Neener's Travel Blog

"The Best Week of Your Life."  It's the tag line for Young Life camp, and it truly is not an exaggeration.  Last year was my first time at RockRidge Canyon (the camp in Princeton, BC where we take our group of teens every summer), and it far exceeded my expectations.  Everyone can tell you that RRC is the best place on earth and that camp is the best week of your life, but it's a completely different thing to experience it first hand.  My first time at camp I remember as a total whirlwind of activity and adventure.  It was a week long party and I loved every second of it.  I was excited to go and excited to be there and somehow my excitement/energy level remained at 110% all week. This year though, was a bit of a different story.  Being on a Summer Grant with Young Life this year, I was working on a lot more of the behind the scenes projects, and saw how much work truly goes into a week at camp (as well as the other duties of running the ministry at...

Another non-fiction writing course composition. This project was a revision of the manifesto we did a while back. ( http://shaneenstravels.blogspot.ca/2016/01/new-year-new-adventures.html ) This is based on a true story - one of the greatest nights I've spent with some of my best friends. The night we chased the storm. The Greatest Adventure Story The night was enticing and full of potential. A storm raged outside, a call to the heart of an adventurer.  However, the young band of heroes curled up safe and dry in their lair, where the sounds of the wind and rain could not reach them.  The adventurers were taking a night off of their usual daring deeds, choosing instead to idly watch the night pass them by.             The hero of a great adventure story must be more interested in experiencing life than they are in merely passing the time.  Excitement comes far more easily and frequently to the active adventurer...

One of our recent assignments was to write a short composition about dogs, so of course I had to write about one of the most important woofers in my life.  So, Kado, here's to you, you little sassypants. *photo credit to Travis T.  And also Kado, for being such a darn cute model.                 I lie down, but I am still wide awake.  I keep my eyes locked on the door and my head tilted, listening for any sound.  They’ve been gone for, I don’t know, at least twelve days if I had to take a guess.  I’ve been trapped here since they left, and I’m nearly out of food and water.  There’s no end in sight, and I’m beginning to lose hope.                 To pass the time I think back on the good ol’ days.  It seems like just yesterday we were passing the ball around, going for walks, cuddling on the couch, eating together, laughing t...

(Another marvel written for school.)                 The scratching of the pen contrasts with the smoothness of the ink gliding over the page.  The strokes, both dramatic and detailed, slowly grow fainter as the end of the line is reached.  The pen is dipped into the inkwell, renewing its supply for the next line.                 In their original context of the Victorian Era, being wielded by a dapper gentleman in a tailored suit to write letters of great import in a grand and tastefully decorated study, dip pens seem elegant and dignified.  Their continued use in this modern age, though, seems old fashioned and perhaps even a bit pretentious.  To me, however, dip pens represent so much more what a writing instrument is meant to be than a fountain pen or (the horror!) a ballpoint pen.  A writing instrument is the extension of the write...

(Just a fun little writing project from my class to keep you warm on this wintry day.) Winter can be a tough time for everyone.  Days are shorter and often darker, bringing about seasonal doldrums.  The annual battle against the elements is a struggle felt by everyone, whether working out in the blizzards, driving on the icy roads, or hauling a toboggan up the slippery hill.  When the frosty grasp of winter works its way past toques and scarves and settles into the bones, the cold can seem impossible to escape.   But fear not!  There is yet a beacon of light and warmth in the vast wintry plains, a small comfort, bringing hope to even the most frozen of winter sufferers.  It is hot chocolate!  That glorious miracle of a delicious hot beverage, come to restore feeling to the extremities and joy to the heart.   In the beginning days of hot chocolate, Mayans and Aztecs believed the drink to have medicinal properties, probably du...

My last writing assignment of last semester was to write a manifesto.  The topic could be as broad or specific as we wanted - topics chosen by my classmates ranged from general advice on how to live a good life to enjoying rain to internet trolling...quite the range of characters we have in that little class. Honestly, this assignment was giving me a lot of issues, and I still am not happy with the way it turned out.  There's maybe two lines in this whole composition that I'm mildly proud of.  However, the message behind it, I am entirely supportive of (obviously, or I wouldn't have made it into a manifesto).  So, here it is, my manifesto for adventure. Manifesto for Adventure                 Nowadays, people are focussed on all the wrong things: money, status, acquiring material possessions.  People are surviving and thriving, but no one is really LIVING .  As residents of t...

The last  assignment  in my writing course was a memoir/narrative.  I honestly had such a difficult time choosing an event in my life to write about.  There was so much to choose from, but at the same time I couldn't think of anything worth putting into a story that people would want to read.  So I picked the most recent, emotionally charged event in my life.  In September I went to Edmonton Expo with a few of my very best friends. And this is the tale of what happened (cut down to approximately 800 words...it started out at 1300, and that still didn't include all the details...).  (Shout out to Alex for his pro editing skills - you da bomb diggity.) Meeting Clara                 This was it - I was going down.  My body was swaying and my vision was going dark.  It had gotten to be too much and I was seriously going to pass out.      ...

This year I'm taking a course called WRITE 298: Creative Non-Fiction Writing.  It's my favourite course this semester because I essentially get to write blog posts for school and so all the assignments are FUN.  Yes, I am describing school work as fun.  That's how great it is. So, throughout the year (it's a full year course, wonderfully enough), I'll be sharing some of my writings.  Here's our first assignment: a description of place.  Despite the short time my DTS outreach group spent in Kolkata, that city still stands out vividly in my mind - perhaps more vividly than other place I've been.  So, even though I haven't been there in a year and a half, and have hardly any pictures to look back on, it was easy to remember and write about. The Fabric of India The first glimpses of the city are overwhelming, and I’d almost be glad for the barrier of the taxi window between me and this new place, if it wasn’t for the stuffiness of the incense-choked ...

Starting over can be messy.  That’s exactly how I would describe my 2015 so far – messy.  Already this year has held a massive amount of heartbreak and change for me.  As I look back on all that’s passed, that’s really the first thing to come to mind.  How messy.  I have really made a mess of things. Life doesn’t really seem to care how much I may have going in my life at once (and I will tell you right now, that I always have a lot going on – probably at least 1.5-2 times as much as is healthy for a normal person).  Life doesn’t care – in fact it seems to enjoy constantly throwing more and more things at me.  Very often those things come completely out of the blue.  Because being prepared for something would be cheating.  As life threw new things at me, decisions needed to be made.  And as more and more things were thrown, my decision making ability decreased.  Rapidly.  Until it seemed that nearly every decision I m...

I have been home for a month and ten days now.  It feels strange.  Like I'm just stopping back at my birthplace before I head out on my next great adventure.  But at the same time I don't feel out of place here.  I've never been more happy to come home.  I've been having all sorts of mini adventures with my amazing family and friends.  2014 will be a year to remember, for a multitude of reasons. Readjusting to life in Canada was (and is) a process, but wasn't nearly as difficult as I had anticipated.  I was prepared for the absolute worst in every aspect of my life and to be completely miserable...but I haven't.  And I can't decide if that's good or bad.  I wasn't prepared for everything to go so well, and frankly, I don't know how to handle it.  I was all set to have to work incredibly hard to fit back in with Canadian culture and reconnect with my friends and find a church and discover places to serve...but it all came so natur...

South East Asia Missionary Life Some of the trivial and strange things that have come to be normal life over the past few months. That moment when: - you can't remember the last meal you had without rice - toilet paper is no longer a necessity - traffic back home will never seem bad again - you discover that it is possible to live without wifi - you run out of water - you've had more bucket showers than real showers in the past month - electricity just decides to go out sometimes - you prefer to go to the market than an actual store - you can't remember the last time you sat in the front seat of a car - it's been an even longer time since you actually drove a car - two outfits are all you need to get through three weeks - you only shower once a week (it's cold in Darjeeling!) - or you want to shower once an hour (it's HOT everywhere else!) - you can't go a day without a tea break (Morning tea - the best time of day!) - cars...

Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Well, debrief week has come and gone, full of meetings and packing and cramming in as many fun times in our last days together as possible.  It's been a good time of relaxing and reflection and planning for the future. We had this really great moment in one of our meetings where we all had a chance to encourage our fearless leader, our beloved Rachael.  It was Sarah's turn to say something and she got about a sentence into her encouragement and started to cry, and instantly about 7 of the rest of us also started to tear up.  "Girl's DTS!"  We laughed...and continued to cry. Our last required reading for DTS was the book Re-Entry by Peter Jordan.  It talks about coming home after missions and the problems that we might encounter.  And there are a lot.  After reading it, I am now prepared for a lot of things, and I was already convicted about some attitudes of mine. I have to apologize for a post that I made near the beg...

Thursday, June 5, 2014 After Darjeeling, I just wanted to be able to survive semi-pleasantly through the remainder of DTS.  I was aiming to try my hardest to serve God and give it my all in the last few days of outreach, regardless of how I was feeling.  It was my goal to "finish well".  I don't know how many times I've heard that phrase in these past couple weeks, but it is a lot. So we headed to our last outreach location, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  We didn't really know what to expect until the day before we left (which was the day after we got back from India - that's right, three countries in three days), so I didn't really have time to prepare or get excited or have any thoughts at all on what our time there might be like.  All I knew was we only had 10 days there, compared to the 3 weeks we had in our other locations.  It was going to be a short one.  Little did I know just how short our time there would be! It turns out that finishing well...

Sunday, May 25, 2014 An overview of our outreach time in India - it's a bit of a long one.  India ended up being a very mixed experience for me.  Darjeeling really was beautiful and we were able to be involved in several different ministries.  It was such great experience to see such a variety of ministries. I went to a children's slum ministry, where the kids ranged in age from around 1 to 12, mostly falling into the 5ish area.  There were about 40 kids packed into a room slightly bigger than my living room (which is not big enough for 10 people sitting, let alone 40 brawling children).  Despite the utter chaos, we were still able to act out Daniel and the Lions' Den (I was one of the bad advisors.  It was a real big hit when I was eaten.), play some games (still not entirely sure how that was accomplished), do a lion mask craft (lions are now green, purple, blue and covered in flower patterns) and hand out snack.  It was over so quickly and all ...

I am getting exhausted. I've gotten tired and worn out several times on this trip. Exhausted in every way - physically, spiritually, emotionally. And every time I think this is it, that I can't go on anymore, God leads me back to Psalm 23. It seemed cliche, until I realized that, despite being one of those overused/not fully understood verses, it is still God's word. He can use it to speak to me and encourage me. And there is so much solid truth and encouragement in these six verses. I wrote my own version of the Psalm (using NIV) today during my quiet time, when God led me to this passage yet again. My 23rd Psalm The Lord is my shepherd. I am a part of his flock and I am valuable to him. He watches over me and sees everything that is going on around me. He provides shelter and food and water and everything that I need. He protects me from dangerous terrain and from predators lying in wait to attack me. With him I lack nothing. When I am with him, there is nothing th...

Saturday, May 3, 2014 We left on the night of April 29th to catch our flight from Bangkok to Kolkata, India.  Pretty short and uneventful as far as airports and flights go.  Also I was half asleep, so I don't remember much of it... I do know that when we got off the plane there were two women from Mega Cities (Kolkata is currently the focus of the Mega Cities initiative - sending as many outreach teams to that city as possible to really hammer them with Jesus) waiting for us.  They got us on a bus that took our Music DTS people to their accommodations and continued on with us Children at Risk DTS people for about another hour to where we were going to stay.  Oh, this is all at, like, 4 am.  I slept through most of it.  We got to our hostel at some point and just crashed.  Two of our leaders went out to figure out our transportation to Darjeeling, and this is where things started getting complicated.  We were trying to get tickets on a sleeper t...

Sunday, April 27, 2014 We had a week back in Thailand between locations.  On our first weekend here, some of us went on a day tour and it probably ended up being my favorite day in Thailand.  We had a wonderful adventure travelling to a floating market, the bridge on the River Kwai and an elephant camp where we got to play with elephants in the river and ride on them.  It was so much fun - we got to sit on the elephants trunks and the elephants would throw us into the water and we got to aim their trunks and spray people! We had a couple days of prep and then headed out for Camp Zoe, at a golf resort about 3 hours from Bangkok.  We took about 50 kids with us and had about 30 volunteers.  We spent 3 full days and 2 half days there.  We did worship and teachings with the kids, and tons of fun activities to keep the kids busy.  Icebreaker games, team building (they were split into 4 teams for competition over the weekend), Capture the Flag, Crazy Nigh...