Garrett took a nice picture of the team!
Discussion during one of the sessions.
Reading the participants' evaluation cards after it was all over and planning for next year!
Country Line Dancing. 10 points if you can pick out the Texan in the picture...
Ukrainian Dancing. Garrett's a fast learner!!
Train station in Kherson
A replica of Catherine the Great's throne in the Kherson Orthodox Church
This is the Church building in Kherson. They're almost finished with the roof
As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it’s only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let’s-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way—hostile to my fantasy of being a real individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation travel:) To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.
Russian built Tu-95 "Bear" is a strategic long-range bomber. Big, cool, and 15,000 lbs of thrust in each engine
Anastra "Antrasal" Reconnaissance Aircraft built in 1917-18 in Odessa
They even had a re-enactment with the Soviet soldiers defeating the Fascists!
Mig-31
Be-12 Anti-sub amphibious Soviet Aircraft. Very cool and built in Ukraine
Everyone who went with the engines of an IL-18 behind us
Outside the entrance to the museum
Think you're good at chess? Come to Kiev and see how good you are. Probably a couple hundred guys playing chess in a park. It's fun to watch and I think this is a national pasttime in this part of the world.
Notre Dame
Mass beginning at Notre Dame
Eiffel Tower
The gang
Napoleon's Arch
The Louvres
The River From the Temple
1 The man brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. 2 He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was flowing from the south side.
3 As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits [a] and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. 4 He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. 5 He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross. 6 He asked me, "Son of man, do you see this?"
Then he led me back to the bank of the river. 7 When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. 8 He said to me, "This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, [b] where it enters the Sea. [c] When it empties into the Sea, [d] the water there becomes fresh. 9 Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. 10 Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Great Sea. [e] 11 But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. 12 Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.
It is impossible to reconcile with the New Testment the view which seems to be more or less accepted among the majority of church leaders, that while missionary work is an admirable thing to do, within reasonable limits, it is not something without which the church simply falls to the ground. We must say bluntly that when the Church ceases to be a mission, then she ceases to have any right to the titles by which she is adorned by the New Testament.
Just as we insist that a Church which has ceased to be a mission has lost the essential character of a Church, so we must also say that a mission which is not at the same time truly a Church is not a true expression of the divine apostolate. An unchurchly mission is as much a monstrosity as an unmissionary Church.
Kristen and I outside an old Belgian monastery which is still active
Some buildings surrounding the Markt (the main square in the city)
Belgian Waffle. Get in my belly!!
There are canals that run all throughout the city. cool huh!!
This is a place called 'the Burg' with the belfry tower in the background. For 8 EU you can go up into the tower. There was kind of a long line so we nixed that.
