Dinner, etc.

After a mad dash through rainy Bratislava.

Waiting on a cappuccino in the old town of Bratislava.

A nice walk in the Slovak countryside.

When in the course of human events...
We watched 1776 last night. I wasn't here last week when the rest saw it on the 4th, and Ariel went to sleep half way through during last week's showing, so we tried again. Ariel fell asleep half way through this showing as well.
The musical is hilarious! It's a ridiculous rendition of the beginning of the Revolutionary War. 1776 was the icing on the cake though. Our evening began with dinner out. A date!
Ariel and I strolled to a nearby Italian restaurant, Pizzaria Amaretti and sat inside next to the open door, the breeze blowing in. Very nice. The food was superior to any Italian I've had in the U.S., and the presentation "wowed." We maybe ate a full third of what they brought to us-- 1.2 kilograms total! Does that mean anything to you?! Well? It should! Look it up! Ok. For those of you lazy bums who didn't check your conversion tables, that's 2.65 lbs.

The week is going well overall. Ariel continues teaching ESL methods on a smaller scale than last week, and I am teaching mosaics to a neighborhood boy who's coming for English camp. Fewer kids came for English camp, planned for this week and next week, than we expected. Some of us were disappointed at first, but the lighter work load that has resulted has been a blessing for all of us--it has meant that we can focus on some other activities, such as helping the missionary family here get ready to move their belongings back to the U.S. They've been here in Slovakia for over ten years, so there is a lot for them to wrap up before mid-August, when they move to NY for a two-year assignment there.

Continue to pray for a quality, life-altering experience for the Bryan student interns, and for Ariel and me to be good supports to them and the internship hosts. I will be heading to China this weekend, as well.

We love you guys!

This week the English camps are underway at BERC. There are 4 day camps offered-- in the morning, 2 sessions (one for 8-11 year-olds, one for 12-15 year-olds) focused on practicing English and playing sports. In the afternoon, the same age groups switch to a focus on English and art. I've been helping the Bryan interns with their planning for the camps-- sort of a continuation of the ESL training we worked through together last week. I feel as though I am making a valuable contribution to BERC and the Bryan students, which is nice. Ben is going to be teaching in the art class, so he's been making lesson plans and breaking up tile for making mosaics with the older group.
Ben has readjusted well to being back in Europe-- he also had a great experience in Kenya and Rwanda. I saw some great video that he took of the Care of Creation sites, driving around Kigali, and some wildlife at the nature preserve in Rwanda. When we are back in the states and y'all come to visit us (or next time we visit you), he can show you, too!
Yesterday we all went to the home of a family from a nearby church-- the wife is Slovak, the husband British. They hosted us for a delicious dinner, walked us to the nearby Austrian border (which used to be marked by a high, well-guarded wall), and began to tell us about the history of the area. The woman was a student here in Bratislava during the student protests and was an active part of the underground church as communism was falling in the '80s. Slovakia had a very peaceful transition out of communism, but boy, did she have some suspenseful stories to tell! It was an honor to hear about that period of history from someone who had lived through it, and indeed shaped it in part.
Tonight I am teaching more ESL methods, and Ben will have completed his first day of leading the English and Art camp for the middle/high school aged kids! More to come...

Independence Day

Well, July 4th has come and gone for me and the interns in Bratislava.

We began our celebration by reading the Declaration of Independence (please read it-- honestly, what was King George thinking?) then enjoying a BBQ of hamburgers (and they really were ham-- no ground beef available), hotdogs, baked beans, potato salad and watermelon. I made the baked beans. I tried to fix them up as best as I could with some spices and ketchup, but without any molasses or brown sugar, they were, well still pretty Slovak-style.
After tossing our paper plates, we connected the school's LCD projector to the DVD player and watched 1776. I went to bed about half-way through, but I am definitely interested in seeing the whole thing at some point.

All the festivities considered, this was the most patriotic of July 4ths that I've celebrated in a while. Even sans fireworks and parades.
I'm blogging now as I wait for a phone call from Ben, who has probably arrived at the airport in Vienna by now. After he gets his bags, he'll buy a bus ticket from the Vienna airport to the Bratislava airport (1hr drive), where we will pick him up-- he should be back here by lunch time today! I can't tell you how excited I am to see him. He'll be back here for about a week before he heads to China. We'll update you more on his adventures in Africa this past week in the coming days...

Friends Who Take Care of Creation

I'm sitting at Brackenhurst in Kenya, home of the office for Care of Creation. Jan, a friend of Ariel and mine from Bethlehem works here now as a supported missionary. Care of Creation works to enlist pastors around the country to teach what scripture says about stewardship of God's creation. They aim at transforming value sets that will transform behaviors toward the land. Deforestation is a major problem in Kenya, which leads to soil erosion, loss of indigenous plants and animals, and decreasing land that is useful for farming.



I'm enjoying my time here, though I miss Ariel and my boy. Can't wait to see them on Saturday in Slovakia.

Love to all.

Teaching ESL

Well, I've made it through day two of teaching ESL. The class is usually comprised of 7-9 students or so (students come and go through the day as they are available). About half have some language teaching experience, half don't. I feel pretty prepared and put-together overall, but this morning I woke up an hour late because the time on my phone got off by an hour, so I made it to class just in time. That threw me off a bit. Ugh. All is going well, though, really. Tomorrow the students will begin putting together some lessons!

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.