Frozen until Monday...

So we had the heater repairman come this morning, only to find out he cannot fix it. He said the pump was bad and we would have to call the company of the heater to fix that. Matt called, but they didn't speak English and his German isn't good enough to explain the situation. So we had to call someone who does speak German and have them call for us. All this to say, they cannot come until Monday....until then, we are without heat and hot water. I cannot imagine how they did this all of the time in the olden days. One of the things I didn't even think about was although I can still cook, there is no hot water to wash the dishes. So did they not use hot water to do the dishes? Or did they like me, have to heat up hot water on the stove to do them?

We have decided to borrow some bigger pots from the school so we can have more of a real bath instead of a few inches of warm water, which should be nice for the weekend.

Anyways, please pray for the following three things for us...1)that we will have good attitudes as we endure the cold...2)that it will get fixed when the company repairman comes on Monday morning...3) that our landlord will cover the costs, as it will be expensive.

Thanks for caring, thanks for praying! We hope you all have a great weekend!

FROZEN

Although it is cold outside in Vienna, it is just as cold in our apartment. Since Sunday, our heating system that provides us with hot water and a warm apartment has randomly been working. Sometimes we would have hot water and heat, and sometimes we wouldn't. Needless to say, we have spent most of our time at home under a few layers of blankets! Then last night the heater quit completely. So this morning, I felt old fashioned as I used every pot I own (2) and my kettle to warm up hot water on the stove. Which, of course, didn't add up to much and resulted in a very freezing bath experience. Then we got to start the whole process over again. Thankfully a repairman is coming tomorrow morning, and we are praying he will be able to fix it!

The Start of 2008

After having a wonderful break from school, celebrating Christmas and New Years, we are trying to get back into the groove of things. Today was our first day of school, and needless to say, getting up this morning was rough. However, we must admit that we are ready to get back into the pattern and chaos of our life here at VCS. Crazy, I know! But we have missed the students and even all of the chaos, so it will be nice to get back to the things we love.

Anyways, we hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years, and we are excited to share our lives with you in 2008!

Here is a short clip of the 12 Days of Christmas at VCS that our senior boys came up with. Enjoy the humor of VCS.

Definitely Ugly--But a Win

Matt and I are coaching the high school boys basketball team together. Last night was our first game, against our arch rivals, International Christian School of Budapest. It was a home game for us, so thankfully we didn't have to travel. This team is a very physical team, which makes for a rough game. The first five minutes looked great and we easily took a strong lead (they were playing man defense). Then they got smart, and switched to a 2-3 zone on us. For some reason our boys cannot break down a zone, therefore, we don't score. Obvisouly the other coach realizes this, and he sat in a zone the rest of the game. We'll just say we only scored 3 points in the entire third quarter, and in the beginning of the fourth quarter, one of our starters and few posts, fouled out. So the fourth quarter starts and we are down by 8, which isn't much, but keep in mind we are NOT scoring against the zone. We as coaches, finally get fed up with it, and make them full court, man-to-man press. They get a few steals, and we're now down to the last 2 minutes, and behind by 5 points. We tell the boys to just start taking outside shots even though we only have one decent outside shooter, because we had to start getting some kind of shot off. Then DK rips a 3, and we are down by two. Then one of our starters gets hurt and has to come off the court. With less than a minute left, we get the ball on offense and start moving it around, I keep thinking time has to be up, it has to be up, are we ever going to get a shot off?!? Then DK shoots another three.....and its good! We're up by one, with one second left! We obviously ended up winning, but we're still shocked that we did. Ready for the final score? A whopping 26-25. At least our defense was good! However, we definitely need to work on breaking down a zone! A win is a win, and we'll take it, no matter how ugly, especially against our rivals!

Thankfulness from the eyes of a 7th Grade Korean Student

"I am thankful that God has created me. When I would not be born, I would never have this happy, sad, lonely, angry, and surprised moments. If I would bot be born, I would feel lonely, and want to have fun too. I will try to do good things, take this chance and feel more, do more even if I am feeling happy, lonely...I will take this chance!"

The chance she is talking about is taking a couple of days off school and take a chance to be thankful, even if she isn't an American.

Thanksgiving!

Contrary to popular belief, we actuall did have Thanksgiving day off here because we are still an "American" school. It was a much needed, and very nice break. We had Thursday and Friday off. On Thursday we spent the day at a good friend's house with lots of other good friends and way to much food! It was a yummy feast! We were also able to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Packers/Lions game. It was a good day.

As Matt and I were talking about what we are thankful for we talked about how a lot of times most of the things on our thankful list are "things." Of course we always put family and friends on there, followed by a huge list of earthly possessions. Beings we are away from family, and don't have much as far as "things" we found our thankful list to be kind of short. As we continued to talk about it, we realized our list should be short, because we don't need all of these earthly things, and how much more we need God than our family and friends.

Our conversation reminded us of one of our favorite songs. The lyrics are simple yet something we all need to be reminded of everyday, that all we need is God.

All We Need is You by Charlie Hall

Rich or poor God I want You more
Than anything that glitters in this world
Be my all, all consuming fire.

We have all we need in You
And all we need is You
All we need is You

You can have all my hands can hold
My heart, mind, strength and soul
Be my all, all consuming fire.

Home Alone

I thought since I was home alone tonight it would be a good night to blog. Matt is at the last play rehearsal before the play opens tomorrow night. Matt was put in charge of the lighting for the play, so he has to be there for everything. The play has really been consuming his time the last few weeks, so I have been busy finding other things to fill my time with.

This weekend most of the Christmas Markets of Vienna open up, so while Matt is at the Saturday showing, I am going to go check out a few of the markets. I absolutely love them! They are full of little booths a few with hot drink, warm food and lots of yummy snacks, however most of them are shopping booths. People from all over Austria bring their homemade goods to sell. They have a ton of amazing Christmas ornaments as well as other fun gifts for Christmas. But I love the atmosphere the most, it is so festive!

I am also planning on getting out my Christmas decorations this weekend, so that should be really fun!

Well, it is off to watch a chicflick for me.

Senior Pancake Breakfast

Steph and DK making pancake and waffle batter.

All week we have been getting everything ready and organizing stuff for our pancake breakfast. The pancake breakfast was started years ago as a fundraiser the senior class does to help pay for their senior trip. It is a lot of work, but definitely worth it! We were at the school until 6 Friday night working on stuff. Then we got up early and was at the school at 7:45 am (super sad we didn't get to sleep in at all) so Stephanie could start mixing the batters for the pancakes and the waffles. At 8:30 our parent help and all of the senior class showed up to help cook, and get everything set up. It started at 9:30, and from then until 11:30, we served people pancakes and waffles, sausage, fruit, juice and coffee. We had over 100 people there, so it was a great turnout. Stephanie had to keep running downstairs to make more pancake and waffle batter. She made her pancake and waffle recipe 17 times over!

How well do you know your seniors placemat?

Throughout the morning we had different forms of entertainment. We had interactive placemats, cartoon corners, live music, videos made by the senior class, and of course, the auction.

The Serving Line

At 10:30 we had an auction, which is the biggest part of this fundraiser. Each senior had to be involved in a service we auctioned off. The services ranged from golf lessons, soccer camp, guitar lessons, babysitting, computer help, and slave labor. Stephanie decided to join in on the "fun" and she auctioned off one dessert a month from November until June. Her service was bought for 65 euros. Everything auctioned off and made a good price, so we definitely had success!

David Introducing DK's service at the auction.

Thankfully everyone chipped in to help clean everything up, and we were done and ready to leave the school at one! We came home and totally crashed on the couch, to nap and watch some tv.

End of Soccer Season

In the last week of the soccer season, we had an extremely busy week.
Monday in Budapest against ICSB. This game should have been an easy win for us, however it was not. We travelled 3 hours in the vans and got there to find out that we had to be off the field by 5 and the game was supposed to start at 4. So we played 25 minute halves just like 11 and 12 year olds. It was very frustrating, but we could do nothing about it I guess. We were winning 1-0 at half-time. After the half we got an early goal to make it 2-0. However, ICSB got some motivation at that point and put in a goal which game them even more motivation. With about 10 minutes to go they tied it up. Our guys responded really well and dominated the rest of the guy but were unable to put in another goal.

The game ended even more prematurely than we expected when some old Hungarian guys walked onto the field in the middle of the game and told us to get off so they could warm up for their game that was to start in 15 minutes (the practice field wasn't good enough I guess). What a wild time in Hungary.

On Tuesday, we were scheduled to play in Vienna at 4 (it gets dark now about 5:15). Well the team we were supposed to play did not go to the right field so they were 1 hour late. Well the field we rent doesn't really have lights. Well it does, but only 2 lights and only on 1 side of the field. But we played anyways. Thomas and I were on the side opposite the 2 lights so we saw very little of the game (the parts that were near us). Even despite the dark, our guys played one of their best games to that point and we won 5-0.

On Friday, we travelled back to Budapest to play their American International School. This is a school of about 800 students compared to ours which is just over 200. Quite a difference. However, we put our best game together and dominated the enitre game and won 2-0. It should have been much more but the keeper made some really good saves and we had trouble putting away our easy chances.

All in all it was a very good season. We had our ups and downs on the field, but Thomas and I feel the guys grew a lot in their lives. They were exposed to some hard times on and off the field, but showed their true colors by putting together 2 great games at the end of the season.