serenity (noun) - a disposition free from stress

Serenity is the name of the spaceship in the movie Serenity and in the series Firefly. Both, the movie and the series, were created by Joss Whedon, but I like the series better. This has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, I just simply remembered.

We are in Southern California now. We arrived this morning and we are staying in Green Valley Lake. It is beautiful, quiet, and serene. We are going to be here until the Missions Conference starting on January 2nd, 2007.

San Francisco

Our friends took us to San Francisco yesterday. It is more beautiful than we both remembered. Here are some pictures.

The Golden Gate Bridge

The Alcatraz

Lombard Street

Sacramento

We visited Sacramento. The Governator lives here, he is on bed rest, because he broke his leg while skiing, unfortunately we did not get to meet him. We "only" went to old town Sacramento. It is a really cool place.

This statue commemorates the glory of the Pony Express, which started at this place at 02:45AM on April 4, 1860, when Sam Hamilton galloped into a blinding rainstorm on the first lap of the 1,966 mile trip to St. Joseph, Missouri. During its 18 month existence, its 121 riders and 500 ponies carried 35,000 pieces of mail with the loss of but one pouch. This venture ended California's isolation from the rest of the Union.

Wild West

The Wild West is still wild. Northern California is full of untouched wild areas, full of natural beauty. There is not enough place on my memory card to show you all that is beautiful.


For the last two days we have been staying with our friends Tom and Carolanne Gillett at their house in Penn Valley, California. Both of them used to serve with us in Pécs several years ago. Now they are married and they have a beautiful daughter. If you click here you can see where they live.

We went to Nevada City yesterday. It is one of the old gold rush towns. It used to be called Little San Francisco, because it's morals were as corrupted as San Francisco's were. Things haven't changed much, since Nevada City has the highest number of homosexuals per capita in the United States.

Bridgeport is the longest single-span covered bridge.

And what do people do for fun here? Check out the following pictures. I have to tell you, even Andi had a spark in her eye after she fired that Glock. We enjoyed staying here, we love the nature, and we love shooting guns.

The target

Christmas

We are in Napa, California now. We are going to spend Christmas with our dear friends the Waldens. It is definitely not going to be a white Christmas, since it is about 50°F (11°C) here.

Idaho

We are at the Boise [ID] airport waiting to board our flight to Oakland [CA], and the flight is about an hour late. We are not happy, but at least we have free wireless internet, at least we can post.

I am sorry to say this, but all those from Idaho should do a better job in letting the world know how beautiful Idaho is. It is gorgeous, lovely, quaint, everything the rest of the world should be. The few thing I knew about Idaho before I came here were potatoes, hewlett-packard, and micron, but there is so much more to Idaho than these.

We are in love with Idaho, we want to come back here one day for a longer period, so we can relax and have some more fun. Thanks to all our friends who made it possible for us to come here and visit.

Northwest

These last few days we have been in Seattle. The whole area is in a chaos. There was a huge storm last Friday (a week ago) and there are still about 200,000 houses without electricity. We saw areas where all the electrical wires were snapped by trees that that fell because of the storm.

Most of those who have no electricity are staying with friends. This means that there are more people commuting and they are driving longer distances than usual. The highways are all jammed, we spent six hours in a car on Tuesday and another four on Wednesday, just to get to places. The average speed on the highways was 20 miles/hour (~35 km/h). We are sorry that we were not able to update our blog sooner, but the internet wasn't working most of the time either.

Queen Ann Hill

On Thursday were in Hayden, Idaho visiting some friends, who moved here from California. Seeing them was such a blessing, and small-town America is so relaxing. We had tremendous fun.

Staten Island

Today we are at Staten Island. I was teaching at Calvary Chapel Richmond County here. Later this afternoon we took a ride with the Staten Island ferry to Manhattan. I took some pictures on the way there.

Lower Manhattan

Statue of Liberty

NYC

Empire State Building

Rockefeller Center

Times Square

Alec Baldwin

Chinatown

NYSE

Ground Zero

BUD-JFK

Well, we are at Calvary Chapel of Kearny right now, where I am going to teach the Wednesday night service.

The trip was all good, no terrorists (thank you for your prayers), but we were not able to sleep much.

Here is a picture I took of a plane as we were approaching JFK.

50lbs

Fifty pounds is not too much one might say, and I agree. Airlines allow two bags under 50 pounds. I tell you, it is not too much if you are traveling for five weeks, like we are.

We are leaving to go to Budapest tomorrow. We will spend a night there, and then we will fly to New York on Wednesday. Can't wait!