Enrichment Night

ICSB announces Enrichment Night for all middle school and high school students!

When I started hearing these announcements, I thought, "Boring!!!" From what I remembered from my high school days, "enrichment" was academically focused. It was a time when the teachers would help enrich the students' academic lives by teaching study skills. Why would I want to be a part of this at ICSB? It just sounded so boring!

Well, come to find out, the evening was meant for SPIRITUAL enrichment, and it definitely was!

The Thursday evening was planned to last for an hour and a half, but ended up going over. We started by singing many praise songs...LOUD praise songs. Students were jumping and dancing. Even some teachers were too! Then we were led into a quiet prayer time. We were encouraged to find a private space and offer our lives to God. At this point, a few of the teachers walked around and prayed with students one-on-one. The teachers would just walk up, put their hand on the student, and start praying. There didn't need to be any explanation, just hearts lifted up to God.

We sang some more, and heard from a few different people. A teacher spoke about Psalm 84:

"A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else!"

A student got up and shared her testimony with her peers. She told us how she was leaning on God during difficult situations. He was faithful to her.

We then sang more songs one final time. The evening seemed to go by so quick. One teacher said she envisioned the Lord "dancing over us." I think he was, and we were dancing with him.

Quark?

Hungarian Quark Pogacsa Recipe
250 g flour
250 g butter
250 g quark
1 teaspoon salt
grated emmentaler cheese
1 egg

Preheat oven to 200°C.
Knead a dough out of flour, butter, quark and salt.
Roll out and fold it 3 times. Roll out again.
With a cutter cut small circles and smear egg on top and sprinkle with some grated cheese.
Bake for 15 minutes.

How would you go about making this recipe? Let me tell you how an over-ambitious inexperienced cook would make these as a thank you for her substitute teachers:

First, start by researching what "quark" is and what "emmentaler cheese" is. According to Wikipedia:

Quark (or qvark) is a fresh cheese of East European origin. Dictionaries usually translate it as curd cheese. It is soft, white and un-aged, similar to fromage frais. It is not the same thing ascream cheese or cottage cheese.

Emmentaler is a yellow, medium-hard cheese, with characteristic large holes. It has a piquant, but not really sharp taste.

Next, go across the street to a small convenience store to find these items. I decided the easiest way to find these was to look for something disgusting that I couldn't identify...quark? I brought home two weird looking, white mush things. I abandoned the emmentaler cheese and decided to just use the white cheese my roommate and I usually eat.

Now try to decipher the measurements and mix together. Bake and remove from oven.

When I got them out, they looked a little bit flat and didn't taste exactly as I expected. They weren't as flaky as those that I buy, but they were okay. Then I decided to try another recipe. This one was a bit more recognizable:

2 Cups all purpose flour
3 egg yolks
3 sticks butter or margarine (cut in chunks for easier blending)
1/2 C sour cream
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 beaten egg yolk for brushing tops of biscuits

Preheat oven to 400. (Convection does a beautiful job!)

Place all ingredients in bowl of heavy duty mixer with the dough hook attachment. Begin mixing on slow speed and mix until the ingredients are well blended and dough forms sort of a ball. The mixer does a great job of blending. (Alternatively, you can blend ingredients by hand and knead well (making a nice smooth dough).

Remove to a floured board and knead a few times by hand to check for smoothness. Add flour only if neeed to keep from sticking to the board. You may still see chunks of butter not completely blended.

Roll out to 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Carefully fold bottom half of dough to the middle, then the top half to the middle. Fold the left side to the middle and then the right side to the middle. Place dough in fridge to rest for minimum of 15 minutes. After 15 minutes roll out again and repeat the folding process. Chill again for at least 15 minutes. Some classic recipes suggest repeating this two more times. I had the problem of finding the biscuits a bit dry perhaps due to adding more flour with each folding. They seemed perfect after two foldings.

Roll out dough to about 1/2 inch thickness. Cut bicuits with a metal biscuit cutter and roll each one between your fingers to make them slightly taller. At this point you can prepare for baking and freeze them. They puff up much better if they come directly from the freezer.

To freeze: Place the pogacsas on a floured platter or tray that will fit in your freezer and freeze. When frozen, place in plastic bags until ready to use.

To bake: Preheat oven to 400. Use convection setting if you have it. When oven is preheated, remove pogacsas from freezer and place on cookie sheet. Brush tops with beaten egg and bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake until golden brown, about 5 more minutes. Serve immediately and they will disappear immediately!

This time, the ingredients went smoother. Unfortunately, one egg yolk was lost to the sink as I dropped it while separating.
Also, if you know anything about my lack of patience, you won't be surprised to know that I didn't really want to roll, freeze, roll, and refreeze 10 million times. I made the educated decision to skip this step and just bake the dough :-)

While this recipe didn't have the yummy cheese, they puffed up better and were quite tasty!

You will see a picture of what pogacsa are supposed to look like (found online) and a plate of what mine looked like. Not bad! Hope my substitutes like them! Go ahead, try to make them...you know you want to!

14th Coca-Cola Women's 10K

This past weekend, my training was finally put to the test. I ran a 10K in Budapest.

A friend from the school, Hannah, and I registered to run this race together. Sunday morning we took trams and the metro to get to Hősök tere (Hero's Square) where the race would take place. We walked up to a strange scene. It looked like a huge rave...a dance party. 100s of people were dancing along to music and they were all doing the same movements. How did they all know this dance, I wondered? Was it some sort of Hungarian dance that all the locals know?

We wandered around and finally found the International Registration table. We signed our lives away and received our numbers and time chips. After pinning our numbers on, we found some port-o-potties. We were ready to race!!

The race was still an hour away.

We walked around, looked at booths, drank some tea, and watched the 3.5K race. We were scoping out our competition and noticed a woman stretching and warming up. She looked intense! We joked about how we would need to take her out fast and quick. As we were joking, this woman walked up to us and started talking to us. She was sooo sweet. This was her first race and she was just as clueless as us! She spoke wonderful English as she works for the British Embassy. She told us where the start line was and informed us of the group warm-up we would all do prior to the race.

Finally, we saw the answer to our "Hungarian dance" question. The group warm-up was beginning! One man was up on a stage leading everyone in aerobics! We joined in and it was so much fun!! After this, we lined up for the race. We waited at the start line and listened to some music. Everyone was dancing and clapping! Then we were off!!

I ran, and ran, and ran! Unfortunately, I was not in as good of shape as I had hoped to be. I had been challenging myself to run 30 minutes on week days, and an hour on Sundays each week before the race. However, 2 weeks ago, the weather had started to get cold and rainy. My training was interrupted, so I was not quite as prepared as I had hoped to be. I ran with Hannah for about 4K, then she took off ahead of me. She finished in 1:03. I finished 3 minutes after her. I appreciated seeing her at the finish line!

After the race, we received medals, a prize package, and a shirt. We decided to get our medals engraved with our names and race times. It took forever and it was freezing because we were so sweaty! Then we took the metro back into the city for lunch with some friends. It was during lunch that our friends took some pictures of us. We reenacted the warm-up and race for some pictures as we didn't have our cameras with us.

All in all, the day was great! Even in the cold and exhaustion from running, I loved spending time with Hannah, seeing the city, and challenging myself with the run.

Feel free to check out race info and results: http://www.budapestmarathon.com/

Jake, the graffiti artist, comes to town.

Art had much excitement this week at ICSB!

Jake visited from Vienna to share his testimony with out students during chapel. He did it in a very creative way: It began with dark, looming music. As it played, Jake painted a somber black and white portrait in front of the crowd. It was filled with depressing words like "lonley" and "shame." When the music came to an end, Jake shared with us about his life. More importantly, he shared how God saved his life. Jake was born with a pastor for a dad, but that meant nothing to him. Throughout his high school and college years, he found himself rebelling against church. This included graffiti, drugs, and alcohol. He was arrested for the first time when he was 17, but that didn't stop him. He kept going and going. He knew his life had no hope, but he had nothing to turn to except his addictions. Finally, after being arrested for the third time, he made a change.

Jake made God his new addiction. Now he is in Bible college in Vienna studying missions. He reflected how much more peace and hope his life now has. He was not like the man in the portrait anymore. We watched Jake tear away the sad portrait to reveal a glorious new life underneath.

Not only did we get to enjoy Jake's testimony during chapel, but he stuck around to paint a mural for the school. He also showed some of the students how to spray paint, and they tried their hand at it. Who's mural do you like better?

Also, I roped Jake into helping with my middle school classes. Together, he and I blocked out some designs for my 7th and 8th graders. We then let them have their creative ways to paint the designs. What cool group projects!!

Retreating with the Lord

This last weekend I attended the High School Retreat for ICSB as a chaperone. I did not quite know what to expect, but found that chaperoning is quite easy when the senior students plan it all!

The senior students stepped into the leadership role in order to plan a retreat for their peers. The retreat started Thursday morning after a bus ride to a local Bible College where we stayed. Once we arrived, we started with some games. All the students had on their green shirts (designed by a senior) and descended on an open field to play freeze tag. They played several games before we had some free time. Later, we had worship time and heard from our speaker. He began his series about pride.

We had lots of free time filled with games, both indoor and out. Friday we played some capture the flag and had a bonfire. At the bonfire, students were encouraged to stand up and address their class. They could say whatever they wanted. Many shared how the school, friends, and teachers had impacted their lives.

Late Friday night (actually 2AM Saturday morning!!) the seniors initiated the freshman. I got up to chaperone the girls. The senior girls had decided that blind folds, water balloons, and wet spaghetti would do the trick. Not to fear, after a little harrassing, the seniors prayed over the new freshman to welcome them into high school.

We left Saturday morning after breakfast and after the speaker finished his last talk. Throughout the weekend, he had encouraged students to take on the character of humility by giving and seeking forgiveness. I heard one student on the bus say to another that she had done that, but still had one more person she needed to talk to when she got back. I think the Lord was speaking to her. Also, the speaker had us all sign a banner with the names of people who had impacted our spiritual lives. These names were to be an example for us of how to be humble people. Wouldn't we want our names to be signed on this paper?

The highlight for me was the worship time. I just love to see the young lives calling out, crying out to God.

It was a long weekend, but fun. I just sat back and watched the students at work. I wonder if they know how much their teacher learned from them...