We Aren't Crazy
We aren't crazy. OK, maybe a little. There are few places we’d rather be than in the classroom with our 56 silly-serious puberty-stricken students. Don’t get us wrong, teaching is a lot of work and keeping the students' attention is like herding cats, but they are totally worth it. Our students make us laugh, keep us from taking ourselves too seriously and give us hope for the future of mankind. They are just plain fun. We love our jobs.
The community here at The International Christian School of Budapest (ICSB) is also fantastic. This past month ICSB hosted the annual basketball tournament and our family participated for the first time. Spirit week was a perfect time for our students to show off how wacky they are. (See photos on our facebook page) Later on we learned the tournament dance (See the video) and cheered both the Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs to victory over four other teams from across Europe. Perhaps the thing that has most inspired us about this community is that this year these events were celebrated in the midst of raw sorrow.
ICSB is not immune to the tragedies that spring out and steal breath away just as it is not unfamiliar with the heartache of long-dreaded goodbyes. As a school we lost one student from the high school and one student from the middle school in the same week. Our middle school student moved back “home” to the States and the high school student went Home to Jesus.
Facing our eighth graders to tell them their friend had died in the night was one of the hardest things Dave has ever done. Dave prayed with them, listened to them and watched with pride as they put to use the healthy grieving skills they learned in Health class. Teams of biblical counselors were mobilized from the States and joined the counselors within our community that had responded immediately. Teachers were briefed and educated in between basketball games. The entire school community gathered their arms around their students and bravely faced death and celebrated life at the same time.
As I write the sun has begun to shine again in Budapest. Laughter again erupts in the halls at ICSB, though it does echo in a couple empty lockers. Healing has begun. Though not without its showers, spring is here.
