Each year at the Royal Maundy Service, the Queen of England presents “Maundy money” to select members of the church. The number of coins handed out coincides with the age of the Queen. This year being the Queen’s 85th birthday, she gave coins to 85 men and 85 women. The men and women are selected for their service to their community and church. This year our friend Hyacinth received one of the coins. You can see her in the video below. Look for the lovely lady in pink at 1:24. Several other friends from our church were in attendance to support Hyacinth and our pastor’s mother (who also received a coin this year.) You can read more about the event here: Royal Maundy Service.
Carnivale di Venezia
Carnivale di Venezia. The Carnival of Venice. Amazing. A couple of weeks ago, we traveled to Venice with our friends Amanda, Carrie, Nicki, Kristi-Anna, Amanda, RheaAnne, and Petra. Venice is about a seven hour drive from Vienna, so we left at 4:00am (yes, you read that right), drove to Venice for the afternoon, then arrived back home at 11:30pm. It was a whirlwind trip and totally worth it!
Carnivale is the celebration before Lent. Apparently, there are a great many of these celebrations the world over. At least, according to Wikipedia there are. The concept is to get all of your partying done before the beginning of Lent, so that during Lent you can focus on God. Here in Austria, the celebration is called Fasching. We usually celebrate Fasching by eating the donuts that Petra brings to school. 🙂
Carnivale in Venice is fairly tame. Nothing like what I’ve heard about Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It’s a whole lot of people dressed in amazing costumes milling about, participating in parades, etc. You can have your face painted or buy carnivale masks. You can take gondola rides through the city or eat lunch along one of the canals.
Venice is such a beautiful city! Both of the times I’ve been there, it has only been for a day. I would love to spend a week there sometime and visit the various islands. While we were there we saw several people in kayaks. How amazing would it be to tour Venice by kayak!?! Maybe someday.
More pictures here: Carnivale
May/June Catch-up
Well, once again, I find myself at the end of August realizing that we have been to busy to share about our lives or keep this blog up to date. I think the summer that we keep on top of things will deserve some kind of reward. Possibly involving ice cream.
Here’s a snapshot of what was happening with us during the end of May and the month of June.
This year we had a mustache themed birthday party for Matt. Mustaches are always fun!
Then of course, there was the senior trip to Croatia, but you already know about that.
The day after we returned from Croatia, I turned 40. Yes. 40. Sigh. Matt and some of our friends threw me a 39.39393939… birthday party. Matt said I don’t I have to turn 40 if I don’t want to. I kinda don’t want to.
Then the seniors graduated! Wahoo! You can see by all the smiles that they were definitely ready for this day. More pics here: Graduation 2010
During the month of June we had a few friends visiting. Sally, Bekah, and Becca are some of our favorite people, so it was great to see them.
On June 19, our friends Felix and Leslie got married. They asked me to be one of the wedding photographers. Lots of pressure, but I learned a ton. I especially learned that this is NOT what I want to do for a living. Yikes!
We spent the rest of June helping our friends Jeff and Bethany get moved into their new apartment. This was super exciting for us because now they live in our building. Yay!
Stay tuned to for stories from July and August. Things did not slow down. I need a nap.
Auf Wiedersehen!
The hardest part of living here in Vienna is that we are constantly saying goodbye to people that we love, people that have impacted our lives in amazing ways, people that have changed us. The Lord has provided us with so many amazing relationships and it just never gets any easier to say goodbye. These are the faces of the people who are leaving us this year. We are going to miss each and every one of them (already do!), but we are so grateful for the time we’ve had here with them. Be well friends! We love you!
Flashback #3 – Vienna Orientation
One of my new jobs this year was being in charge of Vienna Orientation. Vienna Orientation is the first week that new staff spend in Austria. We get to help them move into their apartments, find their way around town, learn how to grocery shop – basically get oriented to Vienna. In the past I’ve been a buddy for new folks, which is a lot of fun, but this year I got to be responsible for planning our outings, getting all the paperwork together, scheduling speakers, etc. It was a bit less one-on-one time, but I got to know each of the new staff instead of just one or two, and that was great!
Our first outing was a trip up to Kahlenberg. Kahlenberg is a mountain (hill if you’re from Colorado) overlooking Vienna. It’s a great place to visit on a clear day because you get a view of the entire city. I loved going here my first year and seeing just how big Vienna is.
After visiting the lookout in Kahlenberg, we rode the bus down to Grinzing for dinner. We walked around a bit because it’s just a really cute town. 🙂 Then we had dinner at a Heuriger called Figl’s. Yummy!
Other staff got to take them on trips to the Naschmarkt and a tour of downtown Vienna. Luckily we had nice weather for most of the week!
Of course, it wouldn’t be summer without BBQs. We had several BBQs at various places to give everyone a chance to get to know one another better. It was a great week!
