First day in the village

Below are Monty's notes on our first day in the village, which was actually a few days ago.

Sziastok Friends and Members of FUCSJ,

We have had many, many experiences today in our village. Yesterday, Friday the 22nd, was our first full day. A mural was begun in the youth room/winter Sunday church service room. We removed a very large headstone from the graveyard. Only about 12 inches of the headstone was visible when we began. In the end the stone was about 4 1/2 feet in diameter and was a used stone from a mill. This stone dated as being placed in 1825. There are many headstones where only the last
few inches are visible. We will try to save those in the most danger of completely disappearing.

Our third project is the installation of a labyrinth. The site was far from level. One end of the labyrinth area was a meter higher than the other end. By lunch time we were able to level the area completely by hand since no machinery was available. Tomorrow we will install the borders of the labyrinth. All of these projects were performed with the help of many Unitarian villagers.

Dinner was a long walk beyond the outskirts of the village. A large fire was built under a pot in which dinner was cooked for 45 people. It was indeed a very large pot. Horse carts were used for bringing supplies to our dinner. I was impressed to see one of the carts driven by one of our youth, Aaron Smith. After cooling the horses in the creek, they were saddled and rides were offered to everyone. Impromptu soccer games and volleyball games were started throughout the evening.
We had an amazing time with our hosts in the warm summer air. The village cows (about 200 head plus a herd of goats) strolled by on their way to their homes. This was the signal for the end of dinner.

Later that evening, we attended a dance performance of the local village youth. The music was provided by a violist and a viola player. After the performance, we learned a four person dance. The musicians played on and I was very excited to do couple dances with the villagers of the Szekelyfold region.

As you can see, our first full day was indeed a full and exciting day.

Sziastok,

Monty

Kolozsvár

Szia Friends and Members of FUCSJ,

We have spent a day in Kolozsvár. (This is the Hungarian name; in Romanian it is Cluj-Napoca.) We had a wonderful tour of the Unitarian High School. The recent history of the high school parallels that of the Transylvanian Unitarian church. It was built in 1901. The building was confiscated by the government during the Communist era. It was not returned to the Unitarian church until around 1996. Since then they have had access to only one half of the building. A public school uses the other half.

We toured the Unitarian Church in Kolozsvár which also contains the rock that Ferenc Dávid (Francis David) stood upon to preach the unity of God in 1568. At that point Unitarianism became the state religion of Hungary. The church itself is very large and with a simple bright interior. In contrast to the simple designs, there were embroidered cloths used to border the front pews and the alter in the front of the church. The cloths were white and the embroidery was red with a Hungarian motif. It was a stunning effect.

Today, Thursday the 26, we left Kolozsvár on our bus to travel to our partner church village of Homoródszentmárton. On our way we stopped in Torda at the church where the Diet of Torda was held. This afternoon we arrived at the village, where we received a very warm welcome from our hosts. Tomorrow we will begin our labyrinth project and graveyard preservation. We have found that we will need to move a great deal of earth to flatten the labyrinth site. We have found several headstones that have sunken into the ground so far that only a couple of inches remain above the ground. We will need to dig very deep to retrieve these heavy pieces of stone.

We are looking forward to a fantastic experience here in our village. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. We feel them here.

Szia,

Monty

Nancy's note from Budapest

Dear, dear Friends in San Jose,

First Unitarian's pilgrims have arrived in Budapest and begun our adventures. We are thinking of you often and striving to represent you well!

A group of us visited the "Buda Labyrinth" today--not a labyrinth like ours, though its flag looks exactly like ours, but rather a labyrinthine series of underground rooms, originally carved out by water, then paved with stones in the Middle Ages, and used as hiding places or military positions in the Renaissance and the World War eras (as many as ten thousand people would cram together down there during air raids in WW II). Now a whimsical mix of ancient cave and modern tourist attraction, we delighted in the dark watery rooms (a relief from the heat aboveground) and in the "Labyrinth of Courage" walk, tracing a path through the pitch-dark by holding onto a metal "thread"--"there is nothing of fear here," the sign said, "the fears are all inside you"--a good topic for a sermon, I thought. (Meg Trask and I managed to get ourselves thoroughly convulsed with giggles, especially when the thread ended just before the exit door, and we couldn't figure out a way to open it. We knocked; Rick Morris knocked back, helpfully, from the other side. Finally, Meg shined her cell phone on the door so that we could find a handle! Ah, how our youth can lead us! :-)). We were momentarily taken in by a tongue-in-cheek, completely anachronous art exhibit featuring petrified "relics" of "Homo consumeris"--Adidas footprints, computer keyboard imprints, and microwave shapes frozen in stone. Andy Warhol, move over!
 
Geoff and I particularly enjoyed a glimpse of a crumbling Bible in one of the big churches here--the first full Bible printed in Hungarian in 1626. On our return trip through Budapest, we plan to visit the Unitarian church here, too.
 
Our ears are full of the polyglot of many languages spoken by locals and visitors, and our tongues stretch to learn and pronounce a few words of Hungarian, often drawing smiles from the solemn faces of shop owners here.
 
We miss you all, and hope you too are having inner and outer adventures, which we will all pour together when we share the waters of the world in September. 
 
Hello!
 
Warmly,
 
Nancy

Our first day

Hello Friends and Members of FUCSJ!
( in Hungarian, Hello (Szia) = Hello in English )
 
We arrived in Budapest yesterday afternoon after various flight delays which also resulted in no luggage for most of our group. [NPJ note: Since our flights took essentially a day and a half--with an otherworldly view of Greenland on the way--this meant we certainly got our money's worth out of our travel clothes!] The temperature yesterday was 99 deg F so we are a little warm.
 
Even so, we have found Budapest to be a wonderful city to explore with many historic and cultural sites. The city is divided by the Danube where one side has hills supporting a palace and a fortress. The other side is a flat plane with restaurants, shops and more shops.
 
We will spend our second night here tonight, and tomorrow morning we will take a chartered bus to Koloszvar where we will spend two nights in the dorms of the Unitarian High School. We will be hosted by Rev. Zsolt (a teacher there--the Balacs Scholar a year ago, who offered that wonderful children's story and sermon in June 2006) and Rev. Erica ( she was the visiting scholar at Starr King last year ).
 
After that, we will be off to our partner church in Homorodszentmarton.
 
Stay tuned for further updates.
 
Hello,
( in Hungarian, Hello = Goodby in English )

( yep this is not a typo)
 
Monty Low