Korean barbecue, tennis and more...

1. Our weekend started off with a special and memorable dinner with our friends KC and Dong. They took us out to this Korean barbecue restaurant and it was a wonderful first time experience! You cook the beef in front of you and then place it on lettuce leaves with other very interesting condiments (including raw crab!) and it was very yummy! Dong explained - and later demonstrated :-) - that it is customary for a wife to prepare the meat and lettuce "wrap" and shove it in her husband's mouth! KC did very well in managing to eat the huge wrap!

But the dinner was especially memorable for the conversation we had. They are just such an encouraging couple and we talked a lot about our futures and where God is taking us. We are really excited to see what will happen in the months ahead... Thank you KC and Dong for a wonderful evening, we really appreciate you both!


2. First joint tennis lesson with Martin! So a couple of weeks ago, we were trying to play tennis together (I, Ana, am a complete beginner) and became intrigued by this tennis coach teaching this guy on the court next to us. The coach just came across as an excellent teacher and we sat down and watched him coaching for about half an hour until we realized, it would be a good idea to have some lessons too. So we approached him and found out that he's an interesting guy: he coaches the University of Maryland girls tennis team, follows the British football league closely (which really impressed Jonny!) and was born in Czechoslovakia and grew up in Sweden. Anyway, we were happy to find out that his classes are reasonable and so we're now his students! I had a half an hour lesson with him about 2 weeks ago and yesterday we had a one hour lesson together! It has really helped us and this evening, we went to practice and have already seen a huge improvement. I'm particularly excited about tennis because I really wasn't sure I would enjoy it but I'm loving it! It's also helping me lose a lot of the pregnancy weight which is a huge bonus. :-)


3. Baby Ladan's first social evening! On Saturday night, some of our life group couples came over for dinner and we enjoyed Jonny's homemade grilled hamburgers! We played the game "Taboo" and had planned to sing some Karaoke (we've had some memorable times doing so together in the past!) but we could not find the microphone anywhere in the house. I guess it was just not meant to be - to the great relief of some of the couples! :-) But what was most special about the evening was that it was Mark and Christie's first social outing with their five-week old baby son Ladan. He's so cute and it's amazing to see how much he's already grown (apparently he's been gaining 1 pound a week which is pretty impressive!).


...So now we're getting ready for another new week ahead... I'm really praying that it will be a good week. It's been a bit stressful with not knowing if or when I'll be traveling next. I've also recently been having more leadership responsibilities at work that have been quite challenging but also good experience. Jonny on the other hand is really excited because Liverpool is playing AC Milan on Wednesday for the Champions league final! He's planning to go to an Irish pub in Baltimore and join some British fans in cheering for Liverpool! Hopefully we'll have good news about this later in the week...