Why We Should All Move to Sweden

Josh and I are members of the life-changing (albeit controversial) online network known as Couchsurfing. While most people would discourage sleeping on the couches of strangers in foreign cities, Josh and I can't recommend it enough! That is, if you do it safely . . . i.e., through Couchsurfing.org where members are verified by local community leaders before they can surf or host.

Basically, Couchsurfers get to spend their world travels crashing with locals for free instead of paying for a hotel. In return, you promise that if you are ever able, you will do the same for a traveler passing through your home town. After surfing with fabulous hosts in both London and Stockholm, Josh and I were finally able to make good on our promise to return the favor when a guy named Joel decided to take a bus from Toronto down to the American East Coast. 

Our postcard from Joel

I accepted his couch request when I thought he was a Canadian . . . Imagine my delight when I realized that we was natively from Sweden, the country where Josh and I left our hearts almost one year ago! Joel stayed with us for two nights. Their was sangria, beef stew, Taco Bell, late-night explorations of Wegmans, some jokes about Swedish and American stereotypes, and a lot of guy-talk about hacking computers and playing RTS games. 

Joel was a pure joy as a guest, and we were truly blessed to spend time with him. He reminded me of everything that Josh and I loved about Sweden and everything that we love about Couchsurfing. In his words, "Facebook is for staying connected with old friends, and Couchsurfing is for making new ones." I compose this post in his honor :-)

For the record, I love Abba.

Reasons Why We Should All Move to Sweden:

1. They are one of perhaps three European countries that the crippling economic crisis has not affected. They must be doing something right.
2. They have free health care, free daycare, five weeks of vacation, and paid maternity leave. No, wait! Make that maternity and paternity leave. You get fifteen months of paid vacation if your wife has a baby.Whoa. It's basically an amazing place to work.
3. The people are environmentally responsible, and they have acres of sparkling clean forests, air, and water to show for it.
4. The previously mentioned forests, open air, and water. Such a unique and beautiful landscape! Pine trees and lakes everywhere.
5. The houses all look like pictures from a country calendar. Wooden, brightly painted, and white-trimmed.
6. They come from Vikings. But seriously, there's a lot of history there.
7. They embrace whole foods and good home cooking. 
8. Their pop music makes ours look like the thumping, bumping, grinding, whiny whore-fest it is.
9. They are responsible for both H&M and Ikea. (UPDATE: Let's not get into the horsemeat issue . . .)
10. They make kids pick a "major" in high school. Talk about preparing for the future.
11. They're doing this about body image issues.
12. They always take a coffee break called "fika" halfway through the morning and halfway through the afternoon. I like a country that respects coffee! (which Joel does not like, btw)
13. They have Stockholm. Enough said.
14. They created the Nobel Prize.
15. This happened there.
16. And this is happening now.

Goodbye, Bahamas. Hello, Happy Birthday!

I doubt that I've mentioned this in my long absence from the blog (except for in Awkward & Awesome Thursday, everything seems to come out there), but Josh and I were blessed with the amazing opportunity to accompany our senior class on a trip to the Bahamas on a Carnival cruise!

It was so wonderful to be able to spend time together as a couple but also fellowship with some great friends we've made throughout our three years at Roberts.

 

More pics of our Bahamas vacation with friends after the jump!

Our Decision to Serve

Greetings from dreary Rochester, NY! I hope and pray that you're safe from Hurricane Sandy wherever you are. 

Josh and I are keeping warm by scrambling through the toughest part of our fall semester (a feat made more difficult by the fact that classes are cancelled until further notice.) We’re looking forward to taking our final courses here at Roberts Wesleyan College before we graduate in May, as well as (perhaps unwisely) tacking onto our schedules several fun extracurricular activities such as theater ministry, dinners out on the town sponsored by our senior class, a young adult church group, and even intramural water polo. The way we see it, when will we get an opportunity to do these things again?

 
We have been blessed by many amazing and unforeseen opportunities while studying at Roberts. As followers of the blog may know, at the start of this past summer we returned from a semester abroad in Ávila, Spain which was required in order for Josh to complete his major in Spanish. Even now, we can hardly believe that we spent five months in Europe as a young married couple. God has been so good and has never failed to provide the resources we need to accomplish His will.

Josh and I absolutely love travel. We love exploring languages, history, cultures, and of course, food.  The truth is, we have both been somewhat convicted lately by how self-serving we have always been in our traveling. We have put a lot of effort into planning out our adventures so as to get the most possible enjoyment and excitement from them, rather than planning how to give something back to the communities that we have visited.

This is why we have decided to travel with a student organization known as Enactus to Guatemala City, Guatemala in August of 2013. 

We are planning this trip with the express purpose of giving of ourselves in order to serve others. In particular, we plan to serve underprivileged children and single mothers who have been delivered from physical and emotional abuse to live at the Hogar Mama Carmen. Some of these children are orphans, but through vacation bible schools, English classes, and even basic entrepreneurship classes for the older children and mothers, our team hopes to show them that someone loves them—and more importantly, that Jesus loves them.

The mission of Enactus is to enable global progress through entrepreneurial action. Their values include imagination, courage, determination, and accountability, as well as placing a strong emphasis on teamwork. Enactus (formerly known as SIFE for Students In Free Enterprise) has active chapters in almost forty countries of which Guatemala is just one. Last year a SIFE team from Roberts traveled to India for a similar project to what we are anticipating in Guatemala. Enactus's approach to missions is to meet the immediate needs of the poor and hungry, but to then go a step further by teaching them practical business skills that they may be self-sufficient members of the kingdom of God. Our hope is that the people we help will be empowered to help others in turn.

As excited as we are about this project, we are also scared. Of course there are more pressing things we could be doing with the few thousand dollars it will take to visit Latin America for two weeks. We could be saving up to pay back four years of college loans. We could be planning to start a family. 

The thing is, we don't feel right about asking God for His blessing, financial or otherwise, if we are unwilling to give back to His kingdom in some way.

It may seem unwise to some, but we are taking a leap of faith and trusting not only that God will provide the funds to make this mission trip a reality, but that His eternal rewards will far outweigh this small sacrifice. 

We would appreciate your prayers as this life-changing opportunity approaches! 

Re-Blog: How to Take Your Relationship to New Extremes

I'm acutely aware of just how lame it is of me to continue reposting blog entries by other writers here on Nine to Phive, but something about the past few weeks has led to me feeling almost overwhelmed by how capable other people are of perfectly articulating thoughts I claim as my own. 

While I am somewhat stunned by what little original content I have to offer, I am delighted by two facts:

1) I am not alone. Out there is a community of men and women who share my beliefs, interests, passions, and questions. I've never felt such a sense of fellowship unity, and the fulfilling peace that is being understood by the world around you. Feels good, man :-)

2) I can learn to be humble. I don't need to be the first, only, or best person to express a specific thought. You have no idea how much more likeable I find myself as a person knowing that I have the capability to give credit where credit is doing, honoring the ingenuity of other people out here in the blogosphere.

That being said, I now have no problem linking over to my good friend Carrie Starr over at at Cheap Love.

Her family is in Australia right now, so her life is much more interesting at the moment than mine! She has put together a neat little article about the exact same truths that Josh and I experienced about the effect of studying abroad on our relationship.

So here she is!

  

Travel works as a magnifying glass on your relationships.

 

The good becomes great.

The tough becomes terrible.

In many ways, this is exactly why you should travel.

The extended time together makes for incredible memories and defining moments. You’ll experience unique moments together you never would have otherwise.

For our 19^th anniversary yesterday, Erv and I went for a run through the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney Australia where we saw the famous Three Sisters.

In the afternoon, we toured the Sydney Olympic Park where we saw the cauldron burning- which only happens every four years during the summer Olympics.

Next we played in Victoria Park with our kids and meandered through beautiful University of Sydney.

In the evening, we went out to dinner at the fantastic Café Otto with our good friends Russell and Sarah, who now live in Sydney.

It was an amazing anniversary we’ll never forget.

There are other parts of the day I don’t want to remember . . .

Read the rest of the article at Cheap Love!

Re-Blog: 7 Ways to Be an Ethical Photographer While Traveling

The following is an incredibly insightful article written by travel expert Julia Austin on Planet Green's blog.

I happened upon the article while watching recent episodes of Dresscue Me on PlanetGreen.com. I hope to write more about Dresscue Me in the future. It's about a vintage boutique that makes it's living upcycling out-of-date fashion items!

Anyway, this particular article about travel photography really spoke to me, as it resounded with many of the experiences Josh and I had while in Europe this past winter and spring. We came in contact both with the joy that respectful lifestyle photography can bring and the mistrust that careless photography can cause.

Julia said it best, so I'll stop babbling and let you enjoy her work.

The best part about a trip might actually be looking at the photos after and sharing the stories behind photos with friends. And taking a photo in today’s world has become extremely simple.
You can take one while you text your friend what time to meet you at a café. But don’t forget—you create a world through your images. Just like you monitor which personal photos you put up on your social media pages like Facebook and Twitter, in order to give what you believe is an accurate and complete depiction of yourself, you must take this same care with photos of others that you take while traveling.

The tiniest camera phone can be snuck into a sacred place. If you wanted to, you could take a photo of just about anything. But, as always, with freedom comes responsibility. Here are a few tips on being a responsible, ethical photographer while traveling.

1. Unless you are at a public performance, parade or somewhere where the individuals expect to be on display, always ASK to take a photo. Sometimes language is a barrier, in which case simply smile, present the camera, make a motion to take a photo and see how the subject responds.

2. It’s tempting to pay your subjects to be in your photo, but this encourages a type of prostitution, so to speak. Individuals in that culture might then offer to pose for photographers in exchange for money, making their ordinary lives look more “photogenic” rather than portraying the reality of it.

3. Try to develop a relationship with an individual or a group. If you can just spend an hour or a week with them, they will grow a trust for you and usually want you to take photos of their life. Also, those photos will be more genuine because the subject is comfortable with you, and feels they are being in your photo, rather than imagining all the websites they may appear on . . .

Read the rest of the article on PlanetGreen.com!

"Stockholm in My Heart"

 

I know it's no excuse, but Travel Tuesday has taken a nosedive amidst my efforts to weed through and edit seventy-three billion six hundred and nine kajillion photos of Stockholm, Sweden.

What can I say? The two days Josh and I spent in Stockholm were absolutely magical (despite the fact that I was in the middle of one of the longest and most intense IC flareups of my life. What does that tell you?) Stockholm is one of those places you love to just be. It doesn't matter what you're doing. Just taking in all of the colors, the culture, the crowds--it makes the experience worthwhile.

Title is from this fabulous Swedish pop song "Stockholm I Mitt Hjärta."

 

 

This is what the Swedes dress like.

I'm kidding. Of course they don't :-) This was a traditional Swedish festival that was going on downtown right as we arrived in Stockholm. Talk about luck! Josh and I even stopped to pose with a beautiful older couple in traditional garb. Who knows? Maybe this is how their parents dressed when this couple was growing up.

There was also a street dance festival going on while we were in town. What a weekend to pick, huh? There also happened to be a marathon going on. That wasn't so great. Lots of roads blocked off.

Anyway! The art culture of Sweden is just so vibrant. The crowds that turned up for these dancing street performers where so thick I literally couldn't get a single picture of the actual dancing! Plan on more than just a handful of posts about architecture, sculpture, decor, and street art out the wazoo.

 

 

A guard at the royal palace

Most Swedes practice a daily ritual called fika. While it's not unusual for the average American to have a cup of coffee in the morning and then head off to work in an office that keeps a pot of coffee on hand, a Swedish office will actually close for about 15 minutes in the mid-morning and again mid-afternoon so that everyone can take a break and fuel up on caffeine and a pastry of some kind.

And I thought the Spaniards were big on coffee!

 

More gorgeous pics of the most special city in Europe after the jump!

"Wild Irish Rose" (Dublin)

For today's Travel Tuesday, we find ourselves back in Ireland at the National Botanic Gardens. Chilly though it was, this March morning was magical for Josh and I, as it provided some of the first flowers we had seen all year. Josh and the camera had a hayday.

Title is from the song of the same name by U2. Gosh, I love that band.

More pictures from the gardens after the jump!

European Bucket List

Whenever I have a goal or a series of goals--serious or lighthearted, it doesn't really matter--I like to form them into lists. It helps me see the big picture when I can look at a single piece of paper or a single word document or even a single Powerpoint and instantly see everything that I want to accomplish in the near--or sometimes not so near--future.

My latest habit is composing bucket list collages. If you can't really picture what this would entail, this should help:

This page was sketched over time in my Avila notepad. I call it our European bucket list. It lists everything that I wanted Josh and I to be able to accomplish while we were in Europe. Some of them you might expect: watch a flamenco dance, eat dinner on the Riviera, eat churros . . . yeah there's a lot about places and things that I wanted to eat. Others might seem really random: find a pet store, buy cereal, or learn a new card game. I guess these were personal challenges as well goals. I didn't want to just sit around!

This is my new favorite format for goal-making! Since Europe, I've started a summer bucket list and a lifelong reading bucket list.

Wouldn't you just love to check things off of a list as fun and quirky as this? What a great motivation to meet your goals!

"I'm Up in the Woods" (Skurugata, Sweden)

The title of this post is from an absolutely breathtaking song by Bon Iver. I highly recommend that you listen to "Woods" while you read this post. So simple, but so deep and majestic. Kind of like the woods!

Skurugata is a long mountain pass in the Swedish countryside commonly used as a hiking resort. It is literally a huge crack through the mountain range formed by temperature changes during the most recent ice age. While the mountains and the crack itself were quite fascinating, I was much more taken aback by the woods surrounding the mountain range in Eksjö, Sweden.

Josh and didn't realize until setting foot in the Skurugata nature reserve that we hadn't seen any forest in the past four months. Let me tell you, I thought the woods back in northern Pennsylvania were beautiful, but this place was like a landscape taken from the pages of a fairy tale--from the tail end of a dream.

I fell asleep at the peak of Skuruhatt, the mountaintop you'll reach if you continue climbing after coming out of the Skurugata pass. Dozing off in the warm sun and then coming to again with the picturesque geography of Sweden stretching out to the horizon in every direction, I thought that I was still dreaming. (Pictures at the end of the post)

A thousand thanks to our friend Johan who took us on this unforgettable trip that we so needed after hopping from city to city all over Europe.

Skurugata

Always hike with a friend ;-)

More pictures of Skurugata and pics from the mountaintop after the jump!