First Visitor

Shortly after we got our car (actually, the very next day) we got our first visitor! Karen, who has been teaching in Hungary, stopped by to see us on her way to and from visiting our friends up North. She stayed the night with us Friday and then headed off North in the morning. It was so much fun to have an excuse to foray out into the big city with real purpose! Fortunately I took a navigator with me (Thanks, Father!) or we NEVER would have made it. I hadn't planned on bringing someone, but I saw Scott at the bottom of the stairs when I was headed out to take Karen to the train station accompanied by my three lovely kids. I think he saw the look of panic in my face when I asked for directions... and he volunteered to ride along with us! "My HERO!" I actually took to the driving style like a fish to water... but that was all I could concentrate on - the navigating without road signs was more than I could've handled. In fact, it often still is - but I have a map! And I am getting good at retracing my "steps" when I realize I am way off!

Karen brought us goodies (Thanks again, Karen!) - including books for me and a puzzle for the kids. The girls enjoyed getting to know Karen while the three of them put the puzzle together in record time. They were so engrossed they hardly noticed me taking lots of pictures of them.




Karen came again later in the week - I picked her up at the train station (a neighbor watched the kids, who were sleeping already) and I made the trip in the dark and without a navigator! When we got back to the apartment we had some warm rice pudding that I had made with our leftover rice from dinner ("wow... she is getting all domesticated!" I HEARD THAT!) and I loved hearing about her impressions of her trip and the school she visited. Unfortunately she got a bit of a sinus infection, so wasn't feeling so great - hope you are all better now!

The next morning we had an altogether new adventure... I had offered a ride into town to one of our neighbors who needed to take her cats in town to the vets. But things became complicated when she accidentally locked herself out of her apartment in the wee hours as she thoughtfully went down to feed the cats of an absent neighbor... and ended up sleeping at their apartment with no alarm. She awoke the next morning to hearing my kids' voices echoing in the hallway, "But, Mom! She is NOT answering the door! I think she forgot!" So she hurried to the local key-keeper and got a spare to let herself back into her apartment to get the cats. [Let me interject here, for those of you who don't know how cats generally operate... but they don't like to be put in cages, ride in cars, or be rushed... all of which were necessary in order to get them to the vet's appointment (which was time-sensitive because they were having a series of shots, and if they missed one, they would have to start again) before our neighbor left town for a weekend conference.] So, like a champion of "just make it happen", our neighbor managed to corner both cats and get them secured in pillow cases temporarily, grabbed the cat-carrier and ran to the car. We zipped into town, dropped her, the cats (still in pillow cases), and the carrier near a taxi stand and raced off to get Karen to the airport in time for her flight. I glanced in my rear-view mirror as we sped off, just in time to see her struggling to get the cats into the carrier so she could flag down a taxi.

A common phrase here sounds like, "In sha'allah" and it means "if God wills it". Well today He must have because the cat's made it to their appointment, Karen made her flight, we connected back up with our neighbor and the cats and made it home in time for her to catch her ride to the conference!!!! Weeeeeeee! (And as an added bonus we didn't even get lost while driving to and fro!)