How to spend a rainy Saturday

Started the day with Psalm 5.  It was good.  "But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You.  For You, O LORD, will bless the righteous; with favor You will surround him as with a shield."  I think verses 11 and 12 sum up what God has been doing with me here: watching over me as I trust Him!

The view out my window (on a non-rainy day)

It was still drizzly today.  Spent the morning playing the guitar, then started on a drawing of the apartments outside my window.  The view out is cool--there's a lot to look at.  I have two windows which make a corner.  One of them looks west along the rest of my apartment building and overlooks the rear parking lot.  Sounds dreary, I know, but it's not.  The buildings are brick and the parking area is all paving stones.  Out the other window are the apartment buildings across the way, including one that has been under construction since I got here.  It's fun to see each floor being added!  Every day when I look out, I can see the crane lifting things up and down and the workers going back and forth in their hard hats.  There is a big shared yard area in the enclosed space between all the houses--they sort of make a ring around the outer perimeter of our block, and the yards are in the middle.  Both our building and the apartments across the way have
a lot of families with kids, so usually I see the kids out running around and playing.  At night, I can see all the people moving around inside their apartments: making dinner, watching television, or whatever.  I've been dying to draw it all, so today I finally got going on a picture.

While I was drawing, Indra came in and kept me company.  I had iTunes on, but we kept switching back and forth between it and YouTube.  A lot of our time together involves comparing and sharing music with each other.  We started off with songs from the French production of "Les Misérables," and ended up listening to Queen because we were talking about Freddie Mercury's voice.  Then we heard Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" before we went to make lunch.  Basically we just say, "Oh, have you heard this song?" or "Oh, I love this song, we have to listen to it!" and then look stuff up and listen to it.

During the afternoon I took a walk to St. Stephan church over in the Hinschenfelde neighborhood.  My church music schedule (which I picked up at St. Michaelis last month) said there was supposed to be a concert of Bach, Dvorák, and Rachmaninoff there.  But when I got there, I realized that it wasn't at the church but at the church's event hall, which was a 10- or 15-minute walk away, and there was also an entry fee, which I didn't think there was.  So I abandoned the idea and came back home.  A bit of a bummer, but I didn't really mind.  I got a nice walk out of it!  There was no rain, but it was still cloudy and damp, and all the green of the plants and the gray sky were so pretty.

Also listened to a Bible study on Our God Can out of Acts 5.  It was a good one!  I got to Skype with Mom and Emily (and Joanna via the speaker phone!) for a few minutes too.

Marni texted me and asked if I wanted to watch Frozen, so after dinner we got together with Indra and one other Australian student, Samantha.  It was really fun!  Marni brought marshmallows, Sam brought the DVD, I contributed my laptop to watch it, and Indra brought in her candle lanterns, which were perfect because they made star and snowflake patterns on the ceiling and walls.  We even had paper snowflakes on the windows that were left over from Christmas!  So the atmosphere was perfect!

One kind of sad thing I saw today when I was walking: a sticker on one of those electrical boxes on the street.  Joey and Rebecca from City Light had told me about these stickers.  They say, "Die Bibel ist ein Märchenbuch"--"The Bible is a storybook."  People here are not merely agnostic; many of them are firmly and vocally atheist.  The Bible holds no truth for them, and they aren't afraid to say so.  I know that a lot of people in America have that same viewpoint, but I don't usually see stickers or graffiti making statements like that.

Church tomorrow, then in the evening I'm going to hear Handel's "Messiah" at one of the other churches nearby!  I've never heard it performed, so I am SUPER psyched!  (I'll look up the info to be sure I go to the right place this time . . . )