Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Glenn and I are not real big on celebrating holidays with presents and fancy meals in a restaurant. I think it comes from our early married days when he was doing youth ministry and so often we were not able to celebrate our anniversary, birthdays or Valentine's Day because of church conflicts. We just got lax about it....but this year we did remember to buy each other something and I even remembered to wish him a happy Valentine's Day with a kiss this morning!! He beat me on the present though with a really nice diamond and sapphires necklace to match the earrings and ring he got me while we were in the U.S. He spoils me. I've got to do a better job this year of taking good care of him and spoiling him, which will mean some changes in my work load. More on that later in another blog post!

While Glenn and I were on STAS (stateside assignment), I bought small gifts for my Hungarian friend and her family.

This is Nikki modeling her Georgia sweatshirt. When I gave it to her, I drew a map of the U.S. and circled the place where the state of Georgia is located and explained that is where we were while in the U.S.. I told her I wanted her to have a souvenir of where I was from and I told her that the sweatshirt is also from the University of Georgia, which made it an even better gift because wearing university sweatshirts here in Hungary is really popular right now! For her mom, Judit, I gave her a fleece blanket with Georgia emblazoned on it (also from the University of Georgia). When I gave her husband his multi-bladed knife, he kept looking for the word Georgia on it!!! I think they liked their gifts a lot. They asked me why I brought them something from America and I had to explain that that is something we do in America to let someone know that we missed them and that we were thinking about them while we were gone. It's kind of amazing to realize that some of our customs are truly OUR customs, not shared by others.

On Saturday morning really, really early, we flew to Malta for the cluster meeting of our personnel who work with the Romany people group, often called Gypsies. We flew from Budapest to Germany, then down to Malta. The view of the Alps was breath-taking. The suns' glare makes it hard to see all the snow on them!

We will do member care appointments for all the personnel here and Glenn will lead two sessions, one on grief and one on setting margins and boundaries.

As we were being driven from the airport out to the hotel where we are staying, we passed this castle and city on the hillside. The driver told us it used to be the capital city of Malta years ago. We hope to have a little time later on during the week to do a little sightseeing on our own.

Malta used to be a British colony so they drive on the left-hand side of the road and the steering wheels are on the right-hand side. Man, that sure messes me up!

Going through round-points was weird! You just don't expect cars on your left to be waiting to come into the circle!! Notice the sign that has the arrows going in the opposite direction from the signs in America???

It's a weird sensation to see cars coming at you from the "wrong" side!

This is the coastline that is just a block from our hotel. Our hotel is on the "beach" but our room doesn't face the water. We have a nice view of the balconies of the hotel next to ours.

The land in the background is supposedly where Paul was shipwrecked. We haven't been over there yet to see it, but will before we leave the island.

I love the sign on the ice cream shop: Italian Ice Cream, the American Way. We're not sure what they mean by the American Way, but it probably has to do with the SIZE of the scoops!

This is the view down the other direction of the coastline. The water is amazingly clear but it looks cold! The temperatures here are in the mid-60's this week. Warmer than Budapest, but not so warm that I go out without a coat or jacket!

This is the main square in town, 2 blocks from our hotel. I've been able to walk down to it twice during long breaks just to get some exercise. Sitting all day is so hard for me!

Because today is Valentine's Day, we have the afternoon and evening off to go into town. Glenn took advantage of the free afternoon to work on his two sessions he's leading and to get with our computer guru to put some things on his computer and I'm working on this blog entry. Tonight, we are going to go into town to eat out in celebration of Valentine's Day. We are staying in Malta an extra day so we will do our sightseeing then.

The whole island is celebrating Valentine's Day! Tons of red flowers for sale on the side of the roads coming into town.

Well, I will update next weekend with more pictures of Malta, but this is about all I have up to this point. Take care!