Barcelona!

This past weekend we were in Barcelona with Selena's parents. Let's just say this is one of our favourite cities in Europe so far! We toured around the city, seeing Las Ramblas, Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, Castle Batllo, Park Guell, Catedral, the Olympic Stadium, and so much more. We basically walked around for 8 hours on Saturday, which Selena and I are used to doing, but Helen and Ewald were right in there with us! They are probably the best people to travel with, so easy going and up for anything. We all had a great time together touring the city. That night we were told about this fantastic tapas restaurant called La Flauta, which we went to because we wanted to experience authentic Spanish food. Upon entering we were a bit wary, as the entire display case showed seafood. However, the place was packed, so we figured they must know what they are doing. We were pleasantly surprised by the entire experience! Our waitor's were the nicest people in the world, the people who were sitting beside us offered their food, and the food we ordered was amaazing! We got jumbo prawns, tomato soaked bread, this potato, cheese, and garlic dish, calamari, grilled vegetables, and this cake with chocolate sauce for dessert! It was a fabulous meal, I would recommend it to anyone going to Barcelona. Overall, Saturday was a success.

 Castle Batllo

 La Pedrera

 Christmas Market logs!

 Sagrada Familia

 Park Guell

 View from Park Guell

 Olympic Stadium

The Catedral

Grilled vegetables at dinner

Sunday, although fun, let us see a different side of Barcelona. I knew that Barcelona was known for pick pockets and thieves, so we were sure to always hold on to our things. What we didn't realize, was that we could get "robbed" in other ways. While we were walking down Las Ramblas, the famous tourist street, there was a guy playing that ball and cup game (where he moves them around and you have to guess which one it's under). Well, we watched for awhile from a distance, and always knew which box the ball was under. Well, we all walked up, and one of the guys watching started talking to me about where I was from, and started pointing to things around us (I later realized he was there to distract me). Then Helen, Ewald, and Selena proceeded to play the game. All of the "bystanders" were encouraging them to put down big money, which they did, and lost. Then all of the tourists around were saying put more down, win your money back! We were like ya, you're right. Well, needless to say, in about 1 minute, we lost 200 euros. We walked away not even knowing what just happened, it all happened so quick. Well, later on we put all of the pieces together. The other "tourists" were this guys friends, they were all working together, and after some google searches, we also realized the game is impossible to win as they put the ball in their hand every time, and they rip off tourists everyday. I know you're all probably sitting there thinking, "how could you be so naive, and not know that game is a trick!", well if you were with us  you wouldn't have guessed it either. Trust me. I like to think I'm smart, and I was convinced we could win, and everyone was so nice we never would have thought they were all working together.

After that little blip, we continued along our journey to the beach, trying to look at it as a lesson learned. The beach was beautiful, and we even stopped in the W hotel on the water. It has got to be one of the nicest hotels I have ever been in, and later we looked it up and rooms start at $1500/night! One day when we have money we are going to go back and stay there! We then went for lunch and hung out in Starbucks for a bit overlooking the harbour. Then we walked through the city a bit more, and as we were walking we saw a robbery. This guy on a bike stole a bag from this guy, and he started chasing him down the street, it was crazy! We actually thought the guy running after him was going to catch him he was running so fast. Unfortunately he didn't. This didn't help our thieving view of Barcelona, but even though they have some shady characters living there, we still decided it was one of our favourite cities. We also realized how lucky we are to be living in a country where that doesn't happen, and how lucky we are to all have good jobs. Be thankful you live in Canada, after all of our travelling we have come to realize that it is truly a blessed nation. Can't wait to be back at home with you all!

 Las Ramblas

 The beach.

 Inside the W Hotel.

 Ewald's crepe!

It was right after this that we saw the robbery.

We arrived back in Amsterdam on Sunday night and went for one last dinner with Helen and Ewald. It was a beautiful two story glass restaurant right near our place that we had never been to, but the food was amazing! We had a great time together. 

 Outside the restaurant where we had dinner.

The next morning they caught their flight back home. It's nice to know we will be back there with them in one short month! We have a few things to look forward to until then, so December should fly by.

I hope you are all enjoying the snow and getting ready for the holidays! 

Selena's Birthday Weekend!

Selena turned 24 on November 17th! She started off her day by giving two presentations at school, definitely not the thing birthday's are supposed to be made of. We quickly made up for it by going to our friend Valerie and Alex's place that night for dinner. They made a very special dinner in honour of Selena, with sweet and sour pork, kung pao chicken, sticky rice, spring rolls, and this special noodle just for the birthday girl (it's a Chinese tradition). They also lit their entire place with candles and had a fruit cake with stroopwaffle on it, they know her all too well! We ended off the night by watching Ever After, such a classic chick flick. It was a great night overall. When we got back to our place our neighbour Jonna brought her a plant and stroopwaffle as well! She is so thoughtful.
The next day her birthday continued. We got all dressed up and I took her to the Oh Land concert! If you have not heard Oh Land, please download her music. She is a singer from Denmark and is absolutely amazing, Sel and I fell in love with her and were ecstatic to hear she would be playing in the Dam! We went with Jonna and our friend Mary from Germany. It was a much needed girls night out. We headed back home after the concert because our friends Suzi and Aura were getting in from England that night as well! They gave Sel a card and bought her earrings! They are such wonderful girls, we had a great weekend with them. We toured all over Amsterdam on Saturday, showing them the sights, shopping, and eating everything Dutch. The city is also being decorated with Christmas lights now and it is even more beautiful than before!

Saturday night Sel had to stay in because her parents were arriving very early the next morning and she wanted to meet them at the airport. Suzi and Aura wanted to go into town, so I joined them, along with one of our other friends from school and his 6 friends in from England as well! We started the night at a low-key pub and then moved on to a crazy dance party where they were pumping Mariah Carey Christmas music, which Suzi and I belted out. It was the first time I felt like Christmas was on its way! We ended the night at what they all called, "an old man's pub", which I understood upon entering. Everyone in the place was over 40. Within 5 minutes though, this group of women was singing along to "I will survive", and some men were jumping up to join in and dance. The place erupted, we joined in, and the rest is history. We danced and sang into the wee hours of the morning, getting back to our place at 3:30am.

 The Old Man Pub

The next morning Sel went to get her parents from the airport at 6am, and then brought them back home and the four of us went to Hillsong church together while Suzi and Aura slept in. After church we met the girls, along with Mariel and Lorenzo (friends from C3) at The Pancake Bakery. It was SO amazing. Sel and I shared a huge omelet and an Indonesian curry crepe. It was one of the best meals we had here so far.

After breakfast we parted ways with Mariel and Lorenzo, and the six of us headed into the city so that Helen and Ewald could see the centre. We took some pictures, did some shopping, showed them the red light district, and went to the famous IAmsterdam sign with them. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that it was pretty cold and really foggy! We were going to go on a canal cruise, but the fog was so thick you wouldn't have been able to see anything. Sel and I also figured at this point that we're better tour guides than the boats anyways. Oh and we also stumbled upon a concert for the Occupy Amsterdam movement, they are seriously everywhere.

 Amaazing cheese store with samples!

 Occupy Amsterdam Movement

 Red Light District

Suzi and Aura flew back home that night, and the next morning Selena and her parents went to Austria and Germany for four days. Overall, it was a very successful weekend, and a great weekend for Sel's birthday!

Acts 2:46-47

You know those days that will go down in your diary as like one of the best days ever? Well that day is today my friends.

Let me start by introducing you to a new friend we had the privilege of meeting last week. Her name is Jing Chan, or "Valerie" from China. I met her because we each had to go with our professor to interview the owner of this fashion company for one of our assignments. We took the bus home together and started with the whole small talk thing. We talked about school, I told her about my job in Toronto, Selena's job, Jason, my family, basically everything. She was so curious and just kept asking questions and we all know how I love to talk. It was a match made in heaven. Well after a few minutes she asked if I had a religion. I told her I did, and explained a bit about Christianity. She knew nothing about it, it's crazy how we take for granted that we live in a Christian nation where everyone has heard about Jesus. She said in China no one really follows a religion. She seemed interested in the whole idea of Christianity, so I invited her to church with Sel and I that Sunday. She was in.

Sunday rolled around and we all met at the bus stop and went to church together. She was so excited to meet Selena, and had a million questions for her as well. Upon seeing her, she said, "Wow, you are so pretty too!". If nothing else Val was a good confidence boost for us ;), ha ha kidding. It was so interesting seeing things from her perspective based on the questions she was asking us. Basically everything she knew about Western culture was from what she saw in the movies, and she pegged us as the popular party girls who dated the football captain, so she was shocked to find out we haven't been to the club here once. Seriously, the mixing of cultures over here is incredible, we are learning so much about different countries.
She loved church and afterward had even more questions for us. We tried to answer all of them as best as we could on the bus ride home, and then planned to go to church together again the next Sunday.
The next Sunday we decided to try Hillsong church out here, and we all biked there. It was a 45 minute bike ride and the weather was great. During the ride Valerie started asking us how she could become a Christian and what kind of "rules" she would have to follow. We explained to her that there weren't really rules, just guidelines to live a better life. I briefly told her about the 10 commandments, and when I mentioned that we only believe in one god and that we should have no other gods before him, she asked if that meant she can't believe in Buddha. I tried my best to explain the conflict in that, and asked her if that would be a problem for her. She said, "no, not at all". I also asked what her family would think if she became a Christian, because I have heard of some Asian cultures disowning their children for believing in God, which we obviously wouldn't want. She said her family would be happy that she believes in something, and that they wouldn't care that it was Christianity. God was seriously doing something in her life, we were so excited for her! She was also wearing this necklace that she said her parents prayed over and said that it had Buddha's luck; right away she asked if we would touch it to take that away. It was neat, even though it was just a necklace, seeing her so readily do what she felt she needed to be a Christian.
Church was also amazing, this woman Christine Caine spoke from Hillsong London about the A21 Campaign she started. If you have time you should check it out, it's amazing what she is doing to help stop human trafficking: http://www.thea21campaign.org/.
After church we biked home and then made plans to have Valerie and her friend Alex over to our place for dinner. They wanted to make us traditional Chinese food, so they brought all of these crazy ingredients over and we made fried rice, pad thai, and attempted to make sticky rice (which unfortunately failed). We covered dessert, which consisted of Greek yogurt and fresh fruit. It was all delicious!
After dinner she had more questions for us about our faith and what we believe. We showed her our bibles, and gave her the coles notes version (Adam and Eve, Jesus, etc). She asked what she had to do to become a Christian, and we just told her it was a simple prayer. We did it with her right then and there, and she was SO happy afterward (heck, so were we). Her willingness just blew us away. At home so often you can tell people about Christianity but they are turned off of it because of hypocritical or crazy Christians they have met, or they think it's all about rules, or they just couldn't be bothered to believe in anything. Valerie, having no preconceived notions or biases, was able to see God through this unclouded lens, and loved what she saw. It was really refreshing to see.
She is going to keep coming to church with us every week, we showed her some good places to start reading in the bible, and we are going to try and get her connected with some people from our church here so that when we leave in December, she'll still have some church friends. It was all very exciting, and we are so glad to have met her! She is so honest, inquisitive and real, we absolutely love hanging out with her. 

In this last picture, Valerie is on the left and her friend Alex is on the right. We have dinner plans with them this Thursday and they are going to cover dinner again and we are going to do dessert (our specialty)!
School has also been picking up, we finally had to do some presentations this week at school. Thanks to the very low bar that has been set by the Dutch students, we are acing everything. We are actually also learning a lot because they give you a huge amount of autonomy over your work. It's great!

Thanks for following along with us on our trip! As of tomorrow it is only 2 more months until we are back in Winnipeg!