Ok, we are back

Thanks to the transporting skills of James Elaine (uncle Jamie), we now have a modern laptop again. Actually, we have had it for a month and have just only now gotten back into web logging, or blogging, again. This is not going to be a post of note :) , rather it is a post letting all three of you who still check this blog know that we PROMISE to be better at posting. PROMISE.

More to come...PROMISE.

No pics just a post

Well, we don't have any pictures to share at the moment but that doesn't mean a lot hasn't happened over the past month. Alexander turned 7, got more than a few legos from America, and took us all to Burger King (his choice) for dinner. The day before that we had some house guests while we were all out. They helped themselves to the computer, digital camera and camcorder (the main reason we have no pictures). Thankfully we are insured but it has really put a cramp on things. We didn't realize how much we relied on our computer for communication with co-workers and family. No skype is no fun.
Anyay, we are all doing pretty well. The kids are down to about 6 weeks of school left and are excited about that (the boys are anyway...Lily loves her teachers). We are plugging away in language and are feeling somewhat more confident. Some Hungarian friends of ours from Dallas were in town so it was nice to get to see some faces from home. They brought some good stuff too.
As soon as we get a camera (maybe next month) we will start putting pics up again. We pretty much need to buy it in America and wait until someone is coming this way since the prices are about 35-40% higher here for electronics. And shipping is...forget about it.
Love to all,
The Shaws

What we've been doing, the final chapter

Denise has been meeting with an old student of mine, Anita, for a while now. Well, Anita has a boyfriend now and so here he is. Get this, he plays football, not soccer, but "real" football. There is a league in Hungary and the different cities field teams. Budapest is the Wolves. It hasn't really caught on here but it seems the guys who play really love it.

What we've been doing, part IV

Well, we took another trip to the Danube on our bikes. It is becoming a habit for us. We are also riding a little farther each time. Alexander is basically our mileage keeper, i.e. when he gets tired we start heading back. We hope by the end of the summer that we will be taking really long bike rides as a family. We have a lot of fun. The pics are from a roadside playground where we like to stop. We need to get some pictures of us on our bikes.

What we've been doing, part III

Alright, the same holiday weekend we went to the hills of Buda for an excursion (notice a difference in weather from the previous post). It was cold and increadibly windy so we didn't stay long. We had never been to these hills so that was good and the views were great. Pics: Lily walking on the path, Szilvi and Denise on the path, and the group eating on the rocks trying to stay out of the wind, and Bryan standing at the top of the hill we were on. He said it looked like where they filmed part of LOTR (for those of you not in the know, that is Lord of the Rings) so that made it especially cool for him. By the way, he is just about to finish the first book which he is reading by himself. We're not proud or anything.

What we've been doing, part II

March 15 is a national holiday (commemorating the revolution against the Hapsburgs). Like July 4, it is a time for families and friends to get together and celebrate. We went to our friends' house on Szentendre island and had a cook out and just had fun. It was surprisingly warm for March, but then again, we have had little of no winter. The pictures are of Gabor and Szilvi in their car as we all ride the ferry over to the island (the kids loved it). The next one is Szilard cooking the food (delicious stuff), then Trey, Gabor and Csati, followed by all the boys eating in the middle of the road. Lily playing in the dirt, Alexander and Tivi carrying wood (they had built a barricade in the road) and then the group walking down to the Danube, in the mud. We had a lot of fun and we spoke Hungarian the whole time (8 hours) which wore us out.

What we've been doing

Well, as promised, here is an update on what we did for the month of March. When we got back from Prague there was a team from North Greenville University here doing an English camp with us. About 40 people came and from that two English Bible groups were formed. It was a real blessing for all involved. Here are two pics. One is of Alexander and Daniel, a student from NGU. The other is of some of the Hungarian students at the poetry reading (in English) held on the last day.

Yes, we are still alive

Well, it has been awhile. Like almost a month since our last post. We have since returned from Prague. Our time there was very good. We made some good friends, learned a lot and got to explore a beautiful city. But we are glad to be back in our beautiful city and life has accelerated since we returned. As soon as we got back there was a volunteer team here from North Greenville University. They were a group of about 14 college students here to teach English. It was a really good experience for them and they were able to share with a lot of people.

Life has pretty much normalized in the two weeks we have been back from Prague. The kids are doing well in school (Bryan managed to finish all of his homework in Prague while we were gone. His teacher was very impressed. He was actually a little ahead of the class when he got back). Lily and Alexander are still doing well in Ovoda (kindergarten). All three of them are pretty fluent in Hungarian now. We went to dinner at our old teacher's new house (she is not old...she used to teach us) and she was amazed at how well the kids spoke. When she met them they did not speak a word of Hungarian.

Trey is leaving for a conference in central Hungary and will be gone all weekend. I am sure he will bring pictures from it. He is going to a place which is near a horse ranch. Too bad he left his boots in Texas (like he ever had any).

Thanks for being patient with the blog. We will be much more diligent with it now. Being gone from home for three weeks really threw us off our schedule but we are back now.

The pictures are of Trey and the kids in front of the Jan Hus (John Huss) statue. Jan was martyred for trying to translate the Bible into Czech. The other picture is inside his church where he preached. The third picture is of Bryan in front of the famous clock. The last one is of the TV tower. Yes, those are babies climbing up the tower. Strange, but we really liked seeing them everyday. What does that say about us?

We have other pictures and stories to post tomorrow so stay tuned.

Love to all,

the Shaws

We are in Prague, pt. 3 Denise's birthday

The James - es (how do you spell that?)who are in the previous post kept the kids for us so Trey and I went out for dinner for my birthday. We took a walk along the river. The city is so beautiful and we have enjoyed our time here learning and making new friends.

We are in Prague, pt. 2

Hello everyone! These are our friends the Jameses (from FBC Dallas). They invited us over for dinner. We had a great time and the boys (and Lily) had fun becoming fast friends.

We are in Prague - pt. 1

We had a lovely train ride from Budapest and thankfully Alexander did not break his arm at the trainstation. Here is a picture of a nice German lady, Elvira, that was fortunate enough to share a berth with an American family of five. Anyway, we are here and having a good time and learning a lot.

Busy Day

Hi everyone! Today was a busy but fun day. This morning Trey preached at Rákoscsabai Baptista Gyülekezet. I forgot (so sorry!!!) to take a picture of the wonderful family that took us to eat lunch afterwards. I will have to add a pic of them another time but we had so much fun with them. I am including a picture of the church. We have had a relationship with this church for over a year now and really enjoy visiting them. The church is about an hour from us so we don't get to go really often but always enjoy seeing them. They are interested in working with us here. After a long yummie Hungarian lunch we headed home for about one hour and then to our church tonight. Trey got to preach tonight also and it was great! Our friends Gábor and Szilvi came with us. Here are some pics from today. From top to bottom: Dávid, Szilárd, Lily and Dia (Gábor and Szilvi's daughter), and the Baptist Church.

Now we're talkin'!

Hello again! We forgot to take our camera and take a pic of Anikó who tests our language abilities, but we just wanted to let you know the good news that we both did well and only have to be tested every four months now!!!!!! Here are Ron and Robin...they have 3 children Robert, Renald, and Rebekah and have lived in Hungary for about 12 years now....Robin takes care of all language for us here in Hungary, like arranging tests for us, encouraging us, etc. She and Ron (who is the SC for Western Hungary) are also our mentors.

Erzsi and Ferenc

Hello everyone! We had a fun time at Erzsi and Ferenc's house for our Thurs. night English/Bible group. Here is a pic. of some of us.

Museum of Natural History

We took the kids to the Hungarian Museum of Natural History this past weekend. The museum is in an old theater and has a really cool entrance (with the skeleton of a huge whale over your head). They also had a huge Noah's Ark there full of animals. Anyway, the kids had a good time seeing lots of examples of the Hungarian wildlife. One of the real joys about living here are the museums and just how fun it is to take the kids to places like that. Enjoy the pics.

The Shaws

Szület egy sztár!

DO YOU SPEAK MAGYARUL?

Ok, so I was on TV last night. Actually a program ran a story on foreigners who are learning Hungarian. My teacher was interviewed (the man in the button-down at about the 8:00 min. mark) and they threw me in for filler. Click this link http://www.mtv.hu/cikk.php?id=180545 and then press play. If you are using high speed you can click the 100k link just above the player and the quality is a little better. Also, just fast forward to about 7:25 and you will see me attempting to pronounce some words with the program my teacher developed.

Végre - Finally

Well, we finally got our first snow of the winter but it was little more than a dusting. This winter has been so strange. This time last year we had already had several heavy snows, but this year we have had days where we could go without a jacket during the day. Anyway, hope all is well with everyone.

The Shaws

Checking in

We have been pretty busy these days. Our friends, the Pollards, have just returned from stateside assignment and will be living in Bp now. We are so excited to have them here. They have two little girls just about Lily's age so she is pretty happy too. We met them and our friends serving in Czech, Steve and April Brown, for their son's birthday party. They are here for knee surgery for Steve (sound familiar?). The kids in the picture are from left to right: Sophie Brown, Lily, Vance Brown, Alexander, Abby Pollard, Chloe Brown and Chloe Pollard. Steve is in the background mourning OSU's destruction. The other picture is of April Brown and Karen Pollard. We thought you all would like to meet some of our friends.

Love to all,

The Shaws

Obligatory sunset picture

I think one of the good things about this blog is that we get to share things that we see or do everyday. Things that we might not ever mention suddenly get documented. And you, our favorite readers, get to see them too. This is one of those things.

I know sunsets are never as beautiful in a photo as they are in person but here is one anyway. This was the view yesterday afternoon/evening from our balcony.

River walk

We took a walk with the kids down to the Danube this morning. The weather has been beautiful and today was especially nice. Just about a mile away from us is an area of the river with cafes and a playground (except everything is closed in the winter) called Római Part or Roman Shore. This was the boundary of the Roman Empire about 1900 years ago. Now it is a good place for fried fish and lángos. You'll have to come visit to experience lángos. Love to all.

The Shaws

Just keeping up

We have been pretty busy since New Year's but we wanted to just check in. The kids are back into the flow of school. The weather has been really nice and warm. Much warmer than normal. This time last year it had snowed several times and we never got out of the thirties. This year we have had several days in the fifties. We will surely take it.

The picture of Bryan is just one that I liked.

Love to all,

Trey (and the rest)

Mega Bionicle

Hi everyone. Bryan combined three of his bionicles into one big guy and a small guy. Here they are. Enjoy:)

Happy New Year!

Hi everyone. We are sorry it has been awhile since we last posted. We have been recovering from colds (Denise) and black eyes (see above). Lily and Alexander were playing "horsey" and Alexander's head met Lily's eye. She calls it her rainbow eye. We had a nice, peaceful Christmas eve and then Christmas day. Everything shuts down here from the evening of the 24th to the morning of the 27th so we had a lot of good family time at home. Our teammate Joey came over for dessert and coffee on Christmas night. We had a quiet New Year's Eve at home. All of the kids stayed awake and we watched Little House on the Prairie (we got the DVDs for Christmas from America). Anyway...we hope you all had a good Christmas and blessings to you all in the year ahead!!