Mission to the Czech Republic

Some of you have been asking how to send donations (which would be awesome, by the way):
1. Make checks out to Teachoverseas.org
2. put my account number, 206038, in the "for" part of the check
3. mail to:
Educational Services International
444 East Huntington Drive, Suite 200
Arcadia, CA 91006

Thank you so much!

Pam, on my apparently unusual selection of excercise:
"I was shocked to hear that you're taking spinning classes! Something about being abroad makes you lose your mind I guess."

A Hello advertisement (another English language school in Ostrava):
"In Hello we realize how important the good education is. We offer a variety of language courses of different levels, scopes, intensity, and length. The team which main target is your satisfaction takes care of you. We will pleased to set off for a joint cruise! Hello gives you a good wind in your sails and helps you to take the right course."

and there was another one...I can't think of it right now. I'll post it later if I can remember. For now I've got a date with James Bond at the Futurum cinema!

I’ve been debating recently how much information to include in my updates. The easy answer is to write a nice fluffy letter about all the people we are reaching, tie it with a pastel bow, and send it out so I can pat myself on the back with how good a job we’re doing over here. Of course I want to send home good news, but in all honesty it wouldn’t be the complete truth. And as you are my supporters and my friends, I want you to have a real, honest view of life in Ostrava. So here are some of my most recent thoughts—the good, the bad, the pastel, and the truth, as best I can write it:

November is when the downhill part of culture shock kicks in. I think my own personalized version of it has been getting hit smack in the face with reality. I know this sounds a bit ignorant and sheltered, but I have realized that yes, I am indeed an ignorant, sheltered person! And it’s incredibly painful when you begin to realize that life doesn’t happen the way you thought it would. You have to make decisions you never thought you would have to make, and you have to deal with the fact that some people just really don’t like you.

Lately, things have felt a bit like they’re spinning out of control. Living overseas seems to just bring out all the junk in your life and forces you to deal with it straight-on. It’s incredibly uncomfortable; especially when everyone around you is watching you go through it. I’ve struggled with feeling like a poor teacher, a failed friend, a selfish teammate, and an unspiritual Christian. My motives are wrong; I don’t care about the right things; I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. In the midst of the “I can't seem to to anything right” moments, there’s no one here to suggest otherwise. Everyone is so busy dealing with their own junk that there’s a general attitude of “just deal with it.”

Missionaries over here, especially the ones that have been here long-term, are amazingly thick-skinned. I admire them a lot and often put myself down for being “the weak one.” But if reality was like getting hit with an acorn, truth was like getting hit by the Number 12 Tram (not to distract from the impact of the acorn…it was a massive nut, I assure you). Amidst all of the feelings of inadequacy, weakness, ignorance, and wanting someone to tell me that I'm not bad at life, at life, I finally realized that, well, I pretty much am. I cannot live out the Christian life on my own. I am weak and inadequate, and I need some Jesus in my life! The amazing gospel of grace has never felt more real to me than it has here. For so long I’ve feared that people, even close friends, would see me as some hyper-emotional nutcase who doesn’t have it all together. But so what? Maybe I am a hyper-emotional nutcase, and I know I don’t have it all together. But that’s what’s so great about God. He doesn’t care. He accepts all of my failures and takes me as I am, even if no one else does. As obvious as this all sounds, I have this amazing gift of having to learn things the hard way. It’s been a pretty significant realization, and I only hope I can make it last long enough to actually apply it.

I felt like Auschwitz and Birkenau needed a seperate entry because they didn't really follow along with the mood of the rest of the trip. I can't really even describe how it felt to see everything; we were so rushed I wasn't able to take it all in. And there was a point when I debated whether or not I even wanted to. You see piles of shoes. Of glasses. Of suitcases. You stand inside the gas chamber and know that you can never fully grasp what happened there.

This was the only photo I felt like posting. It's the tracks and entrance to Birkenau. I don't feel like it needs explaining.

So I finally made it into Krakow. Jesse, Gabriel and I took a 2am train and arrived around 6. We spent Friday exploring the Wawel Castle and other sites around the city. The highlight that day was definitley the salt mine! It's a 700 year old, 200km mine with over 40 chapels, statues, and sculptures carved entirely of salt. In the pictures here you can see the largest chapel, with an 8 ton chandelier made of salt crystals. People actually get married here, 130 meters underground! (sorry, I haven't converted that to feet yet). Copernicus was the first visitor to the mine, and it holds the world record for underground bungee jumping. The whole thing felt like something out of an Indiana Jones movie.




















We managed to find a really great restaraunt with awesome Polish food! The nightlife in Krakow was great, although I was so wiped out each night I didn't experience much of it. But I was so glad to finally do some traveling!

Here we are. God's children in all shapes, sizes, faces, and forms.

http://www.thelongbrake.blogspot.com/

Scroll a little less than halfway down for my picture.

Once again I've managed to lock myself out of the Fishnet office!! I always seem to leave my keys somewhere else. Thankfully Ivana was here to let me in the building, but I still can't get into the teacher's office. She let me come up to her office, and I'm out of stuff to do, so I thought, why not update my blog? I had a wonderful weekend in Prague visiting Stacy, Elanor, and the rest of the crew. Che even decided to come in for a night, after my plan to visit her in Sokolov hit a slight roadblock (who knew the buses would fill up?). So we spent time at BoBagel, coffee shops, cooking, and watching movies and episodes of Lost Season 1. I'm also very proud to say that I sucessfully managed to get in the correct trains to make it out and back from Ostrava! (quite an accomplishment when you get to the train station and realize you don't know the Czech words for platform, track, train, or really any other useful transportation vocabulary).

The weather has warmed back up a bit, which is nice because I wasn't quite ready for snow. And when I say warm, I mean 33 degrees and raining. But at least I haven't broken out the long-underwear yet.

I've started going to a "spinning" class with one of my students, one of those places where you ride the stationary bikes. I haven't had much time for excercise, so the classes are GREAT! You basically get your butt kicked for an hour by a hard-core Czech guy in a cycling uniform and a bandana. They all laugh at me because half of the time (ok more like 90% of the time) I have no idea what he's saying! I just watch the person next to me to see when I should speed up or slow down. Andrea, my student, helps me as much as she can. It's hard work! At this rate I'll be rivaling Lance Armstrong by spring!

Well, time for Czech class!

I woke up this morning to a whirlwind of snowflakes outside my window. I knew the forecast was calling for it, but there's still something baffling about snow at the beginning of November, especially when you grew up in a place where at the slightest mention of possible snow, the entire world came to a halt to prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime event. So I donned my best snow-protection gear and waddled out of my flat, bearing striking resemblance to the boy from the Christmas Story.

I must have looked quite commical to the locals, who hardly batted an eyelash at the sudden invasion of the snowflake army. To them, this is no reason to run to the nearest Delvita and buy up all the bread and milk before sunset. I mean, if the flakes were actually sticking, then maybe I'd be justified.

The snowflakes here don't exactly "fall." They swirl and dance around you in the notorious Ostrava winter wind. I'm not sure if any of them actually touch the ground. It's quite lovely actually, although I do get an uneasy feeling knowing that it's only the beginning of a long, cold winter. As I'm watching the swirling dance routine outside my window right now, it seems as if they are just messing with me. They float by to remind me that they exist, and that if they wanted to, they could simultaneously drop all at once in a heap of snow dust that would blanket me and everything else within a 1000 mile radius. And then they disappear for a while, and the sun comes back out. But give them another twenty minutes, and without fail, there goes another one by my window, as if checking in to see if I'm preparing for the nuclear winter that is Central Europe.

I've always enjoyed the beauty of God's creations in nature. I have been nervous about surviving the winter, but I'm reminded of all the blessings I have here that make it all worth it. The possiblity of having a white Christmas for the first time in my life, to ride a train through a countryside of snowy evergreens (just like the ones in our miniature Christmas Village!), and to go sledding for more than one day out of the year are all joyful thoughts! And so, I shalt put on the mittens of faith, the earmuffs of hope, the scarf of courage, and the long-underwear of perseverance. And this I say to you, little snowflake: Bring it on!

...That's not really a joke, but I laughed because it actually happened last night. I love how culturally diverse this place can be! Oh, and Jesse and I kicked butt at foosball. My updates have been delayed for the last two weeks, basically because blogger has decided to have a revolution and prevent me from uploading any pictures to my web page. It seems today that we have things under control, so hopefully you'll get to see this wonderful picture of Cieszyn above, and Hukvaldy below.
Cieszyn is a border town in Poland where I went with Laura, Joel, and Chrissy last Friday. I spent a fortune on Polish pottery, which has a resemblance to Vera Bradley purses. I never was much for Vera Bradley, but how can I pass up this pottery opportunity? I mean, it's Polish! Hukvaldy was the castle ruins we visted the week before. It was a beautiful day, with the fall colors surrounding us on top of a mountain.

Here we are in Cieszyn!
As I'm reading what I've written so far in this update, I'm a little disappointed in myself. I usually pride myself on being a halfway-decent writer, but I've realized lately that my fear is beginning to come true. They told me it would happen: when you teach English, for some strange reason, your English gets worse. So please forgive any grammar mistakes and misspellings (did I even spell that right?), becuase when you have to "dumb down" your language, for lack of a better word, you really lose a lot of your vocabulary. And apparently your ability to spell and form coherent sentences.
So in the mean time, I will try to keep my updates more regular and full of interesting facts and stories about life in the Czech Republic!