Greece / Prague Travelogue, Part I

I am back from my week and a half of European travels! I had an excellent time, and a fruitful one, I think. For some reason I decided to keep a travel journal (which I never do), so I thought I might as well refactor it for the weblog. It’ll come in 5 or 6 installments, corresponding to the number of entries I wrote over the 11 or so days. I’ll probably put a couple of these up a day, so check back often and make sure you haven’t missed any! After the travelogue segment, I’ll post up some pictures and, most importantly, a special list that I kept adding to throughout the trip (which is referenced at least once in the journal–so just hold your breath). Any post-trip edits will be italicized, and in brackets! I hope reading about the trip is enjoyable in some way… Here we go!

3-29, 10:40 AM, SFO

Well, I don’t normally keep a journal of any kind apart from a weblog, but I feel that this trip may be an important one, so here I go. I’ve spent the last couple days preparing, and I feel that I haven’t forgotten anything important. my two major stresses are only that (a) something at Teleios might crash while I’m gone, and (b) I will feel really shy in situations where I can’t communicate in Greek or Czech. Grant me grace in both those things!

I have some high hopes for the trip:

• I hope to get to know Rachel better and deepen our relationship significantly.
• I hope to take advantage of solitude on planes and being in new environments to take stock of life.
• I hope to understand and come to grips with my desire to live overseas, to see what is underneath and evaluate why it’s important.
• I hope to have many good conversations with God, in a way that only being outside my normal mode of existence can bring.
• I hope to become pretty good at basic Greek.

Grant me success in all these things!

OK, enough for now: time to learn more Greek. By the way, the official soundtrack for the trip is the album Peregrine, by The Appleseed Cast. It is dark and brooding, with occasional flashes of hope amidst chaos. Very representative of my life right now, actually.