Vienna

Our first break from class is on Friday of the first week. We get to go to Vienna for the day.
A Catholic church in Vienna.



We ate at a Wurstel stand. We both had Kabops. Think Gyro's but with out the lamb and the cucumber sauce. disappointing.


If you enlarge this you can see..... yes, that's corn on the pizza. Remember my pizza in Ukraine?



Pam and I went to The House of Music. It's an interactive musical adventure. The one thing I wanted to do the most was go to the section where you can actually direct the Viennese Symphony Orchestra. I picked Mozart's Eine Kline Nacht piece. It started off okay, but then it got a little out of hand and the orchestra just stopped playing and one of the viola players started yelling at me. It was all done with cameras and the technology was fantastic. However it has been abused over time, and it didn't quite follow what i was trying to do. although looking back now, it may have been because my first beat it down, and in Europe it's up. Kind of like pulling the orchestra along.... Weird. anyway it ended my live long dream of conducting a symphonic orchestra.

The dream was just that, a dream.

Yes, I do some teaching here too. :)

In fact my next blog will talk about how my class is preparing and planning for the worship service tomorrow.

drying sliverware

Here are some pictures of what happens during and after the meal. We eat family style and there are 'Hosts" for each table. The hosts help with the serving and getting drinks for everyone at their table. When the meal is over, we all help in the clean up. After the dishes and silverware get to the washing room they come out and several students and professors help in drying them.

This is what it sounds like when we are drying the silverware.

Aren't you glad you checked out the blog today?

Here a

Austrian class

My class in Austria. I have all Polish students. so far it's been a great class, and I expect that it will stay this way for the rest of the two weeks together.

After every meal some students and professors gather around the 'drying table' and talk. And sometimes we even dry some dishes. It's a time for the students to get to know the professors better and for the professors to understand a little bit more about the students. We find out where they are from, what they are presently doing. It's really a fun time even though we are working.

This is the haus (house) we live in. It's the main house and we live all the way up on the top floor. It's three flights up, that's 59 steps. i know I count them every day!

This is the view from our balcony down the driveway. the building you see in the background is called the Cow Barn. And yes at one time (long ago) it housed the cows for the family that used to live here.

More pic's and information will follow. I wanted to get this post up so that you can see what happening right now.

Last thought (and pictures) of Oradea, RO.

Bela (I found that you pronounce it Bay-la) is a preacher, Jozsef is a preacher, Gregory works for a religious publishing house, Attila is a preacher who drove from Hungary (2 hours) ever day for the class. David and Gabor are both students right now, Agnes is the wife of Jozsef, Endy (Andy) was an audit student and is working with physical handicapped people, and Adina teaches Kindergarten there where the church is. They use it as an outreach opportunity towards the community. She told me that there are several children who are in Kindergarten who have parents who do not go to any church.

I may have pushed my students just a little to far. It seemed like some of them finally cracked under the pressure of having to write too many notes.

I went and did some walking on Friday afternoon. Here is a gypsy family dressed in their traditional garb.

A Jewish synagogue

Working on a class project. They were planing a worship service.

A little explanation is needed here. Every morning when i enter the building that my classroom was in there was a gentleman sitting in this chair. And every morning I said "good morning" to him in Hungarian, "Jo regelt". He never said anything back to me all week long. I'm not sure, I think I said "Good morning." At least I hope I did. Here he is outside doing a little yard work.

Adina studying her class notes (Just let me live my fantasy)

Jozsef Kovacs doing some translating/interpreting for me. He was excellent.

A class picture.

He even got my little Italian gestures down!!

Oradea, was a little different then some of my other classes. Even though I was in Romania I was teaching a class being translated into Hungarian.

The city itself is also steeped in the tradition of Polish, Hungarian and Romanian. There is architecture of all those influences throughout the city. When I taught the class I was in Hungry. When I took a walk and looked at some of the buildings I was in Poland. When I spoke to the people in Oradea, I was in Romania.

But no matter what.... God is needed there.

John

367 steps - one way

We had a great day of classes and because my interpreter is good and the class is quick, we ended one class session early. One of the girls in the class Adina suggested that we go for a short walk to a high point where you can see most of Oradea. they told me it's about a 10 minute walk. I jumped at the chance especially to get out into the city to see the sights a little.

So we started walking. winding through these small little side streets until we came across the side of a mountain where there were some steps. That was the start of a very long hike up a mountain. when we finally arrived at a landing, you were able to see most of the city. I did notice that there was a little landing up a bit higher, and I asked if we were going to go up there. Adina said, "If you would like too." I decided not to answer her.
Here are some of the sights from the landing. The close up with the building (church) in the middle is where we have our class. Here is Agnes and Adina. Then me and Agnes.

However the next thing I knew we were all on our way up the hill again. But when we came to the landing, did we stop? Oh, no there were more steps and up we went. Finally we made it to the top. When we got there there was a pavilion that served drinks and snacks. I thought, "How in the world did they get all this stuff up here?" then I saw it. You mean to tell me that we walk all this way up here and there was a road that came here?

Me, Adina, Agnes, Attila and Gergely.

Here are some shots of what I see when I look out my classroom windows and my room where I stay at night.

Oreada, Romania

Well, I finally made it to Oradea, Romania. I took a train from Baden, switched in Wien Meidling, got off in Budapest, Hungary and transferred to another train from Budapest to Oradea. It took around 9 hours. Going from Austria to Hungary there was no passport control, so we just rolled right into Budapest. Every time I write that word, I still can't believe it is really Budapest. I was here two years ago teaching a class. You can go to one of my early posts to read about it.

Anyway, just before the Hungarian Romania boarder the passport control from Hungary was checking passports. When they got to me, they looked at me and then looked at the passport several times (Yeah, the mug shot IS me... who else would want to claim that picture?) and then said several things to each other in Hungarian. One of them looked at me and then told me in Hungarian that he was taking my passport and going inside the station. All this time I'm on the train at this stop and everyone is looking at me. It's because of me the train is not moving again! Well they came back, it was stamped and we were on our way.

But not for long. As soon as we crossed the border into Romania we made another stop and this time the Romanian border control looked at my passport, looked at me several times (Insert the same material here) and said to me in Romanian that he was taking my passport inside the train station. Again, I'm getting all the looks. And the other thing that was funny was that after we left the Hungarian border and I got my passport back everyone in the train started talking again like it was earlier and it was rather loud. We stopped, the Romanian passport control guys took my passport and it got real quite! All I heard were whispers. Well they did come back, my passport was stamped and we were on our way... again ans so was the talking. I can't wait to see what happens on the way back on Saturday!

The class went well today. We started at 10:30 went to lunch at 1, picked back up again at 2 and went to 5:30. I actually stopped a little early today because we were able to cover a lot of material. Kovacs Jozsef (for the rest of the world that's Joesph Kovacs) is my translator/interpreter. He excels in this. That's one of the reasons that we are doing so why we covered so much material today.

Here's a picture of the class.

It is a very interesting situation here in Oradea. The city is in the western part of the country. because of all the wars during the past couple of hundred years, this section of the country has always been a part of other countries. During WWI it was part of Poland. During WWII it became part of Romania. And because of it's close proximity to Hungary there are a lot of Hungarian speaking Romanians here. Where I am teaching is kind of like a compound. there is a huge door from the street that leads into the compound. Once inside everything is in Hungarian. there is a church here, a building that the church uses for its children's ministry, a multipurpose building, and a building that has several small apartments all over looking the commons area. I'll have more pictures tomorrow.

Everyone speaks Hungarian, they have Hungarian names, all the churches that are represented by the different students are all in the Hungarian Baptist Conference from Romania. And they are under the umbrella of the Romanian Baptist Union, with it's head quarters in Bucharest. It's really like I'm still in Hungarian and not in Romania. I hope to get 'outside' the wall here and get to see a little of Oradea before the week is out.

John

Last days in L'viv

Central Baptist Church in L'viv. There was a choral concert on Thursday night. A choir from Minnesota is touring throughout Ukraine.

After the concert several of went out to eat. We had Pizza. Well we had Ukrainian Pizza. That's what they all called it. Tyana is in my class the Sergei is my translator the other two girls go to the seminary there and Vasili is the dean of the seminary.

Some information about my students:

Sergiy: Is the dean of music here at the Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary. He graduated from the National Music Academy in L’viv in choral conducting.

Tetyana: Tayna is an administrative assistant and librarian here in the Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary while she is working on her MA with TCMI.

Oleksander: Sasha teaches here at the Seminary also. One of the courses he teaches is in the area of cults. He is also the IT person for the Seminary here.

Roman: Roman is also a professor here in the Seminary and also in Boryslav where there is another branch of the Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a pastor in a church in a nearby community.

Svetlana: Sveta has an MA in Journalism from the University of Aeronautics in Kiev and teaches Journalism and Ethics there and is also the chair for the department. She is also working on her MA with TCMI.

Igor: Igor is the dean of the Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary in Boryslav. He told that while he isn’t ministering with a church right now, as long as he gives his money the church will keep him as a member.

Vitaliy: Works with Christ in Youth here in L’viv. He heads up the division for Teen Ministries for Western Ukraine. He has worked on a curriculum that will also be used in the school system to help teach teens

Sergei: My translator has taught English here in the Seminary and is also working on an Mdiv degree at the Irpin Baptist Theological Seminary. Sergei has been my translator, driver and a close friend for me through this whole week. It has been good to get to know him and his family.

All the students were really wonderful this week. We had a lot of discussion and while some of it made us divert from the class material we always learned something from it…. even if it’s a discussion on what NOT to get into next time I teach the class. Ha.

Friday night is the time I get to rest a bit and get ready for another week of class. I leave for Vienna tomorrow and then after one night there, I'll take a 9-10 hour train ride to Oreada, Romania.

See you in Romania!