Things are changing, things are changing.  Not only has Burke redesigned our website (do you like it?), but we are introducing a new page to our blog.  The YWAM page.  It isn’t currently, but very soon it will be password protected.  We’ll tell you why on that page, but please, please, please leave a comment or email me at lizzie [at] burkeandlizzie [dot] com if you’d like to access that page.  I’ll be writing a lot of content for said page– I even intend to write a few posts this weekend– to share what we are learning and experiencing in our school.  I’m going to continue to update this regular page too, but it will include mostly travel photos and stories.

For now, I’d like to update you on who we are with!

Students and staff of our school

Although we don’t look it, we are quite a diverse group. The students are:

The rest of the people in the photo are our amazing staff, they include:

Sounds fun, right?  It is.  It’s also crazy to think that we have been here for three weeks already.  It definitely feels like every day is a week, but yet, all of those day-weeks are adding up so quickly.  To quote an artist I once loved,

“How time can move both fast and slow amazes me.”

Too true.  During these first three weeks and next week, I have been on the cooking staff for my work duty.  So I am planning and preparing meals with one other person, a Slovak, nonetheless.  His cooking experience is limited to pasta, so I generally take the lead on the menu, resulting in a lot of “foreign” food.

One meal in particular was chili and cornbread.  I’ll give you the rundown on how it went from there…

Janko: Lizzie, what we gonna have for dinner? (insert animated hand movements)
Me: Chili and cornbread, remember?
Janko: How can we make that? (more hand movements, demonstrating the shape of a banana pepper-shaped chili)
Me: Nooo, chili doesn’t mean chili pepper.  Chili is a meal we have in America.  Kind of like a soup… like a gulaš, really.  It’s Mexicky gulaš (Mexican goulash).
Janko: Okay, so we have peppers, potatoes…. what else?
Me: No, we aren’t putting potatoes in the chili.
Janko: No potatoes?
Me: Nope, no potatoes.
Janko: (face drops, stops all hand movements)  Then this is not gulaš.

I live for conversations like these!  Cultural divides can be so entertaining.

In other news, I am 25 now.  With 8 days of the year under my belt, I’ve got to say it seems like it will be a good one.  I managed to get in all 100 of my miles during the month of September and I’ve already put 80 miles on my new Nike Frees (thanks again to Lisa!).

Birthday Bench!

Oddly enough, this young man also sitting on the bench with me also had his birthday on the 23rd.  What’s really crazy, though, is that he is from Fresno, CA (Burke’s hometown).

Don’t forget to tell me if you are interested in our YWAM page!  I really want to share the amazing things we are doing and going to do!  Lots of Love from Slovakia!