Ireland: Days 3 & 4

Hey, folks. Here is the video from days three and four of the trip. Enjoy!

The video is from Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday (Monday) we went to Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, where I took this panoramic (on my iPhone!) and then tried to find a leprechaun.

Today we took a bus tour and saw the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher, the Ailwee Caves, and other equally awesome things. Since we’ve been gone for the better part of both days, the videos and pictures will trickle in rather slowly.

Alrighty… I’m off to enjoy the Galway nightlife. Slán!

Ireland: Day 2

I forgot to wish everyone a happy new year in the last post. So… Happy New Year!

Anyway, getting on with it.

This post has a video and some photos from day two of the trip, which was Friday. It’s hard to keep up with all of the video and photo editing/uploading with all of the sightseeing and whatnot; which is why I know you’ll forgive me.

Below is a slideshow of some of the better pictures I’ve taken while in Dublin. You can check out the originals on my flickr page.

And again, if you’re not following my twitter stream, you’re missing out on some good play-by-play commentary. Check it:

last night, @kellythorsen and i met two irish women who loved both LOST and bill bryson. #

i was just chided by a local for drinking a beer other than guinness. “when in rome, mate!” he has a point. #

there is no ranch dressing in all of ireland. #

Here’s the video:

Ireland: Getting there

Greetings from Dublin!

I’m geeking out in our hostel right now, charging all of my electronics (iPhone, laptop, video camera), and recharging a bit after a long day and night of travel.

Nothing substantial to say in this blog post, I mean, we just got here. I did, however, quickly put together a video of clips from the journey here for your viewing pleasure. Check it out below.

G’head and leave a comment to say hello and be sure to follow my Twitter stream… I’ll be updating that quite frequently during the next week.

Oh, and I’d like to make a request to readers who know me personally: Please do not call me or text me at all until I return home next Thursday; not because I don’t want to hear from you, but because I don’t want to be paying exorbitant international phone fees. If you want to contact me, please do so by leaving comments on blog posts, messaging me on Twitter, emailing me, and so on. Thanks!

A brief hiatus

I am leaving in 7.5 hours with thirteen students and two adult volunteers for a week; we’ll be doing mission work in Red Lake, Minnesota. I won’t be anywhere near JakeBouma.com until after the 20th of July, but if you’re interested you can follow along at the St. Mark Student Ministries blog, YouTube page, and Flickr page.

See you on the other side.

Donald Miller – “Story”

kelly’s balcony, originally uploaded by jakebouma on flickr.

I have been in Chicago for the past few days, visiting some friends and enjoying the city. One of my favorite things about traveling is that I can listen to a bunch of podcasts for which I don’t normally have time.

On the drive here I got caught up on the Mars Hill Bible Church podcast (Rob Bell’s church). The latest episode is a guest appearance by Donald Miller called “Story” (see below for download links). Miller speaks about God’s ability as a storyteller and how our lives are essentially lived stories. He breaks down the components of stories and analyzes what differentiates good stories from bad stories. I was totally engaged during the whole presentation; it was awesome.

From what I understand, Miller’s message is a distillation of his forthcoming book Let Story Guide You which is currently slated for release in May 2008. Sounds like it will be another great book. [UPDATE 02/26/09: According to this blog post on Don's website, the name of his new book is A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which is "essentially the same subject matter (of Let Story Guide You) but told in a more narrative form," and it has a release date of November 30, 2009.]

You can listen to his message by clicking either of the links below:

Donald Miller – “Story” (mp3, Mars Hill website)

Mars Hill Bible Church podcast on iTunes

If you choose to listen to the podcast, or have heard Miller speak on “Story” already, what are your thoughts? What resonated with you and/or what did you disagree with?

Calling it “The Sunshine State” was a good choice.

It’s late on day six of tour and I am writing from a house in Fort Myers, Florida. While on tour, the choir splits up in the evenings and stays with host families (which we call “homestays”). We’ve had two hotel nights thus far and the rest have been homestays.

Tonight we are staying with a nice couple who have a beautiful home with the biggest screened-in porch I have ever laid my humble eyes upon. Let’s be honest, it’s basically a screened-in backyard with a pool and a hot tub. Speaking from experience, homestays can go either way – but we have really lucked out thus far.

We have sang in some really beautiful places, both visually and acoustically. Spivey Hall at Clayton State University may be the most acoustically rich place I have ever sang with a choir. Our director informed us that Robert Shaw elected to record all his Chorale’s music there, and his decision is entirely justifiable.

I suppose there is no need to ramble on. Tomorrow we are headed to West Palm Beach via Alligator Alley (check out this picture) and then up through Georgia thereafter. And again, you can look at a Google map of the entire tour if you wish.

Oh yeah… and have you seen the iPhone? Dang.

Nordic Choir tour

I am off tomorrow morning on a two-and-a-half week tour of the East coast with the Nordic Choir. The dates and locations of our performances can all be found on Luther’s website, and I also took the liberty of creating a Google map with all of the stops as well.

I will be adding a few cities to my personal list of places I have been, including: Atlanta, GA; Ft. Myers, FL; Tampa, FL; Chapel Hill, NC; Boston, MA; and Pittsburgh, PA.

I used the Google map of the tour and the drive time estimations it provides and calculated that we are in a bus for 4 hours and 52 minutes per day on average. This gives me ample time to read Dave Eggers’ new book What is the What and to watch some movies on my iPod (which I have never done before; I’ve only watched TV shows and music videos).

I hope to post several times on the road, but I can’t make any promises.

Related:

Nordic Choir discography at Primarily A Cappella

Nordic Choir videos on YouTube

Istanbul, Turkey

Sadly, I believe this will be my last post from the trip.We are now in Istanbul, taking the last few days of the trip slowly. We visited out last sites today, and tonight and tomorrow we have to write a final paper. Mine is about the passage in Acts about Paul in Athens. We visited the Blue Mosque yesterday, and today we saw Aya Sofia, the National Archaeological Museum of Turkey and Topkapi Palace. All were incredible.

Interestingly, yesterday afternoon we saw Dave Chapelle as we were walking back to our hotel. When we noticed that it was him, he got upset and yelled something about how he came here to ‘escape us people.’ A couple of people in our group snuck pictures, but I did not. I thought it was a huge coincidince to see him here.

I don’t have much more to say except that although it has been great studying this part of the world, it will be very good to get home.

Selçuk, Turkey

Hello again, this time from Selçuk, Turkey. The last three days have been somewhat paradoxical in that they have been extremely interesting – some of the coolest days on the trip – yet for all three I have been ill. I am not sure if it was something that I ate or drank or what, but it has not been fun. I woke up on Tuesday feeling nauseous to the point that I had to lie down in my hotel room during our morning class and miss the first part of the site that day. I tried to sleep in the bus to no avail, and I finally threw up. I say finally because whatever I threw up is what was making me feel so bad. I was able to go swimming at Hieropolis springs in the afternoon, but felt crappy again that night. The last two days I have had diarrhea, but I am finally beginning to feel better… please knock on some wood if it is nearby.

Last night a few classmates and I, after eating dinner, met a man who was selling carpets and he told us that his wife was from California and invited us in to his shop. We ended up chatting for nearly 3 hours with him and his wife. Apparently she met him when she was traveling five years ago and the rest of the story wrote itself, so she moved here and now they live a humble life selling carpets, among other things. We had many cups of apple tea (which is huge in Turkey) which they offered to us out of hospitality. It was a really great experience.

(The guy next to me in the Internet Cafe just let out a huge fart and nobody even reacted or said anything. My initial reaction was to laugh, but I decided I didn’t want to take the chance to offend anyone by doing so. Perhaps I should offer the room my own personal fart as a tribute to my comfortability with this foreign culture. Perhaps not.)

We spent today at Ephesus, which is where Paul writes the letter of Ephesians to, and is also mentioned in Acts. The theatre there is the biggest one we have seen – in its time it would have seated over 24,000 people. We sat at the very top of it while one of our classmates read Acts 19 in a normal speaking voice and we could hear it perfectly, as if it were microphoned. Unreal. It rained today, which was a bummer, but it didn’t take much away from the grandeur of the city. My photos will do the talking when I get back.

Tomorrow we visit the Ephesus museum and the Church of Saint John, and then on Saturday we fly to Istanbul which is where we stay for the remainder of the trip. It will be very bittersweet to leave this part of the world.

Can you hear me now? Good.

Bergama, Turkey

First, forgive me if this post looks strange… the keyboard here is quite weırd. Second, it may be short because İ don’t have much time. I wıll probably post again ın Selçuk.

After Kalambaka and Meteora, we went to Thessaloniki (thess-uh-lo-NEE-kee) for two days and nights. It was awesome there. I wish I had more time to write about it. Two days ago we stayed in Alexandroupolis, Greece in the nicest hotel so far – and better yet, it was right on the ocean. I just wish we could have stayed there for more than one night.

After crossıng a straight which I can’ remember the name of, we are now in Bergama, the ancient site of Pergamon. The weather is considerably colder here, and by consıderably colder I mean absolutely freezıng.

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