hello all
as kendra said we spend yesterday in baden with julie, who is such a sweet lady, and she showed us a few of the many beauties of austria. baden has an old-town, village-y sort of feel to it and from what we were told is a big touristy point, but you would never know it. they have still managed to keep the quaint feel and it's natural beauties. it is also a place where many older (and wealthier) austrians retire too, and it has natural hot water springs.
anyways, i'll just add a few pictures to give you a visual.

this is a view of baden from behind beethoven's temple (more of a pagoda).

this is another view of baden from the top of a hill we climbed (so pretty!)

one of the scenes painted on the ceiling of beethoven's temple.

kendra sitting on the balcony of beethoven's temple, looking out at baden

julie and i at an Ebuscho coffee shop (julie said to say that she's holding her favourite coffee)

my photography does not do the place justice, so you'll have to make it to austria to see for yourselves :)
i will add more sometime this week as we plan to go back to baden on wednesday morning (which i believe is our only free time this week) for a hike up to one of the nearby castles. i don't know any history of it, but it's over a thousand years old and it was in one of the turrets that kendra's dad proposed to kendra's mom some years ago, so it's got some history ;)

well, that's all i've got for now. kendra and i spent a lovely morning/afternoon wandering around vienna's numerous catherdrals, opera houses, and other gorgeous structures after church today. after living in athens for so many years, i had forgotten that a city could be so beautiful (and clean!). for random reasons i did not take too many photos, so i will save that for another day.

-becky

Saturday in Baden

Yesterday (Saturday) was our day off, so we walked around the town of Baden with Julie, one of the Oasis team members. Becky and I have been to Baden before - we spent a day there two years ago when we came to Austria with our moms, and we had fun memories of the town, so we were excited to go back. Julie was a great tour guide. She showed us her favourite coffee shop (Ebuscho, I think), walked us through some beautiful parks (the Rosarium and Couer Park, which I know I'm not spelling correctly). We had a delicious lunch of doner kebab and salad. Becky took the pictures, mostly. Yes, you read that right, we finally have pictures!! Apologies for not having any up sooner.

A few things I've noticed/learned about Austria:

1) The toilets tend to be separated from the showers - separated as in different rooms. I have no idea why, but I've seen it in practically every home we've been in.
2) Just like souvlaki is the cheap lunch in Greece, in Austria you can get either doner kebab or a slice of pizza. I don't know why those two particular foods, but wherever you get kebab, you can get pizza.
3) Everything closes EARLY here! By 5:00, just about everything is closed for the night. This makes grocery shopping a bit tricky, since we work in the day and usually aren't done until around 6:00. Still trying to figure out a schedule for that.
4) I miss my family and the Athens team :(

Enjoy the pictures! Becky will post them in a separate blog.

Early Morning Breakfasts

Waking up at eight o' clock every morning for breakfast is not the funnest thing in the world, but it does provide a good opportunity to discover wonderful things about each other.

I've discovered that when i am awake when i would rather be asleep, eating food that i'd rather not be eating, my sense of humour reaches a somewhat lower level of immaturity. I've also discovered that when Becky is awake and would rather be sleeping, eating food she'd rather not be eating, she has a tendency to laugh at just about everything i say.

The combination of the two brings about much merriment at the breakfast table.

-Kendra

the beginning

and here i am. i am at a bit of a loss because kendra wrote a really great account of our time up til now, so i'm trying to think of what to write. i'm really horrible at keeping up with these kinds of things, but i will try!
i guess i'll start with saying that this last goodbye at the airport was one of the hardest ever, and i've said my fair share of goodbyes. i knew i had so much to look forward to and i should be excited, but goodbyes are always hard for me. on the 2 hour flight from athens to vienna i watched "snoopy come home", on my ipod. for those of you who don't know, this is a peanuts movie when snoopy leaves charlie brown (of course to return by the end of the movie). there is a reason i'm mentioning this though. after snoopy had left charlie brown couldn't sleep and this little speech stuck out to me:
"why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together forever? someone would leave. someone always leaves. and then we'd have to say goodbye. i hate goodbyes.
you know what i need? i need more hellos."
sigh...charlie brown, you are a perfect pessimist; but you are so right.

anyhow, i'll move on from sad topics. i will try to fill in some of the things kendra has not written about. we arrived in vienna around 5:30 local time and were met by joann richards. tom and joann have lived and worked here for more than a decade and they had us for dinner, which was lovely. it would have been a very sad thing if we had just come straight to the guest house. but they gave us a nice welcome :)
our accommodations at the guest house are not what i would call 'homey', but it's not fair to compare to my own lovely home. it is nice tho. kendra and i share a room that is ironically decorated "greek style", with bright blue and white walls along with photos of scenes of greek islands and shells and pottery and such. how did they know...? anyhow we get a lovely breakfast at 8 in the morning, which will keep me in the habit of waking up at a reasonable time and of eating breakfast: win-win.

kendra already told you about the pension. it was a neat experience. while kendra was visiting the chechnian family with david, i was with eileen visiting the only afghan family in the whole pension. i think after spending time working at the arc i have a soft spot for afghans - i really like them! the two little girls are beautiful. anyways, i got the impression that the wife especially is just very lonely because she has NOBODY to talk to. she was so excited when miriam came and she said so, because she has not spoken to another woman in many weeks. before miriam came though, eileen and i spent the whole time wracking my brain for any farsi words we could possibly remember, but we weren't doing too well with communication. finally after a rough start i got out a pen and piece of paper and we communicated through drawings. it wasn't anything outstanding, but it worked. got through basics of family and such. like i said, it was a rough and awkward start, but by the end of it i really enjoyed the visit.
and today i met two girls from azerbaijan. the only reason i mention that is because not only were they very sweet, but i have never met anyone from azerbaijan before (in fact, i only just learned how to spell it). i love the name! again it was hard to communicate because of the language barrier (i speak NO turkish and NO russian), so you just smile a lot in the attempts to make chitchat. it can be fun :)

i am still rather new with austrian ref-min (refugee ministry), but i am finding it interesting to just observe the differences between ref-min in athens and here. it's very different! not just how things happen at the oasis (the ministry base here) and the arc (ministry base in athens), but also how the government deals with each. from what i've heard greece is just rather uncaring for them, while austria either gives them housing at a pension or even if they are not here legally still has a "camp" for them to stay at. i had always heard that refugees never really wanted to stay in greece, but now i'm seeing why. they are helped out much more in countries like austria, norway, sweden. they really get nothing from greece.
another thing that i am experiencing is being a part of a team not as a leaders' daughter or as one of the kids, but as any other intern that might come in, wholly unconnected as i am. i'm not saying that they are any less welcoming, it is just a different role. i'm not one of the kids that they knew since i was 10 anymore. haha

anyhow, i apologize at the lack of substance in this particular blog entry. i just read back and i'm noticing that i'm writing a whole lot without really saying much, if you know what i mean. well that's getting in the head of becky sirinides....HA! hopefully i will get better at this, but for now i say GOOD NIGHT

Our First Day in Austria

We still don’t have Internet access at the guest house, so at the moment I’m writing this on my laptop in hopes that I’ll be able to copy and/or paste it sometime later.

Our first day in Austria was a long but very good one. We headed over to the Oasis in the morning with Eileen, our fellow guest house resident, where we were shown around and got to work preparing crafts for the afternoon’s children’s program. At two ‘o’ clock, the five of us (Eileen, Becky, me, David, and Miriam) headed out.

The kids club is held every Thursday in the village of Altenmarkt, about half an hour away by car. It is held in a Pension, which is a large building with many one-room apartments that house refugees. Around twenty kids showed up, many of them from Chechnya, nearly all of them German speakers. For the first time in a long time, I was in an environment where I had no idea what was being said to me (I can just hear certain people in Athens saying: “Well, it’s about time you experienced what the rest of us go through!”). I don’t deny it was kind of frustrating. I did learn some new words though – a girl named Selena taught me the names of the colours. I’ll have to learn them all over again next week, I’m sure, but hey, it was conversation to some degree.

After kids club (which consisted of songs, a bible story, a craft, and a game of charades), our group split up and spent a couple hours visiting some families staying in the Pension. David (the Aussie on the team) and I went to visit with a Chechnyan family who’s been in Austria for two weeks. They spoke no German or English, and we didn’t speak any Russian, so conversation was quite limited until Miriam showed up and kept the talk flowing with the Russian she knows (thanks, Miriam!). They were a very sweet and hospitable family – Roufan and Indira have two children, a four-year old girl named Fazira and a two-year old boy named Bhela. Thank the Lord for little kids – they’re a great distraction when you find you don’t have a lot to add to the conversation ☺

Afterwards I spent a little time with Becky and Eileen and the Afghan woman they had been visiting. In this short period of time, I discovered that the only Farsi words I know (“tarosh” and “pakorn”, pencil sharpener and eraser, respectively) are apparently Iranian Farsi words, and not Afghan Farsi. Who knew? So my meager attempts at Farsi vocabulary sort of flew out the window. But it was quite nice to see an Afghan face – felt like Athens, in a way.

Another Chechnyan family was our last stop, at another Pension, where I consumed my fifth mug of tea of the day, and where we had a very tasty dinner prepared by Leila, our host. It’s very humbling that everybody we were with today was so eager to share with us what very little they have – surely it would be far better to save it for their families, or so we would think, anyway. They love having guests in the home, though – they never hesitated to offer us seconds (which we always refused – we were at three homes, after all!). I’m looking forward to seeing some of them next week, and meeting new families as well.

I’ve decided that I must learn another language at some point in my life. German or Farsi are at the top of the list, at the moment – maybe I’ll fit Chechnyan in at some point (or Russian would be better, actually).

Hoping this gets posted soon! It’s just after midnight now, so I’m gonna hit the hay. Guten nacht!

-Kendra


Edit: I am now able to post this from the guest house!

Last night we flew into Vienna at around 5:30 pm with no troubles at all - we made it safely and our luggage did too! I would have updated last night, but at the moment, we're having a little trouble with internet connection at the guest house. It's a little unclear if all we need is some passwords, or if the entire building is without it for now. Anyway, I'm on the computer at the Oasis at the moment. In about ten minutes we'll be heading out to Aldenmarkt, a village where we will hold a children's program - sort of a Sunday school, from what I gather. Becky and I spent the morning cutting out cardboard ears and horns for paper cows and donkeys :)

We've met most of the team already. Eileen is also staying at the guest house, so we met up this morning and showed us the whole spiel on trains and tickets and whatnot.

Sorry for the short post, but we are about to head out the door, so when I have more time I'll try and post some pictures!

Love you all!

-Kendra

Let the Countdown Begin - 10...

Okay, maybe countdowns are cheesy, but really now - 10 more days?? I haven't even started packing yet :S

So on Wednesday, January 16th, Becky and I will board a 4pm flight from Athens to Vienna, arriving a little after five in the afternoon. I'm glad it's close - don't want to be too exhausted our first day (though I'm guessing the emotional toll might wear me out anyway).

Obviously I'm excitedly anticipating finally leaving, after months and months of planning and choosing and whatnot. And to tell the truth, it will probably be easier to talk about this vision trip of ours once we've actually done it. Sure, right now we can name the places we'll be in and give a general idea of the kind of work we'll be doing, but we'll probably make much more interesting conversationalists once we've actually experienced it all :)

Then again -"easy" to sum up seven months of ministry and travel in one conversation? Silly me.

With the excitement also comes the sadness :( Not so much that I have to leave Greece - I'm ready to see other places and anxious to get down the basics of "living on my own". I just wish goodbyes didn't have to be a part of it. I'm going to miss a lot of people here. Seven months is a long time - I have to say, I'm glad we'll be starting work straight away in Austria. I'll need something to distract me so I don't become too homesick. I'll probably be an emotional wreck on the 16th, but I never expected anything less, so I'm preparing myself ;)

Some people have asked us what we're thinking about the whole Kenya situation and whether we still plan on going there in July. All we can say is we really don't know at this point. It's possible that the bad stuff may blow over by July, and then again, it's entirely possible it may not. They apparently have required that all Canadians leave the country - I haven't heard anything regarding Americans, but if it comes to that, we'll see where God leads. I'm not particularly worried about it at this point.

Happy New Year, every one. I hope you'll have a great one. We're just getting started :)

10 more days!!

- Kendra