Children and holidays

Kingsley spoke to a friend last week who had just returned from a short holiday with his family. Kingsley said something about it being a grind to get back into work after his holiday and his friend said his holiday was okay but that work was so much easier than holidaying with his children.

We thought it was really sad comment. What does that show about his attitude to his children? They are a burden rather than a blessing. He didn't enjoy his holiday so much because he was tied down by his children, had to discipline them, play with them. We have recently come back from a holiday with our children and we all had such a fun time together that there were tears the night before we came home. Yes, Kingsley and I might have done some things differently if we didn't have children with us, but we would have also missed out on a lot of fun.

(This isn't an attitude shared by all Slovene people, but I wonder if it isn't all that rare. The Slovene birth rate is about 1.3, so as a nation they aren't really keen about having children.)

Croatian holiday

We have recently spent a week's holiday on the Croatian coast. We stayed in Poreč, a coastal town just south of the Slovene border. It is a lovely picturesque town and God gave us wonderful weather for the week. 

Having been in Australia recently, the beaches were just a little disappointing. We still haven't adjusted to European beaches. In fact I found it hard to call most of them beaches at all. We miss the sand and the waves. Most of the beaches in Poreč were like these: 

Lots of concrete and steps or step ladders into the water. Sometimes they had a sandpit with some umbrellas further away from the edge, although the sand looked more like dirt really.

The closest thing to a beach we found was this one. About 100 metres long with stones. One good thing about stony beaches is that we could have skimming competitions.

The old town was bustling with activity - lots of tourists and restaurants. We took our children on a pajama ride one night and bought an ice-cream. They had a ball.

I loved these buildings in the town centre with co-ordinating pastel colors.

We are very thankful to God for a lovely rest, good time together, lots of time playing cricket with daddy (our boys are sadly lacking in cricket skills after 7 years in Slovenia!) and reading books together.

Spring!

Spring has arrived. I appreciate spring so much more now that we live in a country where winter is cold enough to need thick jackets, hats, gloves, scarves, two pairs of socks etc. Spring doesn't officially start until next week, but we have had a week of lovely sunshine and today my boys and girl pulled out their shorts and t-shirts (well Sophie pulled out her summer dress). The apricot tree outside our bedroom windows is blossoming and bees are buzzing around. Definitely spring. (Although there were some horrified looks from ladies in the street when they saw our children with bare legs and arms...)

We have had Peter and Janet Payne staying with us this week. Peter did a dialogue meeting with some students on Wednesday. God answered the prayers of many and there were five students there, none of whom had been to Kingsley's Bible study group before. Tomorrow Peter is giving a talk on suffering at church and on Monday a lecture at the philosophy faculty. Pray that God will bring people along and that he might use Peter's words to prompt people to find out more.

Grace or Works: Children's books

We borrowed a book from the library for a reading program Timothy is doing with his preschool. It was a picture book written by a Slovene author, called 'Pod Medvedovim Dežnikom' (Under Bear's Umbrella). Its ending was a surprise to me, but I guess in this culture which is so steeped in a works mentality, I shouldn't have been surprised.

The book is about a bear who receives a new umbrella for his birthday. On Saturday, when it rains, he meets a number of animals who are getting wet in the rain and invites them to join him under the umbrella. They have all met a fox beforehand, who refused to share her umbrella. The following day, the fox is bored and meets the animals again. Each of them doesn't want to stay with her because they are going to visit the bear. The fox lies down on the ground and sings sad sad songs all afternoon.

I turned the page, expecting the bear to show mercy and to go and talk to the fox and invite her in. (And of course the fox would learn her lesson). But no. The book ends there - with the fox singing sad sad songs by herself.

Unfortunately this is often how Slovene culture works. If you help someone or are kind to them, they will help you and be kind to you. If you offend someone, they won't give you a second chance or show you grace. You are cut off.

I am very thankful for God's amazing grace in that he didn't leave us singing sad songs by ourselves but he died for us when we didn't deserve it. I pray that I will forgive others as he forgave us. I am also very thankful for a Christianly influenced culture in most of our children's books where grace makes an appearance.

Shoelaces

We had a missionary shoelace visit us just before we came back to Australia. The idea is that the missionary families take the shoelace around with them to various things and 'the shoelace' comments on his facebook page about what has happened. I couldn't get the technology to work for me when we were in Slovenia and so have posted things since we have been back. So here is a snapshot of our life in late May, just before we headed back to Australia, from the perspective of a shoelace:

And I have arrived in the beautiful city of Maribor, Slovenia. I am staying with the Box family in a large two bedroom apartment in the old part of town. I went for a walk in the morning and saw the town from the River Drava. Its a lovely view looking at the old town with the background of a few hills with vineyards. Apparently a statue of Mary sits overlooking the town in a shrine at the top of one hill. At 6.30am I saw quite a lot of people going to work and a few children going to preschool or before-school care.

This morning I went along to take the boys to their school and preschool. Tim attends preschool five days a week (no part time preschool in Slovenia because all the mums and dads work full-time). When we arrived at both school and preschool, they had to take their shoes off and put on slippers to wear inside. I nearly got lost amongst all the shoes! They are given a hot meal at lunchtime because lunch is the main meal for Slovenes. At preschool they often go for a walk to the park or a playground in the morning and have a rest after lunch. At school they have their classes in the morning and after lunch play sport, do homework and play until they are picked up.

Today we had an unusual experience. We were invited to a Slovene family bbq. Every Sunday the normal Slovene has lunch with their extended family. It is very strange for Slovenes to invite outsiders into their homes and even stranger to a family gathering. One of the students who has been coming along to Kingsley's Bible study group invited us to join his extended family. We had sausages, chicken and fish on the bbq (but not beef - that would be extremely strange here), salads, bread and then desserts. We were at the old family home - a one bedroom home, about 10 minutes drive from Maribor. They have a well and a pump in their backyard, which the Box boys loved using. They perched me there at one stage and I was certain I would be soaked in minutes. Just managed to escape in time!

We attended an end-of-school-year event with Timothy's preschool class. They held it at a farm near Maribor. The children played soccer for a while, then they sang some songs for us. We ate typical Slovene (home-baked) food - bread with salami, cheese or a kind of pate type thing and a mariborska gibanica - like a baked cheesecake but not as sweet as in Australia. Then we had a look at all the farm animals and the children had rides on a horse. Lots of fun and a good opportunity to get to know other families from preschool.

We were invited by the neighbour of the Boxes to go for coffee and cake. This is how Slovenes are most likely to show hospitality. They invite a friend out for coffee rather than invite people into their home. There are lots of cafes with tables and chairs outside and they seem to be very well frequented (in the warmer months that is). Icecream is also very cheap here - a great plus! Tim wore me around his neck and I nearly ended up one very sticky shoelace!

Hospitality

I wrote something for Nicole's blog on hospitality in Slovenia, so I thought I would post it here as well.

- Hospitality is VERY strange here. It is just weird to have anyone other than extended family come to your home (with the exception of birthday parties - and even those don't usually happen in the home). Slovenes will generally catch up with their friends over a coffee.

- Slovenia is a very works-based culture. In regards to hospitality, it means that people will not agree to come to your house unless they are prepared to invite you to their house. (If you go to someone's house, you are obliged to invite them back). And this applies to people in the church as well. They keep a tally. The first time we realised this was when we invited a family from

church to our apartment for lunch and they insisted that it was their turn and so we would have to come to their house first. So we effectively (unwittingly) invited ourselves to their house for lunch by inviting them to our place twice. This is a little awkward, because we have four children, which is WAY above the national average, so it is a big ask for people to invite us to their house. One lady in our church refused to come for lunch to our house (she did come to afternoon tea though), because she lives in a very small apartment (a small kitchen plus a living/bedroom) and couldn't cook lunch for our family.

- A Slovene lunch traditionally starts with soup, then a main meal and dessert and should be ready when the guests arrive (lunch is their main meal).

- Slovene ladies keep their houses ridiculously clean. My neighbour mops her floors every day (and even the landing outside our apartments every second day). I grew up in a more relaxed, not-so-fanatically clean house. I just can't keep up with Slovene housewives, although I'm sure they can't understand why, because they all work and I am at home!

So, how have we tried to deal with these cultural norms? Here are a few things that we have done:

- We try to take things slowly with people we have just met - we ask them out for coffee first.

- We would love to be able to break the works mentality, but it is so deep. Grace is not natural. We have tried explaining that we don't have the same expectations, but usually it doesn't make

much difference. It is a long process. For our friends in Ljubljana who are in a church which has had Aussie missionaries for over 10 years, the culture is changing. So we will keep inviting people and pray that God will allow them to break out of their cultural restrictions over time.

- We have found younger people are less bound by the culture. They are more likely to accept hospitality without feeling obliged to return the favour. As well, as we get to know people, we work out whether we need to do soup for them - some people are less fanatical about the necessity of soup!

- I try to have the apartment clean when we have guests over - it's still not to their standard but at least better than my norm was in Australia. (I have recently started working on cleaning one room well each day of the school week, so that hopefully the workload is not so high the night before we have guests).

- If we have people for lunch after church I try to have some things cooked either the night before or do a lot of cooking in the morning before church, so that it is mostly done when we get home.

Mother's Day

We saw this duck with her ducklings today and I thought it was a very appropriate photo for Mother's Day. Hard to imagine having to chase around 10 babies!

I am very thankful for our mothers (Kingsley's mum and mine) and the great examples they are to us of godly mothers.