On the Road...Budapest

It's Sunday morning in one of the most beautiful cities in the world! We arrived in Budapest yesterday afternoon and had quite an experience navigating the city streets to find the Marriott on the Danube. But I want to tell you first about the second half of our festival week.

On Wednesday evening we participated in a somber memorial service for Dora and Szeb. We learned more about the duck boat accident from three survivors who were at the festival, which made it even more horrible. There were tears and candles lit and notes written in a book for the family.

Later that night we hosted an open mic night for which Rob was the MC. The following day, as usual, we had a leaders meeting, group program (like a Young Life Club), small groups, lunch, free time, workshops, a conference meeting, dinner, night program and late night in the village. I figure we've had 2 hours free time during each 17 hour day. Carrie and her room mate posted their own workshop notice on Thursday afternoon.- (see photo).





Thursday evening was the highlight of the week. The students processed to the village square as we (the band) performed on a stage in front of the cathedral. The best moment for me was singing onstage with our kids realizing that at that minute they were experiencing what Greg and I did for a year all over Europe. To have them share this experience was wunderbar!

We have all made lots of new friends and some of them are pictured here.

Using electric here is a challenge - see photo.

We have experienced so much of Hungarian culture, like fruit soup, fruit pastries, real goulash, weird, super long words, peppers for breakfast and paprika in everything. Friday evening the Hungarian kids presented a program about their country. They are awesome kids who we will miss terribly. Saturday we had a half day festival and a really tearful goodbye (that would be me crying...knowing that we will most likely never see these sweet people again).

That brings us up to our trip to Budapest. After we arrived we accomplished a life time dream of Greg's to go to a Turkish bath in the city. You can learn more about this at www.spasbudapest.com. We went to the Szechenyi Bath. There were over 10 pools with varying degrees of hot water, round pools that had a whirlpool currents and jets from every imaginable angle. Greg got some new ideas for the P-ville Hytha spa!

So here we are this morning looking out on the Royal Palace and the Danube...doesn't get much better than this (unless you were here with us!). We miss you Chris!! FYI - Chris won the mini-ramp skateboarding competition at Woodward!!