JK. Well only half kidding. Since I lured you in with a promise of fun and crafty ideas Ill at least share a recipe I recently made. Its pretty easy and good for a quick lunch when youre tired of PB&J. So heres what you do:
Take a tomato, half an onion, a quarter of a red pepper (if you like bellpepper), a scoop of sour cream, and some V8 tomato/fruit juice(or you can use ketchup if you dont have that). Mix all of that into a blender. Heat this concoction until warm. Season with a little salt and pepper and enjoy with some fresh cheese or bread.
So, anyways... that was pretty good, I thought. I havent posted in a while so Im gonna try to remember and write about the things I found more interesting that have come to pass over the past few weeks. I feel like Ive settled down into a decent routine. Well as much of a routine as we can have, not always knowing exactly when we may be needed somewhere the next week. The days seem to go by pretty fast here as we are often pretty busy. The past three Sundays we have been in charge of the worship service in the different congregations around here. They all went pretty well. Raele, Maretta, and I all had little slips of paper to read from, and from the feedback we got, we didnt totally butcher their language. Today I actually spoke with no paper, partly because I didnt realize until we got there that I was gonna be talking again, but also because I was confident that I could at least get my point across without having to read it.
We have also started having kids at Checkpoint every day. The first week for Checkpoint was Kinderwoche where all of IMT and the two girls from last years team were working there together. We didnt have any kids the first few days so we went outside to the park and played with kids and met their parents. By the last day of Kinderwoche we had about ten come to Checkpoint to eat some homemade sweets and see where we were. The past two weeks we have worked at Checkpoint only on Thursdays and then Fridays we work with the same kids, but in a gym. Tuesdays and Wednesdays Karen and Sni have to work alone at Checkpoint, and I think it has been a bit stressful. This past week we had a new kid every day and Thursday we had seventeen kids there. It was stressful even with six of us helping out. But its also alot of fun, and I think its gonna be very good for the kids in that area.
Aside from work I have been able to do a few different things in my free time. The weekend before Halloween I went to a Divali festival at the uni here. Its a rather big Indian festival and most of my friends from our language course were there. It was a fun night. They had several presentations about what is the Divali festival, as well as some things that were more just Indian culture in general. One of my friends that I would never have expected to dance, danced rather well to a kind of Indian hip-hop. It was very entertaining. They also had fireworks which is a huge part of Divali as it means the light in the dark. After the fireworks we got to eat. I knew Indian food was spicy, but wow, it was spicy. I have no idea what I ate, but most of it tasted pretty good and a tiny, little bit actually didnt light my mouth on fire. Once all the cultural activities were finished they turned the place into an Indian disco. It was a good time to talk with my friends I hadnt seen in a while.
For Halloween I was invited by one of the Turkish girls to come to a Halloween party one of her friends were having. I didnt have anything else to do so I decided to go. She told me what time and where to go. So I showed up right on time and where she told me to go. I was not exactly sure what to expect, but I did think she and our other friends would be there when I arrived. I should have gone later. I showed up to the room and walked in as the door was open. There were maybe four people there putting the finishing touches on all their decorations. The girl, who I assume it was her apartment, was not very fond of me. Complicating things was that I wasnt sure whether to try and speak German or English, I tried German but couldnt express myself very well as I was a bit flustered by my welcome and trying to think in another language. The girl thought I had invited myself. I asked her if she knew the girls that invited me and she said yea, and I told her they invited me, but I dont think she believed me. She also was mad I wasnt "dressed up" for Halloween. I was actually a homeless person(I know a pretty bad costume but I didnt have anything else here and didnt put too much effort into it because I didnt decide until an hour or two before that Id actually go). I thought with my scruff it was an ok costume, and it definitely wasnt what I would normally wear out. But, I think everyone here thinks you have to wear face paint to be "dressed up". Everyone there had some kind of very cheap looking face paint on, and I really think they expected everyone to come with face paint. I ended up leaving before anyone else showed up because I could tell the girl didnt want me there, but I saw pictures later and everyone had this cheap face paint, and some with normal clothes on. They may have all been zombies, but I didnt think their zombie costumes were any better than mine, if thats what they were going for. Oh, well.
I have also found/gotten some opportunities to finally play some sports. Last weekend the hospital had a volleyball tournament for all of their employees that we were invited to take part in. Our team consisted of me, four of the girls from IMT, and one middle aged guy from the hospital. I had never really played volleyball except at the beach and one time when I first got here in Zwickau, but it was a lot of fun. Considering that we had never practiced together and most of us had never really played that much at all, we were not too bad. We ended up in 5 out of 8 teams, but I think we were really the 4th best team and maybe could have beaten the 3rd place team. They did a kind of random draw for the first round where we played three games. We only won one of those, but were fairly close to one team and lost on the last serve to the other. We were competitive with all of the teams we played, and the girls said that they think the girl keeping our points actually messed up our score in the game where we lost on the last serve. That may or may not have come into play when they seeded us for the secound round. They added up all of the points each team scored and then ranked us 1 to 8. We fell into the second group of 4, but if our score had not been messed up we may have been in the first group. In the second round we completely dominated the other three teams, which was fun, but at the same time, I think it would have been more fun to have had a little more competition.
My second opportunity to play a sport turned out to not really be so promising. I had talked with several people here about wanting to play basketball and last week Barry told me I could go to this gym at this hour and practice with a team there. Because I was working at Checkpoint, I wasnt able to get there until about 35 or 40 minutes after Barry had said to go. I figured Id go on anyways and I could at least figure out where everything was and maybe still get to play for a few minutes. So, I found the gym and changed into my basketball clothes. I should say I found the building where the gym is, I had to walk around a little bit before I heard the sounds of shoes squeaking and running to find which doors to enter. I finally found them and walked in. I was in the right place, but not really for me. The guys there were scrimmaging and there two or three managers/trainers on the side who looked at me as I walked in. Most of the players were at least a foot taller than me, and it was very clear I was nowhere near as good as they are. I talked to the managers anyways and told them I had heard I might could play basketball here. They were a little befuddled and I dont think they knew exactly what to say. They were very nice about it. Finally one guy that was a sub helped me out and took me to look at the schedule to show me when the "second team" or the league behind them practiced. They were the professional basketball team here in Chemnitz. I looked them up when I got home and found one guy was actually from Tuscaloosa, but had played for UCF. I was really just looking for some kind of pick up game, or a league where regular people play, so I dont think Ill go back.
I also got a chance to hang out with my friends Oznur, Esma, and Sefer and talk about all different kinds of things. Esma invited us all to her room and prepared two different Turkish dishes. I am really not sure what they were but they were very good. Sefer wants to make a movie while we are all here in Chemnitz so Im pretty excited about that. I also got to share with them about what I believe. They were very interested and had several questions. I told them all the basics of what we believe as Christians, answered their questions, and tried to clarify where and why some of the differences arise between Protestants and Catholics. They had a hard time believing that Mary could have been a virgin and God just put Jesus in her womb. It was also very tough trying to explain the Trinity and how they are all one and yet different. I tried to stress the fact that Jesus came from God to save us from our sins. That He came so that we could be reunited with God, that we were seperated because of our sins. I found it tough to explain how Jesus came from God to save us, that He died a human death, and at the same time He is God and was making a bridge for us to Himself/God. They also shared some of their beliefs about Islam with me. It was a very good/interesting conversation.
I guess thats about all that Ive been up to. Thats all I can really remember for now. I hope Ok State and LSU lose soon. If we have to play LSU again for a shot at a National Championship, I think we will win, but Id rather play someone else since I kinda feel like its cheap to LSU. oh well. Roll Tide!
