Sunday

Well, I made it back to Austria without problems. On the train every time we crossed the Austrian - Hungarian boarder we had both sets of boarder guards check our passports. I did notice that this time that both sets of guards got off at the same stop, but that both groups kept to themselves. I was a little surprised at this. I would have thought that most of the guards that traveled this line would probably have known each other to some degree. But as we left the station they were going into the waiting building but each in their own groups. No one even tried to talk with someone in the other group.

Anyway, I'm back in Austria sleeping in my own bed again. Well at least my own bed here at the Haus.

I'm a little drained... teaching 4 weeks in 4 different countries in a 5 week period. Sometimes it seems like it's been 6 months ago that I was in Tallinn, but it was only 5 weeks ago that I was there.

Here are a couple of pictures of Sunday's service. Rob is back from being in the states for several weeks. Actually he and his wife Mary were at Mountain Christian just the Sunday before. Rob's mother lives in Bel Air and there are several people that both Rob and Mary know that go to MCC, so when Rob goes back to visit his mother and if he is there over the weekend, he comes to MCC. Rob is on the left playing the acoustic guitar. The second one is of him preaching.

Rob and Mary will be coming out tomorrow (Wednesday) to visit and have lunch with Pam and I. That should be very enjoyable.

John

HUNGARY PICTURES

Here are some pictures of my time in Hungary.

The first is of the building where I taught for the week. It's the Baptist Theological Seminary there in Budapest. The next two are the students and the students and Laszlo my interpreter.

Here are a couple of shots of the students working together planning a worship service for a class assignment. Just so you know that's Betty on the left and Mariam on the right with the Bible and computer.

The fist picture is of Kodaly's house. Then Hero's square and the last one... well I had to take this shot for Gary T. It's pretty self explanatory.

This is the Chinese Embassy building and then just a building downtown. If you look closely at the last shot way in the background in the middle you can see some mountains, that's actually Buda of Budapest. Buda was one city on one side of the Danube and Pest (which means plains) was on the other side. together they make Budapest.

Sorry that the pictures were so slow in getting posted. But I was finally able to upload them today. I hope you can now go back and when you read a story bout a student you can place a face with it.

John

UKRAINE PICTURES

Here are some pictures from when I was in Ukraine. The first 5 pictures are of students and the classroom where I taught.
The next picture is a picture of me holding the plate that the students gave me after the class had ended. It's a plate with the emblem of Kherson on it with the Ukrainian flag. It's very, very nice.

The next picture is of Zhenia, Vera and their daughter Anya who helped translate for us. After dinner we went for some sight seeing of Kherson. Here is a picture of a WW II monument of a memorial of Russian soldiers who died at this spot over looking a river. I guess it was a terrible battle and lots of Russians lost their lives at this spot.

The next pictures are of the church. The first one is the inside and then one of the outside entrance way. The building was an elementary school that the church purchased. It was built with an open court yard in the middle. The church closed the court yard in and made the sanctuary that you see. Also because this used to be an elementary school, it is in the middle of several apartment buildings. Here is a picture of one of the ones close by.

The last shot is of the cross over the entrance way into the church.

John

EXAM DAY

The EXAM at least that's what they call it. Everyone did very well... all A's. But then again, it was a very good class. They all went home with big smiles on their faces.
Laszlo and I still had papers to read and the test to grade. We finished all of that by about 12. So I decided to take a walk in Budapest. Today is another hot day, so it wasn't a long walk. I got back to the apartment about 2:30. Oh by the way, a gyro here is not the same as a gyro back home!!!!!
I took a walk down one of the main streets here Andrassy Ut. This time I went past the Burger King by a couple of more blocks. There were really no souvenir shops to speak of. Probably at the train station tomorrow I'll find something to bring home as a souvenir from my time here in Budapest. One artsy store I did enter had some incense that I thought was very interesting though. It was the smell of Hemp. I was tempted to by it as a joke, but then I thought that I probably wouldn't be able to get it past the dogs at security at the airport in Vienna for the trip back. That's also the store where I bought a gift for Pam, but don't tell her it's a necklace.
tomorrow back at Haus Edelweiss and a couple of days off, a couple of days of faculty meetings and then we head on home.
I know I'll reflect more on my time here after I get back to Austria. For know I'm going back to my apartment where it's a bit cooler and relax for awhile.
John

Thursday

Well we finished today. The last of the class notes were taken and all that is left is the review and the final exam tomorrow morning.

This was the smallest class I have taught, but it was nice to just have the three students and get to know them a little better.

Betty is the wife of a minister here in Budapest and has two children 12 and 10. They have been at this church now for the past 2 years.

Gabor has a little 18 month old baby boy. He plays keyboards and does some arranging for the church where he attends. He uses Sibelius for a notation program. I told him I wanted to learn it, so after lunch he showed me some shortcuts in Sibelius to write music without using a keyboard. He was fast! I use Finale and I have to use the keyboard because using the qwerty keyboard is way to slow for me.

Mariam has a class full of students come the fall!!!

Now let me tell you about Laszlo my interpreter. Laszlo had been teaching and interpreting for quite some time now, he is 77 now! When Billy Graham would come to Hungary to have is Crusades, Laszlo would be his interpreter. He has written over 800 hymns (words and some music) for the church here. I picked up the new Baptist Hymnal (copyright 2003) and he must have about 30 songs printed in it. The first time I ever taught a class using an interpreter, it was Laszlo. I was spoiled! So needless to say, this week had very little problems with words or thoughts not being translated correctly. Laszlo is somewhat of a fixture here in the Baptist church in Budapest and all of Hungary. To show you the kind of person he is, when we had our discussion about Copyright material, he mentioned that he has never asked for any money in return for his hymn writing, but that he is always getting checks for his songs. Later on in class he mentioned something that kind of told me that the money he receives from the hymns he gives away to charity.
We all went to a little cafeteria just down at the end of the block for lunch today. I wanted to try some Hungarian food, so I picked out what I though was Hungarian food. After I got the plate in front of me Gabor tells me that what I have is Mexican food. If you know me well, you know that I like a lot of different foods but Mexican is the one that I really don't have a preference for! But I ate it anyway. Most of the conversation was in Hungarian, but every once in a while they asked me a question. Sometimes it was a guessing match as to what they were asking and where the question was going, but it was fun and we did manage to have a good conversation. Between the three of them they got all the words out close enough for me to understand them. Actually it was easy... I taught Junior High for 10 years so I'm used to hearing broken sentences!


Well that's about it. This happens to be the last class I had to teach this summer with TCMI. Next week I go back to Haus Edelweiss and go to some faculty meetings before Pam and I head on home to the states.

Wednesday

Again class went well. With only three people in it there's a lot of time for me to explain a little more in detail and give extra explanation to different issues that come up in class.

Everyday for lunch everyone seemed to be going their own way. I would go down the street to a little grocery store and by a sandwich, come back to my apartment and eat by myself. Today as the students were breaking for lunch one of the students mentioned that she was going to Burger King. So to make a long story short....

Mariam and I walk several blocks down to Burger King. (Past Kodaly's house again, and past the Liszt Music Academy.) Mariam has been teaching school for 2 years now. She teachers what we would call middle school students. She teaches, History, 2 dimensional art, and one other subject. As you can guess she is extremely busy. Plus she must be about 5' (she said that she is 153 centimeters) so a lot of the older students are bigger than she is. (yes, even me) When I asked about if any of the boys gave her a hard time, she just looked up and smiled at me and finally nodded her head. She said that sometimes it's quite hard. She also works with the youth in her church.

She lives in a small town near the Romanian border. She is Hungarian although she was born in Romania and lived there until she was about 11. Then her family moved to a town near the Ukraine border. Now while she is taking the class here in budapest she is living with her parents in a town about 50 Kilometers away, and takes the train back and forth. She is a very sweet girl.

When I do get pictures up you may have to go back several posts to put faces and stories together. Sorry about that.

John

Tuesday

I'm still trying to post pictures but I still seem to be having a problem.
Today was a hot day and Gabor wasn't feeling well, so he only made to class for about half the day. With Laszlo being so good an interpreter he really doesn't have to clarify much of what he says, so class is moving right along. Because of this, and the fact that Gabor was not here, I decided to end class a little earlier tonight.
Both Betty and Mariam and pretty quiet, so there is not a lot of discussion in class.
Betty is the wife of a minister here in Budapest and Mariam works with a church here also.
So, so far there are not a lot of stories to tell about the students.
I did take a walk earlier today and walked past Zolton Kodaly's house. Pam and I had been here once before and went to see the house. Ask a music teacher! There's a great little restaurant just opposite the house, great food - cheap price!
The Baptist Seminary here is only two blocks away from Hero's Square and two of Budapest's art museum's, but I doubt that I will have any time to go and see the art work. It's also right in the next to a lot of foreign embassy's. Although I haven't seen the US's yet. We are just across the street from the British embassy and the Chinese embassy is right down the block.
Yes, I did take pictures of the class and when I can figure out what the problem is I'll send the rest of the Ukraine pictures along with this weeks pictures.