A fun video by one of the students...

Here is a video done by one of the students here. Please note that this event was just under an hour...but went through the whole range of weather possibilities...(to compliment my pictures). Enjoy!

2nd Annual Ugly Duckling Cup

Hi All,
This last Thursday was the 2nd Annual Ugly Duckling Cup...a dorm competition that involved students from the dorm building their own boats and racing them on the pond here on campus. Perhaps you remember last year the pictures we posted of us all carrying the boat across the city. This year Karklu won again (but now we live in Neumann West...we got second place!), and there were some extra added elements, like a quick relay before the boat race, where runners, 3-legged racers, and piggy backers had to pass off their team's flag (the baton, if you will), and then there were three sets of sailors, so each team had to sail their boat across the pond three times. As you will see in the pictures, the weather was typical Klaipeda weather...but a good time was had by all!

Here is one of my favorite pictures of the day, the rest can be seen here.


Have a great weekend!

Stir crazy

One thing that I did not anticipate properly about overseas work is how small the bubble you live in actually is. A colleague of mine compared it to when she worked on a cruise ship for 6 months. The options for people to befriend outside of work are very limited...especially when you live at work (in her case, a boat...in our case, eastern Europe).

That being said, we are doing well, don't worry about us. But please pray that we would be able to find community and balance of personal life and work life.

We are taking time to go out on a date tonight (much needed), and hopefully will get out of town for a day or two this weekend. It will be so nice to be off campus for a little while! (to put it into even more perspective...I am one of those who spent a lot of time being a commuter when I was in college. I lived in a dorm for a total of three semesters when I was a student, the rest of time was spent living off campus. Being a wife of an RD, I am now on my third semester of living in a dorm when I'm not a student. It is definitely one of those "God has such a sense of humor" situations). :)

Hope everyone is doing well.

Intercultural Olympics

The Intercultural Olympics is a day (Saturday) of games planned by the Intercultural student leaders and their supervisor Sarah. Teams of students representing their country play a bunch of fun camp-type games at the Velodrome (bike track) near LCC. Steve and I made an appearance before heading out to the market. It was a beautiful day! Here is a link to the pictures I took (the batteries of the camera died, so there aren't very many pictures, and of the the pictures taken, there isn't that much variety, sorry).

Hope everyone is doing well!

A Weekend of Food

One of the best parts of working at a university with students is getting to spend time with them. And like most people one of the best ways to spend time together is around a table of food. This takes on a whole new meaning when working at an international university.

Last fall, Laura and I had the opportunity to travel to Izmir, Turkey and visit some Balci family (long time family friends). While with Murat, Sedan, Osman, Feyhan, and Suti (their housekeeper), we enjoyed a Turkish dish called börek. Börek is a flaky pastry that is most often filled with savory ingredients. The crust is phyllo dough (puff pastry) and then insides are usually spinach and cheese, meat, tomato and onion, etc. Börek quickly became one of our favorite foods and something that we have been longing to learn how to make ourselves, so that we can enjoy it more often.

Last year during Bible study we were sharing a meal with our students and talking about native dishes for each country. One girl, Aina, from Albania said that most Albainian dishes had been influenced by the history of Ottoman Empire rule in their country for about 500 years. So I asked if Börek was one such influence. Our hearts and stomachs rejoiced when Aina said that of course Albainians ate börek. Only in Albainia it is spelled byrek. A few weeks later Aina made us some byrek.

On Friday, Aina, Eri, and Juli (all ladies from Albainia) came over to our apartment to show us how to make byrek from scratch. It is a bit of a time consuming task, but so worth the effort. Laura was in charge of observing the creation of the phyllo dough and I was was in charge of helping and observing the making of the filling for two different types of byrek (spinach and feta; tomato and onion). We had a great time learning, talking, laughing, and of course eating our final product. Ummm, I can still taste it. Here are some pictures for you get a "taste" of what a delight byrek is.



Oh, deliciousness (a.k.a. byrek or börek)


Aina and Laura rolling out the layers of dough.


Juli and Eri filling the tomato and onion byrek.


The preparations.



Our lovely byrek teachers enjoying their hard work.


Also, last evening, Iva, one of my RAs from last year came over for dessert to catch up from the summer. She has been in Greece working this summer and brought us a Greek treat that is like a Russian Tea biscuit, but had whole almonds in them. They were great. And it was a great time to catch up with Iva and hear her tales from the summer.

Finally, today we held our first dorm potluck for the year, here in Neumann at noon. Vasile, who was our neighbor last year and now on my RA staff instigated and planned the event. In all about 12 people came, but we shared chicken, pasta, pasta salad, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, borsht, tiramisu, and sausage and apple egg bake. It was a great time of eating and getting to know some students we haven't really met yet.

Now we are off to church where we will enjoy an ice cream social after the service. It has been a good weekend.

Here!

Hey All,
My textbooks arrived in the mail today! Yay! I will only be a little bit behind, but will use this weekend to catch up (my instructor has given me grace!).
Thank you for praying!
Laura

Prayer Request

Hi All, just wanted to share a request.

I am currently taking an online course Cultural Dimensions in Mission (North Park Seminary). I am really liking it, and it is immensely practical and applicable to me right now! I have been able to borrow 3 of the 5 books I need for the class (either from the library or other people here). The others I have ordered via the internet. I ordered them in mid-august, with the intent that they would be shipped in 4-14 business days. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the 14th business day. I need to have read and reported on one of the books by Wednesday. The books have not arrived.

Pray that I would get a little slip of paper in my mailbox that says I have a package waiting for me. That would be amazing.

I am a pretty fast reader/writer, so I still think that tomorrow night and into Wednesday is enough time to complete the assignment. Just need the book!

I appreciate your prayers...and I will let you know when the books get here!

First week of school: check!

It is now the Saturday after the first week of school. Needless to say, we slept in. We're going to take it easy this weekend. Maybe eat some breakfast, go to the market, have some friends over for pizza and games.


Here is a picture of the Student Life Staff getting their butts kicked by the faculty in the tug o war at Community Day (last Wednesday).


Happy Saturday!