Turandot

Ben left for Rwanda this afternoon, missing out on a night at the opera! The Bryan/BERC group saw Turandot this evening performed at the National Theatre. The building is new, luxurious, and beautiful. The old national theatre was an historic building in the old city, reputed to be beautiful as well.

Blah, blah-- I had a little trouble staying awake, but by the third act I was more perky, and especially enjoyed the beautiful costumes and choreography.

Not much of an update for today, but it's bedtime for me...

Basement Floods

In the last several days since arriving at our new summer home we've done and seen a lot. On Wednesday we settled into our new digs, pulled out our camera for a few shots, and (best of all) reconnected with our students who've been here for a month already. That night Ariel and I jumped a bus with some of the students and found a restaurant in the old part of town (hundreds of years old) for the Germany/Turkey Eurocup semifinal. Quite a dramatic game (especially for soccer). Germany won 3-2 in the last 30 seconds of the game. Ariel and I have another notable soccer memory from the last Worldcup, so it was fun to add another. After a fun night we paid our bill and took to the streets to walk to our bus stop--crazy storm! We made the bus shelter just in time as rain began pelting the sidewalk and the wind picked up to a frenzy! If we were in the Midwest during a storm like that we'd take to the basement because it would mean a tornado wasn't too far away! We also witnessed an expansive web of lightning stretch across the sky in front of us. Awesome. Truly awesome.

Thursday Matt Benson arrived in Bratislava to a warm welcome. That night, our ministry hosts drove Ariel, Matt and me across the border to Austria to use an atm (Matt needed Euros), and another furious storm hit! We ended our night spending two hours with a dozen people bailing inches of water out of BERC's basement!

Tomorrow I leave for a week in Africa. I'll be away from Ariel from Saturday 'til next Saturday. Matt and I will travel to Rwanda where we'll meet up with four of our students, spend several days with them, visiting their places of internship, catching up on their progress, and relaxing in the hotel room on Sunday night by watching the Eurocup championship, Spain/Germany. On Wednesday I'll say goodbye to Matt as he leaves for the U.S., and I'll go on to Kenya where I'll meet up with a friend Ariel and I made in Minnesota. She is now a missionary with Care of Creation near Nairobi. Then...back to Bratislava and Ariel.

Ariel will be spending this coming week teaching an intensive course on ESL methods to our students, area teachers from an international school, and a few others.

Bratislava

Well, we've arrived! Ben and I are on location with Bryan Missions Interns this summer. I'll be in Bratislava, Slovakia through the beginning of August, helping with some ESL training and various tasks at a school here-- Bratislava Educational Resource Center (BERC). Ben will have Bratislava as a home base, visiting the student interns working with ministries in Rwanda, Kenya and in Asia at different points.

We (Ben, me and baby, too) arrived on Tuesday afternoon, a bit travel-weary, but in pretty good shape overall. We slept well both Tuesday night and Wednesday night, which is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Ben, by the way, provided me with a delightful surprise by lifting from his luggage my currently-most-prized material possesion... my body pillow! How he stuffed it in there, I don't know, but I love him for this act of care and thoughtfulness, as well as for many other reasons.

Other good news-- Ashlee passed her NCLEX (nursing board exams) on Monday! Pretty wonderful!

Prayer requests for us:

• for Ben, as he travels to Africa this weekend for about a week


• for me as he is away (Anyone else remember how I used to traipse off to foreign countries on my own and do just fine? I'm not so independent anymore...)


• for the interns here in Slovakia and elsewhere to grow, learn and serve well


• for the ESL training next week

We'll try to blog regularly-- keep us email-updated on your lives, too!

Northward-Ho!

Well, tomorrow morning we depart for MSP once again-- this time to celebrate Micah's wedding and enjoy some fun times with the Norquist clan. I will be staying up that direction until the following weekend, when Miss Mel gets married in Sioux Falls! Ben is in a wedding down south, but we are very excited for her and Tim, and for Ben's friend Bryce and his soon-to-be-wife Esther. And we are very excited to see our dear family and friends over these next few days!

Things That Go "Bump" in the Night

Soooo... last night when I went out onto our porch in the midst of a roaring thunderstorm to make a phone call (the only area with semi-reliable cell reception), I noticed a branch hanging down from the porch roof. Oh, wait. That is actually a snake. I didn't hang around to make a positive ID on the variety. Don't know if it was a bad snake or a good snake (Okay, are there really good snakes? Don't comment on that.) It was a snake, though. Maybe 2-2 1/2 feet long, an inch and a half around or so? Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. Later in the evening I heard it fall (jump?) off and land on the porch. That was actually a relief, because I didn't want it to climb into our attic and make itself at home or something. Ew, ew, ew. Ben was teaching last evening, so he didn't get to see it. He says that if he finds it in the future, he will weed-whack it if it is a copperhead or the like. Weed-whack it? That is more than I can handle. Personally, I think it might be time to get a shotgun. By the way, this is the second snake that I have had the pleasure to encounter on our property. Ben has yet to make the acquaintance of any at all. Why is that? Not that I want him to see one, or whack one, I just don't want to see them any more! Ew.