Getting to Know Bratislava, and Getting Ready for School

Although students showed up at the school yesterday, September 2, we will start earlier. Yes, we took a trip to Ikea to get some "essentials". Pastor Arden Haug took the Fredells (the other couple) and us after church, bless his heart, and had to make two trips to get us back to the apartment

We've also been downtown a lot, which is not saying a lot since it's only a kilometer or two from where we live. To the right is the square around the Primate's Palace, which was built to house the head of the church when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was essentially run from Bratislava. Several clubs from around Bratislava made lace in the square the next Sunday; it was very expensive. Don't expect lace for Christmas!
Walk down from the Primate's Palace and you arrive at the Old Town's main square. There you can get a wonderful cup (bowl?) of hot chocolate. We were there because we were going to the craft fair, which we had found the day before, after venturing through Aupark, a megamall not too far away. Artisans come from the three cen-tral regions of Slovakia (west, central, east) to demonstrate and sell wood carvings, metal work, ceramics, cookies (yum) and preserves, traditional music and dancing, and a bunch of other stuff.

Yes, we are here to work, and we have been! We've been squired around to the Foreign Police to begin the process of getting our resident visas, to the clinic to make sure we haven't brought any noxious foreign diseases into the country, and to the bank to open up an account into which Paula's salary will be deposited. Jim's been learning his way around the library which, while small, has many resources. Paula has been figuring out what she'll teach 4th years about British literature, and 5th years about Latin American literature. We're glad for predecessors, but we have to learn our own way around, too. Paula especially has worked hard, and will continue to develop lesson plans as the year rolls by. Next time we'll blog about (we've been itching to use that term) our (unintended) second trip to Vienna, and the opening of school.