crossed the Grand Canal in a gondola once!  We had a wonderful seafood/pasta lunch in a tiny cafe.  And we topped off the afternoon with a cappuccino and pastry (gelato for some) at a famous cafe called Rosa Salva.  We sat outside to enjoy the snack and soaked in the charm of Venice.  Dave did a stellar job leading us back to the bus stop on foot (no easy task!; ask to see our videos).  It was high tide and some of the customers at canal-side restaurants got wet feet as the water lapped over the edge of the canal.  Global warming?  Or has it always been this way?  We got to the bus park just in the nick of time: standing room only for the 25-minute bus ride home.  We missed the stop nearest our campsite, so our sore feet walked another 10 minutes from the next stop, and now we are taking a little rest.

So, tonight we hope to sleep a bit warmer.  We are so thankful for sleeping bags...and for the sun today...and for the camera--more great pictures to come.  Tomorrow, we take a drive through Austria and then go to the Romantic Road of Bavaria, Germany.  We are headed (over a couple of days) to the area that the Beines come from (Stukenbrock, Germany).  We look forward to a little rest as we get acquainted with extended family.

Ciao from the Beines + Kylie!

A Language Barrier?

We checked into our hostel in Piza, Italy at 7pm, after seeing the leaning tower (Impressive!) and before dinner.  "Where can we park our car?" Kimberly asked.  "Down the road, turn left, park on the right," he said.  We drove into Piza and ate where the guide book said college students like to go.  We had great pizza at a reasonable price and really wonderful gelato for a great price. We returned to our hostel, followed the instructions and found a parking lot down the road to the left and then on the right.  It was by a Bingo Hall.  We saw the supermarket parking, but it had 2-hour-limit signs.   

This morning, we wanted to get an early start.  Everyone was ready at 8am.  Dave went to get the car.  When he was gone too long, we sent a scout.  Somebody closed a big gate late in the evening and it was now locked.  We tried the phone number on the gate, the phone number on the sign and the phone number of the hostel proprietor.  All three recipients of the phone call had similar responses: "I am sorry.  You parked in the wrong place.  No, I cannot help you."  We wondered when the next Bingo game was scheduled.  We asked official-looking people on the street; nobody seemed to know what to do.  

We went to breakfast (sweet breads and some cappuccinos) and walked to a nearby supermarket for more food (ever tried to feed teenage boys on a budget in Europe?  No easy feat!).  One wonderful find in the supermarket: PEANUT BUTTER!  It's the first time we have found it in Europe.  (just a special treat, really the food has been spectacular here in Europe).

At 9am, Dave found some people cleaning the Bingo Hall.  They did not have a key to the gate, but they had the phone number of the person who did.  Hooray!  We were going to get our car out.  Unfortunately, while helping us with our predicament, the cleaning staff got accidentally locked out of the Bingo Hall.  Ughh.

We weren't too far off schedule.  We drove to Lucca, Italy (happily eating PBJ sandwiches and fruit) and had a wonderful morning riding bikes around the old wall of Lucca.  The weather was gorgeous and a good time was had by all.  

It was quite difficult to find a toilet in Lucca.  The woman at the pizza shop said, "Go to the square and go right."  After doing that without finding a toilet, we asked another restaurant worker who said, "Go to the next square and turn left."  No toilet there either.  It turned out to be along a street between the two squares.  We should have gone straight when we went right, and we should have turned around when we went straight.  In the end, we bought cokes at a different restaurant so that we could use their toilet and on the way back to our lunch spot (which had no toilet), we saw the public toilet.  It turned out the public toilet cost 0.60 Euros per person anyway, so the coke plan was a good one.  

So, did we park in the wrong spot and go the wrong way because of the gulf between Italian and English, or did we miss some other cues that would have helped us?  In the end, one guy told me that we should have parked at the supermarket; were we supposed to ignore the 2-hour-limit signs (even though Italian is not our native tongue, the limit was quite clear)?  Ah, isn't international travel full of ambiguities?

By the way, we are finding several things that we are so thankful for in good 'ole America: many free public toilets, free and good water at most restaurants and the fact that the white lines between car lanes actually indicate something.  It is good to be thankful for home, and still, we are having a grand adventure.  Our sweet Josh was the first to thank God for allowing us out of the parking lot and on to Lucca for our bike ride.  We live such fortunate lives.

I'll add some more photos when the setting is more conducive to high-speed Internet and opportunities to charge devices.  We are currently in tents at a Camping Villa on the outskirts of Rome.  We will be here for three nights.  Thanks for your interest in our adventure.

Kimberly, for the other adventurers also

Two more...

Holland, canoeing: "Waterproof gear was a bit too large!"

The London Eye, with the Elizabeth Tower (housing Big Ben, the bell) behind

More photos...just for fun.

OXFORD: Pembroke College (where Kimberly attended for one year in her college days)

On the walking tour of Oxford

Kylie, do you need to make a phone call?

Eiffel Tower, an icon of Paris

Some Photos

We continue to have a wonderful time in Europe.  Yesterday we spent a lovely day in a quaint medieval town in southern France, with some friends that we know from Spokane, who welcomed us into their delightful rhythm of life in community.  Thank you!  Today, we found the town of Beine in central France (in the wine country) and enjoyed a final meal in France of savory and sweet crepes.  The French certainly do food well!  I will allow a few pictures to tell some of the story of this special experience.  Tonight we sleep in Switzerland.  :-)

Seven of us tightly packed in our Renault Scenic!  What an adventure.

the classic hop-on, hop-off tour bus

Alien landing in London!

Local police man has the situation under control.

The Unusual Day

Every day cannot be wonderful...that is just the way life on Earth goes.  This was one of those days.  I went out early in the morning, to find croissants...I decided to drive; that was poor judgement.  I got stuck in horrendous traffic (1 hour and 15 minutes to go 1.3 km), then at some point, while driving on a cobblestone road, I hit a dead end; after turning around, I discovered that somebody had raised up some barricades (pillars) and I was trapped.  And nobody around spoke English.  Thankfully, gestures are well-understood.  I made it out and decided to park and walk to the Boulangerie.

So, we got a late start.  Then, the GPS said that it takes 30 minutes to get into Paris; that must be after the apocalypse when there are no other people around; it took 90 minutes.  Then we were trying to maneuver the parking garage: round and round we went, four levels underground, and there was an indication that this level had some open spots (13 to be exact), so we took it... only to discover that we were forced to exit the garage and make a payment, without even having parked.  With Kylie's French, we were graciously allowed to give it another go.  We got on the tour bus (later than planned) with exactly 2 hours until the Notre Dame English guided tour.  Perfect!  Well, maybe not.  It was cold and it stopped a bunch of times and the information was pretty limited, and they did not keep to their advertised 2 hour round.  By the time we got off the bus, we were chilled to the bone, not to mention quite hungry.  We dashed into a French Cafe and ordered five sandwiches plus two bowls of soup, no drinks.  Total cost: $68!  Ouch.  We finally got to Notre Dame, having missed the English tour but decided to go in anyway.  In less than 10 minutes we were being ushered out, along with everyone else.  A well-known historian had just shot himself in front of the altar in Notre Dame (this detail was obtained from the Internet, after getting back to our hotel).  It was a bit of an off day.  Oh well;  we will give Paris a second try tomorrow.

Au revoir!

Kimberly, for the Beines

Pictures to come later...

We are having a wonderful adventure in Europe.  We have seen Utrecht and Haarlem, Netherlands, Oxford, High Wycombe, and London, England, and now we are in Paris, France.  We were blessed with two beautiful days (with afternoons of sun) in England.  And our most rainy days have been those when we were traveling in the car (like today).  Speaking of the car, we did manage to succeed in staying on the left side of the road in England, with the help of a navigator in the passenger seat at all times!  Now we are back to the right-side driving.  It is beautiful to see all the green countrysides that result from this rain... and then there are the brilliantly yellow fields of mustard.  We will see how the weather is tomorrow as we begin our exploration of Paris.

Kylie has been doing a wonderful job of translation from French to English for us, and Nick is giving it a try after one semester of French at the public high school in Spokane plus some private tutoring from Kylie over the last two months.  We have so many wonderful pictures that we have managed to take while sharing one to two cameras (depending upon which ones have been remembered and which ones work and which ones got charged at the prized and limited outlets) among seven of us, as we explore.  A huge THANK YOU to Kylie for generously sharing her camera with us.

The reason that I am not currently posting these beautiful photos of our adventure is this: at the last place we stayed, we got wonderful, fast Internet connections...for 30 minutes per day.  This was just enough time to check email and then make online reservations for parking spots and tour bus tickets.  Now, we have unlimited Wi-Fi, but the connection is so weak and intermittent that I am actually sitting in a stairwell to post this note.  So, I think I will close now...with high hopes that I will be able to post some pictures from our friends' house in a couple of days.

Enjoying life's adventures,
Kimberly, for the wandering Beines 

Enjoying a NEW adventure!

We have begun our grand tour of Europe!  We started in the Netherlands with our dear friends who also work in Nepal.  We have gone to Haarlem to experience the Corrie ten Boom House.  We have wandered tiny cobble-stoned alleyways.  And today, we explored 20 kilometers of the canals of Utrecht, by canoe.  Of course, some of the highlight has been trying new foods (particularly enjoyed by our teenage sons) like chocolate sprinkles on bread and Dutch pancakes (complete with sweet and savory cooked in; for instance mine had ham and apples).  This adventure is a huge blessing between our grief over leaving Nepal and our work ahead of us to re-assemble our house in Spokane.

Thankful for the adventure,
the Beines

Green Meadows?

First, let's start with something in Nepal that still makes me laugh.  There is no such thing here as colors for girls that might not be appropriate for boys.  Combine that with the practice of not cutting a boy's hair for his first five years of life (often it is pulled back or up in a hair band/pony tail) and piercing the ears of a baby boy, and it is difficult to guess whether a child is a boy our girl when you meet one on the road.  Today, I was with a white friend who has a two-year-old daughter.  A Nepali woman was walking by and she stopped to greet us in the friendly Nepali way.  My friend's little girl had on a dress, a pearl necklace and purple shoes with flowers, as well as having longish hair that was tied up.  This well-meaning Nepali woman asked if the child was a son or daughter.  The next thing we knew, this feminine little girl had toddled off and was becoming well acquainted with the feel of cow dung, so her mother ran off to bring a halt to that activity, and while the mother was out of earshot, the Nepali woman asked me if I was the grandmother of this child whose gender she could not determine.  I might assume that my light colored hair is being mistaken for grey, or maybe I am really looking old; one of my children did remind me that girls are sometimes married off at age nine here in Nepal, so I guess I very well could be a grandmother.  Thanks for the laughs, Nepal!

Now onto a more serious note.  I have blogged very little during this stint in Nepal.  We could chalk it up to our visit here being very short and we are quite focused this year on the work that we are doing (for such a short time).  That is partially correct.  Dave has been very focused on completing the second edition of his book on HIV/AIDS in Nepal.  But, we have certainly been busier in other seasons of our life.  The truth is that we are experiencing a very different season in our lives.

I just finished reading Ecclesiastes to the boys; it is one of those books that I have not read to them before.  In this somewhat depressing book, Solomon wisely reminds us that life has many different seasons.  Right now, the Beines are in a season of grieving.  We seem to be grieving multiple losses.  This will be the final trip to Nepal for all six of us together; Nick is ready to hunker down in America and start working toward a plan for university study as well as that launch into his own life work.  So, whenever we come here again, it will be without Nick.  

We lost our house five months ago.  Although our life has been quite nomadic, this house of ours in Spokane has been "home base" for the past 14 years.  As we watch it go back together, we have been surprised by some of the things that we talk about missing (even some of the imperfect aspects of the house were memories for us that we weren't necessarily ready to part with).  So, each of us is grieving in his/her own way, and the banner that we live under during this time is GRACE; we must give each other grace for each of our reactions to this loss.  

The Chepang project is coming to a close this year.  We made a commitment to the Chepang in 1998 and I'm not sure that we felt it was time to finish, but for a variety of reasons, this is the year to bring this project to a close.  Our colleagues in South Asia have collectively  launched into a new vision and a new way of doing things.  Where we fit into all this newness is not currently apparent.  At this moment, every member of the Tansen foreign community (that serves with UMN at Tansen Mission Hospital) is different than when we arrived three and a half years ago.  Thankfully, our Nepali friends have not moved away, and our new friends are wonderful also. 

 

The paradigm of mission is changing and the idea of serving in one place for more than a couple of years is far less common.  This makes for much change.  Speaking of change, I reflected, with David, the other day on the fact that in 20 years of being married to him, I have had to pack my bags in less than 12 months for 19 of those years.  Now I know why I feel so very very tired (in an emotional sense). 

 

Some of the exhaustion comes from the ever shifting circumstances.  On one side of the world, I live in middle-class suburbia, driving to work where I practice elder care.  On the other side of the world, I live in a house made of mud on the side of a mountain, walking to work where from week to week, I am not sure if I will be working on the Maternity Ward or serving in the Pediatric Outpatient Clinic. 

 

Although I have loved everything that we have done, I feel quite strongly that it is time for me to enter a season of rest (not meaning not working but meaning not moving for a few years).  I sense that some green, peaceful pastures, with nearby still waters are ahead.  I am grateful for what I perceive to be an upcoming rest.  I am limping a bit from my current exhaustion, but I see the restful spot ahead.  I do hope the LORD is going to say that a season of slowing down is at hand when I reach that spot.  We will not rest for long; it isn't what our time on earth is about.  Heaven is the place where we enter our long-term rest.  Still, I am due for a stop on our journey.  I think David could also use a breather, but I am not sure that he knows it yet.  Will you join us in praying that we would live well in this new season that is soon to begin?  

Thanks, 

Kimberly, for the Bunch