Mission to the Czech Republic

The snow finally came...about two months late! It started yesterday morning and by last night we had probably 2-3 inches. For being so worried about it November, I'm glad that I'm excited about it now! I think because I associate snow with skiing and church trips, since that's really the only time I was around it before. It'll be strange actually living in it for longer than four days (although it'll probably melt next week), but right now it's beautiful! Now I can prove I actually have been in the Czech Republic this whole time, and not in Bermuda.

This is the last week of first semester. Can't believe I've already been here five months, with another five to go. I get a two week break, and I hope to get down to Budapest to visit the team down there. Mom and Dad are coming the following week, and hopefully we'll be able to pull some kind of trip together!

Last week we welcomed Mike and Jaclyn, newlyweds from Vancouver (it's always exciting to get native English speakers). Jaclyn will be teaching part time at Fishnet, and Mike will be playing on the baseball team through Athletes in Action. I'm actually excited for baseball season to start up again. I'd gotten kind of tired of it in the fall but the games were pretty fun. The Ostrava team is rebuilding their stadium to seat 5,000! Now our job is to inform the people of Ostrava that they actually have a baseball team. And speaking of sports, how is it possible that I haven't been to a soccer or hockey game yet? I was running in the park last weekend and the entire Ostrava Banik soccer team passed me (their stadium is next to the park), and I started thinking about going to a game. The fans don't have the best reputation and I've heard to be really careful if I go. But hopefully I can find someone who wants to go!

I'm still doing my spinning classes every week, which I love. The trainers know me now and are really nice to me, even though we can't communicate that much. My Czech is getting a little better, but when you focus on English all day it's hard to practice much.

This week has been hard for some reason. Maybe because I'm anticipating Mom and Dad coming next week. But sometimes over here, you can be surrounded by a large group of people, and you still feel like you don't know anyone, and that no one here really knows you. It makes the tough times tougher, I guess, when you don't feel close to anyone. And I know I'm stressing out a lot over what to do next year, so that's probably part of it. Either way, I've gotten some pretty nasty headaches lately. I'm currently trying to stop eating food that supposedly causes headaches, which includes, according to the women's health website, pretty much everything edible.

On the upside, today is Wednesday, and that means Revelation rehersal. We are now getting coached by a professional singer, and I'm pretty excited because I've always wanted to someone to teach me how to sing, but would never actually go through the trouble of paying for lessons. But here I have a reason to get better other than the fact that I just want to...the whole choir is wanting to move forward and turn professional. I hardly feel I need to be in a professional singing group, but it's such a great experience I'm so glad they let me in! It's made me enjoy singing even more than I did before, and I still secretly (well not anymore I guess) wish I could do something more with it. I don't play any instruments, but if I could be someone's backup singer/harmony person, that would be just fantastic. I don't like being front and center anyway.

We're also doing praise and worship at Rev today, which will be pretty refreshing. It's been a while. Not that the songs in church aren't good; I like the music, but I probably understand about three words, and I spend the entire song trying to catch up to everyone else because it takes me longer to figure out how to pronounce everything! I'm sure I sound pretty funny to the native speakers. "SVATYYY, SVAAATY, ....um...PAN BUH...UCHMITAME, wait no, UCTIVAME....whatever..."