Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Nein.

Sorry folks for the blog backlog! Last Sunday was a travel day from one part of Germany to another and I just completely lost track of what day it was.

Thursday, Oct. 15th, Glenn and I flew into Basel, Switzerland which is a very small and quaint little town on the border touching both France and Germany.




We were told that when we exited the customs area, we should exit on the side that will take us to France. How cool is that? We were picked up by one of our personnel and taken to our little gasthaus (guesthouse=hotel) where we stayed for 3 nights.



Our gasthouse

Our first meeting was in the town of Kandern, Germany where there is a boarding school that some of our children attend when they get into high school.



Fountain in the center of town

We were there for a meeting of TCK education consultants (Third Culture Kids). There were about 15 of us. Only two of us were officially TCK consultants; the rest were teachers (and Glenn). The meeting was very helpful. With all of the changes within our organization, I felt so out of the loop and uninformed. By attending this meeting, I realized all the others involved in TCK education felt the same way, and that the new policies and guidelines will not be ready until January. Phew! I thought I'd missed something along the way!



Typical German village

We didn't have any free time so the only pictures I took were on our way out of town on Sunday as we headed to a town north of Frankfort about 4 1/2 hours away for a conference for first termers.



Horrible traffic on the autobahn

Before the reorg, our conference for first termers was called Ebenezer and was held in Prague, Czech Republic. Now, by combining Central and Eastern Europe with Western Europe, we have a new name, E-migrate, and a new location, Holhauzen, Germany.

On a side note: I lived in Germany when I was 3-5 years of age (in Heidelburg and Frankfort), and then again when I was in 7th and 8th grade (in Mannheim) so I was thrilled when I saw the road signs leading us to some familiar towns! Maybe on another visit to Germany, we can take an extra day and drive to Mannheim to see if I can recognize my old stompin' grounds!




Most of the participants have been living overseas for 9-15 months. Glenn and I came to do member care appointments to see how they were dealing with all the adjustments. We had some great messages and seminars on various topics.

The picture above has been "played with" to disguise the innocent, but I wanted to show you a slide he showed during one of his presentations. It is a slide of an exit off of Interstate 95 that passes through Virginia and Washington, D.C. This is the exit we took to get to our house when we lived in Springfield, Virginia when I was in high school! Between my house and the interstate was one row of houses, we were that close! I lived about 1/2 mile from this sign.



Our prayer "triplet"

We were divided into groups of three and prayed together about specific needs during the conference.



Fellowship time

We were in sessions for the most part from 9 am until 6 pm with 30 minute breaks scattered through-out the day. Everyone loved the breaks because it was a good time for getting to know people. We also had some free time in the evenings (except when we had member care appointments) for playing games and chit-chatting. As leaders, we were asked to make ourselves "available" so we didn't have a lot of time for checking emails and updating our blog!



Small group time

Glenn and I facilitated a small group where we discussed certain assigned topics.



Aren't they cute?

And, of course, there is always a children's program at the end of the week when they show off what they have learned. The children are taught by a volunteer team that comes out from the U.S. for this specific purpose. Now THAT'S MEMBER CARE for the whole family! The kids love it and the parents enjoy having child care too!



Solving the problems of the world

Glenn and Mick are "processing" all they've seen and heard during the week.



Brause Stabchen


And totally unrelated to the conference but a definite perk...while we were there in Germany, I found the candy that I used to eat when I lived in Mannheim. It is called Brause Stabchen, or Sour Sticks.


Little sour sticks

Some kids never grow up.



Geneva, Switzerland by air

The conference ended on Thursday night so we flew home on Friday with a 4 hour lay-over in Geneva's airport.




We had a great 10 days in Germany but I was so exhausted that I slept 12 hours our first night home!

Glenn heads out Monday for a meeting elsewhere in Hungary and will be gone until Thursday. I'll be here, holding down the fort until he returns. Home, sweet home.

I"m so sorry!

Hey! We're still in Germany but we didn't have internet our first week here, and we were traveling to another part of Germany on Sunday, my usual day to update this blog. I was sitting in a seminar on Tuesday when, all of a sudden, I realized I had completely forgotten to update on Sunday!

We have full days in sessions and since we're leaders, we're supposed to set good examples by being present (even though this conference isn't for us). In the evenings we have our member care appointments so busy, busy, busy!

We return to BP on Friday, so I will update on Sunday. I promise!

Passport to ...?

This past week we got our new passports. They weren't expired yet, but we are getting ready to apply for another visa to extend our stay in Hungary, and the time remaining on our passports must be longer than the length of the visa to be issued . Right now, it seems, the Hungarian government is giving five year visas instead of their normal one and two year visas so we needed new passports to be able to get a 5 year visa.



The American Embassy

We got our new passports that are good for 10 years, and we had them put 50 extra pages in them to hold all the customs' stamps as we enter and leave the countries in which we work AND they gave us back our old passports (invalidated, of course) as souvenirs.



Szabadsag Ter = Liberty Square

I thought it interesting that the American Embassy is located on Liberty Square. Do you think they looked for an empty building at that particular square or did they rename it when the American Embassy moved in?




This dark building is also located on the same square. It is in desperate need of a deep cleaning pressure wash!




This building is also on Liberty Square and this is what a building looks like when it is clean. Quite a change, isn't it? I know the variations in color add character to a city, but the clean buildings just look so much prettier to me.




We had company this week. Andy and Kaye do member care in Western Europe and they came over for a couple of days for us to get to know each other better, work on strategy, and a few other work related things. Above, Kaye is talking with her granddaughter via Skype while Andy talks with their daughter. It was so cute watching Kaye play pat-a-cake! I guess one day we will be doing this too.

We went into town Saturday night to show Andy and Kaye the night lights and ran into these two young ladies from America. The one next to me is from New York and they were in Budapest to celebrate her birthday! Some present! The one on the far right is from Roswell, Georgia! It was fun talking with them and hearing their fascinating stories. It was nice running into someone from "home".

Glenn and I are driving to Germany this Wednesday to attend an MK education conference for those who work with childrens' education in our part of the world and then a conference for first termers called E-migrate (formerly called Ebenezer). Be back soon!

It's all about me!

Glenn was in Greece and Macedonia this week to speak at a retreat so this weeks blog is ALL ABOUT ME! For the most part, I stayed at my computer and took care of work emails and a few member care calls, but when my back would get stiff or my neck sore, I took a break and did something else like....


Inventoring homeschool curriculum

Worked in my basement with my friend Janet, inventoring homeschool curriculum. She helped me go through 8 boxes of used homeschool curriculum to decide what to keep and what to throw out. (Hint: if it is written in-throw it out!)


Picking figs for me

Did conversational English with my new friend, Judit! YEA! I have a Hungarian friend! This was our second time to meet, and this time her daughter got up enough courage to meet with us. Nikki is 15 years old and is learning to be a seamstress like her mother. I found out that once a student gets in high school, they can "specialize" in their studies. She goes to a high school that has a track for students who want a career related to textiles. She is wants to be a seamstress like her mother and a fashion designer (and sew the clothes herself). There are high schools for students who want to be an athelete, another for tv and movies, another for mechanics and all things technical, and so on. Students that desire to go on to "University", as they call it, go to a general academic high school were they get a broader and deeper academic education. Cool. I didn't know that. See, that's one of the reasons I wanted a Hungarian friend.


Traipsing through Tesco

One of my favorite things to do is grocery shop. Well, that's not entirely true. What I love is to go to the grocery store and just peruse the aisles, looking for new products and trying to get up the nerve to try some of the stranger things. I could spend an hour or two just looking at everything. This week I discovered that Tesco brand cake mixes have arrived, and as you can tell, they have a grand selection of 4 kinds of cake! It looks like the mix makes a loaf of cake, and the price for a loaf (or one layer) is $2.22. Occasionally, we can find Betty Crocker cake mixes on the international isle for $7.50 so the Tesco brand is a bargain if it tastes okay. I'll try it one day, but right now I have a couple of cake mixes from America in my freezer that I'll use first.


My thumbs are green because my gloves are green!

While at Tesco I bought some pansies to plant in our yard. Last year Glenn planted some chrysanthums in our yard and they are beautiful! We can definitely tell that winter is around the corner because the days are cool and crisp.



"Joe" and his Florida license plate

Even though Glenn was out of town, I went to church this morning. I enjoy the church once I get there, but I have to make myself go since we don't get a lot out of the experience. A kind lady behind me made sure I knew the Scripture reference and a lady beside me helped me find the pages in the song book so I was good to go. During the message, which might as well be Greek to me, I just thought God thoughts and prayed, and listened to the Holy Spirit, and cited verses to myself.....

But when I was walking home (25 minutes), this man spoke to me in Hungarian. I responded, "Nem beszelek magyarul." He didn't understand my Hungarian so I spoke in English, "I don't speak Hungarian." Ah! That he understood! His name is Josef, but he kept calling himself Joe. He is actually Romanian by birth but grew up on the border between Romania and Hungary so he speaks both languages equally well. He moved to Florida 20 years ago, bought a small house in the Everglades for almost nothing, and sold it last year for $300,000. He has moved to Budapest to be closer to his family (that he said was dying off) that lives on the Hungary/Romania border. (Guess he doesn't want to be tooooo close!)

He is an interesting character and he was so proud of his Florida license plates on his car! He said he can legally drive the car with Florida license plates as long as he leaves the country every six months. Hmmmm, I don't think he and I are reading the same law books, but then again, I can't read Hungarian so maybe he's right!



Walking home from church

And thus ends another exciting week, but the best thing was when Glenn got home!

We have company coming on Thursday for 4 days. They do member care with our company in western Europe. It's just a time for us to get to know them and for them to understand a little more about the life and ways of central and eastern Europe. Very different from western Europe!

Have a good week!