April 7

April 6 was my 25th birthday, and it was celebrated by bowling (there is a huge mall close to Moszkva Ter called Mammut, and they have quite a nice American-style bowling alley). This was only the third time that I had gone bowling this year, but before this year I hadn't gone bowling for two or three years. 

After bowling, several of us ESI types met together at an Italian restaurant between the Nyugati (Western) railway station and Margaret Island for dinner.

April 19

The 18th was Tracy's 26th birthday, and we had a dinner for her at T.G.I. Friday's in Westend City Center, the mall next to Nyugati. I got her a card, which included a limerick that I have now forgotten, and a Europe travel book by Bill Bryson.

This was one of the times that I got to see Michael and Kelley Tschetter and their baby, Andrew, who was born October 31. They live up in Vac, and they understandably aren't able to make it to Budapest regularly now. Andrew seemed to be doing very well, and had gotten quite big.

While we were at dinner, there was a small crew of girls setting up Tracy and Annika's flat for a birthday/bachelorette surprise party. When dinner was over, the girls went back to the flat for an evening of dancing and embarrassing gifts (among other things, I presume, though of course I was not there).

At school, several of my 9s have been on a trip to England for the past week or so. While they were gone, I decided to have the rest of the class do speeches. I told them that they could pick whatever topic they wanted (as long as it was OKd with me first) and they had to fulfill certain requirements (time, visual aids, etc.). There was a wide range of topics (though somewhat predictable, given the kids who were giving the speeches). Among them were Stonehenge (Zalan and Tibor), Eminem (Roland), Budapest Public Transportation (Gabor M) and Formula One (Gergo). While Gergo was speaking, he passed around his visual aids, which were pictures of the most recent Formula One race. Among them was a picture of a woman in a string bikini, posing provocatively. I decided that I would quietly interrupt the progress of that one before it made the rounds. Many of the boys at my school begin their obsession with sex at a young age -- posters of semi-clad women have to be removed from the walls of the classrooms from time to time -- and so of course they protested. I could understand why they did, but I wondered to myself why Gergo had included that picture, since he was a generally good kid and not inclined to be so obsessed with sex as the others.

After class, Gergo came up to me and, in his innocent and inquiring manner, asked what was wrong with the picture. I said that I didn't think it was appropriate for class. He said that I had told the class, when I assigned speeches, to take into account the interests of the audience. This particular audience would be most attracted to that kind of picture, so that's why he included it.

I liked his logic, and couldn't argue with it, though I still exercised my prerogative as a teacher to not have that sort of thing in class. He got a good grade.

April 20

April 8-13 was our Easter Break. On Wednesday, we taught our lessons to barely conscious students, and then we were off until the next Wednesday.

That Wednesday night, Neal and I had several guests in our apartment. Claudia, another ESI teacher, needed to stay someplace near to the airport because her flight to England was leaving early the next morning. And the Curnutts, Ryan Curnutt's parents, had been staying for several days and were due to stay several more. I wasn't scheduled to leave until 4 Thursday morning, so I put off packing long enough to play a game of Scrabble with them.

Thursday, promptly at 4:20, Judi, Sarabeth and Abi picked me up in their rental car. That day, we drove to Croatia, a country that none of us had ever been to. We fell in love with the beautiful rocky landscape, which was such a welcome change from living so long in the plains of Hungary. We drove through Zagreb down to a town on the coast named Zadar. The old town was built on a peninsula, with white stone streets and buildings. Though so close to Hungary, it has a very Mediterranean feel. We ate a lunch of seafood and pasta (a rule of thumb that I've used in Hungary: don't eat seafood in a landlocked country), soaked in the sun and enjoyed the atmosphere. Little did we know that it would be the only sunny day of the trip.

DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMM.

That was supposed to be ominous. Yes, it was cloudy, and often rainy, during the rest of the trip, but it was still a great trip.

When we left Zadar that afternoon, we continued down to Split, the second-largest city in Croatia. While we were there, I was supposed to meet with a couple, a pastor and his wife named Danijel and Eva Mrsic. I had been put in touch with them via Crossroads International, the missionary organization in Hong Kong that I have been in contact with. Crossroads sent them a shipment of furniture and other items a while ago, and they wanted me to go and check up on the impact that the shipment had made so I could write an article for their web site.

We entered Split as the sun was going down, and I tried to call Eva's number. No success. So I sent a text message and waited for her to respond. I also tried to use a pay phone, but the only one that I found only took phone cards. I went into the convenience store right next to the phone and they didn't have any cards.

So we began to look for a hotel. One trick that I have used before, in looking for accommodation in Europe, is to go to an expensive hotel and ask about a cheaper hotel. They are usually very nice and speak English, and will help you. Sarabeth and I went into the Hotel Split, told them that their hotel was a little out of our price range, and asked them about others. The desk assistant said yes, he knew that the hotel was too expensive. He said that it was a business hotel, for people who are on business trips or at conferences, and that people like us didn't stay there. He also said that most of the other hotels in the city were the same, aside from some fleabags (he actually used the term "little animals on the floor," but we understood what he was talking about). We asked to use his phone, but when we called Eva, there was no answer.

On to the next hotel. We drove around for a bit, saw the Hotel Park, and pulled into the parking lot. Sarabeth and Abi checked on this one, and found that it was 122 euros a night for a double room. While they were inside, however, Eva sent me a text message asking where I was. She and Danijel picked us up in 10 minutes and took us to a pension outside the city.

This pension, by the way, was right on the water. It had been dark when we arrived, and when I got up the next morning and went out on the balcony, the view was amazing. All up and down the coast of Croatia, there are huge islands that look like half-submerged dinosaurs on a day like this one. The water was clear. Though it was cloudy and somewhat cold, I went for a walk on the beach.

After breakfast with the girls, Danijel Mrsic picked me up and took me to his church. He showed me around, had me look at all of the things that Crossroads had donated, and allowed me to meet a poor family that went to the church. As we walked around, he was talking quickly about all that he and Eva had done since they had arrived in Split in 1991. Much of their work has been drug rehabilitation, but there has been a lot of refugee work as well. It was amazing to see what God was doing in Split; that is something that rarely happens on a vacation.

In the afternoon, I walked around for a while with an American missionary, Katie, who was living in Split and working at the church. We met with the girls and had lunch at another seafood restaurant. Then we explored the city some more. The center of the city is the Roman Emperor Diocletian's palace, built in the early 4th century. He was known as one of the greatest persecutors of Christianity. Several years after his death, the bones of a bishop that he had had killed were put in his mausoleum and a church was built over it.

That evening, Sarabeth and I went to the Good Friday service at Danijel and Eva's church. A man from England was speaking, so at least we could understand the sermon. Croatian is similar to Czech, and I could kind of figure out the songs as well.

The next day, I interviewed Eva at the pension (Danijel had said a lot of good stuff, but he talked so fast that I had barely had time to get it all down) and the girls and I set out for Dubrovnik at around 11. It was still cloudy, but it was still one of the most beautiful drives that I have ever taken, with the mountains on one side and the sea on the other.

Dubrovnik is a walled city in the extreme south of Croatia, which was an independent city-state until 1806. The walls around the old town are still intact, and most of the buildings inside are still intact as well. It has recovered well from 1991, when it was shelled by the Yugoslavian Army.

We met Danijel's sister, Ana, there, and she showed us a great place to stay. The next day, Easter Sunday, we went down to the sea just outside the city walls and had a devotion, just the four of us. We read the Easter story and reflected on Christ's death and resurrection.

Later, we walked around the city walls and throughout the city. In the evening, we just spent time hanging out with each other back at the place we were staying.

Monday, we got in the car for a long drive. We stopped for the night at Plitvice national park. We were unable to spend much time there, though, because it was raining. We did, however, run into Tracy, Annika, Amy and Laura, who had rented a car and rolled around the northern part of Croatia. 

Well, a storm is coming, and I'm concerned about the computer getting shut off by the lightning. So I will continue my story later.