Jet Lag by Proxy?

Is is possible to "catch" jet lag? I'm sitting here at 6:45 in the morning - on vacation! - and wondering what in the world I am doing awake. My sister Sarah is here visiting (arrived on Tuesday) and sleeping on some weird schedule, and that's messing me up. Of course, she's falling asleep at like 7 in the evening and getting up in the middle of the night. I'm staying up until at least midnight and then being woken up early. I think today might be the day to force her out of jetlag mode...

I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera yet, but we went out to the Black Sea (at the port city of Constanta) Wednesday & Thursday. There's nothing quite like a dead resort town! The city itself was still bustling with activity, but the resort area of Mamaia was like a ghost town. Many of the hotels didn't even have curtains hanging in the windows. Such a contrast to the summer months when the place is choked with so many people everywhere! But Sarah got to see the Black Sea, and that's what she wanted.

Today we head to Sinaia, home of Peles castle & a monastery. We are going by train (another cultural experience she must have) and I am very thankful since I've driven about 25 hours in the last week. My car and I will be enjoying a day apart from each other =)

For your viewing pleasure, a few images from the last week...

Teacher training in Tulcea on Saturday; leading a devotional at the beginning (all in Romanian...yay!).
Teacher training in Bucuresti on Saturday

Piata Traian, one of the markets here in the city.

Epuizata

Exhausted. That's the only word I can find to describe me tonight. It's barely 10 o'clock and I'm fighting to keep my eyes open to post this (since I know you are all waiting with bated breath).

First, it's time for a celebration! Tonight I taught my first lesson completely in Romanian! I had intended to teach a Sunday School lesson last month in Romanian and was prepared to do so until, just before class began, a whole big group of Americans walked in; if I had taught in [bad] Romanian, someone else would have had to translate into [bad] English...and that would have been doubly frustrating for me. So, yay for having finally jumped the hurdle! Not sure that I will teach Sunday School this week in Romanian, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Second, a bit of an explanation. The Budapest picture from my last post wasn't completely random. I actually spent all of last week in Budapest at an ESL conference led by Michael Pasquale. In the evenings, we did a little bit of sightseeing & picture-taking. Now more than ever I would like to switch to a digital SLR camera...maybe someday! I've been looking at film SLRs on eBay since so many people are now switching to digital & getting rid of their film cameras. Until then, my Canon PowerShot does the job with a little bit of coaxing.

Oh, yeah...we were there for a conference, weren't we?





I drove back to Romania last Friday and brought a colleague from Slovakia with me. Nancy is helping us for a couple of weeks with our quarterly teacher training sessions; I'm sure the teachers are enjoying having some fresh ideas and a fresh face in front! Nancy stayed with me until our Monday night team meeting and then moved to another family's home for the week.

This week has been crazy busy with finishing a promotional brochure for the teacher training conference in September, helping teammate Jeff Broome pack up his family's belongings to ship back to the US, and being sick the last couple of days. Between all of that, I didn't have a lot of prep time for teaching tonight (probably good...no time to freak out about teaching in Romanian; just jump in and do it!).

For Kris' sake...here are a couple of pics from the container packing this morning. Sadly, I was in the container helping with the baby grand piano, so I have no pictures of the piano on the forklift. Or maybe that is for the better...

The loading crew...

Closing the doors...

And that's the short version of the saga that was this week. Maybe if I write more often I won't have quite so much to pack into one post, huh? Ok, it's off to bed for me. Have a happy Friday evening!

Budapest

Bursting At The Seams

When we started our Friday night youth meeting last October, we averaged around 15 teens each week. By December the numbers had dropped to 10-12 each week, and I was a little concerned.
When we went to the youth conference in Bucharest in December, we took the Friday night kids, the Sunday morning kids (some of whom never came on Friday nights), and a couple of teens who had been to camp with our teens before.
Over the last couple of months, these different groups have started to integrate a little bit more. We still have a sizable group that comes on Sunday morning but not Friday night (most of them orphans from either group homes or mentor apartments...they have their own "youth meeting" on Thursday evenings). But we don't really have a "Friday only" group or a "camp" group any more; they've all started coming on Sunday mornings. And another new group of boys has started to come as well. Last week we had 27 teens and 7 adults stuffed into a little basement room. Last night we had 24 teens and 8 adults. We're bursting at the seams!
Even more exciting than experiencing growth in numbers is watching spiritual curiosity and growth in the teens. It's fun for me to hear their questions and see their excitement for learning things from Scripture that they have never heard before. Two weeks ago, our pastor ended his sermon with a very direct salvation invitation, which is pretty rare here. Four of those teenagers (3 of them "camp only" kids and one a sibling of a "camp only" kid) responded and made decisions to repent of their sin and make Jesus Christ Lord of their lives! That makes giving up my Friday night "veg out" time not just a sacrifice, but a true joy and blessing to me, too!

Halfway!

Today we hit a major milestone - the halfway mark in this huge translation/publishing project that consumes most of my days.


The 6th (of 12) student manual came back from the print shop a couple of weeks ago, and today we finally finished the printing and binding of the accompanying student manual. We do the set up for both books - "we" being Gabi and I...she does the student manuals (much more complicated!) and I do the teacher manuals. The cost of "professional printing" for the teacher's manuals is prohibitive, so we do these pretty much "in-house." The student manuals are printed by MultiMedia International in Arad, a print shop started with the help of EBM personnel. Our print run for teacher's manuals, however, is only 65 - not worth firing up the big presses! So, when everything is ready for print, my trusty flash drive and I make a trip to the local copy center, get the original printed and copies made, and then head back to the office.


We use plastic comb binding for these books to help keep the costs down and make the manuals teacher-friendly at the same time. The binding machine and I have passed many hours of "bonding" time together. It's good for the arm muscles :)

We're going to have a celebration time soon with all of the translators and proofreaders who have worked on the project so far. I want them to know how much we appreciate their investment and how important this "halfway" milestone is. Now that we're halfway done, I'm starting to figure out how this whole translation/publication process works!