The Staff Retreat

I'm not sure if some of you were praying for the past weekend we had at the VCS staff retreat. If you did, thank you so much! It was so great to be there. Really refreshing, some great speaking by a guy I knew from my time in Austria a few years ago, playing lots of sports, and a fun "not so talented show". I think our upcoming newsletter in the mail will have a little more details so I'll leave it at that. I feel more rested after this weekend than any yet - plus encouraged about how God is working in me to change me and use me for whatever he wants here at VCS and wherever else.

This is us and our friends and neighbors, the Hannas, overlooking the city of Vienna. 

Hey Dad!!! Does this shirt look familiar?? :) 

my fourth grade class outside VCS 

that was ME

hey...the fourth grade one was from ME...anne.
thanks!
i'm so excited to be ON THE BLOG now.

a note from fourth grade

Okay, so I never thought fourth graders could come up with questions like the ones I've been hearing over the past few weeks. Wow! One boy asked me whether all water is holy because his father's priest says it is. Another boy asked me if God created only one continent and then it split apart into seven continents years after creation. I mean, really!
I have 13 kids in my class, and I think seven nations represented. Four kids are from South Korea, one from Nigeria, one from the Phillipines, one from Pakistan, one from England, a couple from Austria, and a few from the U.S.A.
It's been so much fun for me to watch kids from all over the world play dodgeball, eat lunch, speak English, and laugh together. Kids are the same everywhere...wow.

This is a cool shirt!! It's sorta bitter-sweet though, since Fisher's amazing shot was all for naught in the end. And now he's left us for Golden State. Oh well 

Volleyball and other sports

I've started being an assistant coach for the girls volleyball team at VCS. It's pretty cool, but athletics just aren't quite as serious here as they are in the US. The school here is much smaller (200 something students) so there aren't as many interested or that are very experienced. Also, it just seems that sport in general isn't quite as big of a deal (in Austria) - especially women's sports. VCS is a little different since it's an American-International school, though. Anyhow, we practice two times a week, and I feel like I'm the mean coach - I push them more. I think that's thanks to Eugene Kim (if you know him, you'll appreciate this more) since he taught me most everything I know about coaching volleyball. And compared to him I'm a softy.

Anyhow, we have only had 2 practices so far, and we have our first game next Monday in Bratislava. That's about an hour away - actually across the Austrian border just into Slovakia. I hear that this school is even smaller than VCS, so I think we have a chance of competing and winning.

Also, I'm co-teacher of 2 middle school boys PE classes. It's pretty fun most of the time. We're teaching them basketball now, but we they can't seem to focus very well or we feel they just need a good work out - we drill them. :) We use everything from leap frog to push ups to wheelbarrow races to "up-downs" (a football drill). It's pretty fun to watch them work themselves into shape. But don't worry - they are STILL junior highers and they still go crazy, we just try to get them in shape in the mean time.

Lieblingslehrer

I'm not sure if that is the right word in German for what I want to say, but I just wanted to say that I was just called that by a kid in my PE class. It's a kid that joined school late and his name is Dejan (say day-YAWN) - he was born in Austria and speaks alomst no English. So it's good practice for my German to speak with him. He's a 7th grader I think...
And just now in PE he said that I'm his favorite teacher - that's what the subject of this was supposed to mean.
Well, time for the staff meeting. Tschuss!!

As I type

There is a Polish guy in our apartment repairing the walls. He actually speaks less German than me since he's only been here one month. But I guess he knows what he's doing - speaking the international language of wall and tile repair. :) I'd take a picture, but I don't want to freak him out. By the way, he must be 6'6" - and I'm sure he could hurt me if he wanted. But he seems really nice.
Yay for Polish repair men!!

prayer

I (Chris) could use some prayer for something....
There have been some random small things happening - like missing the train, water leaking in our apartment, pieces of furniture breaking, etc. - and those things normally wouldn't be such a big deal. But recently it has been really frustrating to me - enough that I've been struggling with just getting mad. And then getting mad that I get mad. I feel like the key is my perspective and my attitude, plus my personality that really likes to have everything organized and "all my ducks in a row." It has to do with spiritual warfare, and I also just need to learn to let go of things and not feel like everything has to be just running right and organized and controlled. Uuuuggghh.

I'd really appreciate prayer for that because it's been controlling me at times, which really effects all of life. Thanks for reading. I'm feeling humbled and very weak.

Another sort of butt shot :) 

This is a nice butt shot of Dan, our neighbor, who was helping us with the initial stages of our water leakage problem.