think, write, share

well, i’m back in San Jose after a long, long plane ride full of pilgrims returning from World Youth Day in Köln. I’m exhausted, so I won’t write much about the trip here, but while we were in Berlin, CNN stopped by the parish we were staying with and interviewed some of my teens who were working on a service project at the elementary school. You can find the article here.

The relevant section is near the bottom starting with:

But his approach does not strike a chord with all of those attending World Youth Day, which was founded by John Paul. Some are decidedly more liberal on social issues, like birth control.

There’s a video link on the right which contains small quotes of some of the teens and with one of the Berlin young adults affiliated with the parish. You can see me briefly in the background with a long roller painting a white wall white (don’t ask, I don’t know either). It’s interesting how a 30 minute Q & A session with my teens turned into a few second sound byte…

Gilroy represent!

EDIT: looks like the video has been taken down. oh well! it was cool, trust me

Greetings from Köln! We’ve left Berlin after spending a week there doing service and immersing ourselves in the German culture by living with host families in the former East Berlin.It’s been amazing so far; the history of the city and its people is so rich. Plus there was much bier which needed to be sampled! Well, gotta run!

well, i’m off on vacation for a few weeks. off to the land of milk and honey…err, rather bier and brat

i won’t have access to email or anything while i’m gone, so don’t expect too much here…i’ll miss you all! hahaha, ok, maybe not

Auf Wiedersehen!

i found this quote while going through the list of drafts on this site and it made me laugh again i forget where i found it.

“Feminists do not ignore the plainly evident just because it happens to be annoying or inconvenient. God creates the world in all its splendor and plenty –poof, a cornucopia of all things good and sweet — and then proceeds, as His first administrative act, to place everyone on a diet? A FOOD RESTRICTION? This is a male God. In a female God’s paradise, you eat what you want.”

this is a cool site:

gmaps pedometer

I love Google maps and I love the fact that they’re so customizable that you can add applications on top of it (cell phone tower locations, etc). This site will allow you to plot out your run and will tell you how far it is. My only gripe with the site is that it only plots straight lines from point to point, so if your road/path is curvy, you’ll need a lot of points to get a precise measurement. This is my typical running path, a short 1.5 mile jaunt through the streets around my neighborhood. Depending on how my legs feel, I’ll add some distance by running up and down some of the cul-de-sacs in the area or making another loop around the park adjoining Vistapark and Sandpebble.