Sprechen Sie Deutsche?

Nein! I don't speak German but I wish I did. Germany is such a pretty country and the language is so much easier than Hungarian; besides, they have gummi bears and sour sticks (two of my favorite candies!)

We were in Germany for the Germanic cluster meeting, which is for all our personnel who live in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Glenn and I went to do the member care appointments.

This is the hotel where Glenn and I stayed. A nice, typical German hotel. The meeting was held in a small village near the Czech Republic-German border in an assisted living complex. The families with children stayed in the apartments in the complex but those of us without children were blessed to stay in this beautiful hotel down the street, 5 minutes on foot. Unfortunately, neither place had wifi for us to be able to check emails. In fact, no where in the village was there a place to check emails so we had to drive to a McDonald's in a nearby town about 10 minutes away. It cost us 8 euros (about $11) an hour for internet. It didn't really matter that it cost so much because there wasn't much free time in the schedule anyway!

We had a few hours one afternoon for "family time" to do some sightseeing so we went into the nearby town with another couple, Andy and Kaye, to see what there was to see. We went to Zwickau, 20 kilometers away.

Every town has a Catholic church, and this town was no exception.

We saw a skilled craftsman repairing the head to a statue! If you look at the top left part of the picture, you can see the statue on which the head normally rests. Before we left the church, we saw the man climb a ladder and replace the head. Cool!

Some of the other families drove an hour and 15 minutes to Dresden, a much larger town that boasted a Mexican restaurant. We love Mexican food, but we weren't willing to drive that far just for it. Lo and behold! In the small town of Zwickau there was a Mexican restaurant! In fact, it was the same chain as the one everyone else went to in Dresden, and we didn't have to spend all our time riding in a car!

The day was cool, the restaurant was close by, the colors were bright, the food was mediocre, and the company was great!

Oh! Another neat thing was that one of the volunteers who came to lead the worship music is from Jonesboro, Georgia! The world is getting so small!

After the meeting ended, we drove through the Czech Republic to visit with several of our families on our way home. I think we visited with seven families between Germany and Budapest. We got to spend the weekend with Melissa and Larry in Plzen and join them in all their Easter festivities.

Sunday morning we drove about 40 minutes out into the country to attend worship in a village with the Lewis family. Larry preached in the Czech language so that was a special treat for Glenn and me! The church meets in the lobby of an old, old theatre while they save money to renovate the actual theatre to get rid of the sloping floor and self-closing seats.

That afternoon 3 Czech families and 2 American families joined us for a huge meal, an Easter egg hunt, and the story of Jesus's victory over sin and death by using "Resurrection Eggs". Melissa did a great job of talking about Jesus to the children...

...and the adults listened intently to her too!

Czech's don't have the custom of hunting for eggs so this was a new experience for them, and I think they really enjoyed it.

As we headed on to Budapest, we spent a night with the Young's in Brno. Their lovely daughter Emma is into basket weaving and made me a beautiful one while we were there.

I was so impressed! Hmmm, maybe I could get into something like that. I love baskets!

Well, we are home for the next two weeks before heading to Macedonia for a team retreat where Glenn and I will be leading a couple of sessions. For the next week, I won't be doing much-other than responding to all the emails that came in while we were traveling these past two weeks. The week after that, I will be focused on preparing for the retreat. Please pray for me to be able to get a LOT of emails written this week.

Yippee! The Doyles return to Budapest from their 3 month stateside assignment in the U.S. on April 15th. We will be so glad to have them home again! We've really missed them.

Have a great week!

Hol van a Taco Bell? (Where is the Taco Bell?)

I can't show you pictures of the people we were with this past week because some of them wish to keep a low profile. They are doing member care for people serving in countries in Europe where security is an issue. I can't show you people but I can show you what we did on our free afternoon during the week!

Due to the off-season rates, we were able to stay in this wonderful hotel near the beach for the European Member Care Conference 2010. We stayed in the Papa Luna Hotel in Peniscola, Spain (2 hours from Barcelona) from Tuesday afternoon through Saturday morning, really, really early. The attendees were from many different countries throughout Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, Canada and the U.S.. The conference was held in English but as you walked among the tables in the restaurant, you could hear many different languages being spoken.

The last day had a 3 1/2 hour block of time that was free for lunch, resting and running down to the beach for a leisurely walk in the sand. It was the only day that was sunny and warm! God saved the best for last! Anyway, going across the street from the hotel to the beach, if you look to the left, this was the view.

And to the right is an old castle or fortress up on a hill that juts out into the ocean.

As we walked toward the castle, we could see the small city that has built up around it.

So we wandered through the small city that surrounded the castle, always taking the road that would take us higher and higher....until we arrived at the top. The view was phenomenal!

Even looking straight out was a perfectly framed view of a tower.

One side of the top of the castle dropped straight down into the water, making one just a little nervous leaning over the edge to view the descent.

From the top we could see the onto the flat roofs of the nearby apartment buildings. I thought it interesting to see how folks took advantage of the flat roofs to give themselves more living space. Laundry "rooms" seem to be the most popular usage, but we also saw some beautiful gardens and outdoor eating tables for those hot summer nights.

Every direction held a breathtaking sight! One side held a view of the beach, one was nothing but clear blue-green ocean, and the other side ...

a bay area with a large port.

We climbed DOWN the opposite side from whence we went UP, and snaked our way to the port to watch the boats unload their catch of the day.

We found out why seafood in the local restaurants wasn't a cheap meal. The haul for the day was quite small on some of those boats!

Didn't really care for the tubs of eels. Ech!

But did drool over the huge shrimp!

After watching several boats unload, we meandered through the small, quaint town and then headed back to our hotel in time for the next session.

Most of the buildings were painted white which was quite pretty and gave a crisp, clean look to the town.

I was tickled to find Senegalese men and women with their blankets spread out on the sidewalk selling things we bought when we lived in Africa! I'm sure our kids will recognize the balaphone and the tam-tam that are just like the ones we have! I asked one of the women where she was from and she replied, "Dakar". I mentioned our daughter had lived in Minam and Sindou, and she didn't even raise an eyebrow or recognize the names of the villages right outside Dakar. I wonder how old she was when she left Senegal???

Found this scraggly tree and thought it made a cool picture! Kind of reminds me of the Boabob trees in Senegal too!

It felt so good to be out in the sun, soaking up the warm rays. This was truly our first day of beautiful weather and we kinda hated to leave it to come back to cloudy Budapest.

We got back to Budapest on Saturday at 1:00 pm. We spent the day doing laundry, paying bills, answering emails and calling family before heading for Germany on Sunday morning. We will be in Germany for a week, and then wind our way home through Czech Republic, visiting with some of our families along the way. By time we get home again, I will be soooo happy to see my own bed. My goodness! I sound like my grandfather!

Friends Cruisin' Down the Danube

This week started out like all the others...COLD...but by the end of the week, we were in full-swing SPRING! Ah, but I jump ahead of myself!

On Sunday, Glenn and I decided to walk to church even though it was freezing cold outside. It had snowed 1-2 inches a few days earlier and almost all of it was gone by Sunday so we chose to walk since it wasn't slushy outside. Besides that, when the temperature drops below a certain degree, our electric gate won't open!

While we were walking home, I decided to take pictures of our neighborhood, especially of all the things that you just don't see very often at home in America. I saved all those pictures and will post them on my blog the next time Sunday rolls around (the day I update) and I don't have anything else about which to write.

On Monday we had one of our Eden House guests down for dinner and I made a red velvet cake. I'd been craving one for about a week! Do you know how much red food coloring goes into one cake? Two ounces! I have a little yellow McCormick box with the 4 primary colors, and the WHOLE box is only one ounce! Well, I didn't have anywhere near enough red food coloring so I used up what I had, and the cake was still delicious even though it was more brown than red! (Because my recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, it was a nondescript shade of brown.)

Not having enough room in the refrigerator to store the cake (with cream cheese icing), I pulled a "Queenie" and put it out on my front steps. Glenn's mom (Queenie) used to store food outside all the time on her porch, and since it was bitterly cold, my greatest worry was whether the cake would freeze before we finished it off. It didn't!

The rest of the week I spent hunched over my computer working on TCK (third culture kids) education emails. As the education consultant for Europe, all the requests for clarification of interpretation of the new TCK educational guidelines and all the requests for exceptions are coming to me. I do the research and then make a recommendation to my boss, he makes the decision, and then I communicate the response to the parents. Some emails are relatively easy to answer, but some require getting input from others, asking hard questions, and carefully formulating a response that is not what the parents want to hear.

Glenn has been wonderful this week, fixing most of our meals, doing the laundry and whatever else needed to be done. Because we are going out of town this coming week, I really needed to get as caught up as possible so he has done almost everything around the house to free me up.

In the picture above, it is about 8 pm and I am still working. He fixed us something to eat (Nachos) and he is getting ready to watch some tv while I keep on working.

On Saturday, I hosted a baby shower (with help from several friends) for Dorothy who is expecting her first baby in a month. The cake was done by Robin, a co-worker, and it was not only beautiful but also delicious! I never knew she had the gift of cake baking! (When we were serving as missionaries in Ivory Coast, one of the men in our church asked me to make the wedding cake for his upcoming marriage, telling me I needed to use my spiritual gift of cake baking!)

We played some silly games, like guess how big around Dorothy is! I actually got pretty close-only an inch or two off...

...but Teri wasn't anywhere close! (Even though I was close, I didn't win. Robin nailed it to the centimeter!)

Right after the shower ended, we put away all the food, packed up all Dorothy's gifts into our car and took her home, then went to meet long-time friends Debbie and Joe Moss in downtown BP!

Joe and Debbie were members of our former church in Marietta, First Baptist, and they served as missionaries in Togo around the same time that we were in Ivory Coast. We've kept in touch all these years, and consider them great friends. We've shared a lot of similar experiences through the years.

Joe and Debbie flew into BP earlier on Saturday to board a ship for a weeklong cruise down (or is it "up"?) the Danube River. They would have all evening and Monday morning to sightsee in Budapest before the ship set sail.

They had emailed us that their ship would be docked between the Elizabeth bridge and the Chain bridge...but it wasn't so we had to walk along the Danube until we found their ship, the Viking.

After eating dinner in a typical Hungarian cafe on the famous pedestrian street called Vaci utca (pronounced vat-see oot-sa), we drove them past Hero's Square, through City Park and over the Chain Bridge to the other side of the river to get a good view of the Parlament building. Of course, I took MORE pictures, but I will spare you!

We then drove up to the Citadel that overlooks the city for a gorgeous nighttime view.

By now, it was about 10 pm so we parked our car close to where their ship was docked and walked them over to it to say good-bye BUT THEIR SHIP WASN'T THERE! (My first thought was, "Phew, I have clean sheets on my guest bed! My second thought was, "Oh, but I have pink and purple balloons, streamers and "It's a girl!" banners strung all over my living room and dirty dishes in the sink from the baby shower! )

Did they misread their departure time and we'd have to drive them to Vienna to catch up with their ship? Fortunately, Joe and Debbie had a phone number for the ship and Glenn and I had cell phones, so we were able to call the ship and ask, "Where are you?" They told us they had moved to Pier 2, which was all the way down at the other end of where passengers board and disembark, a half a mile away! Oh well, we got to walk along the Danube at night with some great friends! All's well that ends well!

Glenn and I head to Spain on Tuesday for a member care conference that will be attended by counselors from all across Europe with many different organizations. We will be there until Saturday, and then on Sunday we are driving to Germany for the Germanic cluster meeting where we will do member care appointments. Busy, busy, busy.

Please pray for us. We will be traveling A LOT for the next 2 months. Currently, I'm battling a sore throat and not feeling well, but have a thousand things to do before we head for Spain on Tuesday, none of which I feel up to doing. Glenn and I both will be leading some small seminars in April and need some time to prepare for them but with our travel schedule, it will be difficult. Pray for wisdom, grace and compassion as I respond to parents requests concerning their child's education. Pick a prayer-any prayer! Just pray!

Just a normal week...

...at the Borders home. We enjoyed having a couple from Russia that came to have a baby and renew their visas. They had the cutest little boy, Andrew, who enjoyed playing cars with Glenn.

These are the same cars that Glenn played with 25 years ago with our son Chris. They've definitely gotten some "mileage" over the years!

These 3 young ladies spent a week or two here in town too. One day we went to the discount pottery place and did a little shopping. Not me, mind you. I'm saving my forints for Polish pottery! One of these ladies returned to Russia on Thursday, one left today for the Czech Republic, and the last one leaves tomorrow for Ukraine.

Last Thursday we had a two families come from out of town for the ACSI Honors Chorus that was performing in town and out at the Christian School of Budapest; one stayed with us and the other stayed at the Eden House but we spent a lot of time with them. We spent one day sightseeing with the two families. One of the guys also worked on our computers one day.

This is Denise, one of my friends from Prague. She and her husband Scott stayed with us and we enjoyed "girl talk" while the guys did "manly things".

We did all the normal things but of course, my favorite was looking at Parliament across the Danube River.

I love this view through the arch...

...and this view through another arch.

We spent so long in town that it got dark on us! This allowed us to view Hero's Square at night, which is beautiful, isn't it?

I went to Judit's house for English conversation. Our topic for the day was baking. Chocolate chip cookies, in particular. A few weeks ago I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, adding pecans, ground flax seeds, bran flakes, wheat germ and oatmeal, and took a bag of them to Judit, hence, the reason we were discussing cookies. Anyway, her family loved them and asked for the recipe. Gulp! I never measure so how do I help her make them like mine???

No, we didn't put nutmeg and cream of tartar in the cookies, but while I was there with Judit, her mother came down from upstairs and showed me the nutmeg and cream of tartar from her cabinet!!! What? Where did she get them? Ten years ago when she took a trip to the States! She wanted to know if they were still fresh enough to use. I don't think so.

When she also pulled out the Skippy jar, I just about flipped! Hungarians haven't discovered peanut butter yet so I knew she didn't get it here. Her mom has saved the jar all these years.

This past week our boss came to town from London. We spent most of our time talking while working on our computers at the dining room table. It was really good for us to spend the time with him, getting to know him and hearing his heart. While he was here, we were able to discuss a lot of the new changes with the educational guidelines. It was a good time and very helpful!

Yesterday it snowed all day and was beautiful. We're supposed to have snow and rain all week. We're not sure when spring is EVER going to come!