Easter Sunday 2010

Easter at CityLight was quite a bit different then our usual worship services... but very good it it’s own way. In other cities Christmas & Easter would be “big church days,” but in Bratislava it seems to be the times where people split and head for their hometowns to celebrate with family. So, we had a much smaller group and more kid oriented. Chad did a great job reading the kids the Easter story. Erik shared his testimony of walking with Jesus since Easter 10 years ago! All in all it was a special time. (Thanks Kieko for the pics!)








The kids watched this as well....

treasure hunt

Recently we went with the Hovokovci family on a GPS hunt... which is a upgraded version of a treasure hunt. Our wanderings lead us to a hilltop in Austrian in sight of Bratislava. On top was a huge tower which we climbed then explored the forest to discover a treasure cache in an abandoned castle lost in the forest. The guys had a blast!

Christmas 09'

This past Christmas was pleasantly peaceful. We didn't really go anywhere or do anything - which is such a change from our normal life here in Bratislava. It was great to remember the coming of Jesus and simply be together.

We had a traditional Christmas meal, but served up with a twist - Christmas Sauerkraut soup, Carp Greek style with tomatoes & walnuts, potato salad with dried tomatoes and Italian spices and lots of sweets.

One Slovak tradition is to start the meal with wafers & honey. I don't know all the meanings behind it, but the wafers are basically the same as what is taken during Communion in the Catholic church (i.e. the Body of Christ). So, Jesus - the Word made Flesh - is celebrated by eating super sized Communion wafers with the sweetness of honey. It is a nice picture.

Another tradition "imported" from Orava is to bless the kids with the sign of the cross ala honey. It's hoped that it will help the kids behave well, be blessed, and healthy in the next year. We should have poured the whole honey jar on theses guys! :)


Gabe and Dave licking off their "blessings" !

G@Skool

Snowbording without the board

Snow Angels

SnowSlide

“Carppy”

There is no such thing as a free lunch, even if it looks free. We went to Metro (like Costco) to get a bunch of things for the holidays. Apparently if you spend too much they give you a free bottle of champagne and Carp... yes, the fish... it’s a Christmas thing here. So the attendant scoops out “Carppy” form a huge vat of writhing fish upon fish out of water struggling for life. Water wouldn’t have helped them, it was freezing, they would simply have been Carp-sicols. Our fish is tossed in a plastic bag and handed him to us. He flaps and our guys go wild with excitement. We have a few more hours of shopping to do elsewhere and figure the “fish slapping” in the trunk will end before we get home.
So, we get home and the apparently frozen and dead fish is in the words of the Wizard from the Princes Bride - “...only mostly dead, which is different from all the way dead.” So, falling back to Slovak tradition we try to resurrect the poor beast and put him in a tub of water. Guess what - he jumped up to 80% alive! The guys loved it, named it, and were checking on him minute by minute (think: overly attached children to the Passover lamb on the way to the slaughter). The boys went to bed and the fish went to fish heaven (by natural causes... I swear!) So, not that his is all the way dead I had to do the fatherly thing and “clean it.” There is nothing clean about this process... especially in your bathtub. I quickly realized that I had never really cleaned a fish, especially at 12pm at night in my bathroom (kitchen was occupied with Christmas baking stuff). So, the moral of the story - ask for two bottles of champagne and leave the “free” fish behind!

Christmas Mules

Went to pick up some Christmas packages (thanks McKinney's!) for the boys. We live about 3/4 of a mile from the post office and this being the center of Bratislava the mode of transportation is your feet. The weather was cold, but beautiful...so why not? I decided that the boys should be the “mules” today. This is part of a bigger “strategy” to wear them out before their much needed nap. Half way through they wanted me to carry the packages, but I told them they would have to share 1/2 of the loot. They carried the boxes all the way home. It’s amazing what we can do when we have the proper amount of motivation! In the end they did open their packages only to discover that all gifts were wrapped, thus they have to wait until Christmas... but I gave them the box (yes, I am cruel :) But, they didn’t have any problem with that. They proceeded to be creative and build dog houses for Puppy & Wolf (legendary stuffed animals in our home).

"Lord of the Flies"

In an effort to encourage students to think about their behavior/performance the school, Forel, has introduced a merit system based on the "House" concept in some British school. The basic idea is that classes are divided into "houses" (think: teams) and get points for positive behavior and achievement. They are color coded (Yellow, Pink & Blue) and named: Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.....all tragedies...hummm...interesting (not exactly inspiring virtue, but whatever...) The trick to it is that other classes are also divided into these same "houses" as well (3 in our case) and so you get points racked up by overall school wide performance. It's an interesting idea. It could either turn into a crazy "Lord of the Flies" social experiment pushing everyone into a conspiring and consuming 3 way school split, or transform them into brilliant angels yielding to the slightest command of teachers & parents. So far the competition is not that fierce (I suppose mischief & pranks still trumps being "good"). Yet, the "House" system is working quite well for my competitive H6 class (10th grade in the USA). Anyways, above is a pic from Gabie's class visually displaying the houses in his class. It's fun and personalized. Gabe is #8.

Jingle Bell ROCK!

Last Friday (18th) Gabie + friends had a Christmas performance on the Main Square in Bratislava during the Christmas Market festivities. Gabe & his buddies really took the show, especially with their "improvising" and on stage antics... like grabbing the mic and randomly shouting "Jingle Bell Rocks!" Apparently the crowd loved it! Enjoy the pics & video!

off roading in Orava

Orava: land of beautiful mountains, haunted castles, bears, and artery-clogging-good Slovak food, and the birthplace of Ivetka. We took a drive to the Orava Castle area and then a detour through some remote countryside, expansive alpine fields with sheep grazing, dark forests, and lost villages. It's a great place to explore....

joy

Red Castle

Over the summer we visited Cervena Kamen (just outside of Bratislava). It had been a wet day, but the sun came out a bit and lit up the beautiful countryside surrounding the castle. After a quick photo shoot on the castle wall we went down to the "dungeon" and put the guys in shackles....wish we had some at home :)