input please

i'm thinking about dying my hair
yeses?
Nos?
color suggestions?
anyone care?
anyone read this?

sorry bout the lack of content....actually there is a lot going on....i am just spread to thin to process it all and then type it out too.....i'd be glad to do lunch.breakfast.dinner somethime and clue you in on some of the stuff i'm learning....i'll be home saturday......call the cell

here we go!

Pittsburgh's goin to the super bowl!!!!! ONE FOR THE THUMB!!!
i must admiththat watching the game in Colorado made me a bit nervous...oh but what a good game....
i am a tad unapologetic about the fact that i'm a person whose mood is affected by the winners of football games! in which the steelers are involved!!

My Latest Cross Cultural Experience

I went to the rodeo last weekend....and had a great time crossing cultures!!
Me and John Deere

me and a large dead cow head

I smooched a LLAMA!!(do you think Micah will get jealous?)

kissing cows

cow butts

It must be a cultural thing :)

this guy was just the epitome of cute! He got so tied up in his rope....i felt kinda bad taking pictures of kids that werent mine, but not bad enough to miss this cute shot
more cute kids who arent mine!

I cant escape Slovak Culture!....we were running late to the actual rodeo so I didn’t get to try any :(

start of the rodeo

bull riding

they put 5 and 6 year olds on sheep.....it was sooo funny...the kids were just hanging on for dear life!!

Stasi In the Saddle!!


THE END!!!

the joy and the agony

i love my mac...i have to use safari if i want to post pictures on it...pictures liek this one of my drill group trying to perfect the sound of an upsilon in phonetics....

i have my cell phone charger!! you can call me if i am not posting enoough to suit your taste....you can not if you dotn have my number and i'm not going to post it on the internet...i'm not DUMB!!!

We finish up PILAT tomorrow at noon....i'm heading to Denver to YFC headquarters tomorrow afternoon, going to hear Steve Saint speak tomorrow evening and going to a rodeo on Saturday!!

monday starts SPLICE

i'll be sending out a prayer letter soon....it's getting edited....

i'm done writing

i wish i was better at this

Thank You

for praying....this morning i feel so much much better!!! God is Good.....i am still a tad tired...but my nose did not bleed last night and my nose is not stuffed up adn my head does not ache near as bad....thank you thank you thank you

Two for the price of one (about PILAT AND my Afternoon off)

PILAT so far has been wonderful....it has been good to meet other misisonaries...to share frustrations and suggestions and jsut feel like people understand!

We have classes/sessions/whatever you call them from 845 till 430 and A lot of what we're doing has been really interesting and useful. Ive gotten some really practical ideas for learning Slovak and a lot of encouragement that it can be done. I've even been practicing some of them with Russian!

we've also been trying to break out of our "sound boxes" did you know that English only has about 44 sounds but the human mouth and vocal chords are capable of THOUSANDS!!?? (i wish English still had an interrobang too) but our mouths fall into a rut...yesterday after practicing laterals and fricatives, my mouth was sooo tired....but i'm starting to be able to hear and make the sounds too...it's really neat....

Here at MTI we get weekends off...except this week we started late so we had a session this morning....so here's what i did with my afternoon off

Art & Lois from headquarters who help me keep focused and figure out fundraising drove down from Denver to take Jessica (also with YFC...going to Uganda) and me out to Lunch it was a great. fellowship and chineese food (without roaches!!) next friday i'll be going up there to visit

Till we got back most people had left for the afternoon on hikes or otherday trips so i am here mostly on my own....i took the chance to embrace the solitude and get some stuff done

I wrote some thank yous. I still have quite a few to go and darn it if Postage isnt going up this weekend!!

I finally ballanced my checkbook....

Also I uploaded a ton of pictures....if youve been waiting for pictures of the Lane Christmas/Anniversary, or the pictures for updating your magnets, or some pictures of Colorado, The Link to Flikr on the right is for you!!!!! Also if i get enough comments, i may break down and post the picture of me with the banana on my head!

I sat with some kids who are here and watched the never ending story while is did the pictures and wrote this

Additionally and a source of joy, I sat outside in the sun (it was 65 here today....what kind of wussy January is this?) I havent seen sun in months it seems!! I did some reading and some just sitting!!

later, i'll write a paper (or at least start it) and watch another hour of "Pride and Predjudice"...send some e-mails....and go to bed early!!

more to come.....stay tuned

from Beatrice & Colorado

I'm currently wireless in the community area...this is officially beatrice's first blog entry!!

so i almost slept through my flight but with some other "minor" complications (which i'm not admitting to the internet in general) I made it to Palmer Lake and MTi. i forgot my bears and cell phone charger so far...i mean that's all i have realized i forgot so far....It's nice here...have my own room and bthroom and every one seems nice enough...at dinner with a couple going to Kenya, a friend going to Uganda, a girl going to Tanzania, and one going to Uzbekistan

i have pictures from the Lane thing...aniversary and Christmas...they shall find their way to flickr eventually! any family reading this, keep your eyes peeled at the link to the right

i'll keep y'all updated as i learn my language acquisition techniques these next two weeks

ok so without looking, what's the difference between eg. and i.e. ?

DSL

I would like to sing the praises of DSL...i'm not honestly sure what that stands for, but i know i like it!....it was daddy's christmas present....and they are going to hook up the wireless router so that i can access the internet on beatrice....what's that you say "who's beatrice???" well it turns out that my laptop came with a name...and that name happens to be beatrice...i am also in love with her!
and in other "geek"(as My darling Micah would say) news ... i sort of bought a digital camera...a canon EOS 300D..."how does one sort of buy a camera?" you ask....well, i bid on it on e-bay...on a whim...i was surprised to win....(insert shocked and surprised face here) ... it should arrive tomorrow.... quite excited....Ok my cousin's Boy Band is coming tonight and staying here so i must run a nd clean some....and please dont tell Stephen i called his band a boy band....i believe they play metal.....but they ARE all boys....what SHOULD i call them?? :)

a post

2 weeks till i leave for Colorado for the last bit of training....exciting....scary...so much to do...and i am still having inertia problems....i had a bad day yesterday....

but a wonderful night...drove to Grove City to celebrate the end of the Semester with Micah before he leaves for the barren wasteland that is Ohio ( i know, i know, sorry...i'll be nice;)
we had a LATE dinnner (we ate at 9) after his final...decided it was too cold to walk and look at lights....his very strong desire to deposit me in a snow bank played a part in that decission....so we watched the muppet christmas carol instead....

i got a laptop...a major God thing...used 6 months....noting wrong with it...more screen size ram and a bigger Hard ddrive than i could have gotten for hte same amt of $....God is Good!....Abi is bringing it home with her!....

bye

jsut becasue KT asks so nicely!

Look on the bright side, when i dont update there anre none of my annoying typos!

so it's been so long since i posted that my internet browser no longer "guesses" right when i start to type in the URL....sometimes it feels like it has been even longer than that since anything worth posting happened....and i certainly dont have any insights into life...nothing deep...nothing humorous....

i discovered the other day that my uncle Ron reads my blog...kinda fun....wonder who else out there....makes me want to be more entertaining....

so i'll tell a story that makes me laugh....the childrens christmas program was this past weekend. and as part of that, the prescoolers sang a few songs....their moms and dads dressed them up in their cutest little red and green and velvet christmas outfits and they all had little stars on top of thier heads that glittered.....
my favorite was littel Samantha though....her dress was red with a bit of a drop waist and a flare skirt....and right there in the front row, she has either side of her skirt in her littel fists....and shes lifting one side then the other...bringing them both up and hugging the skirt to hereself....positively showing the entire audience her underwear....
my mom is next to her and says, "Samantha, honey, keep your skirt down" And Samantha (the sweetest littel thing in the world) just looks at her and says, "It's RED!" and how can you argue with that?
Someday Samantha will grow up and she will be mortified by the video her dad has of the program. And somewhere along the way, she will stop finding so much joy in the color of her christmas dress that she simply must play with the skirt, no matter who sees her underwear.
i'm not saying that's a bad thing in fact society will say its a wonderful thing!....but lucky for humanity, Samantha's place will be filled by another prescooler will come along to remind us that sort of joy is still out there.

Merry Christmas! i wish you all the reckless joy that having a Savior brings

i do not like

babaganasch....i'm also pretty sure it's misspelled....tha'ts all

well, that and the fact that today was my last day at work...

and my laundry still needs put into drawers from last wednesday (yeah, as in Nov. 9th)

and i am 23 in case you missed that this wednesday (the 16th)

so i guess that babaganasch was not all

but this is the end! (well of this post anyway...sorry for the sparseness)

updates

dixi
Originally uploaded by wbsercessa.

uploaded some pics to flickr...halloween and the dog....maybe someday i will get around to scanning the pictures of Judah, Megan(micah's brothr ad his GF) micah and me with our faces painted...this time Judah ahd the whiskers and micah had a spaceship...i have a few stars a moon with a black eye and a pink cactus....yes, i let micah paint my face....
so for those who dont know i quit my job...8 days and i'm a full time fundraiser...also i will be in Colorado for the month of January doing some really cool training on living cross culturaly and learnign anew language....www.mti.org if youre interested.....
things are going well... i jsut wihs i could get myself out of bedd earlier on my mornings off...i'd get so much more done!.
ok off to write Thank-you's, fold wednesday's laundry, and layout a brochure. Life is good good good...gimmme a call sometime!

when you get salycilic acid in your eye it hurts.

painting by Gwen Meharg. I got it from her website Draw near to God

well i'm trying this out for abi...seeing if i can post a picture using the top bar...turns out i can...
aside from that functional purpose, this picture is a glimpse of where i am....it's beautiful and mysterious and full of promise and full of One i cannot see but trust...but i'm so small....and someitmes i feel insignificant in light of the big picture...and sometimes i feel very alone. other times i see the beauty of everything around me and the blessings that i'm so unworthy of. and i'm blown away by the fact that God chose to put me in the picture at all

who's fault is it?

i was hurt last night...deeply wounded by someone from whom i should have seen it coming....i have been in denial to this point as to her nature as a consistently thoughtless and often mean spirited person....and i cant decide if i should be mad at myself for not seeing it coming sooner...i should have had a thicker wall built towards her or at least a sharp retort ready to shoot back...and was i too sensitive....did i misinterpret what she meant....am i dwelling on it too much...well at any rate that's why i have this thing...to get that sort of thing out.....
and maybe i want to be mad at the other people in the room....becasue no one said anything....of course they all had reasons....the foremost probably being that since it wasnt their most vulnerable spot she hit, they probably didnt realize just how deep that wound would get....but those guys know me pretty well...do i hide my deepest fears that deep, that well that tehy really couldnt tell....i cant blame them i guess it was a offhand comment that jsut happened to hit deep when no one was looking....

and i know that she doesnt know me that well....she gust got in a lucky shot.....but really i want to be mad at her....for being a snot.....among a myriad of other things that i jsut wont go into becasue i dont want to go to her level...and for that reason i'm going to drop this and let the wound heal over...casue tha's how God designed us..to be tough and to heal...but i have learned my lesson...next time i'll keep my defenses up....

Much thanks to Alison from the third west whom i love
Leave your name and...
1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. You MUST. It is written.

PS....puppy pics are up just click the my pictures link to the right....also Ami has some on her flikr account too

cryptic....

i have a puppy sleeping in my lap...i'm kicking myslef(that is unrelated to dixi, pictures are up btw...link to the right)....the puppy is keeping me sane......i'm in no state of mind to be writing this....i would like to not get out of bed tomorrow....i'm scheduled for 12.5 hours....this will not be fun...add to that that i'm still up and it's almost midnigh....not a happy camper....and yet, oddly elated and hopeful...for reasons related to the kicking of myslef....

a puppy!!

Alex and my dad got a dog(my mom and i have her too but she really belongs to those two)....

she's a rat terrier...not becasue she looks like one but because we hope she will catch moles when she grows up....she is tiny and black all over except her toes and chin and shes deadly cute....her name is Dixi....the Disciplemaking Ministries Committee(DMC) voted on it at their meeting last night where teh puppy was in attendance....walking on the table i hear...wriggling her way into the hearts of the most hardened of ministry volunteers:) (i promise that is not commentary on MAC church leadership)

she wont stay in her basket...she prefers the dirty laundry on my parents bedroom floor....she cries and cries....after i got off the phone with Micah last night i went down to get a drink form the kitchen and she was not in her basket.....she was sleeping with my dad on teh couch....last night she woke me up crying at 130....so we played for a half hour before i put her back in her basket with another basket on top to keep her in....it did not work that well...mom found her in the laundry this morning....

I'll take a picture this evening when she gets home from meeting ami for lunch....this dog gets around...shes almost never home....first the DMC meeting then to visit seelbaughs and today out for lunch...sheesh....she has more of a life than me and she's only 8 weeks old!!

norhtern Ireland

i would like to say that Slovakia is safe. when i'm living in Presov i will be as safe as if i was in Pittsburgh. Slovakia split fromt he czech Republic in 1993 in what is commoly refered to as the Velvet Divorce...sounds rough huh?
Belfast on the other hand is wrapped up in century old fueds and riots. and Kristen is in the middle of it...suddenly i'm interested in Northern Ireland Politics...

reflective ramblings stream of concoiusness

Kristen is missing things....and KT is smiling....and i miss knowing why...all the ins and outs and details and a hammock at the center of it all....i miss college life....i have of course conveniently forgotten all the annoyng people and hall meetings and dumb chapel speekers and tests and papers and I am jsut remembering community and laughter and late-night runs to walmart for canned air and Orange juice stopping at wendy's for fries and frostys and the "hammock Rule" and the "after midnight rule" applied with reckless abandon at 3 in the afternoon :)
in other news, i'm fundraising....i'm scared still by this....and when scared i tend to procrastinate.....i love telling the story....of how i got here and where God's taking me...but then at the end i have to ask for money....and no matter how i try and paint it as joining a team or sharing my adventure...in the end i still feel like i'm askign for money....i know all the platitudes and all that, but still it's uncomfortable...ok ok ok Art says to call it stretching and embrace it....i'm trying...keep praying
further down on to the gossip column another one bites the dust and Micah is the only havener Boyfriend left....there shall be more square dancing this weekend....i like him....i'm done
the end