My Belly Acres: The Art Festival of Sausage!!!

Well, what can I say...we are the lucky ones and you all missed out! (Now, hold your hand over your face and flap it with a envious intake of breath while I tell you this) We were privileged to attend the Sausage Festival. It was in the town of Erdevik about 1 hour away. Our landlord Dragon (pronounced Dragon) took us. And when you got there it truly was like the Arts Festival...a very long row of booths and almost every booth had prideful men standing behind displaying their sausage specialties. And several booths displayed silver trophy cups for winning certain awards. Alan was especially brave and tried many samples and even I gathered my courage and tried some. (I so hope Dragon didn't see me throw the inside of my sausage sandwich away and just eat the bread). Most of the sausage is rather spicy and hot but OK. However, the last straw was when Dragon offered me some sausage and as I went to take it he said, "It's good....horse sausage". I was done....I mean you never know. The sausage is very dry as is most of the meat over here. Apparently there are many ways to dry the meat and it affects the taste. There were also a few booths with Wine (but it probably has it's own festival another time) and very few handcraft booths. It was a nice change of pace and our landlord was very nice to take us. He is very non-Mormon....he likes to drink wine too much, but he is good to look out for us.

There is a woman in our English class that we really like named Gordana. She is a single woman who speaks some English so after English class she stays for a while and we visit with her privately to help her English improve. She invited us to her home a week ago to see her garden and her paintings. She is a beautiful painter and has a lovey big yard that she shares with her brother and parents. (Remember the yards are often courtyards with several houses around them). When we went to her house we had a wonderful visit with her, her father, and brother. It's a good thing that they spoke more English because our Serbian is very meager. We invited her to church and she came a week ago but did not return this week. I was able to give her a BOM but people here are polite and she would never say that she wasn't interested. We took her a thank you plant yesterday, so we hope to just keep growing the friendship.

It has been extremely rainy here...unnatural for this time of year in Serbia. Of course you have maybe heard about the flooding in Germany on the Danube River and the Sava River that runs by our city has been extremely high. They (And Chach, you know who "they" are) say the flooding may be moving this way. For once, we are happy to be 54 steps up. :o)

Out Serbian Missionary is doing great...we've adjusted to his living here and he almost seems like one of the family. We should hear in about 3 weeks where he will go on his mission. Stay tuned!