The Final Countdown! (But not)

13 more days! In 13 days I will be home! Words cannot express how excited I am! I will be arriving at 6:30 PM, and my family and two bestest friends are meeting me at the airport! I will be crying, no doubts there.
But moving on, let me catch you up on the horribleness that was this weekend. Basically it is sufficient to say I spent a lot of quality time with the bathroom floor. I slept on it for 6 hours Saturday night, and spent close to another two hours sitting on it on Sunday. I am not sure what I had, but it was in no way fun. I slept well over 27 hours in two days and spent all but two of my awake hours sitting in bed. I read all of Catching Fire, and listened to 'Perfect or Something' probably close to 20 times. Pretty much I went insane.
I have still not eaten a full meal. All I can say is that today's lunch better be good. Because I plan on eating a lot of it.
This is a very pathetic blog, I'm sorry, but I have nothing more to write at the moment.

Experimenting with media

So to keep my promise this is going to start with a list of acceptable places to wake up right before going. To those of you who are friends with me on Facebook you may remember the status that I am referring to, but for those of you who are not, first you should be, and second I will retype it all out for you. I like waking up very close to when I have to be somewhere. It's like a game, like 'Alright you wake up looking like a you're dead, so you have 10 minutes to make yourself look as close to a productive member of society as you can. Ready? Go!'. Its is in a weird font because I actually copied and pasted it from Facebook so I would get all the words  exactly right, because I write a honest blog, no shortcuts here! And this is my list of places this is O.K. to do this for: School, Work, Hanging out with Friends, A date (If you have been dating longer then 3 weeks), going to Wal-mart, Sitting watching TV, Going to the Cheap Theater, McDonalds, The Library, and probably a lot of other places. Now I am also going to include some places you should probably not do this for, just to make sure you don't do this and blame it on me when it doesn't go well: Your Wedding, Prom, A First Date, A Job Interview, and The First Day of School. Once again this is not an all-inclusive group, so before doing this, you may want to check with other people first.
Now the title of this blog is because I am going to try to spice things up and throw in some pictures, and a video, but I am not sure what I am doing so we'll see how this goes.

First up is a picture of my dorm-mates and I at the Bible School Director's house. We were invited there to watch a movie and have cake for Asia's birthday. From left to Right: Me (I hope you would know that), Asia from Poland, Danielle from Brazil, Noemie from Quebec, Angela from Brazil, and Tereza from Czech Republic.Watch out for the red-eye.

And now a time-lapse video of one hour of my Old Testament Survey class, staring your's truly. But it didn't work, and the message is in Hungarian so you are just going to have to wait. Because tonight I am going to my mentor's house, so now I need to do some homework. Maybe,  might just end up on Facebook. No way to know.

Hungary 1956

So today I went to a rememberence celebration in Toalmas. Basically I stood outside in a cold mist and listened to people speak Hungarian for about half an hour by myself, because no one else from school wanted to go. But thanks to the history lesson we received in Presidential Chapel last Tuesday I at least knew why we were remembering, and thanks to Reka's hard work in my Hungarian class, I could pick out obscure numbers and even the occasional word, but with no context it was not very helpful. But since I am going to be living her for another 7ish months, I wanted to be as involved in community life as I can, I mean how many of you can say you have been to a Hungarian rememberence celebration? Not many. Now I would like to take the time to tell you why this occurs each year on October 23rd.

Obviously Hungary is a European nation, and so was super involved in World War II. Unfortunately they were part of Nazi occupied territory for a long time. In 1945 the Soviet Union 'liberated' Hungary from the Nazis. But instead of being all like 'No problem glad to help, have a good time ruling your own country.' The Soviets were more like 'Hey it looks nice here, lets stay.' And long story short they communisted the country. Intimidation, false accusations, torture, and imprisonment were used to keep political challenges from arising. The capitalist economy was forced to transform into a socialist one, leaving the majority of Hungarians with a horrible standard of living. More then 7,000 people were 'relocated' to a camp in Eastern Hungary for disagreeing with the government. Schools taught Communist Principles, and Russian language became required. People were placed in concentration camps, tortured, and executed. What it boils down to is that Hungary was one of the most repressed countries in Europe in the 1950's. And considering what a mess Europe was after WWII, that's saying a lot.
So by October of 1956, there were a lot of unhappy people in Hungary, and they decided that enough was enough. A group of students began a protest on October 23rd, and soon over 20,000 people had joined it. A 30 foot statue of Stalin was torn down, and basically the protesters did a whole bunch of illegal stuff, but totally had reason to do so. The government reacted by killing a lot of them, by shooting from the windows of the government building they surrounded. Early the next morning, at like 2:00 AM, the Prime Minister of Hungary AKA Evil Communist Dictator Who Is Super Horrible or ECDWISH, called in tanks. Also this was the night ECDWISH traded places with some other horrible person, and so there was a new Prime Minister. But once again to shorten the story, there was a lot of fighting, and the army killed a lot of people. The Hungarian revolutionaries fought the tanks with Motolov Cocktails, and eventually the Soviets got the picture and left.
But on November 4th, the Soviets totally lied and said 'No don't worry, we don't want to live in your country anymore.' But really were thinking 'Actually we are like on your doorstep and going to come in even though you didn't invite us back.' They are like the guests at Christmas who come with out being invited, and then leave for the weekend and come back for New Years. The Hungarians and Soviets fought for 6 days, and once again a lot of people died. The Hungarians lost, and once again were under Soviet rule.
The consequences for the revolution were huge, 13,000 were imprisoned, hundreds were executed, and over 200,000 fled the country as refugees. The Hungarians lived under communist rule until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Then there were treaties and a whole bunch of political things I don't really understand.
But that is the story of the Revolution of 1956, and why the people here remember this day every year with a holiday. Even though I understood .01% of the things being said, and it was cold and misty, I am very honored to have been able to be a part of this celebration of the brave Hungarians that fought to make their country better.

Please note that the information I have provided it all from Al Konya, and Wikipedia. And I highly doubt the Soviets used the language I did, well obviously they didn't speak English, but I mean I doubt it was the same wording or anything, I paraphrased.
Tune in next time for my list of acceptable places to wake up 10 minutes before going to! :)
Also Josh Durham is by far my most dedicated reader because I have my own short cut on his internet page, the rest of ya'll should try to be more like him.

Wow! Two posts in one week!

That's right ya'll, be impressed, I am a blogging maniac this week. Actually I was studying (GASP) my Systematic Theology notebook, and realized there are a lot of great quotes in my frantic scribbling. So this is going to consist of those quotes, and who they are by. Some of them are from lecturers, and some are random quotes from my classmates. Some are super deep, and some are just stupid. Take them all as you will. I am also doing this because there are way to many to update them all as my status on Facebook, especially when I use that to keep you all up to date on my eating habits, currently kiwi for those of you who have not seen it, bird or fruit, I am giving no clues. So lets get started!

"Sometimes all we can say of God is what He is not."-Dr. Scott Horrell
"You don't grieve a cosmic force, you grieve someone who loves you."- Dr. Scott Horrell
"5+3=8 whether you are in 3rd Grade or at Harvard."- Dr. Carlos Pinto
"No matter how entrenched a culture has become in its sin, still deep down God has left His morals imprinted on our hearts."- Dr. Carlos Pinto
"If you only broke God's law once a day for the rest of your life, you know what people would call you? A saint, they would build a statue of you. You know what God would call you? A hell deserving sinner." -Dr. Carlos Pinto
"Earn your salvation? What makes you think you can offer God something more valuable then the life of His son?" -Dr. Carlos Pinto (Yeah this man has a lot of things to say.)
"Salvation is absolutely free. Discipleship may cost you everything." -Dr. Carlos Pinto
"Red is Red. Truth is Truth." - Paul Weaver
"Satan does not commit our sin, he commits his own, and we sin when we listen to him." -Rohme Dyck
"If we bear God's image, then it is Him we need to study to learn more about ourselves." - Rohme Dyck
" I reflect the image of God. My husband will reflect the image of God. Together we will reflect the image of God better." - Rohme Dyck adapted by me
"Because of Adam we are all going to die. Because of Jesus we can all be saved."- Rohme Dyck
"This is one big class of sinful." - Rohme Dyck
"You rarely see giraffes in the forest playing chess with each other." -Rohme Dyck
               "Ummmmm..... you rarely see giraffes in the forest at all." -Me
"We have been designed to sin, because of our sinful nature."- Rohme Dyck
"Our problem is not that we are sinful, but that we are not even trying to be saved." - Rohme Dyck
"God didn't tell us everything we want to know. He told us everything we need to know." -Al Konya
"Our respect and love for God is no greater then our respect and love for God's word." - Al Konya
"When you have your quiet time in the morning, the authority, the nature, the importance of those words is the same as if Jesus were standing in front of you saying those words with His own voice." - Al Konya
And to end the quote section of this post one from Kevin, " It's like a parrot! But a little one. A little parrot. Like a parakeet! Parakeet soup! No! parakeet tea! That's the name of our movie." This was him trying to translate the title of a movie he has on Youtube from Portuguese to English for me.
These are only quotes from three classes, so I'm sure in a few weeks I will do another post like this, because some of these are too good not to put online somewhere, and like I said, my Facebook status is already occupied.
I received very few ideas for things to do in class, probably because only like three people read this, but anyway I am still looking for more so let me know. Byes!

I'm really not dead, just busy.

Hey ya'll. So I promise I'm not dead. I just really forget that I have this thing, and that some people (namely my parents and apparently Geoff) read it. For those of you not in Hungary (AKA everyone except Geoff), Geoff is an intern here who loves to play Catan, Monopoly Deal, Carcassone, Bang, Kemps, and other games. Which obviously makes him someone that I hang out with on a regular basis, as I also love games of all kinds. Also falling into this category are Kevin and Jess. There is rarely a day that we do not play a game of some sort.
Since being here, actually just yesterday, I have found the best chocolate in the world. It is Milka. A type called "Season of Happiness" Basically it's pear flavored chocolate. I could probably eat it almost constantly. But if I do that, then I would be fat. And I drink enough Coke that this could be a legitimate problem.
Let me try to explain my schooling to those that don't go here. I have classes four days a week, Monday- Thursday. Form 8:00AM to 1:00 PM. There is one class we have for an extended period of time, currently it is "Bible Study Methods". I will have this class one or two hours a day, from now until the middle of November. The other class changes from week to week. So far I have had "Personal Evangelism", "Trinitarinism", "Dispensationalism", and am currently in "Angelology, Anthropology, and Hamertiology." I have had exams on the first three, and am completely done with them for the year. So instead of taking how ever many classes normal college students take, and having like two hours of class a day, I take one class for 12ish hours a week, and then move on to the next one. It works pretty well.
Those of you who know me well know that I am a multitasker. So I am going to leave you with two lists, showing what exactly I do in class.
Things I have done in Class(and will probably do again):
Drank tea
Read my Bible
Get names from the Bible that I might name my children (112 so far)
Write titles for every chapter of the Bible (I'm through Deuteronomy thus far)
Read my 'Basic Theology' text book
Written letters
Made this list
Made bracelets(four types as of now, I'm learning more)
Taken AWESOME notes (Seriously, my hand hurts from writing so much)
Learned a lot about the Bible and God I have never even thought of before.

Things I plan on doing in class:
Writing my Last Will and Testament
Knit mittens (For Jess)
Write a Psalm
Cross-Stitch some butterflies

If any of you have more ideas for me, please let me know. I'm not sure how many bracelets I can make and still have room to take them home!

Thoughts from my "Tinitarinism Class"

Adam, the first man lived to be 930 years old. His son, Seth, was bor nwhen he was 130. He had at least two sons prior to Seth, Cain and Abel. We know Cain killed Abel before Seth was born, and that both boys were old enough to work by the time of Abel's murder so lets say Adam had them when he was 100. That gives him 830 years between when he started to have children and when he died. Lets also say that Eve lived as long as Adam (there is no record of her death). And since Adam was her husband, that also gives her 830 years to have children. 830 years is 9960 months. Thats 1106 nine month sections. That means they could have 1106 kids! But Eve would probably want some time between each of these pregnancies, say a month. Thats still 996 ten month sections.
Lets say women today live to be about 90. They hit menopause around 45ish. So half their life. Half of Eves life would be 465 years. So once the 100 years before she had Cain and Abel, thats still 365 years. Thats 4380 months. And 486 nine month sections or 438 ten month sections. Thats a freaking lot of kids!
I used to wonder how on Earth it ever worked for so many people to come from just two, but now that I've done the math, it's so much easier to understand. Because the kids Eve had when she was 130, were having kids by the time she was 230. Which is a lot of people living a long time and having a lot of kids.

I believe this was a productive class period.

The day after a "6 Kilometer" Hike

It has been forever since I've updated this thing, I'm sorry. But honestly now that I'm here this whole website is in Hungarian and it's rather stressful to try to navigate it, also I am just a procrastinator and this doesn't have a deadline, so I just put it off till my mother asks for 'a long newsy letter' then I feel bad, and am guilted into writing a rambling, incoherent update on my life, which I am sure ya'll have been dying to read. (Did you know guilted is not a word, at least according to my spell check. I did not until I wrote it in that last sentence)
I have now had one week of 'classes'. Really three days of class and two days of street evangelism in Budapest. It was the most amazing terrifying thing I have ever done. I had no idea what to expect and I mean I speak exactly 4 words in Hungarian. "yes" "no" "thank you" and "hello" Which are not especially helpful when trying to share God with people. But God provided and I was able to have several amazing conversations with different people.
Moving on the the most interesting that has happened since I arrived. Yesterday one of the guys here, David Grafe, asked if I wanted to go hiking with him and four other people. Three of the girls, all from Quebec, and the other David. He said that we would be going to a lake about 6 Km from campus. I agreed, planning on spending a nice afternoon with friends. We left about 2:30, and in my head I was thinking we would be back around 7:00. We got back to campus at 11:45. The sun went down about 7:15. We never made it to the lake. It was an insane trip. I hope to make the pictures and videos we took into a movie, complete with LOTR soundtrack. Because that is the only thing it is comparable to.
IT is now time for volleyball, as I told the Hungarians I would be playing, but I hope this satisfies those asking for 'news' (Love you Momma). If it does not, please feel free to Facebook me and I will answer or expand upon any questions ya'll might have.
TTFN

Nagy Britana

I am finally settled into the dorm I will be in for the remainder of the school year. "Nagy Britana" or Great Britain. But sadly they were not prepared to have four girls dorms, and had already rented ours out next Wednesday. So my five room mates and I will be moving out completely that day. Which is slightly annoying. But having a room, and a bed, and a desk, and a closet that is mine is fantastic!
I know its been a while since I last informed ya'll of the going-ons from across the ocean and I'm sorry. It has been really busy, and I had zero motivation to write. I went through extreme homesickness, and am still suffering slightly from it. But it improved greatly once I had more to do. I am officially a RA, and am still trying to comprehend what that all means. I would really appreciate your prayers while I learn.
As I sit at my desk the other two girls in my room are skyping their families. Both in Portuguese. It is going to be an interesting year. I feel like the only person here who only speaks 1.5 languages. But hopefully that will change by the end of the year.
This is a fairly short blog, but its dinner time (AKA time for Rachel to eat bread). And I am starving. So I will try to be motivated to write again soon, with a desk it is much more likely that this will occur.

Jet Lag Lasts How Long?!?!!?

I read my post from last night, and I am so sorry to all who had to read it. But as a warning this one may be no better.
These past two days have been the most trying days I think I have ever had. I have cried a lot, and I'm sure the people who have seen me think I'm insane. Mostly the man I sat next to on the airplane across the ocean. Cause one minute I was just sitting there, and the next I was quietly crying trying not to look obvious. But its hard not to be obvious when you have snot running down your face. But oh well, hopefully when stuff starts going on around here it will get better.
The food is iffy... After arriving and sleeping through lunch yesterday I dragged my halfawake-self to the dining hall for dinner. Bread and weird meat. Like the bologna with colorful stuff in it and such. So I ate bread. And that's it. Lunch is apparently the big meal here, so today I dragged myself out of bed (after sleeping through breakfast), to make it there. Fried Pork ribs, and fried potatoes, and bread. Much better, but still odd. And they drink tea here. A lot of tea. I do not like tea. But it has become my goal to like tea by the end of the year.
I have been doing nothing at all since I got here. There is nothing for me to do yet. I have spent an ungodly amount of time online. After stalking the majority of my friend on Facebook, I moved on to Crazythingsparentstext.com. I am currently on page 126. And not proud of myself.
I slept for over 11 hours last night, and feel like I'm starting to recover. But I have had a headache all day.
I'm going to go dig through my suitcase for my drugs mom made me take. Ta-ta.

Greetings from Kenya

Kenya is the name of my dorm. Why they think it's a good plan to put you into another country as soon as you arrive in this one I'm not sure. But I don't know how long I'll be in here, it all depends on if I RA or not.
The eight hour flight to Germany was not bad at all. Except having a window seat has its disadvantages. Such as really needing to go to the bath room, while having two men sleeping between you and the aisle. But the movies selection was fantastic! Three fulllength features in one trip. Airline food= weird.
I didn't talk to the man that sat next to me until the last 5 minutes of the flight, when I learned he is from Hungary. Needless to say I would have liked to know this before.
Also I seem to have a problem with my gate being changed. Frankfurt Germany is the weirdest airport ever. My ticket said gate A40, so I head that way, at Gate 36 I see the first departure board in the whole airport and look for my flight... A4. So then I have to turn around and go all that way back, and no one spoke English. Not a fan.
I arrived in Budapest at 9:00AM local time which equals 3:00 AM Indiana time. After meeting up with the WOL people I fell asleep in their car, and drooled. Good first impression. The man laughed at me, but doesn't speak English, so couldn't really make fun of me. Then I fell asleep in a bed at campus.
I am drasticlly jet-lagged and am going to bed. More later. ZZZZZZZZZZZ

O'Hare Gate C10

I just experienced my first real moment of panic. I have spent the last fiveish hours at Gate B17 because thats where the nice lady told me to go. Well the nice lady lied. There is a flight to Frankfurt flying out of gate B17 today. At 3:40. My flight leaves Gate C10 at 2:39. Needless to say this 'nice lady''s actions could have caused serious problems if I was not so observant. Also if my laptop had not died and I didn't need to go on an outlet search(because there are none in the gates). But luckily my hunt led me past one of the arrival/departure boards and I double-checked. Realizing something was odd I pulled out my handydandy clipboard(told you it would come in handy Dad) and checked my flight number. And then basically power walked across the whole airport to end up 3 gates down from the gate I flew into from Indy. Lets just say I am not happy with the 'nice lady'.

Terminal 17A O'Hare Airport

I held out till 10:45. But most of that was due to the horribly complicated nature of the Wi-Fi in Chicago. Creating user names and paying and what-not. But thanks to the heroic efforts of my father I will not go into Facebook withdraw (even though I have it on my phone) and you will get to hear about this next leg of my journey.
Fortunately I was not seated next to the flower-smelling woman on my flight from Indianapolis, but next to an older gentleman who asked me if I had a pen he could borrow before we took off, filled in three words of his cross word, and promptly fell asleep. Holding my pen. Which he gave back after he was jolted awake by the landing of our plane. This is the only significant thing that occured on the flight. No cookies, no pretzels, no coke, nada. What is the point of a flight with out these things, I don't know what air-travel is coming to.
My arrival in Chicago made up for the boringness of my flight. I am currently on hour three of my seven hour layover, and due to this dramatic amount of time, my next flight is no where to be found on the departure board. I was told that I should probably hang  out around terminals 16 and 17 on concourse B, so that's where I am. But for some reason this airport seems to have a distinct lack of outlets. So I wandered the concourse looking for one. With my carry-ons. Making it quite obvious I have never done this before. Luckily I am still in the United States, where my incapabilities don't automatically peg me for a easy target to steal, or some such thing.
While sitting in my terminal, surrounded by a lot of people speaking Japanese (I'm pretty sure that's the next flight out of 17B) I complied a list of observations.
1. If you are wearing enough lipstick to stain the lid of your Starbuck's cup bright pink, you are wearing too much.
2. If your flight leaves at 6:15AM, and you don't speak English well, you should arrive at security well before 6:00AM. Especially if you have small children and don't empty their sippy cups, which are well over three ounces.
3. If you have small kids that run around like they have nothing better to do then knock over innocent 18-year old girls, who are stressed out enough about traveling by themselves for the first time, put them on a leash.
4. If you are going to use the moving sidewalk thing and still walk while you're on it, make sure you time it so you don't fall when you try to get off.
5. If you just want a plain old regular coke, make sure it's worth the energy to talk 52358245305902 miles around the concourse to find one.

Time to go check the Departure Board again. A huge group just cleared out for Honolulu, so I could possibly find some information on my flight now. But maybe not, the lady from United did say that the people from Ldskjbgfuisghr( I'm not sure the name of the airline I'm flying on next, but it starts with 'L' ) don't usually show up till two hours before the flight, which means I still have at least one, maybe two. If I get bored enough I might be back to ramble again. If not I'll be writing from Word of Life HUNGARY next!

Gate A25 Indianapolis (wayyyyyyyyy to early)

Hello there, and welcome to my blogspot. I have never done this before, so we'll see how it goes. Let me start by giving you some background on why I have begun to blog. (Is that right? Begun? Began? Begin? That's one of those tricky words.) 

I am currently sitting on the floor of Gate A25 in the Indianapolis International Airport waiting my flight to Chicago to board. From Chicago I will be flying to Frankfurt, Germany, and from there to Budapest, Hungary. I am attending Word of Life Bible Institute for the 2011-2012 school year. 

Quick tangent, I just found a card in my bag that my mother snuck (another of those tricky words, it has the red squiggly underline) into my bag, and now I'm sure the people around me think I'm emotionally unbalanced because I am about to cry.

But anyway, long story short, this blog is to keep anyone who is interested updated on my life and travels. I'm not promising you anything great or wonderful, just my thoughts, hopes and dreams. 

I have less then 15 minutes till my flight begins boarding, and I really need to try to organize myself a little bit, so ya'll will just have to wait for more till my 7 hour layover in Chicago, where I'm sure I'll run out of productive things to do in about an hour and a half tops, which will send me here to ramble, like I'm doing now. 

Next Stop Chicago!

(The lady next to me smells very strongly of lilacs, which I like as much as the next person, but I hope I am not seated by her on the plane.)