His love changes us . . . doesn't matter where you come from

 I haven't written too much about my faith yet in this blog, but today I am going to. 

Three years ago I became a Christian and since that time God has been changing me drastically. One of the marks of this change is praise. I cannot help but to sing praises to Him. Seriously, the first six months after becoming a Christian, I would do this run/skip/dance/hop thingy home from wherever I was coming from and I'd be singing at the top of my lungs. I didn't care who heard me. I looked like a complete fool, BUT It didn't matter. GOD SAVED MY LIFE AND HE LOVED(S) ME!  That was three years ago, and I'm still singing.

In the United States, I've seen this same response to the acceptance of God's love over and over. When people are hit by it, they are changed, and their response is praise. Usually I see some tears first, but after that it's praise. . . Singing or dancing or something.

Overtime, I have met some other Christians here in Hungary. I've watched them too, and it's the SAME thing. They are singing for joy because the GOD of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE saved their lives and loves them. They don't need to tell me why they are praising God. I can tell they are thankful for what He did in their lives.

Somehow this observation has been teaching me that God really is the same God everywhere in the world. It deepens my faith in Him. It doesn't matter what a persons background is, what color their skin, what country they are from; He loves them and that love changes them.I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes thinking about how awesome it is to watch people here sing praise to Jesus for what He has done in their lives, and to think that ALL OVER THE WHOLE WORLD people are doing the same thing. It's really all you can do when you're overcome by His love. You gotta sing or shout or cry or dance or do all four! (I did all four- yup all at the same time too- kind of awkward looking)

Seriously though, His love is the same wherever you go and it elicits the same response. . .  To me, that is a beautiful thing.


Anyway, this is what's on my heart right now. .  


Christmas is coming. . .

I wanna wish you a love-filled Christmas and Happy New Year!


LOVE <3

Anna

Cultural Mishaps & General Tomfoolery . . .

Hello :-)

I know, I know, I haven’t updated this in forever! Partially because I don’t have internet in my flat, partially because I am busy teaching and things, and partially because I am lazy . . . sorry!

 Anyway, I wanted to share some interesting stories with you. . .

1.      I will call this story "The Yellow house"

This house has gotten me into A LOT of trouble recently!  I live in a flat inside of this house. I might be scared to put a picture of my house on the internet, but I don’t even know the address myself, so if some creepy person figures it out maybe they can let me know what it is! 

Anyway, so yellow house in Hungarian is “Sarga Haz” Sarga meaning “yellow” and “Haz” meaning house. All I know about my address is that I live in the Sarga haz next to a school. Sooo, on Friday my friend and I wanted to order a pizza. Problem being I don’t know my address.  It’s a small town though, and the pizza guy probably would recognize the place if we described it. I tell my friend, who speaks Hungarian, that we will tell the pizza guy that we don’t know the address, but we live in the sarga haz next to the school. He would totally know where that is. . .  She starts laughing really hard, and I am sitting their clueless as to why this statement is worth any more than a little chuckle.

She explains that sarga haz has two meanings in Hungarian . . . Yes, it does mean yellow house, BUT it also means mental institution. From what I understand, mental institutions used to all be painted yellow, so this is still the name given to them.  Therefore, we were about to tell the pizza guy that we lived in a mental institution, which he would probably believe since we don’t even know our own address. . .Picture this conversation:  Pizza guy: “Okay, what is your address?”  Me: “Uhhhh… I have no idea, but I live in the mental institution.”   I really needed a pizza, so we ordered one even though we didn't figure out the address.

Here’s the real embarrassing part. . . People in other towns in Hungary have asked me where I live before this eye opening conversation on Friday. I give the same answer, “ I don’t know, it’s the big sarga haz.”  They laugh, but NO ONE has ever explained it to me. . . .  

Sooo, I didn’t expect this story to take up an entire page, so I won't share my other stories right now. . . DON’T worry there will be more embarrassing stories to come in the near future!

LOTS OF LOVE <3

Anna

Her name is Miss. School and shes like coffee :-)

Pic of me and a new friend in front of the castle near my house :-)

I've been pretty busy lately. I will try to write more often, but teaching takes up A LOT of  time...I'll write a little now, and I promise to write more later. 

I am starting my third full week of teaching. The past two weeks I've been getting to know my students. Who I love by the way :-)  Although they do pronounce my name like school instead of Scull. I answer to it. Yes, I am as big as a school, but my last name is Scull..I'm kidding.....they're pretty much amazing, so I let them call me school...I'm enjoying them soo much...I have a lot of very bright student.

some of my students folk dancing :-) AMAZING!

Quick story, so the first day of classes I asked my students to tell me something interesting about themselves, among other things. Well, one of my students told me he had a twin brother. I got sooo excited! I was like, "REALLY?!" and "Is he in this class right now?!"  He told me no and he pointed to the door, so I assumed his twin was  in a different class or something.. Well, the next class his twin was there and he introduced me to him. I shook his hand and got all excited again! I said something like, "Oh wow, nice to meet you!" I thought it was cool that he would bring in his twin for me to meet. The twin looked a little confused, and the rest of the class was kind of looking at me weird when I got really excited and shook his hand, but I didnt think much of it.. Well, he kept coming and I was thinking that it was kind of weird that he would keep coming to sit-in on my class...Last night, I had a "light bulb" moment when I was telling my teammate how cool it was that one of my students had a twin brother and that he visited my class...I think about it for a minute and I'm like, wait a second... this kid is in my class!!! He is my student... He's not visiting! No wonder he keeps coming and no wonder he looked so confused when I shook his hand in front of the entire class!! .....  sometimes i can be a bit slow..

CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO: Some of my students invited me to watch them dance. They're so amazing!

That's all I got for right now...I'll write more later..      My computer is going to die and I am in a cafe across  from my flat..


Below are a few pictures..Enjoy :-)
 

The goulash cook-out with coworkers...it's super good

Had a nice picnic lunch with our coworker :-) That's my teammate

I burnt my leg pretty bad..another embarrassing moment. It's not a long story. Basically I jumped on a very hot hair straightener and wasnt paying attention.

Where we crash a VIP dinner and play charades for days. . .

Budapest

Szia/Hello!

Mandy and some strange beehive looking thing near our flat.

We’ve (my teammate Mandy and I..check her out. she’s cute.I know, right!! ) toured around Budapest, ate crapes, tried goulash, and explored our new town. Its charming here in Sarospatak. The little town has a castle, buildings as old as dirt, and beautiful flowers everywhere. We’re enjoying ourselves here. I cannot wait to go swimming in the thermal water, to hike, and get a tour of the inside of the castle. BUT, there are some things that we’d like to have. For instance, it’d be nice to have internet that works, or to have our own kitchen, or to not have our building smell like cigarette smoke….ugh, I hate the smell of cigarettes.  It’s cool though. We are being resourceful and having good time doing it.

 It’s been fun so far talking to people with the few Hungarian words we know.  We went to buy an alarm clock yesterday, and I could not figure out how to ask for an alarm clock, so I sort of yell “good morning” in Hungarian and throw my hands in the air like an alarm. We got our point across, and the dude was cracking up. Then last night we were starving, so we followed some people we didn’t know to a restaurant.  Generally, you go into a restaurant and seat yourself, so we did that. Then I asked for an English menu in Hungarian. Well, apparently the waiter was trying to tell us that the restaurant was closed for a VIP group and he was asking us if we were part of the group. We had no idea what he was saying. I thought that he was trying to ask us what we wanted or something. Then the waiter brought another person that spoke English. He was trying to figure out if we were part of the group..We said no, and he basically told us to leave.. Oh jeez…We left and there weren’t really any other restaurants open. We ended up eating cheerios with forks and cups because we don’t have any bowels or spoons yet . . . Good times!

Oh, so I also wanted talk about the rest of teaching in California. We had our last day of teaching on Wednesday August 17^th.  For the last day, we had a party and each level (beginner-advanced) presented something that they learned that month. My students (beginners) presented a song and played charades. If you cannot tell, I am a big fan of charades. They had fun with it. One of the phrases they learned was “Please be quiet.” One of the students received this phrase to act out, but instead of putting his finger in front of his mouth or something like that he just shouted “AHHHH!!!” really loud. The whole room burst into laughter.

 The party was bittersweet. One of the students sang a song for us, because he knew we were Christians. It was about God’s grace. It was beautiful.  Another student wrote us a poem using some of the words we taught him. He said he would miss us and that we would always be in his heart. I got a little ferkelmpt. I will miss them too. At the beginning of the month my only intention was to learn how to teach well.  I poured my heart into the time we had to lesson plan and tried my best at teaching, but I viewed it more as a learning time for myself. I slowly realized that our group of teachers was making a difference. Pour your heart into whatever you’re doing and you’ll make an impact. Check out a pictures of some of my students. They are amazing! 

That’s all for now.  I start teaching on Thursday. I am teaching college and high school aged students. Wish me luck!

FOR MORE check out my teammates blog: http://mandyinhungary.blogspot.com/

A park in Sarospatak

Parliament in Budapest

Sarospatak

Your breathing is good, but the odor is bad. . .

Some of my Hungary teammates on a scavenger hunt.
The instructions: take a picture skipping through a field.

I've been in California for three weeks now and things have been pretty good. California is a beautiful place. Not that I've had too much time to explore though. They keep us new teachers pretty busy. The days generally start at 7am and end at 9:30-10pm. It's tiring, but lots of fun...

Our schedules are packed with learning to teach and learning about our new cultures. They actually have us teaching already too. We go to local churches and community centers and teach to non-English speakers. I taught the second day I arrived. That was actually pretty terrifying. It's like having to run a race you haven't trained for. The first night was rough, but it got better after that though. Each time it's more and more fun. I teach beginners, so I have to do a lot of charades in order to make them understand what I'd like them to do. I've gotten a lot better at role playing with myself. This can be pretty comical at times. I didn't know I'd like teaching so much. It's honestly pretty great. I'm getting more excited about meeting my students in Hungary.


 Funny story: The other night, one of my coworkers was teaching advanced students "social taboos" and she made the class role play some situations (we role play a lot to get them to speak English more). The one student was supposed to tell the other student that she had bad breath. It went something like this: TS: "Lucy, did you brush your teeth this morning?"  Lucy: "Ummm, Yes."  TS: "Well, your breathing is good, but the odor is bad." It was great! I couldn't control myself when I heard that story.  This is the kind of stuff that happens all the time. I really didn't anticipate laughing so much while teaching English. The students laugh too when they realize their mistakes. It's a good time all around.

I leave in one week for Hungary. I'll keep you posted!