About Mark

This is to inform everyone that Marko has just left FB. That seems like a sad thing; he is there no longer. But I would like to thank Marko for being such an instrumental guy in getting “technologically impared” straight. He has done so much to re-vamp Faith Builder’s whole electronics outlook. Everything is much clearer now. I want to wish Marko an extremely rewarding and successful year in nursing prerequesites.

Of words and phrases

I have successfully completed my Polish intensives course in Warscawa.  That feels like a real accomplishment if only to teach me how much there is to be known about the Polish language.  Les made a completely/ devastatingly accurate statement yesterday “If you ever need to study anything, have any free time, there are plenty of things to learn in Polish.”  I am extremely tired of riding public transportation every day for three hours.  Because of the bus being filled over capacity, I have to stand all the way to Warscawa most of the time.  That gets pretty old or maybe my legs are getting old.  They feel old after the drive in. Maria and I celebrated our success by going to one of the most famous pastry shoppes in Warscawa and getting a chocolate ekler.  What a treat, I mean to just go into the shoppe.  There was such a variety of confections: fruit pinwheels on top of chocolate truffle cakes, garnished with shaved dark chocolate; domino bars made with heavy cream and doted with dark chocolate “domino dots”; there were beautiful layered fruit cakes with cream cheese based icings (I think so); and crusty danishes with peaches, cherries, and all kinds of fruit under there flaky facades.  The store itself had a wonderfully classy atmosphere with brass trimmed, glass showcases.  Spotlights bring out the creativity of the different deserts in the cases, highlighting the contrasting colors.  So much for that; I loved the experience.

This morning Les and I had Lavern over for breakfast, a guys “morning out”. We had a nice time together creating breakfast.  I think that Lavern made a most delightful cheese spread for our crusty bread.  It has a traditional soft Polish cheese base (in between ricotta and cottage cheese, dry cottage cheese) and is mixed with chopped radishes and chives.  Looking at it in the serving dish is almost as delightful as eating it.  I think that men need to get together and do meals like this more.  We can make good food and we can enjoy eachother’s company.  God made us to have strong friendships with other men so that we can find stability in who we are and learn about our true selves.  I need that.

Since John and Laura are coming home tomorrow, Les has been working like a dog to get this house cleaned.  I think that cleaning is his forte because he has truly transformed this place. Washing toilets and showers, mopping and sweeping floors, and washing windows.  Cheers for Les!  I helped to clean by scrubbing down the kitchen.  I am responsible for a good bit of the dirt in there since I have been attempting to cook the last several weeks.  We have been eating alot of spaghetti and sauce, pasta in general, french toast, spoozas, and cabbage salad.  I attempted some cinnamon rolls a few days ago; I failed miserably.  The rolls themselves turned out wonderfully.  I was talking with a Polish friend of mine and giving only half of my attention to the execution of icing.  I melted the margarine ( I did a good job of that; did not burn any) then mixed in two cups of powdered sugar and some vanilla.  When I spread the icing on the warm cinnamon rolls, it was supposed to melt and seep into them.  Much to my bewilderment, the icing did not melt.  Instead, it got firmer as it cooled and so I worked harder to “spatulate” it into the cracks.  I successfully smeared it over the top of both pans and then I licked off the spatula. The icing was not sweet!  I realized in that split second that I had mistakenly mixed in corn starch instead of powdered sugar for the icing.  So here I had two 9×13 pans of cinnamon rolls with the equivalent of chalk for icing.  I had a hard time forgiving myself.

The knight with curled tresses

yt -two in the bull’s eye one went wild

Today was yesterday, tomorrow will be too

This is the way that I explain the day that I had so far.  I went with Lavern’s family and Alison to a Medieval re-enactment this morning.  That was a new experience for me since we do not have a long chivalrous tradition in the US.  There were longbow and cross bow comptetions.  All of the adults in our group actually paid several zlote to shoot a longbow. Even Lolita and Alison shot.  I was not ashamed of our marksmanship as a team.  Could have kept the invaders at bay for at least a few hours.  I guess that I just enjoyed the whole atmosphere at the re-enactment.  It was held at an old castle from the 14 -1500s and the activities were organized in such a way that gave me the distinct feeling of having stepped back in time.  At around eleven thirty there was sword fighting, very chivalrous duels, with winner announced after one man scored a certain number of crucial hits.  The fighting between knights with battle axes was the wildest. A man can get a pretty good swing in with a hammerlike object. I wondered if someone might get hurt because these guys were using real weaponry.

I am going to try to post a few pictures of the knights and the armour as well as some other miscellaneous with of course “yours truly” in a few.  I may not get these posted because I am still learning how my site works.  Please be patient, I’m a work in progress.

I do want to let you know that the e-mails you all have are stored in my heart.  Thank you.

Robin

This is what Poland is like . . . so far

I am here today. Wow, I am here safely and in my second day of language school in Warszawa. Maria is here too, by the way. We arrived here on Saturday morning at about 2:30 Est, which is six hours different from Poland. Just add six to the 2:30 + 6= 8:30 in Polska. The flights were great with very little to keep track of, i.e. Lufthansa made flying very comfortable. The food that the flight attendents served us was very nice. In fact, we were given traditional German food on our flight to Warszawa, meat and scrumptious bread with a choice of juice (including tomato), water, or alcoholic beverages. We flew very high on that particular flight and the sun was rising, so with no clouds to deflect its rays, it fully energizes anything that it strikes. For short periods of time (I was shielding my eyes) I looked down at the masses of undulating white below me and the powerful feeling of infinity gripped me. The distances seemed eternal, you could move towards the vast cloud cover but never reach it. Sheer space envelopes the person.

Being here in Minsk has been all about returning everyday to Warszawa. Maria and I are in language school which we leave for at 7:15 -7:30 every morning. We ride the bus for about an hour and a half before getting off at Newi Swiat in downtown. I love the word “swiat” which means world. Frankly, I think it has a great ring to it; it is said “shveaut”. The language seems to be a significant thing to learn, that is the polite, couth way of saying that it is a brain scorcher. There is so much other stimulli so I will put some clips of them out.

-the bread is great here, crusty, chewy, flavorful, looks edible, dare I say beautiful

-the road workers work, digging ditches with muscles and elbow grease, very limited power equipment

-the bus drivers drive with a streak of diconnected mania; there is significant BO on the bus (that is body oder) Garfield would complain about it in the cartoons for years

will finish later

Love Robin