behold the power of cheese...

I had never heard of raclette before, but when the Custers invited us over for raclette, all they needed to say was that it involved cheese! It's similar to fondue; everyone cooks meat on a common grill, while lots of cheese melts in little trays underneath. Then you pour the cheese over your veggies and potatoes.... Nagyon finom volt!
Short week -- because this weekend is the High School Retreat! Pictures coming soon...

busy week!

but today is a fun day, as it's the day when my sophomores make masks in honor of our African novel, Things Fall Apart. They're so cute -- they try to be all grown-up, but throw some markers and construction paper in front of them, and they suddenly become different people!

prayer request for you all: I'm working with a new ministry this year, an Alpha course, that I'm really excited about. I'll send out more info in my newsletter (by the way, if you follow my blog but you're not on my mailing list and want to be, let me know. Email my gmail account; it's misshardy) but for right now pray for the planning stages. We had a meeting last night, and a lot of questions still need to be answered about logistics and finances. We're also hoping a team from the States will be able to come and help out with our kick-off events in early December...so if you want to take a trip to Hungary, maybe you can work in a missions trip! :)

So my language lessons are going well -- Heidi is meeting with me, too, so the three of us have a lot of fun with Izabella. But apparently my confidence level isn't exactly high, as evidenced by a dream I had, in which I was trying to help a Hungarian man who was lost. I was talking to him over the phone and trying to explain to him how to get to our village. I thought I was saying things correctly, but he just got frustrated and mocked me, until he yelled at me and hung up. I was so angry/embarrassed that I woke up... and then I thought about my dream-Hungarian. In the dream, I was convinced I said, "Are you familiar with Balatoni Highway?" -- but what I actually said was, "You know how zoo?" Ha!

God has such a sense of humor....

Lisa and I often joke about how the Lord will have to bring a man to our doorstep. Little did we know that would actually happen....

So Sunday morning, I was in my room getting ready for church, when I heard a man's voice. I walked into the hallway, thinking I'd go to the door and see what he wants -- but actually he was right there, inside the house, in front of my bedroom door -- a man I had never seen, carrying a bouquet of flowers!

Thank God he spoke English, because I was so flustered by having a random guy in our place I couldn't think of a single word in Hungarian... although he was pretty embarrassed and confused himself! Apparently, his mother (who now lives in the house above us) used to live in our apartment, but the son (let's call him Gabor) hasn't been too great about keeping in touch with her. He showed up unexpectedly to spend Sunday with her, and just walked in to surprise her! We laughed about it, and I sent Gabor on his way upstairs.

It was a pleasant weekend -- although I had to give in to impending cold weather and switch out all my summer clothes for warmer things. Yesterday Lisa and I spent the afternoon at Gloria Jean's coffeeshop with a Polish girl who's new to Budapest and looking for a church. Nothing like a little coffee with good conversation on a cold day -- especially at Heroes' Square.

We sang a song yesterday during worship that I love. I actually found the Hungarian lyrics online, which is kind of a minor miracle, but here's the English version for those of you not fluent in magyarul :)

icsb outreach

One things that's been really great this year is the excitement over the new outreach team, headed up by my very own roommate! The kids are full of passion, and they're going into the city to do drama and street evangelism. This video was done by one of the parents, and is a good picture of the work they're doing as well as downtown Budapest.

It's cold and rainy here, so the walk back and forth to school has not been fun (and naturally we chose to put our car in the shop this week, the only one with rain!). And I'm a little stressed out by open house last night and progress reports tomorrow. But our staff retreat was fun..... some pictures from that and the wine festival:


Everyone loves the coffee shop! Great drinks at less than half the price of Starbucks :)

The grounds are beautiful, too.

We played ICSB Family Feud, and I correctly guessed the #1 answer for the biggest problem facing ICSB staff: lack of available single men!


So I'm not the only short one this year! But we're pretty darn short...


I never get tired of the city at night.

hallelujah!

The forint is at 172 today!

After this summer, when it fell to 141 forint to a dollar, I was really worried about my budget. Thanks for praying -- keep it up!

I haven't posted much because I've been playing with our brand new yearbook software! I'm so excited; this is life-changing :) Seriously, when I told our publishers what software we were using last year, they laughed. Now we're high-tech!

This weekend is our staff retreat at Vajta, and tonight is the wine festival! Pictures coming soon....

This would only happen to me....

so after I posted those pics, I taught one class and then looked at my statcounter to see if anyone had seen them yet (thinking maybe I had time to change my mind and email it just to Kathy).
Well, with the statcounter, I can see where people are when they view my pages.... and within that 45 minute period, I had 70 page-views of my blog. 70, all from the following countries: Germany, Malaysia, Switzerland, Italy, France, Hong Kong, Latvia, Singapore, Sweden, UK, Phillipines, Mexico, and the US. Apparently, the "View next blog" button in the toolbar was set to display mine for a long, long time...

I always wanted to be internationally famous -- this isn't the way I had anticipated! :)

So Kathy... don't ever say I didn't get you anything for your birthday. I think my total humiliation today has more than compensated for my lack of a card!

Happy birthday, Kathy!

I hope you know I would NEVER do this for anyone else... may this gift bring you abundant hilarity... (for the rest of you, this is me with the fake "grills" Kathy sent me, as a souvenir from the lake!).


(I can't believe I'm actually posting these)

over the weekend

I love weekends. I particularly love them after the first full week of school, because I was absolutely exhausted this week. Friday night was the high school party, which was surprisingly fun. They had Rock Band and karaoke and various party games, and it was nice to see the new kids (we have 20 this year!) starting to fit in. So we had a good time -- but I was really glad to sleep in Saturday morning!

Heidi's birthday was this weekend, so she took us to this place I've wanted to go to for a while, just because it sounds so odd.... it's on the rooftop of a supermarket building. literally. Just imagine hanging out on top of your local Food Lion! so weird.

Continue to be praying about my work here -- I'm trying to make some decisions about other ministries outside of the school, and I have a lot of options! I'm meeting with Chad and Serina tonight to talk about it all, so pray that I'll have discernment and know how to make wise choices.