days three and four: and the work begins.

Saturday morning our wakeup call came at 5:50.  May I just say, those extra 10 minutes really would have been nice. 

View from the balcony.  Beginning of sunrise over the Adriatic Sea.

Nevertheless, we were up and at it shortly after that, getting ready in time to make it to breakfast by 7:30.  I discovered at breakfast that morning that Europeans, or at least Slovenians, have a different standard of temperature when it comes to yogurt.  It was always slightly cool and had a bit of a grainy texture.  Hmm, no thanks.  I was thankful for all of the fresh fruit they had at every meal.  Never have I had so many meals consist predominantly of fruit.  Anyway, after breakfast we had our team devotions and got to work setting up all of our rooms.  Here is the wall the decoration folks put up:

By 4:00pm or so, all of the rooms were set up and we were ready for action.  Erin and I decided to venture outdoors and get a bit of fresh air.

It was freezing outside, so we walked for less than 20 minutes, and then went back inside to thaw out.  The team had dinner and the kids started arriving around 5:45.  We did worship songs with them, showed them the opening movie that talked about the 10/40 window, then went back to our class and decorated tote bags and told taught them a bit more.  These kids came from all over Eastern Europe and not all of them spoke English.  It was interesting to me to see how these kids got along without knowing much or any English.  Some of the other kids served as interpreters, others we just did the best we could with.  They all seemed to have fun, and that's the most important thing.  The kids left around 8, then our team had to get set up for the morning.  There was a bit of a learning curve on how to work together and how that would look in our classes.  Had a team debrief, talking over the evening, tweaked a few things, then off to our rooms and off to bed.  I got more sleep than two hours, but it still wasn't enough. 

Sunday morning, the alarm went off at 5:50.  Again, much too early, but at least this time it was intentional.  Courtney took the first shower while I tried to rouse myself awake.  We were at breakfast by 7:00, team devotions by 7:30, then a few minutes to prep for the day, and the kids started arriving 8:30ish.  It was my first day to teach and the kids were learning about the Tajik people living in Tajikistan.  Overall, the morning went well, but it still seemed a little like things were in slight chaos in the class.  It's bound to feel that way with 47 kids ages 6-8, but we figured there had to be something we could be doing better.

 

Next, it was lunchtime.  Let me say, one of the worst things about the meal schedule was that it was adapted to the conference schedule.  Which means, as soon as the session got out, the parents came to pick up their kids, and everyone descended on the dining room all at once.  By the time our team went down 15-20 minutes later, it was just about enough time for all the seats to be taken and the food to be well picked over.  Not that the food was all that wonderful to begin with, but it's always nice to get a bit of a selection.  Anyway, we had the afternoon "off," but had a few things to prepare, then Courtney and I got in a short (too short) nap.  It was that I'm not sure that it helped, I just felt drugged after it kind of nap.  That evening we had our first movie night, which featured "Up."  One of the guys on our team created a script and a puppet show that coincided with the movie to incorporate a message in it.  It was creative and the kids loved it.  The only problem was that we had some technical difficulties at the beginning, which caused us to start 30 minutes late, and having to cut the movie short.  All in all, it was a good day (other than the fact that I felt like I was sleepwalking at times).  Team debrief, then it was off to bed.