Carry on...

My brother's twin sons have arrived! Samuel Levin and David Gardner, at six and seven pounds! My sister-in-law is amazing! It's strange that I can't be there to coo at them, but I will be soon enough. Who knows, maybe they will be holding their heads up by the time I cross the ocean to visit them...such precious, beautiful little babies. Kyle and I will have our hands full every Christmas, shopping for four nephews of the same age. I can't wait to see Samuel, David, Aidan and Kellan playing together. I hope that happens often.

Having lots of thoughts to think today, I took advantage of the sunshine and rode my bike along the river. It does my heart good to see so many people out there having fun, and especially all the dogs smiling and playing, delighted to be with their people. Dogs are necessary to me. I also found a thoughtful spot bench near one of the streams and journaled for awhile. The frogs have already started their croaking and there are a few flowers growing. The ducks are out in full force again, too...though when I took my class to the park yesterday, we saw a female duck floating upside down. I wonder what happened to her?

I have been exhibiting the signs of a woman missing her husband. I've been eating lots of chocolate, and drinking coke more than usual. But don't worry, my chocolate binges never last long before my body decides to boycott sweets and doesn't want to even touch a piece of chocolate for like...a week. Also, I plan to get as much dental work as possible done here in Macedonia before I leave the country in June. It's much, much, MUCH cheaper here.

I've started going to my Pilates class again. Tuning out incomprehensible instructions from my Macedonian instructor, silently counting to ten repeatedly in Macedonian, listening to fun love songs and stretching. It's an excellent setting for thinking.

When I miss the sandwiches Kyle made me while he was here, I go buy lunch meat to make my own sandwiches. When I miss Kyle's guitar serenades, I play guitar to myself, but pretend he's there to listen...and sometimes he is, like when we're on Skype and I can see his sweet face on my computer screen.

For St. Patrick's Day, I went with Rachel to a local Irish-themed restaurant where there was a live band. There were so many people there, and there were song sheets to encourage everyone to sing along with the band. I had told the owner I would come, but when I got there, there was nowhere to sit. Luckily, someone important had just cancelled, and we got his table. Some friends from work joined us and bought wine for everyone at the table. We tried to order food, but they said it would take an hour and a half, so we just said bring us anything you've got, so they brought us a steak rejected by another table, and sliced it up so we could all share it with bread. Yum. The band even played Be Thou My Vision. Lots of my students' parents were there, and everyone was super friendly. It made me see my students' parents in a new light. Who are they when they're not being parents?

I have three more months here in Skopje. I want to enjoy it, not just bide my time. There's so much to think about. I found out that shipping my clothes, shoes and books home would cost more than the price of replacing everything...like$400 a box! So now I have to choose my very favorite things and give everything else away. God really doesn't give up when He wants to teach us a lesson. I am praying for a generous, thankful, happy heart. Spring helps a lot.

At last, my prince has come.

Oh, happiness! Kyle got his R&R vacation, and we got to be together for two weeks and two days!!! Oh, how I love that man! I worked three days so I wouldn't exceed the personal days I could take from work. He stayed at home and rested when I went to work those days, but then came to the school to eat lunch with me and hang out awhile. He sat at the table with the kids and they adored him. Funnily, it took them awhile to figure out who he was. I gave them clues (such as our matching last names) and asked them questions until finally, one of the kids thought to look at my wedding photo. I saw a light bulb light up behind the kid's eyes and he said, "oh! he's the...the...husband!"

It was fun having my dearest Kyle in my classroom. On the 100th day of school, we used glitter sticks to paint "100" on all the kids' foreheads. Somehow, the glitter got all over Kyle's face. :) He played some silly guitar songs for them until they got a little too wild for this mean teacher. I hope that’s not how it will be when we have kids of our own.

Kyle went to church and home fellowship group with me, too! It was so wonderful to have him meet the people in my life. Now he can put faces with the names I talk about, and they can see that my dear husband is not imaginary, after all. :) And…I got to take him to lots of my favorite places in Skopje! Now he will be able to picture my stories better!

After spending the first five days of his visit in Skopje, we started our journey to Rome...and boy, was it ever a journey. I booked tickets via Thessaloniki, because they were about a third of the price of flying Skopje-Rome. Then I booked a van to take us to the airport in Thessaloniki. It sounded like a great plan! But then we found out that the border to Greece was closed due to striking. The van from Skopje was able to take us to the border, but then we had to walk across the border and call a taxi. Luckily, we were with a friendly Macedonian man who spoke Greek, called the cab for us and split the outrageous price with us. The following day, all the taxis in Greece went on strike, so we really were kind of lucky in the end. And hey, if the borders hadn't been closed, Kyle would not have had the chance to make friends with a pack of Greek puppies, and I wouldn’t have been able to take this photo.

We had to wait a long time in the airport in Thessaloniki, but it was OK. We had movies on our ipod, and there was gelato. We connected in Athens, where I was able to use Skype on my ipod to call the hotel in Rome and tell them that we would be arriving after check-in hours. Super exciting.

We were delayed once again in Rome, because I was too impatient to wait for the bus to the center, so we went to the train and that was delayed almost an hour. When we finally made it to the metro stop nearest our hotel, we couldn't find the hotel. I called the three times to ask for assistance, and the lady did try to help, but it was like playing a game of hot and cold every time I called. We were close, then too far, then she didn't know where we were at all. So I smiled and asked some ambulance workers who were hanging out on the sidewalk. They didn't know how to explain it to us in English, so they gestured for us to hop in the ambulance, and we did. Five minutes later, after sixteen hours of travel in three countries, we were very near the entrance to our hotel. :) Thank goodness for emergency services.

After that, everything was great! The colloseum was super close to our hotel. There was free breakfast available at almost all of our hotels. We took two guided tours in Rome, one of the Vatican and one of the “ancient city,” including the colloseum and the forum. One tour was just three people and the other was four, which was great!

We ended up staying in Rome two nights longer than expected, and switching hotels, which was good, because the second hotel was much nicer! We had planned to go to Munich, but the only train ride was overnight. It was way too expensive, and an overnight train defeats our purpose of watching the scenery as we traveled, so we booked a flight to Frankfurt with RyanAir, which is way cheaper than the other airlines, but if you ever book with them, remember to read the fine print.

Germany was wonderful, too! We LOVED the food. Kyle said he never really felt full in Italy, but in Germany, he could have manly food he wanted. We spent the first night in Frankfurt, then took a train to Heidelberg where we saw the castle and spent a night. Then it was back to Frankfurt to catch our flight to Skopje. We stayed in an airport hotel on the outskirts of town that last night, and the only nearby restaurant we could find was Italian. Funny.

Now he’s gone and it’s Spring Break. I’m glad I don’t have to go back to work yet. I need some time to get myself together. At the moment, I’m in Bulgaria visiting a friend. I've wanted to visit this part of the Balkans for awhile now, and I couldn’t stay in my empty apartment alone, not when there are so many reminders of Kyle there. I’ve mostly put all his things away now, but it took a lot of willpower. Part of me just wanted to hide under the covers until he comes home. His clothes were on the drying rack. There were glasses half full of his coke in the kitchen. In the fridge, there were leftovers from the yummy food he cooked and a whole host of foods and drinks he likes that I neither wanted to eat or throw away. There's the DVD he bought at the green market for us to watch together. There was half a yellow pepper and some asparagus on the counter that will never be used now. I miss him. I'm sad. Deployment sucks.

Nevertheless, I am thankful for Kyle. I am so blessed to have such a loving, attentive, honorable husband. I wouldn’t want to be married to anyone else. I am thankful that he was able to come visit me, and that we finally had a real honeymoon. Now, it seems the snow has melted and flowers are starting to bloom. Spring is on it's way, and that will make everything so much better. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.