A Week in Spring

Sunday, after church, we had lunch with the Builders’ Group from ND, MN, IL, and TX. Tomaš and some band members came and entertained us. The fellowship was wonderful.



Sunday evening we had our regular choir practice. We practiced for Palm Sunday in the church. We also practiced for a program with all the choirs in the local "Synod." We then practiced for Good Friday and Easter. We talked about our trip to Prague. This will be on the weekend following Easter.

Adriana is serving Gary. She is the youth minister’s wife.
They live in the flat below us.






Monday, after teaching in the two second grade classes, I got my work clothes on and helped the Builders Group paint some radiators. Gary was going to do a little more pruning, but someone had put up the ladder he needed for the big trees. He decided he was finished pruning because that was the third time the ladder had been put away. So he came to help paint the radiators. We had worked on cleaning them the Friday before. The ENGLISH conversation was wonderful.


Please notice Jeannine and her radiant personality. (It's the best Gary could do on short notice.)


Tuesday night was a Good-Bye party for the Builders’ Group, complete with a gypsy band. The food was scrumptious, the music quite lively and the company superb. All of the families of the workers at the Christian Center for Education (CCE) were there. Everyone had a good time. There was singing of Slovak folk songs and dancing to the music.











Wednesday, we were invited to Mirka’s house for some authentic Slovak food, homemade halušky. She had done the difficult work of grating the potatoes. Then she mixed in just enough flour and a little bit of salt. She showed me how to cut little chunks into the water that she kept just below the boiling point. (When I had made halušky with Lenka, I had used a special strainer to push the dough through into the water to cook.) The dough sinks to the bottom of the water. When it rises to the top, it is ready to take out of the water. After it is all cooked, the Bryndza (sheep cheese) is stirred into the noodles. Meanwhile, Gary cuts up the Slovak bacon and it has been cooking. It is added on top of the halusky. We had a marvelous meal, complete with sour milk.



Then we talked and talked. Mirka’s mother’s house is on the edge of a forest. We learned how women were used to plant new pine trees to replace the ones that have been harvested. In doing this, the wild raspberries were cleared away from the trees to give the young trees room and plenty of sunshine. Consequently, the wild raspberries are few.

Thursday evening, Zuzana, who is now teaching first grade at the elementary school at the CCE, came for dinner. She also wanted some ideas of using the Content & Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in her classroom. That is the method used in the elementary schools for teaching English. Basically, a subject that has been taught in Slovak is taught in English. So the students use the English and are learning the language as they are using it.

The Lord has a good sense of humor. I only learned about CLIL when I started teaching here in September. Now I’m giving her ideas. We also had a wonderful dinner and conversation with her.




Friday was Bible study at the Fasts. It was also the 15th of April. Do you know what happens on that day? Throughout Slovakia on that day, a collection is made for combating cancer. The way it is done is that you are asked by someone if you would like to contribute. If you do put money in their official box, they pin a daffodil on your coat. When others who are collecting see the flower on you, they do not bother you. Practically everyone I passed was wearing a daffodil.



Saturday we invited Pastor Milan, is wife Zuzana and their 2 daughters and son over to the Gymnasium for dinner. As it happened, it was little Milan’s naptime. So Zuzana (the daughter) and Gabriela took turns staying with him while he slept. Zuzana brought some homemade split-pea soup. It was delicious. Then we had made a taco casserole and sopapillas. We all enjoyed the food and the conversation. It was a wonderful time.



That evening, Luboš came to the Gymnasium (where we live) to show us how to get
to his flat. Luboš has been like a mentor for me, not to mention the driving us to Žilina all the times necessary for our VISAs. He and his wife Katka had invited us for dinner at their place. I would guess that we walked about two miles to get to his flat. For those of you who know Martin, it is in the housing that is across the highway from Tesco. The evening was beautiful.



At their place we had enjoyable conversation and another delicious meal. This time the soup had small dumplings. Then Katka had fixed us some steamed bread and a goulash. Luboš told us this recipe was a Hungarian recipe. It was so good. We so enjoyed speaking with them and watching their little 27 month old daughter.
On Sunday, the choir sang in church. The service is different from ours. In the service, the Passion Story is read by two people this week. (Part of it the story was read last Sunday.) The choir sang during the service.















Sunday afternoon, the choirs from all the Evanjelicka churches in their Synod-like area, gathered at a church in a little village Krpel’any. I believe there were 18 choirs and each choir sang two songs. The church was packed. The music was joyful and our hearts blessed. The collection was taken and will be used towards finishing the church. They began building it in 1999. The inside is nice and has an open feeling. The tower and the outside of the church still needs to be finished.













It was a week full of enjoyable experiences! (Oh, we did do some English Conversation classes, too.)

A Weekend in March

I laugh when I remember that one of the reasons I began this blog was to give me something to do on the days in which I had nothing to do in this small apartment without TV and only with a few books. Most of the time I am late at posting something because we are so busy.

The Friday after meeting the ambassador (end of last post,) Gary and I got on a train to visit Oravsky Hrad. This is the castle I enjoyed back in November when Gary was in Brno, in the Czech Republic.
We rode to Kral’ovany. There we boarded a small, “doodlebug” train. The doodlebug term is ours. It is like the one in the photo, except it only had two cars. This went up the little valley in which is Oravsky Hrad. These little trains travel all over this country and are the reason a person is able to get to so many places by train. The train was full most of the ride. It was a beautiful ride, following the river at times.













When we arrived in Oravsky Podzámok, the first view of the castle gave us a clear understanding of the fact that this castle was never conquered or destroyed by outside armed forces.

When we bought our tickets, it was a steep walk up to the castle gate.










Inside the walls, you get an idea of how high this castle is. When I took the picture that is below, I was two levels (or stories) below the first set of windows that you see. Counting those two levels, I count at least twelve levels up to the highest. The higher four levels were closed. Two will be opened later in the year. And the very highest levels are never open to the public because of “static,” which I understood was probably the danger of lightning.


















We took so many pictures that I cannot even begin to show you. However, I like this picture because you can see the size of the walls and windows, as well as the swords they used. The sword on the far right weighs 7.5 kilograms (about 15 pounds.)





The shield shown is ten kilograms or about 22.5 pounds.

This was a castle complete with a picturesque tower and chairs that looked like they were made for the Knights of the Round Table.














Have to relate an incident of God specifically providing for a need:
Jeannine began the day with a meeting with a first grade teacher about what to teach the following Monday. The subject matter is animals from the forests or in the wild. What does Jeannine know about the animals that live in the wild in Slovakia? I thought about visiting the nature museum in Martin, across from the post office, but that is closed for “re-construction.”

Well, one of the places we visited in the castle was a museum. And in the museum were examples of different animals living in Slovakia, such as the roe and stork, pictured below.





GOD IS SO GOOD!












In the tour, the stairs were many and the views spectacular.


In the background, behind the flag, is the highway, filled with trucks, in stop and go traffic. This leads us to the Jenks’ Adventure for this trip. In the morning when we approached Oravsky Podzámok, we had seen that the highway was bumper-to-bumper with large vehicles. They appeared to be stopped.

Six hours later, when we are riding a bus to Kral’ovany, we find ourselves on narrow roads, riding through small villages. At first this was not surprising, because that’s where the buses travel. However, we began notice the heavy traffic on these narrow roads. This is not normal.

Apparently, road-work or a very bad accident has moved most of the traffic, (except the large trucks) off of the highway. There was much stopping and waiting our turn on the narrow road. This led to us getting to Kral’ovany an hour and a half late. We not only missed the train we had expected to take, but we had missed the last bus to Martin.

So we waited almost two hours for the next train to Martin. Kral’ovany is a very small town, with homes of people who live there and the train station. Nothing to do. So we ate our sandwiches, Jeannine knitted and Gary toured Kral’ovany.

We did get home about 7:20, but without enough energy to make it to the Bible study.

In telling of our Adventure, I skipped over our wonderful mid-day meal that we had in a little restaurant at the beginning of the walk up to the castle. Gary had pork with gravy and dumplings. Jeannine had pastries filled with sheep cheese. These were served on traditional Slovak dishes.



Speaking of Slovak dinners, Saturday, Janka, a Slovak teacher of English who lives in the Gymnasium, invited us to dinner in her flat. She, her visiting sister and Emily had been cooking all day. It was delicious.

Sunday after church, we hosted a potluck dinner for our Bible study. We had it in the Gymnasium café. Two Scandinavians, four Slovaks and the five Americans were there. We made the taco soup, Brenda made the cornbread, and others brought their “pots.” It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

That was all in one weekend.