To be

      I am sitting at a clean desk for the first time in ages.  For a long time, this desk was covered to about navel height in papers.  I guess that I am feeling very eastern European right now because I am listening to Russian monastery music right now.  Really, I hate the lead guy’s voice right now, but in general I love the mood of the music.  Pardon me, it is not the Russian bass that I was ranting about before.  But they have the same surreal, worshipful sort of effect on my soul.  So somber and yet so supple in its texture.

I look around at this room and realize that it is not super becoming.  In fact, I think that I have lost some interior decorating design skills.  I have whitewashed walls in my room speckled with the remnant mosquito carcasses from last year.  I have a huge American flag over my bed and covering the top of my nightstand is a holly Christmas dresser scarf.  Hah, hah.  Talk about remnant.  The mosquito carcasses are more “in style” these days!   I do like Les and my room.  It is pure guy stuff and guy stuff goes on in here too.  We have a coffee pot that starts perculating late at night.  It really does have this natural “bent” towards doing so.  Of course, Les has this terrible coffee that has a smak (Flavor) resembling that of silage.  It makes Maxwell House look heavenly.  Although, in all honesty, I think that we are now drinking a really tastefully suitable coffee, Jacobs coffee.  I made absolutely no reference to its effect on Les’ stipend in that last sentence.  The other night I hauled the blender down to our room and tried to crush up ice and mix it with cold coffee for the true iced coffee effect.  However, crushing the ice in the blender made such an ungodly racket that I broke into a nervous sweat for fear of waking the whole household.  The coffee was tolerable but disappointing in comparison to my dream when I lugged the blender, ice cube trays, and mugs down here.  I have had better success with fruit smoothies.

Stolowa Wola

     This past weekend, Lukasz, his girlfriend’s cousin, Les, and I went to a small city on the south side of Lublin for a short vacation.  There were no mountains that I was hoping to see but the landscape was very beautiful and the atmosphere was really quiet.  It reminded me alot of my home in the WV hills and mountains.  Really mountains add alot to an atmosphere of peace for me because they create a wall to “hem” me away from things that want to press in.  Think about the verse that talks about God trapping and protecting us from the front and behind.  Where do we have to turn?  We can only wait and look up.  To look up to the heavens is both a response of willingness to know what God is thinking and it is also the place that it dawns on us how protected we are in the sheer vastness of life.  But, as I move on, our little quad headed into the back country to celebrate the fall of one era that is giving way to a new era in Lukasz’s life.  He is to be married at the end of this month, June 30th.  God bless you Lukasz, I think you are crazy like every man must be to want to get married and to settle down with the love of your life.  May God teach you in his love and with his hand, may he guide you into true hope and the knowledge of his presence.  Our first evening was spent mostly eating koczolek (a mixture of vegetables; cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and pork cooked in a Polish Dutch oven) and being lazy around the fire.  It was really fun.  The next  morning we got up early and went rafting down the nearby San River.  We did over forty kilometers and got thoroughly roasted by the sun to top it off.  There were some moments of sheer abandon when we (Les and I) went charging down the sand and plowed into the water sending sheets high into the air.  The water fights were great too;  “Give it to ‘um.” “Bring it on!”  That evening we played a hard round of soccer which the eight year-old twins of our hosts really enjoyed.  It was the time where a permanent bond between the boys and the big boys developed:)  Centering around a game that to them (the twins) touched heaven and for at least Lukasz and Tomek was a rejuvenator of the love of their lives.  I know that I am a sorry American who really stinks at soccer, and it makes me mad!   The next morning however, we were not so energetic, having been well toasted the day before we bathed our sunburn and layed around until early afternoon.  Les and I gave the little guys a couple of English lessons.  They seemed to really enjoy it in spite of the warm day and the difficulty of wrapping their minds and lips around English syllable and sentence structures for a hour at a time.  Good little students!

So, today I am still bearing effects of the sunburn.  My back is peeling.  I went jogging last night for about six kilometers and when I returned I had all these little pockets of sweat under my top layer of skin and my back was itchy.  When I itched it, big pieces of skin rubbed off.  I am learning about sun.  I was only burned once before.