Thanksgiving weekend

We've had a really great guest the past couple days - Kelsey. She's a friend of ours from Bloomington and was in our Bible study. She's been a lot of fun - and we've been showing her around Vienna at some touristy things and enjoying some more western/American type things here. She's been in Romania for months and they have much much less variety and choices with food and other things there. So she's been loving things here like vegetables, beef, butter, etc. that just isn't the same in Romania. Today we went to a cool outdoor Christmas market and to the main Vienna cemetary (to look at gravesites of lots of famous people like Shubert, Beethoven, Strauss, Schoenberg, Brahms, and more).
See the picture below for visual help.

Anne and Kelsey at a Christmas market eating monster-size pretzels. I helped, too. :) 

Parent Teacher Conferences

Well, it was just on Friday that the big day happened. Anticipation was in the air. An extra pot of coffee was brewing in the staff room. Ties adorned the chests of every male teacher in the hopes of a professional display.
But theses weren't just any old Parent Teacher Conferences - many were meetings with parents of very different cultures. Anne met with an animated Nigerian father. Chris met with a father, whose children have Indian decent but have been raised in Austria. But what made this meeting that Chris had so interesting, was the non-verbal communication between Chris and the Indian man. He was asking some great questions about how I try to make the Bible interesting since he finds it hard to communicate that to his kids. As I was explaining, he was shaking his head no. The more I spoke, he would verbally affirm that he understood and agreed, and then proceeded to shake his head no.
After a few minutes of me trying to ignore his mixed up verbal and nonverbal cues, I remembered something: shaking the head from side to side meant "YES" for his culture! Oh duh, Chris. I should have remembered that from when I spoke with refugees from that part of the world. So then I found myself nodding my head up and down in agreement as he was speaking. I thought, OH NO! I'm saying "NO" to him. So I tried to stop but it was so hard. :)

Anyhow, it was really funny in my head, but the father probably had no idea what was going on for me. :)

Panel

I had a panel today for my 9th grade Bible class. It was made up of some VCS staff who answered questions that the students wrote on cards about studying the Bible. It was pretty cool, and tomorrow there will be another one for my other 9th grade class. There were some good questions asked like "Do you think it's better to use a devotional book with studying the Bible, or just the Bible?" and "How do you keep from getting distracted when you read the Bible?" and "What exactly do you do when you study the Bible?"
I think it was helpful, at least to some of the students. :) Do your work, God. I'm just your weak servant.

WOWZERS!!

An awesome thing happened yesterday!! Two students decided to commit to following Jesus with their life!! Both are new students, speak very little English (they speak German, actually), and are brother and sister. I think their nationality is Macedonian or something in the Balkans, but they are Austrian. The boy, Dejan (day YAWN) is in my PE class and his sister Sonja is in my 7th grade Bible class. I could see a difference today in the light in their faces. And I feel privileged to just be a part of their lives and exposure to Jesus - the way the truth and the life. If you remember, a few weeks ago, I mentioned Dejan (I think) as the student who said I was his favorite teacher. I think that was just because I spoke to him in German and most teachers at the school don't speak much German. He's a cool kid, just gets distracted easily. I guess that's not rare with Jr. Highers. :)

Another awesome thing is that I've been getting to know another 7th grader named Rifat (RE faht) from Bangledesh. He's in my PE and Bible class - very smart and much bigger than all the other kids. He's Muslim and has been celebrating Ramadan. But he also believes some things about Jesus and the Bible. He and I met during lunch (but we didn't eat) to talk about some questions he has. He's really feeling stuck in the middle of both religions and seems to genuinely want to know the truth.

Please pray for these three kids if you can. Dejan, Sonja, and Rifat. Maybe I'll get a picture of them on here sometime. :)

The best ice cream in town, in our opinion!!! 

finally

It seems like it's been forever since I've had a complete day that I feel good about. I didn't get frustrated with lesson plans, difficult students, reprimanded by Austrians ("schimpf-ing"), or just totally wiped out by a long day. I actually got home around 5pm. amazing. einfach erstaunlich.

so it seems wierd that it's election day in the US. There just isn't any hoopla about it here. Good thing - but they sure do talk about US politics here more than Austrian politics (as far as I can tell). Maybe it's more interesting or entertaining. It sells, I guess.

Anne and I went on a walk for an hour and a half or so around "the Ring". It's basically the city center that has one main street that goes all the way around it. We saw all kinds of cool restaurants, cafes, a music museum, some old churches, and of course some Leckerbissen.

What is Leckerbissen you ask? It's German for a "tasty treat" - e.g. ice cream at Zanoni and Zanoni. :) it's open 365 days a year!! see the picture above