Mall of America and Worship Services!

Hi everyone! sorry ahead of time because i might not write in complete sentences. So the first thing that we did was get up [ and if you dont get up somebody is bond to sing a "wake up song"]. We went to Spirt Garadge, which is a really awesome music service, and we did all the stuff that we would have done at St. Andrews. Then right after that we went to the Mall of America and shopped [oh how i love shopping :)]. After that Elzabeth and a few other people went to the grocrey store to get stuff for dinner. When we got back to the peace palace [the place that we are staying] I took a nice nap... and let me tell you it was amazing haha. After a little free time we had dinner [pasta and garlic bread], then we went to a agape worship service which was really fun and spiritual. Now im here on the computer typing haha. Today was pretty sweet and i can't wait for tomorrow.
-Erika

p.s. i can't wait to see my family and my puppy//dog!

a quick recap...

ok, since i haven't really had time to write about everything that's happened, i'll take some of my precious time and enlighten you of our progress here in the midwest. after visiting ceder point amusmant park, we drove for a day and ended up in the southside of chicago. yuh, it's the "ghetto" side (elizabeth said it, not me) but it's actually really nice there. really, it's just a stupid assumption that the southside is dangerous. that night we had dinner at gino's east. in case you haven't heard of gino's, it's the legendary chicago pizza place-the pizza is famous for a reason, lets just leave it at that. we stayed in a youth center in hyde park, and the next day we took the bus and train to visit a neighborhood called cabrini green. cabrini green is a poor, black neighborhood that the mayor is trying to close down. (feel free to use colorful adjectives when describing the mayor.) cabrini green is a tight knit, friendly neighborhood where everyone was really nice and they trusted each other. however, the neighborhood's schools are being closed by the government because the mayor (and others) are trying to push the residents out so that they can develop it into nice, expensive condos/houses that rich people can live in. so where do the residents go? they obviously can't buy one of the houses. answer: they don't have anywhere to go. get it?
after visiting cabrini green we went to the white sox vs. yankees game (very awsome). oh , after the game we were on the train to go back to the southside and this security gaurd rushes on the train and is like "are you sure youre on the right train?!?! this train is going south!!' it was really funny because he asked us b/c we're white, and white people don't usually go home to the southside. anyhoo, the next day we hung around in the morning, went to downtown chicago for lunch, then went to a retirement home to volunteer for a bit. the old people were nice and kinda (very) amusing.
then toady we drove all day from chicago to where we are, which is minnesota. we're staying in this place called the peace palace, which is the basement of a closed-down mini-mart.
funny notables:
~the 2nd night of our trip i dared erin to pour milk up her nose and she did
~there was a milipede that ran torwards us one night at the church, and we all (the girls anyways) freaked out, and mr.kooiman caught the whole thing on camera
~erin doing brad's makeup-and it didn't come off for quite a while
~listening to everyone (including the boys) scream on the rollor coasters at ceder point 9home of the world's 3 best rollar coasters)
;)SOphia

Minneapolis!

Oh my goodness well here we are in good 'ole Minnesota! We are staying in the "peace palace" of a church here, which, coincidentally, is the church of famed christian rapper Agape. We just left Chicago today and spent all day traveling to get here. In Chicago we got to go to Gino's to get their famous deep dish pizza, and it was delicious. I gave a homeless guy my leftovers, but regretted it the next day when everyone had pizza to chow on for lunch and all I had was otterpops amd peanut butter. The next day we to the subway to the south side of town, which was overall a great experience except for when somebody threw a rock at us and it hit me in the back of my head. (Brian forgot to tell you all that:) ) It made me really sad to see the small, cramped and dirty places so many thousands of people live in and the depths that big corporations will go to just to make more money. It was nice get cheered up by a baseball game later that day. This morning I ate cereal out of a glove because I couldn't find a plastic baggie to put it in. We also watched The Blues Brothers in the car ride over here, which was sweet. I'm sure only more fun times and learning experiences are to come.

Magnificent in Minnneapolis!

-Moses

p.s. I miss my kitties. :( If you're reading this right now, I love you Daisy and Dottie!

Talking Politics Late at Night

just kidding, but now we have your attention...
The "Ghetto"
It wasn't the first thing I noticed, but the lasting image I will have is of how tight-knit the community was. ALthough conditions were bad, it was easy for the residents to contact each other, as they all knew everyone. While walking, it wasn't necessarily the rundown buildings I noticed, but it was the desolate schools and playgrounds. Or I should say school, singular. The playground was almost all concrete, with a half-broken rusty playplace, and pieces of concrete cylinders. The rest was gravel, with almost no grass.
The people were friendly to us, and the kids were extremely cool. They were hyper, and enjoyed running around and screaming maniaclly. Of what we saw, only one person was white, the rest black. Our guides, Jamie and Lelo, told us of how the richer developers are gradually buying out the land, which is already surrounded by nice condos and apartments, to build more. Soon there will be no place left for the poorer people to live.
Our guides spoke also of corruption among the government. In principal, they explained, the mayor controls all the city. One-third of the city council has been sent to prison on corruption, and the mayor is the one able to appoint a replacement. He can do almost whatever he wants now, and has only been opposed on a couple issues in the last decade.
US Cellular Field
To take a break from the harsh realities of the world, Elizabeth later took us to a White Sox-Yankees game. Randy Johnson had a no-hitter through 7, but then later gave up 2 more runs before being pulled. It started to get exciting when the White Sox scored 3 more to make it 7-5, and then in the bottom of the 8th pulled within 1 run on a homerun. Unfortunately the Sox lost 7-6, but we still had a great time. The fans are so much more different then the fans on the East Coast, exemplified by how they booed the Yankees. As we left the stadium to get on the train back to the South Side, a cop sprinted onto the train to make sure we were, in fact, going the right direction. Presumably this was because we were white, since almost no one else was who was on the train. We got back after telling him that we knew where we were going, and went to bed.

As a side note, yes mom, I'm drinking at least 3 bottles of water a day, but thanks for the suggestion.

-Brian K

hullo again...

hullo my chummy chums, how fares you and the rest of seattle? actually, i don't care about you so don't answer that, i'm just gonna talk about us for a bit. we went to ceder point amusmant park a couple days ago (so fun) ok...now after a loooong (6-7 hours) car ride, we're in chicago.
whoops g2g
;)SOphia

<*_*< ^*_*^ >*_*> DANCE MONKEY, DANCE!!

Hey everyone... today is our third day of our mission trip! *woot* So far the trip has been surprisingly un-boring, what with painting murals, going for runs (flat land=EASY), eating yummy food, going to the pool, going to elizabeth's house, going to the rock and roll hall of fame, and lotsa other fun stuff. Cleveland is a pretty cool place and I'm glad we came here with the group of people we did. Everyone's really nice and we all get along very well. (so far.... :P) Last night we had a barbeque at rocky park or whatever but we ended up in the wrong one. (It was a lot of fun anyways though.) After that, we all went out for ice cream that was extremely yummy. This morning we went to church and it was really fun because Sophia and I got to read the gospel thingies for the church service. (although I did skip a line on mine on accident) So now everyone else is watching Chicago in Elizabeth's family room (in her house, of course) and I'm being super cool and writing the blog thingamabobber. Anyways, as interesting as this must be to read, I kinda wanna go watch Chicago so I'm going to sign off. Ciao!

-Moses

wassup?

hey guys, so far cleveland has been pretty awsome. i'm gonna try not to repeat anything from what elizabeth has written so you're gonna be reading about the odd things here in cleveland. it's very flat here-which is a blessing compared to bellevue, and the ice cream is AMAZING. better than DQ. we've been staying in a church here, and the 1st night (the one where we were all crabby and delirious from the lack of sleep) we tried sleeping on the pews. not a good idea. they're amazingly skinny-in case you haven't noticed yet (and now i'm painfuly aware of that).
sincerely,
SOphia

We're here!!!

Hello everyone! We arrived in Cleveland this morning safe and sound. Even though everyone was very tired (no one slept well on the plane), we dug right in to work. We started off by learning a lot about the area in which we are staying -- both Cleveland and Lakewood. We're staying at Trinity Lutheran church which is a very small church, considered a dying congregation. We spent most of the day painting cabinets, a banner and scraping windows in the hot Cleveland sun. By about 2:30 the kids were getting a bit cranky and tired, as well as running out of stuff to do, so we decided to head over to the air-conditioning of my mom's house and the comfort of the city pool. My mom made some fabulous lazagna and everyone got to shower (yay!). Tomorrow is going to be an early morning to finish what we started today, then it is off to have some fun and see what Cleveland has to offer. Hopefully, later in the week, some of the kids will be interested in jotting down some of what they have seen and learned. In the meantime, here's a picture to prove that we are all safe and sound:

Wecome to Road Rules '06

Hi Everyone! Welcome to the blog for the members of the Road Rules team for Summer 2006! We're going to have an amazing time wandering through the fields of the midwest, as well as experiencing the urban landscapes. Ready, Set......