Flash back moment

I have had some wild adventures as well. Well, wild I guess is a relative term. I have been visiting a lot of monasteries so I guess they can’t be too wild. I hiked up 40 minutes (a lot with a 18 kilo pack and no food) to a monastery on a mountain peak in the Pyranees. It was surreal. I was so intent on getting up there that I neglected food and ended up starting an unintentional 24 hr fast. I also stayed up in a free mountain refuge there, my coldest night yet in France. I also went to a really cool interdenominational christian community called Taize. Oh wow, you would love that place! The music was great, the prayer was exceptional and the community was awesome. I met two guys from London the first day at Taize who were theology students in England. I also met a great girl from Romania named Roxanne. After being there for a week I felt finished with travelling. That was just last week. Then I came up to paris to meet my parents and went off to the family reunion. WoW! 187 of my relatives. So amazing. The food was great. The family even better. We ended up singing around the fire on Saturday night. I can’t wait to bring back some of these traditional family drinking songs back home. I have also never been more dehydrated in my life. I swear we were drinking wine and hard cider and calvados and whiskey for 12 hours straight. Never enough to get drunk but enough to escalate the conversations. I am either building up my tolerance or killing my liver. It was great though. I connected up with all my relatives who I met when I came here 5 years ago. I even found a running partner for 4 months. It will be real great living there. The cousin who I lived with 5 years ago is going to school in the same city. He is taking on a mission to introduce me to French girls so that I can marry them and stay there. It was great, we were a good pair of friends 5 years ago and we just picked up where we left off. I am now at the beach for the next two weeks and am so excited to have some time to actually relax. I think I will head from there off to the Olympics. That is going to be a long train ride, but hey, why not? I got the free trip because of my pass. I wish I could meet ya there, but it’s ok. I might chqnge my plqns to heqd off to the unkown regions of yugo slavia for a catholic pilgrammage sight. I will write another gerneral update soon, but I am glad I was able to get one just to you. Take care and remember that being around australians is no excuse not to floss.