St. Istvan's Day and Open House

St. Istvan's Day was Monday.  Saint Istvan (or Stephen) was the first Christian king of Hungary and established it in 1000 AD.  So, on August 20th, we celebrated Hungary's 1012th birthday!  Makes America seem pretty young, huh?

Some of the veteran teachers took us newbies downtown into Budapest for the day.  We rode the volánbusz into the station at kelenföld (don't worry, I can't really pronounce it either) and then took the city bus to the Pest (pronounced Pesht) side and went to St. Istvan's basilica and Vaci Utca (Vot-see oot-suh) and a bunch of other places that I can't remember or pronounce.  Suffice it to say though that I live in an amazing and beautiful city.  We walked past the Parliament building which is too beautiful for words or pictures.  I am always amazed at the time that must have gone into making such a huge and intricate building.  Then we got some delicious ice cream at which the server laughed at me when I tried to order.  Ah well...it'll happen more times, I'm sure.  Then we walked across the Margit híd, or Margaret Bridge.  We ate off of some food carts where they had the biggest pans I've ever seen.  

After that, we made our way to a spot near the Liberty Bridge (Szabadság híd) to see the fireworks.  We weren't in a great spot and so didn't get to see all of the fireworks.  It's supposed to be one of the best shows in all of Europe.  They shoot them off in synchronization from three different spots over the Danube.  

It was a very hot day, but a great day to be out and about in the city.  It was also really nice because I got the chance to know some of the girls at the school better.  Getting the chance to hang out outside of school functions and after the "Where are you from?  What do you teach?" formalities was really nice.  I work with some really great people!

Here are some pictures from the day:

St. Istvan's Basilica from the road leading up to it

Latin for "I am the way, the truth, and the life"

More Basilica

Traditionally, they take out the box containing St. Istvan's mummified hand and parade it around the city.  We think we missed it, but this was the end of a procession that I briefly thought was the hand.

A cool tree held up by supports in the park

Chain Bridge

Hungarian Science University

Coming up on Parliament

Parliament

Oh look...more Parliament!

There were so many more!!!

The proud Hungarian flags on Margit Bridge

Parliament and the Chain Bridge from the middle of Margit Bridge

Chain Bridge

This is a terrible picture, but when the sun is setting, all of the buildings on the Pest side of the Danube reflect the orange light.  It was soooo gorgeous!

I think this is the Erzsébet (Elizabeth) Bridge

Liberty Bridge leading up to Gellért

Buda Castle

The week since St. Istvan's was All Staff Orientation.  There were lots of meetings.  Our director read a book called Death by Meeting over the summer.  Perhaps it's because he didn't want us to die or perhaps it's because the people I work with are so incredible or perhaps it's because I love what I'm doing and I'm so excited to be here, but the meetings were actually pretty cool.  We started each day with a few testimonies (I had to go first, but I actually didn't mind) and then we talked about various things like our vision, what to do in an emergency, tech updates, how to work the grading system.  By far the coolest meeting was on Thursday.  They had two parents and two students come talk to us about what ICSB has meant to them and how it has impacted them.  Very cool!

The rest of our time was spent getting classrooms ready and preparing for Open House (Meet the Teacher).  I'd actually already met quite a few of my students at church or around school, but it was cool to talk to the parents and to meet the kiddos I hadn't yet.  I'm so excited for Wednesday when school begins.  It's going to be a crazy year, but a great one.

Here's some pictures of my classroom:

My door - an idea I took from Pinterest

The view of my teeny classroom from the door - it's okay though.  I only have 12 students

Add caption

Social studies corner

Reading bulletin board - I'm very proud of the READING banner

Cubbies and the coolest thing of all - the fact that I can hang a Bible verse on my wall and not get fired!

School starts on Wednesday!  Please please please be praying for me as school begins.  Pray for my students.  I have one who speaks no English and two who don't know Jesus.  Also, please be praying for me as I try to decide on which church to join.  There are a few really great options.  And that I would find a mentor here.

I am planning on sending out a newsletter sometime this week.  If you are interested in receiving it, leave a comment here with your e-mail address or send me an e-mail or facebook message including your e-mail.

Also, while I have yet to experience what I would call "culture shock" I am missing the people back home.  Feel free to e-mail or message or Skype me at any time.  

Love and miss you all!

The Harrowing Tale of a Superstore Shopping Extravaganza

Szia (Hi)!  Happy St. Istvan’s Day!!  Today is Hungary’s 1012^th birthday!  In about 3 hours I will be headed into the city to enjoy the day’s festivals followed by what is supposed to be a very impressive double fireworks show over the Danube River.  Don’t worry, another blog will follow detailing today’s events (unless it ends up being supremely boring, in which case, I won’t).

Now, on to the main event.  The Harrowing Tale of a Superstore Shopping Extravaganza brought to you by Megan Stewart and DeAnn Nelson.

The day started innocently enough.  The previous night, our heroes borrowed a minivan from a missionary family so that they could make a few very important trips to IKEA, Tesco, Jysk, and a number of other superstores.  In an attempt to keep from scraping the side of the van with the edge of the narrow garage, Megan had to roll the window down in order to listen to DeAnn as she guided her safely out to the street.  Unfortunately, what neither of them realized was that the motor for the window on the extremely quirky minivan tends to go on strike.  So, now they were unable to park on the street (or in a parking lot of a superstore) so their plans came to a screeching halt.  Luckily, the school has a lovely parking cage in order to (hopefully) secure it safely overnight.

On Saturday, they had a leisurely morning and made their way to the school for a few hours of work and access to "Plan B" – borrowing the principal’s van while she stayed at school to work.  They made their way across town to the jungles of IKEA (where pregnancy season in Budapest was clearly in full bloom i.e. at least a dozen were spotted).

Shopping there went smoothly enough.  There was nothing to foreshadow the trials to come.

As a kind gesture, our heroes knew that there was no way their kind principal would accept cash for gas.  In an attempt to circumvent her denial, they made a “quick” detour to the nearest gas station.  In this strange and foreign land, with Megan freshly having arrived from America, unleaded seemed the automatic choice.  Unfortunately, upon payment and after many minutes of attempted communication, she realized that the van was diesel only.  Uh-oh.

Decisions needed to be reached.  Panicked phone calls were made.  What to do in this tragic situation?!?!  There were many prayers lifted up and much advice sought.

Meanwhile, DeAnn turned into an action hero.  Jumping out of the car and racing down the Balatoni, she ran to school in order to retrieve the original vehicle which still had a half open window.  Driving was not something she had intended on doing that day.  More prayers were lifted up as she crossed the highway and tried to look like she understood what all of the traffic laws were.

Upon arrival back at the gas station, they quickly jumped into action to transfer their purchases from the temporarily-out-of-commission vehicle to the quirky-somewhat-working vehicle.  As the owner of the out-of-commission vehicle talked to his mechanic, scenarios and dollar signs were flashing through Megan’s head.  But there was nothing to be done.  The goods were then safely delivered to their home.

Upon departure, everything changed.

God answered their prayers. 

Megan received a phone call from the owner asking for specifics of the unfortunate blunder.  Upon hearing that 5 liters of unleaded fuel had been put into a half full diesel tank, his advice was to fill the rest of the tank up with diesel (which is what the gas station clerk suggested…) and that everything would be as good as new.  Well, as new as possible.  Praise the Lord!

As the girls praised en route to complete their task, Megan decided, why not try to roll up the window again.  Lo and behold, up she went!!  More praises!

And they lived happily ever after.

The End.

The rest of the weekend was spent setting up our new home.  As two boys lived here last year, there was much to be done.  Their version of clean and our version of clean were two very different realities.  I scrubbed pans, drawers, Tupperware, silverware and countertops in the kitchen and then reorganized everything then reorganized the pantry, while Megan scrubbed the bathroom, mopped the floors, reorganized the downstairs and began decorating.  We both moved all of the less-than-beautiful furniture into the guest bedroom.

I got to Skype with April and Wesley yesterday, which was wonderful and I met 5 of my students at church.

This week is all-staff orientation with more time to work in my classroom.  It’s almost ready, I think.  I’ll take pictures when it’s finished and upload them for you all to see.

Miss you and love you!

My New Home

Hello all! 

Life has been pretty low key.  The UWMers are out of town.  We did grocery shopping at the Interspar yesterday and today I went for a walk around Diosd.  I love my village!  It's very pretty.  Tonight, my landlord Gabor said they might take me to the Citadela which is supposed to have a beautiful view of the village.  I just wanted to share some pictures of the village with you.

The Catholic Church in the Diosd town square

A statue - maybe this was the fire station???

The Description of the Statue

The view of Diosd from the intersection across from the school

My Street - pronounced Kav-ee-cho-sh oot-sa

ICSB

The front door of my flat

Jó Reggelt (Good Morning)

Hello from the UK! I am currently sitting in the “lounge” at Heathrow airport in London.  In approximately 7 hours I’ll be en route to Budapest!  Hopefully I will also be more awake at that point, though that really seems unlikely.

Let me share with you a little bit about the last few days.  I’ve had every intention of updating this thing for a few weeks, but there’s been so much else going on. 

Last Friday, April and Sarah threw me a wonderful going away party.  It was so great because I got to spend so much time with people I love.  We celebrated my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve since I will miss all of those during the next few months.  I think my favorite was singing the Aggie War Hymn for Thanksgiving.  Not only was it awesome, but I got to see a lot of my non-Aggie friends either attempt it or flat out refuse to do it.

The rest of the week was a bit of a blur.  On Sunday, my church said goodbye.  It was really good, but really hard too.  But what a blessing to be prayed over by my pastor, my home fellowship, the youth, and my friends!  I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so loved in my whole life.

Monday and Tuesday were full of more goodbyes and running around trying to finish last minute errands.  Tiffany came home Tuesday night and then the rest of the family came over to pray over me.  Again, it made me feel so blessed to have the family that I have and it was such an encouragement, but it was really difficult.  Sacrificing that closeness with my family and friends has without a doubt been one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done in my life. 

Wednesday, the day I left, was hectic.  The combination of feeling like I had a million things to do with no time, wanting to sit back and enjoy my last few hours, the fact that I hadn’t slept well all week, and the realization that in a few short hours I would really be saying goodbye to everyone and everything I know meant that my anxiety/freak out level was maxed out.  Probably the most disappointing thing about the day was that I’d been telling myself all week that my “last meal” would include a Chick-fil-A cookies ‘n cream milkshake, but I was so anxious that I couldn’t eat it.  I really couldn’t eat anything the whole day.

Airport goodbyes were miserable but having those last few precious moments with my family was worth the tears. 

Then came the worst part of the day – easily the worst airport experience I’ve ever had.  There are a few facts you should know: 1) my connection in Dallas was already the one that I was the most concerned about making, 2) I’m not an overly huge fan of flying in general, 3) I was already at a record level of stress.   When I got to my gate, the flight was already delayed 25 minutes.  Not a big deal, right?  I kept my eye on it and it looked like I’d still have a ton of time once I arrived to make my connection.  Well, as I’m sitting in the gate (feeling hungry for the first time in days and chowing down on a Salt Lick pulled pork sandwich – yum!) I notice a little cluster of TSA workers and policemen gathering around the check in desk.   I was a little curious but not too worried.  The plane arrived and everyone got off.  Then the check in guy announces that TSA will be checking the flight.  Immediately, I start flipping out a bit not only because the flight will now surely be delayed even longer but because I am now envisioning TSA finding horrible things on my plane.  But I calmed down after a bit.  Then, they come off the plane, have a huddle session, and announce that they will be doing random searches of passengers.  That’s when I lost it.  We are talking full on freak out.  I was hyperventilating and crying and ended up calling my dad because I needed someone to talk me down.  I know that part of it was my fear, but I think a bit of it was some spiritual warfare because the first thought running through my head was, “I want to go home.”  Eventually (after a lot of talking to my dad and praying frantically), I just bit the bullet and got on the plane.  About the time I was starting to calm down, the captain comes on over the PA and informs us that the turbulence would make it too dangerous for anyone, including the Flight Attendants to get up.  That didn’t help. (There also was hardly any turbulence.  Also, apparently when it's too turbulent for the FA's to serve coach, it's not too turbulent for them to serve 1st class...)

Anyway, obviously nothing happened as I’m sitting here in London.  I was fortunate enough to have a very chatty seat mate who didn’t mind talking to me the whole time.  The next concern was that I only had 30ish minutes to make my flight to Heathrow.  I wasn’t too worried, but I knew I’d probably have to book it.  As it turns out, we arrived at D31 and my flight took off from D30!  I got off my plane just as they were calling my group to board.  And even better, there wasn’t a team of TSA agents standing outside the plane!

The flight to London was great.  Dinner was yummy!  I was on the second to last row, but the seat next to me was empty so I had a little more room to stretch out.  Those international planes are huge anyway and the Flight Attendants were super friendly.  Again, I was so tired anyway that when I combined that with some Tylenol PM, I was out!  I went to sleep maybe an hour after take off and woke up and hour before arrival.  It wasn’t the most sound sleep ever, but it was certainly more than I’ve slept on previous flights.

Now I’m in London.  I have decided against going out to the city.  I’m not sure if that decision is because I’m utterly exhausted, because I don’t feel like going through customs, or because I don’t think my body could handle any more stress, but I decided just to sit here in the waiting lounge for the next six hours. I’ve got my Kindle and my iPhone so I should be set. 

UPDATE: From my classroom in Diosd now!  My flat is cute and not as small as I thought.  My classroom has a ton of stuff that I need to go through, but I'm excited about that.

The flight to Budapest was cool.  I ended up sitting in the lounge next to the Hungarian Olympic team - one of which won the gold medal on the pommel horse, Kristian Berki.  

Gold Medal

It was a big deal!  Everyone was taking pictures with him and the whole plane applauded whenever he got on and then there was a HUGE welcoming crew with TV cameras and chanting and people wearing scarves with his face on it at the airport.  It was basically the coolest way to be introduced to Budapest. :)  I took a video of the madness on my phone and will upload it later.

Please be praying for a smooth transition into life here.  Now that all of the goodbyes are over, I’m really excited to get started at the school and in Budapest.

I miss you all!

Viszlát

And I'm off!

I'll make sure to post more once I arrive!  But for now, just know that I love you all so much and I'm so thankful for the part that you've each played in my life.  I'll be missing you but we are bonded by something much stronger than miles!

Love you!