October 10

Here is a much-delayed update. I tried to send one last week, but it just didn't work out with the computer and all. It decided to swallow my update whole and leave no trace. And you can't argue with computers when they decide to do something like that.

It has been so long, now, since I've sent an update that I am not sure what has made it onto the web site and what has not. I've mostly talked about school, I believe, so I'll begin by saying what I have done for the past few weekends.

Last weekend there was a small ESI retreat at the Kolegium, where Annika and Tracy live (have I said anything about Annika and Tracy? I'll check, and if I haven't, I'll write a lot later). The purpose of this retreat was to give help to those teachers -- specifically the new ones -- who were having trouble teaching. Before the retreat, a couple of teachers were picked to give talks on areas of teaching in which people requested help. The first talk was given by Sarabeth, on grading, and the second was by Skye, on classroom discipline.

Following the retreat, most of us went to Yvonne and her daughter Katrina's flat (which has a prime location -- just below the castle, on the river) and there was a potluck. I bought some dessert, as I am still not too confident in my culinary skills (though I DID assist Tracy in making a pie this week, and cut my finger slicing apples to prove it).

In all, it was a good weekend. It was good for everyone to get together, and good to hear some new teaching ideas. Though I know more what I am doing than I did at this time last year, I am still far from perfect as a teacher (as my students will readily tell you, I'm sure).

The weekend before that, I went hiking in a national park near Vac. Vac is a small city north of Budapest on the Danube, and is the residence of ESI teachers Claudia Hirotsu, Michael and Kelley Tschetter, and their baby, who should make his entrance into the world in about four weeks. Michael, Annika, Amy and I hiked around some beautiful mountains which reminded me of the Appalachians. Then, we went back to Vac and met Kelley for dinner at a restaurant. As hungry as I was, I wasn't able to finish my food. It was a great disappointment, let me tell you, and not just for me. Maybe my stomach shrank.

After attending church together in Vac the next morning (at a small Calvary Chapel which has a service in English and Hungarian), we came back to Budapest.

It's Friday afternoon now, and I'm not quite sure what I will do for the weekend. All of ESI's Central Administrators (a responsibility that some people have in addition to teaching) have gone up to the Czech Republic for the weekend, and there are a few other teachers who are not around. So the social pickings are slim. I may end up going to a movie. Even if I do something this evening, there is a high likelihood that I will spend a great deal of time alone this weekend. Please pray that I spend my time usefully and to God's glory.

Some Random Saturday Night

This event happened one Saturday night. I thought that it was unusual at the time, and later I came to regard it as miraculous.

A large group of Hungary teachers was together on a Saturday night. We had come to a point when it was getting late, and we had finished what we were doing, and it was time for the group to decide what to do next. Two teachers, Danielle and Annika, decided to go home. Danielle lived in the Northeast part of Budapest, and Annika lived in the Southeast, in Kispest. So they were not exactly going in the same direction, but they decided at least to take the tram across the river, where they would continue on the metro - Danielle on the yellow line, and Annika on the blue line.

The rest of the group decided to go up to the castle with chocolate and a couple of bottles of wine, to enjoy the view of the city and to talk. We were at Moszkva Square, from which you can take either the red line metro or a bus up to the castle. While we were waiting outside a Non-Stop for the wine and chocolate to be bought, I suddenly had a change of heart and decided to go home. I don't know why I decided to go just then; I didn't feel any urgency about it, I just decided that it was too late to go to the castle. So I said goodnight to everyone and got on the metro.

I took the red line metro to Deak Ferenc Square, where I would pick up the blue metro home. I waited for maybe five minutes, and when the train came up, I saw Annika through the window a few doors away from where I was standing. So I ran over and went into where she was. We talked for a while on the way back to Kispest, and then went to our respective flats.

The next morning, in church, Annika said that she had to tell me something, because Laura and Amy (who were staying at Annika and Tracy's flat that weekend) said that she needed to. It turns out, when she got to the metro platform the night before, a group of guys approached her and started talking to her. She talked back to them, said what she was doing, and even (she regretted this immediately afterward, she said) where she lived. This group of guys got onto the metro with her, still gathered around her, and she started to feel very uneasy. She then started to pray for some way out of the situation. Two stops later, I saw her and got onto the metro. These guys dispersed immediately; I had no idea that they were there until she told me the story the next day.

God is certainly a God who takes care of our needs, and he will use us in ways that we cannot imagine. I am so glad that God placed me in the right place at the right time to be an answer to someone's prayer.

October 31

Happy Halloween to everybody. They don't really celebrate Halloween in Hungary; they are more of an All Saints' Day sort of people. They do acknowledge that something on the 31st of October exists, but it is not a holiday and they certainly don't dress up in costumes or hack up pumpkins to put in their windows.

This is the end of the first week of school since our Fall Break. We had all of last week off, from the 19th to the 26th, in honor of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. It started October 23, when the people of Budapest decided to revolt against the communists. It ended about two weeks later, when the communists collected themselves, came back, and beat the stuffing out of the city and its inhabitants. A few weeks ago, Neal and I went with a group of students to the cemetery where many of the heroes from the uprising are buried. They are all collected in three large plots in the far corner of the cemetery, nearly 2 km from the main entrance. But the place was crowded, and there were candles and flowers everywhere. It was good to see that the people of Hungary do not forget their countrymen who died while fighting for freedom.

Our break started on Sunday morning, when nine of us met at the train station at 6 a.m. to catch a train to Bratislava. We only spent a few hours in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia; and a few hours is enough to see most of what Bratislava has to offer. It is very small for a capital city, and while it does have an interesting historic center, there is not much there that can't be seen elsewhere in Europe. Mostly we stopped in Bratislava because, on a trip from Budapest to Prague by train, it is economically beneficial to stop over instead of buying a ticket all the way there. We saved maybe $30 by stopping.

We made it to Prague, my old home, on Sunday evening, and I don't remember much of what happened there. It was a blur. We saw some sights. I saw some old friends. We were going from early in the morning to late at night. I had the opportunity to act as a tour guide for my Hungarian friends, and also went to a teahouse with an old student, visited my old school for about an hour, bought bus tickets to Sokolov and train tickets to Krakow, and visited some friends who now live in the flat where I lived last year. People often asked me if it felt strange to be back in a place where I had lived not long ago; it honestly wasn't, for the most part. The only strange part was getting on the tram to go to my old home, and having someone else live there. I can honestly say, though, that they are much better interior decorators than I am. 

Prague was good, but it was no vacation. Five of the original nine of us intrepid Hungarians (Annika, Tracy, Laura, Amy and I) got on the bus Tuesday evening for a trip to West Bohemia, near Germany, to visit some ESI teachers out there. Laura, Amy and I stopped in Sokolov, where some of them live, and Annika and Tracy continued on to Cheb, where the others are. We spent Saturday evening in Sokolov at Brian and John's flat, talking. Brian was in the Czech Republic last year while I was there, and it was good to see him and Beth, another teacher there in Sokolov, again.

The next day, while the teachers were teaching, we took the train to Cheb to rejoin the other two girls. We ate at a restaurant, visited a school, visited a castle, visited some churches, visited a market, and went to the bus station for a bus back to Prague so we could make our train to Krakow, which was scheduled to leave just after 9 that night.

Problem was, there wasn't any bus going to Prague when we got to the bus station, even though I'd checked the schedule on the internet to make sure. So we went into the train station, which adjoined the bus station, to try and buy tickets, but they were doing some construction on the tracks, and there wasn't anything leaving from there, either. But the lady at the ticket counter told me to take a bus. Since we'd just been outside, I asked her which platform. Then she got impatient with me (and no wonder, as what she was telling me was probably posted all over the station but I couldn't read it) said, "There, THERE!" and pointed outside to the left.

So we went outside, and found a series of buses lined up that were going to Marianske Lazne, a town about 40 minutes away. Since there was construction on the tracks, they provided free bus service to the train station in this town. By the time we got to Marianske Lazne, it was just after six o'clock, and we were wondering if we would be able to make it to Prague in time to get ourselves and our non-refundable tickets on the train to Krakow.

We got to the ticket counter and asked for tickets to Prague. The lady said that the next train left in about an hour. We looked disappointed. Then she said that the train just outside at that moment was going through Prague. She got excited. We got excited. We ran outside and hopped on the train, thinking that it would pull away just after we were all on. . . but it didn't. It sat there for another eight or nine minutes. Apparently, they decided to delay it for the people getting off the buses from Cheb. So now my story isn't so dramatic. But at least we got on the train. And we arrived in Prague with about a half hour to spare before the Krakow overnight train left.

I will finish the story of my Fall Break later, and include what happened in Krakow (A wrestling match!) and on the night train to Budapest (Scary people! Intrigue!) later. It is a busy day today; one of our ESI teachers is having a baby this afternoon. The C-section will be performed in a half hour. 

May the God of peace guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.