Unlearning As Learning

Observations from my Portland vacation, Day 2:

Again, I'm more tired than I thought. 12 hours of sleep yesterday, 7 today (so far).

I realized that I'm a church geek. Here's what I mean: I'm on vacation, and I get very excited when my hosts tell me that, before lunch, I'll be getting a tour of their church. Now, sure, I listen to their pastor teach via podcast most every week, but still, I was looking forward to the tour of it big time. I got to take a look at their offices, the children's area, the auditorium, the student ministry area. The whole shebang. It was GREAT.

I never really needed to gripe or complain about our youth facilities and such as CBC. I mean, I was in on the design committee and our leadership has made sure we have everything we need (and most of what we want) to do our ministry. The church I visited yesterday would've killed for our youth-dedicated space.

Portland has a sensitivity to the homeless population. The city does some organized things to try to help. Local businesses put signs in their windows saying things like if you need a job interview, they'll press and clean your suit for free. Local churches put in warming stations in the winter. I'm sure I'm not the first to have this thought, but if I were homeless, I think I'd migrate in the winter.

Had lunch downtown in a nice little tavern. They were even showing the Premier League on big screens. Food was good. Company was good. Microbrew was good.

Weather was partly sunny and in the 50's. Can't complain. Nice to walk around a lot and not sweat.

I spent a little time wandering around Hawthorne. It's just a street that has had a bunch of locally owned businesses ccreate a nice 4 or 5 city-block area. It creates the effect of a mall. It was kinda cool...and you see all types, from grandmas to punks and everything in-between.

The coffeeshop I stopped to read in had a security code on the restrooms...I'm sure to prevent folks on Hawthorne from just popping in to use the facilities. What I found amusing was that it appeared that the homeless had discovered the day's code and began sharing it with each other. A bunch of folks who didn't buy anything were undeterred by the security code.

Had a nice dinner and visit with Meredith and Jake and Finley. Remind myself to get the soup recipe from Merdy. Danny and Jake got involved in Call of Duty: Black Ops. I watched, fascinated by the complexity of video games. They were playing folks from all over the world, talking on headsets and such. Killing. Lots of killing.

I'll try to post some photos later...