There is so much more I want to write about, but in these minutes before class, this is enough: on Saturday we took Audrey and Curtis to see Star Trek at the movie theater at Aupark (our most convenient mall here in Bratislava.) It was wonderful for many reasons:

• Audrey and Curtis were visiting us.
• The Palace Cinemas have assigned seats--they are clean and comfy and the most pleasant movie-going experience imaginable. Real butter for my popcorn? Yes, please.
• Slovak (or are they Czech?) subtitles are always cool and interesting to try to follow.
• The crowd loved it. This should be expected of a wonderful new Trek movie, but it was especially wonderful to experience outside of the US.
• What's not to love? It's a great movie. It makes me want to lose several days of my life watching all the Star Trek I can get my hands on. I will not do this anytime soon (sermon to write, project to get underway, paperwork ever-looming, worship to plan, classes to teach ...) but I hope to have a marathon at the first opportunity.

Star Trek has had a fairly profound influence on me, as you can read and listen to in my most recent sermon from BIC. It's a reworking of my senior sermon from LTSP and also the sermon I submitted for my approval essay. I was a little worried about making Trek and Lord of the Rings references in an international context, but the story worked well. Spock is universal. =)