Love for Prague

The day students become poets

2011-05-27T17:26:00.003+02:00

As you may know, we are coming up to the end of the school year (8 1/2 days to be exact, but who's counting?) so I have been trying to come up with creative/fun things for the students (and myself) to do so that we don't spend our days wishing it was summer. So far we have had an elementary school reading day, we went to the park, and the 7th graders will be joining us next week to share a few original children's stories.

In between these very exciting activities I have started a poetry unit with my 3rd graders. We wrote color poems first and they were super cute so I had to share! Enjoy!

Blue-by Ha-yeong

Blue is water, Rosie's jacket, and cold

Blue is the taste of blueberry

Blue smells like salt and delicious blueberry

Blue makes me feel sad

Blue is the sound of waves in the ocean and rainy days

Blue is the ocean, sky and pen

Blue is paddling to the middle of the sea

Blue is the sky

Blue is the best

Black-by Annemarie

Black is Ha-yeong's hair, my hair band, and like nail polish

Black is the taste of blackberries

Black smells like nail polish and thunder and lightning

Black makes me feel scared in the dark

Black is the sound of nails on a blackboard and the dim night

Black is the underworld, the sky when it is night, and my closet

Black is a scary movie

Black is a computer screen when it goes black

Black is awesome

Green-by Mollie

Green is nature, green grass, and happiness

Green tastes like nature in a bite

Green smells like seaweed, and dew on the grass

Green makes me feel fresh

Green is the sound of amazing things

Green is nice, good, and full of excitement

Green is everything good

Green is amazing

Green is like rowing a boat into nature

Blue-by Shamima

Blue is fire from a Nancy Drew book

Blue is the ocean so deep and blue feels like the beach

Blue is the taste of water

Blue smells like the swimming pool and a blue rose

Blue makes me feel sad

Blue is the sound of a seashell and the waves too

Blue is the rivers, seas, and ponds

Blue is drinking water

Blue is watering plants

Blue is my favorite color!

Red-by Levi

Red is a robin, a flame of fire, and the bright morning sun

Red is the taste of chili

Red smells like markers and smoke

Red makes me feel mad

Red is the sound of a heart beat and bubbles boiling

Red is the center of the earth, Australia, and Mars

Red is a volcano

Red is a fire sword

Red is the hot, dry sand of a beach

Can you write a color poem like these???

Until next time....

When students decide to pull a prank--a letter to Miss Laugherty

2011-05-05T20:37:00.005+02:00

Dear Miss Laugherty,

Today something happened that you should be aware of (for next year of course). We will simply call it the sushi in the shoe incident of 2011. Today, our Korean student brought sushi to school for snack. Since trading food seems to be the thing to do, our PK ended up with a whole roll of sushi that she decided to save for lunch. The sushi wasn't wrapped well and some ended up on the floor. This event in and of itself is not a big deal but is crucial to false accusations that will come later...

Moving on, when going down to lunch (it was my day for duty naturally) our British American came up to me and said, "Miss Townley I think someone put sushi in my shoe!" I promptly went inside the classroom and found the recently squished piece of sushi on our favorite Serbians desk. I kinda laughed (wouldn't you?) and told him it was okay and pushed him out the door because we were late to lunch. Problem solved....I thought.

During lunch I was doing what I always did--serving drinks--when I came across a group of girls consoling a sobbing PK. Through her tears she told her story of our British American declaring that they would no longer be friends if he found out she was the one who put the sushi in his shoe. By her reaction (tears, really?) I thought it was safe to assume she was not in fact the sushi offender.

From our trustworthy student from India I quickly found out that it was not our PK who put the sushi in the shoe. It was in fact, our Korean and Czech American student who did it as a joke. Trying to suppress a laugh (because, does this really happen?) I told them that it was not nice, they must apologize, and they would lose recess. They did apologize, and will lose recess-if I can remember-but did not seem very remorseful. But, if you put sushi in a shoe would you be remorseful? I didn't think so...

All this to say, Miss Laugherty watch out next year when you see a roll of sushi come into the classroom. It could mean there is another sushi in the shoe incident coming your way.

With Love,

Miss Townley

First guest blog! The Gingerbread baby adventure...

2011-03-29T20:04:00.006+02:00

A while back, Melanie, one of my roommates, received a gingerbread baby (kinda like flat stanley) from her goddaughter-Abbey- who lives in TN. Now Abbey had specifically sent the gingerbread baby to Melanie in Prague rather than to her dad who is deployed to Afghanistan because she thought Melanie would be up for the challenge of taking gingerbread baby on a grand adventure in Prague. I decided to tag along with Melanie and the gingerbread baby and the following is the gingerbread baby's story. Enjoy!

The Gingerbread Baby Adventure

Dobry den! (That’s how you say ‘hello’ in Czech!)

Whew, am I ever glad to be back! I had some Great Adventures in Prague, Czech Republic! I was pretty jet-lagged when I arrived in Melanie’s mailbox. And to make matters worse, the postman folded me in half! It took two days to get the kink out of my back.

Before Abbey took me to the post office in Tennessee, she said that she had taken a trip to Prague last summer. She told me all the best places to visit! I was so excited!

Abbey said she liked riding the metro the best, because it went so fast. I rode the big escalator all the way underground. Then I jumped on at Namesti Miru and in a few seconds I was speeding away to the castle!

Abbey told me that she loved the fountains at the castle. Melanie held me up so I could look over the edge, but *whoop!* I almost slipped in! Fortunately, only a little bit of my foot got wet. I put a bandage on to hold it together for the rest of our adventures! I even saw one of the castle guards. He was very serious. He must have a really important job to do.

Our next stop was beautiful Charles Bridge. When Melanie and her friend, Kim, told me it was 650 years old, I was a little worried about walking across it. But she said it was safe. There were so many people! I even got my picture taken with a real soldier!

Then we walked to Old Town. Abbey’s mom, Mrs. Wawryk, liked this part of Prague the best. We bought a Trdelnik that was as big as me! Melanie and I shared it, but when she got to the end of the Trdelnik she accidentally took a bite out of me!

“After all,” she said, “You ARE a big cookie!” And she licked her lips! Yikes!

After that, I was finished with sight-seeing! I was also feeling lonely for the little girl who made me. Melanie wanted to cheer me up, so she told me she knew where I could find some other first graders who might want to play with me!

So we hopped on a tram and went to the school where Melanie teaches. I met all the fourth graders and they made me feel much better. After just a few hugs, I was back to normal.

Even though I liked those fourth graders, I liked Abbey best. So Melanie said good-bye and sadly packed me in an envelope and sent me all the way back to Tennessee! (She even included some postcards that we bought for you!) Thanks for letting me share my adventures with you!!
Until next time...

Mixed-up Myths

2011-03-22T20:39:00.001+01:00

We are studying Ancient Greece in History.

We have learned about the gods and goddesses as well as some of the myths surrounding them.

We decided to mix the myths up and create our own stories from them.

I decided they must be shared.

Enjoy.

War in the Sea by Grace

Once upon a time Poseidon was sleeping in the still waters. Then Zeus got him because it was Monday! And he had to go to work catching fish in the water. So then they were fighting about it cause it was 1:00 in the morning so they were arguing about it until it was 11:00 in the night! Hestia and Ares helped Zeus. No one helped Poseidon so Zeus won the war in the sea.

Zeus and Apollo in Love by Shamima and Ha-yeong

Demeter was the most beautiful goddess. She was the nicest goddess too. So one day when Demeter was walking past Apollo’s house Apollo asked, “wuld you like to stay for dinner?” “Of course I would.” Said Demeter. Since Zeus was watching them, he got jealous. He called Aphrodite and asked, “what would be the best way to make Demeter love me?” Aphrodite answered, “have a vote!” So all the Greek people voted and Zeus won. He got 100 and Apollo got 99. The end.

Return of Poseidon by Filip

Deep inside the ocean there was a little boy called Poseidon and 30 years later he was a grown up king but he was still alone and nobody to take care of him. So off he went and he found a girl. Her name was Hades. She was a queen as well. They were best friends. 10 years later it was the battle for power. Then Zeus came and shot a lightning bolt at Poseidon and he blocked it with his shield and then he jumped and kicked him in his face and they defeated Zeus. Then Poseidon and Hades went to the ocean and they dug and dug and found the treasure.

The First Sea Monster by Levi

One day Poseidon was bored. He wanted to have a tsunami so he asked Hades to make the earth shake. Hades made a tsunami and Poseidon was happy but in that tsunami was a sea monster called Shumoncher. Even Zeus could not defeat this monster. But the Shumoncher even killed Zeus! So Poseidon and Hades had to combine their powers. They killed the monster. Since it was from the sea and that it was a monster they named these monsters sea monsters.

I love imaginations.

Apparently all the original myths had something to do with love, oceans, or power.

Sounds about right.

Until next time…

The day a teacher scores major bonus points

2011-03-09T20:36:00.004+01:00

So you wanna know how to score major bonus points as a teacher??? I have your answer right here.

Spend a Saturday watching Upward Basketball.

That’s it. No, seriously. It is.

A couple of weeks ago, myself along with a couple of the other elementary teachers at CISP went to watch a day full of child sized basketball.

I think that seeing the surprised looks on the faces of the 10 or so students from CISP who play Upward made the whole day worth it. They were all smiles and I love it…

We began the day with the younger kiddos who play what more looks like clump basketball than anything else. I was fully reminded of the days when my parents faithfully came out every Saturday to watch me play clump soccer. I can imagine how excited they were when we finally learned to pass the ball. J We cheered the kiddos on nonetheless and chatted with them during the short breaks.

As the day progressed we began to see more organized basketball and even got to move into a bigger gym! It seems that as they get older they can manage a bigger court and they also learn how to pass the ball just like I did while playing soccer!

We watched a full 4 hours worth of basketball and for those of you who might know about my love-and knowledge- of basketball will know that that was 4 hours more of basketball than I had watched in probably just as many years.

Like I said before, seeing their cute, surprised faces made the whole day worth it.

I managed to snap a few photos of most of the young basketball stars so check them out below.

Until next time…

Miss Townley, Weronika (1st), Jessica (2nd), Grace (2nd), and Miss Laugherty

See? Kinda like clump ball...not too bad though

Getting better... (Levi-3rd grade-in the blue)

Now it seems we have it!

The time when a teacher gets sent home

2011-02-21T20:45:00.004+01:00

No one likes to hear the word "rejected." It seems to be a negative word for every possible situation. Well, I am not here to refute that statement. This word is in fact a very negative word.

In the world of the 2/3 grade classroom last week this word meant that the 2nd grade teacher was now going to have to leave the Czech Republic because her visa got denied by the Czech government.

I currently have a strong dislike for this word because it means I have to say goodbye to a friend and a co-teacher. Miss Laugherty will be headed back to Illinois this week to restart her visa process stateside.

We are hopeful/praying/asking for a miracle for her visa application to be processed lightening fast in order for her to come back as soon as possible.

Please pray with me as we all adjust to what this means in school and out of school. The students must adjust to an uncertain time of different teachers helping out in the classroom. Miss Laugherty has to adjust to being back in the United States for an unknown amount of time. Lastly, I have to adjust to the real possibility of inconsistency in a classroom very much used to consistency as well as an increased work load for the time being.

Miss Laugherty...we will miss you and hope you come back to us fast!

Until next time...

The things we love [Just because it’s Valentine’s Day]

2011-02-14T19:55:00.003+01:00

No, this is not a post about being single on Valentine’s Day. Even though it is Valentine’s Day and I am single.

This is about the things we here in Prague-more specifically the 2/3-grade classroom-LOVE.

Miss Laugherty had a great idea that on Valentine’s Day we should write about the things that we love.

So all of the 2/3 graders along with Miss Laugherty and myself participated in making this list of 14 (get it? February 14^th?? 14 things?? I thought so…) things we love. So here goes…

At the top of the list, making an appearance a total of 13 times is-drum roll please-Jesus! This is appropriate considering His love and grace is what makes us who we are…

Coming right up behind our top winner were the likes of: family, friends, toys, teachers, SCHOOL (wohoo!) and of course…food (who doesn’t love that?)

Moving on down the list we find the likes of the sun, our beds (a personal favorite), snow, gravity (good point), shade, stars, the nature, chocolate, and birthdays.

That about rounds it out for the students but since Miss Laugherty and myself are a bit more experienced in finding things we love we were a bit more specific and included such things as: sharpie and felt tip pens, Max the cat, cute shoes, cereal, lists, the macbook, the 2/3 graders, good books, the color red, Alberts’ yogurt, and music among other things.

I know that I LOVE and am LOVED…and it is one of the best parts of life.

So here’s to Valentine’s Day 2011

Until Next Time…

The reversal of typical weather patterns...

2011-02-06T15:01:00.003+01:00

I know, I know…it has been a while. Ok, maybe a little more than a while. But since you are all such loving people I know you will forgive me just this once J

I thought that in February it would be appropriate to dust off the “pages” of this blog with a post about weather. If you know me at all you know that cold weather is not something I am too fond of or used to. If you don’t know me, then this is your first insight into who I am…

I am from Tennessee, which gets cold weather but normally only for a few weeks between December and January, and then it warms back up again. This is not the case in parts of Europe where you are approximately as far north as Canada in N. America. Here (being Prague) it gets cold at the beginning of October and normally stays that way until late April. Not exactly something I enjoy….

BUT that is why I am writing this post. This year a strange phenomenon seems to be happening that I quite enjoy. Here in Prague we have been having unusually warm days and back home they have been experiencing unusually cold weather.

For example, the southeast United States got blasted with snow not too long ago and entire cities shut down for a whole week-I don’t think it had so much do with the snow as it did with southerners lack of ability to drive and function when there is precipitation on the ground J

While the southeast has been having snow we here in Prague have been having days with 50 degree weather where we can walk outside without our winter jackets and open our windows in the afternoon….in January and February! Just yesterday I was out in the city center in just a fleece for a jacket…

Now I know what you are thinking....it is going to get cold here again while those in the south get warm weather starting in March and you are probably right. But right now I don’t even care because the sun is shining and I had the window open earlier…

Until next time…

Thanksgiving...

2010-11-27T22:04:00.001+01:00

So this past week was Thanksgiving. As I am currently living in Europe, the Thanksgiving day/meal is not common unless you are living among Americans. It is even hard to find a Turkey!

Even though Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the Czech Republic, our school takes the Thursday and Friday off of school because we are an American school. In our classroom we made pictures dictionaries for the word Thanksgiving. Each student was asked to write something they were thankful for that started with each letter of the word Thanksgiving. After hearing their responses I wanted to share some of them with you.

Are you ready for them? Well here goes…

T: toys, tulips, teachers

H: hugs, house, happiness, home, hand

A: ants, apples

N: nut, Nikes, nuns

K: kindness, kites

S: sushi, sister, sun, songs

G: God, giving, grace of God

I: India, ice cream, iguana

V: voice, vans, vowels, valentines

I: ice, Israel, Indians, insects

N: ninja’s November, nose, night

G: goodness, girl, God’s son

Don’t you love how simple children’s lives seem to be? I am thankful for each of these students and the time they spend at CISP.

Since I required my students to write what they were thankful for, I thought I should write what I was thankful for as well….

I am thankful for Time spent in the Czech Republic and time spent at Home. I am thankful for Animals that I can call my own and Nights spent in a warm bed. I am thankful for Kids that I get to work with and my Sister Kristen. I am thankful for God and his saving power and for the Internet, which lets me talk to my family. I am thankful for small Victories in the classroom and the beautiful gift of Itunes. I am thankful for Naps in the afternoon and the Grace of God present in my life.

I have much to be thankful for…how about you? What are you thankful for?

Until next time…

A little update...

2010-11-13T20:54:00.004+01:00

A couple weeks ago a new teacher arrived in Prague....

This teacher has joined me in the 2/3 grade classroom to co-teach with me. I am quite excited about this because it means that we can both focus on 1-not 2-grades for the core subjects of math and language and share the responsibility of teaching Bible, Science, and Social Studies. If you are not a teacher, this is your cue to get really excited. If you are a teacher, you should understand my current happiness...

I do not actually know what it is like to simply focus on one grade in a classroom so this weekend as I have been planning I have felt a little out of my element. I feel as if I am starting over...and amazingly seem to have WAY more work to do now than I did before. How is this possible?? Oh, I can think of one reason...I probably talk too much during the day instead of working :)

This teacher-her name is Janna-is a wonderful addition to our classroom of 11 and I am very excited to work with her!

In other news, we have a busy few weeks left leading up to Christmas break (which I can hardly believe is already on our horizon) and I am getting pretty excited about being back in the United States for a few weeks. Being away for months at a time makes coming home that much sweeter :)

Until next time...

Spain, Spain, Spain...

2010-11-07T19:18:00.002+01:00

Where to begin then where to end? Well we (meaning 5 of us girls) started off in the little towns of Acalá and Camarma and ended in the big city of Madrid.

We visited the Evangelical Christian Academy located in Camarma, Spain and were able to tour their school and attend their secondary chapel.

We started in host families’ homes and ended in SEND missionary housing…

I started off not knowing who Miguel de Cervantes was but ended up knowing that he at least authored Don Quixote (Alcalá is Cervantes’ home town)

I started not knowing anything about the city of Madrid and ended knowing more than when I came (though probably not as much as I should)

I went not knowing about the awesomess of Churros con Chocolate and ended fully appreciating its chocolately goodness-if you don’t know what they are you should totally look them up.

I began not knowing there was an Egyptian temple in the middle of the city and ended having visited such a place (strange I know, but it was a gift so you can’t turn it down!)

I started off dry and ended up wet-I just love the rain when I travel, especially when my rain jacket decides it doesn’t want to be what you would consider “waterproof.”

I began not knowing there could be so many different street performers in one city, but left knowing it is entirely possible to have mickey mouse, GI Joe, and a llama all in one square…

We headed out on a Thursday and came back on a Sunday all the more wiser about the city of Madrid. For me, a city is a city but the little towns we visited were completely different from what you would find in the city. They were charming and had simple two-story buildings. There were big open fields and children running around without the need for a parents’ close watch. This is what I loved the most J

Until next time…

Birthdays seem to come around every year

2010-10-18T22:45:00.001+02:00

Since it was just my birthday, let’s have a chat about it.

I spent my birthday in the Czech Republic.

Some would say birthdays away from home are hard.

Some would say “Wahoo I am away from home! Let’s have a party!”

I say they are simply...different.

This year was my second birthday away from home (in this case, Tennessee).

I received a birthday box from America a couple days early. These are the best.

I turned 23 on a Friday.

We had no school. Bonus!

We were headed to a weekend staff retreat on this particular Friday.

The staff sang me to a total of 4 times. Yep, count ‘em. FOUR.

To celebrate, the director of my school made a Texas sheet cake that was fabulous.

My friends threw a room party for me with brownies, party hats, and balloons. Oh and I can’t forget the awesome mittens and photo/drawing of Prague.

4 of my students brought presents and sweet cards just for me.

I miss being home with my sister on our birthday weekends but I love my friends here in CZ.

Family, friends, and skype…I am not sure what I would do without you.

Birthdays are great but I love the people in my life more…

So, here’s to 23. I am not sure what you will bring but I know it will be unique just to me. And this is how God made it to be.

Until next time...

Paris...home of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and tasty bread and cheeses

2010-09-29T18:42:00.003+02:00

It started out as a typical Saturday morning. I woke up late, took a shower, messed around on the computer, and ate lunch. Then I was off to the airport. Wait…that doesn’t sound very normal. Oh yeah, this particular Saturday I had a flight booked to go to Paris (France, not Tennessee) for the weekend with my good friend Melodee.

We flew out (only a couple of hours delayed…) on Saturday afternoon and arrived in the gigantic Paris airport a short while later and were off to find our way into the city. The not so helpful tourist information desk attendant told us that the trains into the city were not running on the weekend. After prompting her on what we should do she told us we must take the bus from terminal 3. We found the appropriate terminal and were ushered onto a free (quite surprised by that fact) shuttle bus that would take us to the nearest open train station. Upon arrival at the station we bought tickets (at least what we thought were the right tickets) and got onto the regional train that went into the city. A few insights into this journey: a pair of accordion and tambourine players entertained us while riding in one of the metro cars, we had to find our way around the gates at a transfer station because our tickets would not work and there was no one around to help (see previously mentioned comment about buying what we thought were appropriate tickets), and the total journey took around an hour and a half. We decided later to take the shuttle bus from the hotel back to the airport because we figured it would be easier and would take less time-well it was easier but most certainly did not take less time…another story for different time.

We found our cute little hotel, walked around to find dinner and then settled in for the night. The next morning, we were up early and headed out to see the Louvre before our walking tour that afternoon. We figured out the metro system (with a little help from a nice stranger who watched us fail at the machine several times before coming over to see if we needed help) and went to find the Mona Lisa. Well…we found her and I must say, she is quite a small painting. And she is behind bulletproof glass just in case anyone wanted to mess with her. There were crowds of people in the gallery and the thing I noticed most was the very little attention being paid to the HUGE painting on the wall opposite the Mona Lisa. I mean…this thing was BIG. It probably took years to paint it and all we care about is getting a picture of the beloved Mona Lisa. Seemed a little strange to me…but I am most certainly not an art expert.

After the Louvre we went on a walking tour of the city. Our tour guide, who was from New Zealand, took us around the city and told us many stories (she could have made them up for all I knew of the history of Paris).

Then it poured rain….oh and I forgot to mention the fact that it was COLD while we were there and being the southerner that I am, I had only brought my chacos. Smart, I know. J

In the afternoon, we went to the Eiffel Tower and in the rain (of course, cause it’s Europe!) we rode the slightly scary elevator to two different viewing platforms with awesome views of the city. I am pretty happy we went on Sunday because I found out today that they had to evacuate the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday because of a threat. All I have to say is that I would not have gone back up the tower had that happened while we were there.

Monday, Melodee and I decided to relax so we went on a boat tour down the Seine River. The tour took us by Notre Dame and most of the major sights along the river. There was this little boy on the boat with us who looked just like one of my students from last year. He was so cute and took pictures the whole time with his bright blue digital camera while his mom took pictures with a pretty intimidating professional-looking camera.

Our hotel was only about a 20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower so on our last evening in Paris, we went and saw the it all lit up and even watched the twinkling light show it puts on for the first five minutes of each hour during the evening. We took way too many pictures trying to get the Eiffel Tower and us into the picture and then made our way back to the hotel.

We had a splendid time seeing this very famous city and it ranks in the top 5 of my favorite places I have visited in Europe…right behind Prague and the island of Hydra in Greece.

Until next time…

School in September

2010-09-10T17:39:00.003+02:00

September is here and school is back in session. I have a lovely group of 11 second and third graders and they they are shaping up to be a wonderful class :) At least they have been good in the 2 1/2 days I have had them in school. We will see what next week brings...

Last year, I had 7 different countries represented in my classroom and this year I have 8! And I have a smaller class! I can confidently say that we have a very international group of students at CISP.

Speaking of school...my loving and wonderful father made the video I filmed about CISP small enough to fit onto this blog. So, if you haven't seen it, I hope this video gives you a glimpse into life at the Christian International School of Prague.

Until next time...

Scandinavia in August

2010-08-27T21:27:00.003+02:00

One of my roommates and I decided in May of this year that we needed to go on a cruise. See, this roommate (she really does have a name and it’s Melodee) had never been on a cruise before. I decided this was something that needed to be remedied so we determined that a cruise was in order for this summer. We settled on Scandinavia in August to celebrate Melodee’s birthday.

We ventured out on a Saturday morning and made our way to the port of call, which was Stockholm, Sweden. As we arrived and took the bus into the city it started raining lightly…then the light rain turned into more of a downpour as we tried to manage our way through the metro and then continued on the walk to our accommodations. When booking our hotel, Melodee decided to arrange for us to stay on a boat. She thought it would be good for her to have a practice night on a boat before we went on the cruise. We stayed at the LogInn Hotel for our night in Stockholm. Let’s just say, we enjoyed the front desk attendant and the fact that we were only there for one night.

Our Stockholm accomodations

On Sunday morning we were able to board the Vision of the Seas at the port of Stockholm. We checked-in, found our room, and promptly went to find the Windjammer café. Isn’t that a requirement? We sailed away from Stockholm later in the day and had our first dining room experience that evening. Since there were only two of us I knew we would be seated at a table with other people. That first night we were introduced to two couples that were seasoned cruisers and were a “bit” older than us. We will just leave it at that.

The Vision of the Seas

Our first full day on the ship was a day at sea. We wandered around and enjoyed trivia and name that tune. I think these two things are also requirements when you go on a cruise. Next stop…Gothenburg, Sweden.

Melodeee and I decided to take a tour of the West Coast Islands of Sweden. We were bussed around some of the different islands in the fjords. It was beautiful. We stopped in two small fishing villages and walked around for a little while. One village had a swimming area. I put my foot in the water but was not too excited about the water temperature. That was the end of that.

Fjords near Gothenburg

Melodee and I in Sweden

Next stop was Olso, Norway. We went on a walking tour in the drizzle and were educated on the history of Oslo and the meanings of many of the town landmarks. I probably could not tell you much of what the tour guide said but to most that will not be surprising because of my lack of history retention ability. But I did enjoy the city and it seemed surprisingly quaint and charming.

Last stop on the Scandinavian journey was Copenhagen, Denmark. This is where we sadly had to disembark and say goodbye to the Vision of the Seas. 4 nights is simply too short for a cruise. Moving on… if I had to choose a favorite city from this trip it would be Copenhagen. We were able to see more of this city than any other on our trip and it is a beautiful place. There are colorful buildings and water canals built into part of the city. We took a bus tour and a canal cruise that took us to the highlights of the historical landmarks of the city. While there, we also went into a local grocery store and bought dinner. This is beginning to be one of my favorite things to do while visiting a city. In places like this, I feel like you can begin to understand a little more about the local culture. For example, Copenhagen enjoys selling alcohol free wine. That is your random fact for the day. Go on, share it with others…

Beautiful buildings in Copenhagen

So there you have it. 7 days, 3 countries, and 4 cities. Best way to do it? On a cruise ship.

Until next time…

Just in case you were interested....

2010-08-06T20:43:00.003+02:00

I made it back safely to Prague on Tuesday evening. After a full 14 hours of sleep and a couple restful days after that I am successfully in the right time zone and off to Scandinavia tomorrow! Before I go, I thought you might be interested in something I put together...

Since I know some of you are curious (don't lie, I know you are!) I put together a slideshow video of the places I was able to travel to this past year. I hope you like it!

Oh, and I am always looking for ideas of places to visit. So please share them with me!

Until next time....

P.S. I tried to upload the school video some people saw during my presentation at church but it was to big. I am going to work on getting it up soon!

What I love about HOME...

2010-08-02T06:52:00.010+02:00

I have found something that can express who and what I love better than words ever could...

Here in pictures is what I have loved the most about HOME this summer....

Hanging out with my mom...wherever that may be

Seeing this beautiful girl almost every day that I was here...

Oh, and you could never forget Marley. She has part of my heart forever

We have fun...can't you tell???

Going on roadtrips with this guy is never boring...I love you dad :)

We went to visit family in Ohio and had a blast...

Waking up in the morning to Miss MacKenzie always meant there would be an interesting day ahead...

Randomness with my sister...like taking pictures at the mall

Add in a couple more awesome friends and a wedding....

(Thanks for the pictures Stevie!)

Sara

Renee and Stevie

The bride Jillian :)

and for me, it is easy to see why I call this place HOME...

I love each of you with all my heart

Until next time....

Summer Vacation...

2010-06-27T05:12:00.002+02:00

So, have you ever experienced a time where it seems like your emotions are being pulled in a million different directions? Some might call it “your formative years” others might name it “growing up” but I have a different name for it. You want to hear my thoughts on the matter? I can give it many names. I say it is challenging, annoying, confusing, overwhelming, etc… And believe me, I am not hiding under any veil to think this period of life is even close to being finished. I won’t lie, sometimes I wish it didn’t come with so many conflicting emotions…geez. This overwhelming feeling thing has been happening to me a lot lately. Sometimes I have this inner argument with myself that goes something like this, “Goodness I hate this feeling. Oh hush, you have it made. What are you complaining for? You have a family, a job, and opportunities out the wazoo to travel and explore. There should be NO complaining from you!” Sound familiar to anyone??? Ok maybe it is just me. Must focus…on to the real subject of this post.

Summer Vacation.

Like I said before, I think everyone goes through this time in life where you are trying to figure out who you are going to be and what you are going to do with your life. Well, I am getting to know who I am and have a pretty good idea on what I am going to do in life. I have been growing and changing all year long and have adapted quite well to my new way of life. Currently, the only problem is this pesky summer vacation business. See, I am a teacher. This means we work REALLY hard for 9 months and then get 3 months of vacation. This time off is very much appreciated but it has been very strange thus far. Now, I have a semi-unique situation on my hands. I normally live in a different city, different country, and even a different continent than where I am currently located for the next five weeks. Right now I am in a place you would call home. Now, I am with family and friends that I haven’t been around for more than a week or two in a whole year. Now, I am away from the friends and surroundings I have called home for the past year. Sometimes, I wonder what I am doing here, where do I fit in a place that is supposed to be the most comfortable for me? This is not comfortable. This is weird, just plain weird. It may seem odd to use this choice of words but I have no other way to explain it.

My question for today is how do you manage such things as these? How do I effectively transition back into a place I call home that is not really my home right now, re-connect with friends who I have not seen in a long time but still desire a friendship with, and actively prepare for a new school year coming in September, in a different country? Doing all this mind you, during a time in one’s life where you are lucky to be able to figure out just about anything….ok maybe I am not that bad.

All I know is that I will be spending a lot of time in prayer over the next three months…cause I know that is the only thing that will get me through this summer vacation we (I) started wishing for around February.

If you think about it…I would greatly appreciate any and all prayers! It is the only way we make it through life.

Until next time…

Kids are unbelievable...

2010-06-09T19:29:00.003+02:00

Kids can be pretty unbelievable...

Now most everyone knows this, but if you don’t you have probably been living under some rock without any human contact for the last while. If you have ever spent any significant period of time with a child (you can pick the age) you realize that they have the amazing talent of being full of complex emotions, silly comments, annoying habits, and an ability to surprise you at any moment during the day.

Take my students for example. Now, I have enjoyed spending the last nine months of my life with them, but have probably had a countdown of day’s left of school before they even realized it was spring. These kids have challenged me, annoyed me, made me laugh, and most of all taught me A LOT. Top on that list of lessons taught is that I need a few years before I have my own children…ok back to the topic of conversation.

As I am writing, we have just one day left of school-not even a full day at that! Lately, I have been so ready for summer vacation that I haven’t really thought about the fact that for six of my students, I will probably never see them again after our school picnic on Friday. This idea finally caught up with me this week. Even though I am ready to not be their teacher for three months, I don’t believe I am so ready to say goodbye to them forever. All of the moments of annoyance and all the challenges suddenly fade into the background as I think about having to say goodbye to Angie, Carl, Yonju, Seo-yeon, Josiah, and Elizabeth.

Just to give you a little glimpse in the last week of school, we have been wrapping up our different school subjects and have been working on illustrating the class story we wrote this nine weeks. Each of the students has had to illustrate their own copy of the story so we have had some chunks of time just to work. On Monday, a group of the students were laying on the floor working when they started singing a song. Now normally it is a song they have made up or a song they have heard their older brother or sister singing so it just blends right in to the noise of the room. This day was not the case. As I started to listen to a couple of the girls sing, I realized it was a worship song they had learned in chapel during the school year. Now remember, I was just a listener at this point so there was no encouragement from me. The girls continue singing and soon other students join in and they move to a different song. They continue singing and eventually come and ask me if I can find the music for the song. I look the song up on youtube and I am quickly surrounded by half my class who all join in singing this song with the music.

Let’s just say that my heart was melted. I was in awe of these kids-some from non-believing homes-singing about our God in the middle of the morning. I have been amazed at their ability to drive me nuts for a whole school year and then the last week of school they melt my heart and make me not want to let them go. I have been so blessed and challenged by these students this year that I am not too sure who has learned more-but let’s not tell them that ok?

Until next time…

When we go to Berlin...

2010-05-30T15:03:00.004+02:00

So, after several months of talking about it, a group of six of us teachers-and one recruiter-from school finally made it to Berlin-Germany that is. I am not aware of any other Berlin, but who knows nowadays. We rode a bus the 5 hours up into Germany, passing through Dresden and a number of other small towns that I do not know the names of. We made it to Berlin, and after figuring out the Berlin transport system-which has a few more lines than our beloved Prague-we were on our way to the hostel to crash for the night.

Saturday morning we set out to find the local Starbucks that just so happens to be the meeting place of the free walking tours in Berlin. There was a massive crowd gathered around at 11am and I began to believe that Starbucks has the better end of this deal. Talk about free advertising. We were put into groups of about 20 and eventually set off with our guide named Anique. She was Australian but just so happened to have a German heritage. She introduced us to the “tourist pirouette” (where you simply turn around in a circle while the guide discusses the buildings behind them) and led us around the city for the next four hours.

We saw all the major sights-many of which I still don’t know the name of-and our guide was very passionate about this city. We saw the last remaining piece of the Berlin wall, Brandenburg Gates, Checkpoint Charlie, The Reichstag, Hitler’s bunker, and even went into an incredible chocolate shop that had giant models-made completely of chocolate-of the important buildings in Berlin. They also had one of the Titanic…I think it fits. How about you?

Titanic...

This picture thanks to Melodee :)

Reichstag

Checkpoint Charlie

What is left of the Berlin wall

Brandenburg gates at night

During our tour, we stopped at the Jewish memorial that was placed in the city center near the Brandenburg Gates. This memorial was made up of thousands of concrete blocks of varying heights all places in neat rows. The ground they were placed on went up and down so when you walked through the memorial the blocks were eventually towering over you. It was quite an impressive sight. Our guided said they decided to put the memorial in the center of town so that everyone would be reminded of what happened during the war.

After finishing our tour and wandering around the city a bit more we set out to find this Mongolian restaurant that one of our group members had read about online. Well, we didn’t know exactly where it was and had no access to the internet so we decided to use the resources around us. There is a fancy hotel in the Pariser platz named Hotel Adlon. This is the same hotel that Michael Jackson held is baby named Blanket out of the window for who knows what reason. We knew that inside this hotel there would be a concierge that would help us. Melodee and myself, the two who supposedly looked the least like tourists from the streets, walked in past the door guard and found the concierge. When we asked for directions to this restaurant he replied, “That is more of a self-service place, not a real restaurant.” This clearly meant he thought is was not up to the standards required for guests at this hotel. Good thing we weren’t actually guests…We successfully got directions and found the Mongolian restaurant but upon arrival found that it was above our price range even though it was below the hotel’s standards. Now what does that tell you??? Fear not, we eventually found a suitable restaurant-Mexican in fact- and enjoyed the rest of our short time in Berlin.

Until next time…

I blame the men who built the tower of Babel

2010-05-13T19:41:00.002+02:00

I will forever suggest to anyone who thinks English is the only language in the world that they should move to a non-English speaking country for a year or more.

But before I start, I must say, here in Prague there are many people who speak English (which is probably why my Czech is still SO bad) but you still have those moments where you wish that you could just flip a switch and be fluent in whatever language you needed at the moment. Here in Prague, there are many different languages. I have 6 languages in my class of 14 students alone!

A few fun examples:

Example #1: The other day I was walking home with my roommate Melanie when we stopped into a local store that seems to have just about everything from soap to paint to household cleaning supplies. Melanie was in need of bubbles or glycerin (to make bubbles of course!) for an art project. We stepped inside and Melanie decided to play a little game of charades with the lady who worked there. She promptly pulled out a bubble wand-which she happened to have in her backpack-and pretended to blow bubbles. This time around the lady understood exactly what she meant and promptly pulled out a bottle of bubbles. Mission Accomplished… but we are not always so lucky.

Example #2: I usually walk to school alone each day so I typically listen to music. This day was no exception. I had my white earbuds in and was walking down the street. There was a lady standing on the corner looking a little out of place with her phone in her hand. I just assumed she was waiting on someone. As I walked near her she started talking to me. Now, usually when someone talks to me on the street I cannot understand them. Well today, I had my music playing so I couldn’t really hear her either. I just assumed she was speaking Czech and proceeded to say (in my best pronunciation) “ne mluveem cesky” which means “I don’t speak Czech.” A normal reaction to this phrase is a laugh, hand wave, and another long stream of words in Czech as they walk away to find someone else to ask their question to. Well, this particular morning the woman just stared at me. No really, she just stared. I looked at her for a moment longer, mumbled a weak “sorry” and walked away. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I am still not sure if she was talking to me in Czech or another language. She could have been talking to me in Russian, German, or English for all I know…

Example #3: A little while ago, one of our friends became a godfather to a little baby boy born here in the Czech Republic. Since he is the godfather he was asked to be part of the baptism of the little boy. Well, he invited Melodee-one of my roommates-to come to the baptism. She in turn asked me to come with her. I agreed, simply out of curiosity. Sunday came around and we arrived at the church to realize that it was not an English speaking church like we hoped. In fact, it wasn’t even a Czech speaking church. It was definitely a small, Slovak church. We sat through the service, trying to at least pretend we understood what was going on, and followed what the older lady in front of us was doing so we knew when to stand up and sit down-which was a lot. J It was in this service that I REALLY wished I knew the language.

All of this to say…I blame the men in Genesis 11 who decided that they would build a temple to the heavens in order to make a name for themselves instead of being content with what they had. Of course, God isn’t going to allow that so he decided to scatter them among the earth while at the same time giving them different languages. Just imagine for a minute what they must have thought when they went up to each other after this happened and couldn’t understand what the other person was saying. I realized how hard it must be for someone to come to a country and not know the language and also not have anyone speak your native language. I have it easy compared to those people.

Now, imagine what the world would be like had this not happened…it would definitely be a lot less interesting for people who move away from home to live in a different country. And google translate would not be needed…

Until next time…

Extra recess Friday

2010-04-28T20:15:00.005+02:00

So last week my students finally earned a trip to the new park a few blocks from the school for extra recess. I thought I would show you how it all turned out.....

Enjoy!

Group photo :)

Seo-yeon climbing on the totem pole....

A giant trampoline that all the kids love!

Surfing on the ship!

Cameron and Edmond

Jump! Jump! Jump! Get all that energy out!

Going for a ride....Carl and Edmond

Handstands are the new thing...I was just thankful to keep them from doing it on the trampoline!

More jumping...if there weren't so many kids I would have joined them!

Hope, Angie, and Elizabeth :)

Until next time....

School update

2010-04-17T11:33:00.000+02:00

It has been a little while since I updated so I thought I would do a post with a few things about school. We have just finished up standardized testing and have 8 weeks left of the school year. Whoo hoo! This year has flown by and I have learned a lot. I am looking forward to next year and all that will come with it.

Speaking of next year…..we have a new building! The school administrators have their first meeting this Wednesday, April 21 to start negotiations with the contract. I am still a little skeptical because of how things work around here but I am trying to have faith and be confident that this will be our building next year. With that being said…..the building is HUGE. It is an old school building that is 7 floors! You can say it fits our needs and then some. We will be renting out some of the building to help pay for the rent as well as be a resource for those in our community who also need a space to rent for their organizations. I am very excited about this move and all the potential it has for our school to grow! What CISP is doing in this city is amazing and I am incredibly blessed to be a small part of it. Please pray with us, as there is A LOT of work that has to be done before we are settled in the new building.

Throughout this year I have seen my students change in incredible ways. I have grown to love them even when they are being difficult (which is almost every day J ) and will miss them when they leave in June. Because of the lifestyles of most of my students’ families, of my 12 students most likely will not be back next year. In some ways this will be a good thing, but in others it is very sad. Only a handful of my students come from Christian homes and so I have had the great opportunity to share Jesus with those who do not come from believing homes. Over the course of this year, I have seen them grow and understand more about the bible and how God loves them. I have come to love teaching them about the bible and the Jesus who died for them. My prayer is that those who are leaving will end up in a nurturing, Christian environment in the 5 different countries they are moving to. These students are precious and I am working at having the faith that says it’s ok to let them go and that God has it all under control.

Until next time….

Spring Break 2010

2010-04-08T19:13:00.002+02:00

For round two of our spring break this year I ended up in two different countries throughout the week.

First up was Germany. We-as in myself along with several of the other staff and teachers from the school-drove up to Black Forest Academy in Kandern, Germany for an International Christian Educators conference.

Here are some of the highlights:

We were able to meet teachers and leaders from school literally from all across Europe and parts of Africa. I talked with people who worked in Spain, Senegal, Cameroon, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. Just to name a few.

It was four days of meetings, workshops, and seminars so I didn’t get to explore the little town very much.

We stayed in dorms and I was reminded how thankful I should have been for my dorm accommodations my freshman year of college. I must say though, as far as dorms go, they were pretty nice!

I finally learned how to effectively integrate biblical principles into regular academic lesson plans.

After our trip to Germany I was back in Prague for a day before heading out to London, England for Easter weekend with one of my roommates, Melodee.

Some highlights from London:

I realized that I thoroughly enjoy a real hotel….thank you express by Holiday Inn.

Even though we went to an English speaking country we didn’t hear very much English.

Melodee and I went to see “Wicked” at the Apollo Victoria theatre on Friday night and it didn’t disappoint. I love this musical.

We took “The Original Tour” on a double decker bus to see the city. The best seats are up top but unfortunately they are also outside. We braved the cold and saw most of the major sights of the city.

We rode The London Eye and witnessed the inner workings of a French family that was having what you would call a “bad day.”

On Sunday, we went to church and were greeted by the easter bunny at the door and experienced a very contemporary Easter production. I must say, it was not your normal Easter Sunday.

It was a good break and we are now in the homestretch of the school year. We have standardized testing next week, which promises to be an experience….

Until next time…

Poland, a musical, and a tour of the castle grounds...all in 48 hours

2010-03-23T21:50:00.003+01:00

I had the opportunity to go to Boleslawiec, Poland this past weekend to do a little polish pottery shopping. Now to most-including myself before this trip-this pottery may be unknown to you. The best way I can describe it is to say that it is the Vera Bradley equivalent of pottery.

On Friday afternoon, myself along with 3 other teachers at the school, set out in a rented car headed toward Poland with printed directions from google maps and a hope that we would not get lost. We did fairly well on the way up-only one dead end road-and made it to the Protea Hotel in Boleslawiec. The next morning, we set out bright and early-some shops open up at 6AM! We headed out around 8 with our marked map of which shops we were to go to and in what order to maximize our 5 hours of shopping time. We made it to most of the shops and found that each one was different from the one before. There were all kinds of different patterns and a fun numbering system to tell us if the pottery was safe to use in the dishwasher/microwave or simply for display use only. Our hours were quickly up and we were back on the road headed back to Prague. Below are some pictures of my “finds” as well as a fun polish pottery tree that was outside one of the shops. :)

Tree decorated with polish pottery

Salt and pepper shakers

Vase/spatula holder

Water pitcher

Aren't they pretty??? :)

After journeying through the Polish countryside that they consider “highways” we made it back to Prague and had just a couple hours before we headed out the high school’s performance of “Godspell” in a tiny theatre close to where we live. The cast of the musical was composed of about half of the entire secondary school and I must say I was blown away with how they did. I had never seen the musical before and thought they did a very good job with it!

After the musical, for an unknown reason, some of us were not tired yet so we decided to hop on the metro and take a walk through the castle grounds. At night, parts of the castle grounds that you normally have to pay for are free to walk through. Of course, we took full advantage of this opportunity! We walked through “golden lane” and saw where Franz Kafka lived and then headed out to see the view that the castle up on the hill has to offer before heading home.

Quite the weekend I must say. I am glad all weekends are not like this but I do enjoy them every now and then!

Until next time…

Broken

2010-03-12T21:26:00.002+01:00

Broken: to be subdued or brought low in condition or status; thrown into a state of disarray or confusion. (thanks google)

This week I have been broken.

Broken for the hurt this world is experiencing, broken for the students in my classroom who are learning about God at school but receiving zero support at home about it, and broken over the tremendous difficulty of teaching

This week is not one that you would put into the category of uplifting or joyful when you look at the facts.

This week, there were attacks on the World Vision offices in Pakistan-6 were killed- and in Morocco, where all the foster parents of an organization that offers homes for orphaned children were expelled with no warning because the authorities claimed they were proselytizing in the country.

This week, several of my students talked about their families and how they (my 7 and 8 year olds) know more about the Bible than their parents. One of my students told me her dad takes her to church because she loves it so much but he himself does not believe. Another one of my students told me that he teaches his mom and dad about the Bible because he knows more than they do.

This week, was a tough week in teaching. The feelings of inadequacy have caught up to me once again and if you couple that with several very challenging students it is enough for one first year teacher to want to run in the opposite direction from everything related to teaching.

So, this week has been a week of brokenness.

BUT-and I love that I can use this lovely conjunction- I know that God is in all this.

He is not a God who stands on the sidelines and just watches things happen. His hand is in everything even if we don’t see it.

I am choosing to take comfort in that this week. Even though I am broken for the people who are hurting in this world, broken for my students who do not have the solid Christ-believing home that they need, and broken over my inadequacies as a teacher, I am going to pray and believe that this is all part of God’s plan.

I am going to pray that doors will be opened so that the people who work in Morocco are able to once again be with their foster children.

I am going to see the beauty in being able to tell a student to pray for their dad who doesn’t believe, and for being able to talk about Jesus each and every day with my students.

I am going to be amazed at hearing 5 languages being spoken during a morning prayer time, and a child who knows more about the Bible than I do.

I am going to choose to learn from my mistakes and inadequacies as a teacher and not give up just because I want to run in the opposite direction of school sometimes.

I am going to pray that what these children are learning at school about Christ follows them home so that those they love may see a glimpse of the shining light that they are learning all about.

God is in this, He always is. And he is teaching me a thing or two (or twenty) while he is working ALL things for the GOOD of His people.

Until Next time….

For more information about the Village of Hope in Morocco click here.

A trip to Gran Canaria, Spain

2010-03-09T21:21:00.005+01:00

A week of sunshine with the company of many retirees can do the soul some good. This is precisely what I encountered during my trip to the lovely Canary Islands, Spain at the end of February. These islands are located about 65 miles off the coast of Africa and are considered one of the best places to vacation because of the good weather. According to my experience, I would have to agree. The sun was out-and actually warm!- and nothing was expected of me for a whole 5 days, so life was wonderful….

We took off from Prague Saturday morning, made a quick stop in Madrid and then were loaded onto a plane headed to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. This particular flight was very interesting considering the fact that an entire men’s athletic team-in matching outfits I might add-joined us for the trip. At one point during the moderately calm flight I looked up and all I saw was a sea of blue and white striped shirts everywhere. They were sitting, standing, and talking to each other all over the plane. It was quite the sight to see.

We finally made it to the islands and to the Hotel Atlanta with their very large key chains attached to a single key for the room. I was thankful I carried such a large purse! We settled in and ventured out the next morning after being surprised with an unknown complimentary breakfast from the hotel! We walked the one-block to the beach boardwalk and meandered down to the sand to enjoy the sun and all the retirees that were out on their morning walk. No, I am not joking and yes everyone we saw for the first bit of our walk had to have been members of some senior citizens club. But they were out enjoying the sunshine and warm weather just like us.

As time went on, my roommate and I spent a lot of time walking near the beach and even walked to another part of the city to visit a museum. On our last night in Las Palmas we went to the Gran Canaria symphony at the Alfredo Kraus auditorium which was right on the beach. The symphony was wonderful and it was a great excuse to bring out that sundress!

Our very purpose of this trip-to do nothing but relax-was well accomplished and I came back almost ready to become a productive part of society again.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip (you may notice I thoroughly enjoy taking pictures of the water and sky ☺)

My roommate Melodee and I

Hotel Atlanta's LARGE key chains

All the rocks that are hidden at high tide

The beach the first morning we were there...awesome :)

Sunset at dinner one night...incredible

The sand has black in it from the volcanic rocks in the ocean

Until next time...

Fieldtrip day at CISP

2010-02-18T20:20:00.003+01:00

Today was fieldtrip day to Morsky Svet-which is an aquarium for all those who don’t know Czech….

The trip held all of the usual excitement that you would expect from an outing including a group of elementary students, three teachers, and three chaperones-two of which had small children in strollers.

One of the best stories of the trip happened on the way back from the aquarium. We were on the metro just a couple of stops from where we needed to get off when the metro started to become full of people. I was standing making sure everyone was staying where they needed to be and talking with some of the students when we stopped at one of the stations. The car became crowded and one of my students-who is seven by the way-stands up and motions to her friend sitting with her to also stand up. See, this girl had noticed that an elderly gentlemen had gotten on the car and wasn’t very sturdy on his feet. He was busy trying to steady himself and had not noticed that one of my students had gotten up, leaving an empty seat for him to sit in. This girl then proceeded to tap him on the arm until he realized that they had gotten up for him. He finally noticed and made his way to the empty seat.

In Prague it is a well-known courtesy/custom that you give up your seat on a tram or metro to someone who is elderly or looks like they cannot stand up steadily. What made this story different from the rest is that the man didn’t just smile and say thank you, he proceeded to give the girls red flowers that he had in his hand. This act of kindness just made me want to leap for joy because it made me realize that generosity is not completely dead in this world we live in. I was so proud of my two students who gave up their seats and didn’t expect anything in return but received flowers anyways. This was a perfect example of God blessing you when you choose to do good for others without expecting anything in return.

Some other highlights of the day were:

One of my second graders getting locked in the bathroom and screaming hysterically until someone came to let her out.

Our entire elementary school going up to the aquarium theatre to watch a “movie” that we assumed was about the usual fish, sharks, and whales but were surprised by naked men and women who live in the jungle (I still don’t understand why this was part of the movie). Just take a second with me to imagine the reactions from 30 elementary students. We the teachers kept hoping that it would go back to the fish and sharks but sadly it did not. So after a chorus of “ewwwwww’s” and “that’s inappropriate” we ushered them into the other room to look at the remaining fish and wildlife. Talk about exciting…

After explaining to the students were to draw a picture of their favorite fish for an aquarium contest, one of the 4/5 grade students asked, “What are we supposed to draw it with? Our eyeballs?” –in reference to whether they should trace it or just draw it. Personally, I would enjoy watching someone try to trace an outline of a constantly moving fish….

Two of my children getting caught by the 4/5 grade teacher via closed circuit television monitor play-fighting in the hallway with the bathrooms…I am pretty sure they think she has God-like powers now :)

I sure am glad that everyday is not fieldtrip day…but it does make for some funny stories…

Until next time…

A life of steps...

2010-02-09T19:53:00.002+01:00

In my short 22 years of life I have found that there are certain moments, both big and small, that make an impression or significant impact on your life. When it comes to following Christ I have realized that our walk with Him happens in a series of steps-or decisions-that shape the way you view Him.

Now, when you are the five year old sitting in bed after reading your first children’s bible with mom and dad, and decide right then and there to ask Jesus into your heart the initial impact is probably more on the mom and dad than on the five year old. But this decision-made 17 years ago- has impacted a life. That decision, made by an innocent child, was the beginning of a life that would eventually desire to be led by the Holy Father, the one who gives life and takes it away.

This story began at age five. The next step in this walk with Christ occurred towards the end of high school. I realized that life was moving and that I better attach myself to the one who is unmovable. Even though part of me understood what some of this meant most of me didn’t have a clue. But God knew what he was doing and was faithful all the same.

If we take another step forward we get to college. A place that was an hour and a half away from the home I had known since age eight and that would become my home for the next four years. The next clear step in this story occurred in January of senior year. I was starting my student teaching experience and had no clue what I was doing. Yeah I had had the classes that were supposed to prepare me and was developing this sense of confidence in who I was, but still had no clue. Through all this I began to cling to the one who wouldn’t leave me or turn His back on me. See, people are sinners. We can’t help but let others down no matter how hard we try not to. It is simply in our human nature. So, I clung to the one who wouldn’t let me down. What started from this was a beautiful dependence on Christ and His words. Now, you would think that this would have been something I had been doing from day one considering that I practically grew up in the church. But this was not the case. It took until the age 21 for me to really take Jesus for myself and seek out His word on my own.

Now this is where things begin to blow my mind. Since elementary school I knew that I would go to college and study to be a teacher. So nothing about what had happened so far had truly surprised me. About a year before student teaching, my dad had casually mentioned to me that a school in Africa needed teachers to work in their international school. Now he was telling me this thinking that my sister would actually be the one who would like to do something like this. My initial reaction was “that would be so cool!” but inside I figured it would never be possible. After this conversation, the thought of teaching outside the United States started popping back into my head every few months at first, then every few weeks, and eventually it was all I could think about. After realizing that I couldn’t ignore this thought anymore I began to research the idea of teaching abroad. At this point it was about March and to most that would seem a bit late to be beginning all of this. I was drawn to a school in Prague, Czech Republic and the next steps were quickly set into motion. After a series of interviews via skype with the school I was offered a job. At this point it was the beginning of June. I had about 2 and a half months to raise support-my salary-and move across the ocean in order to be in Prague for the beginning of school. I am still amazed at the fact that God allowed my support to be raised in just six weeks!

God led me to the Czech Republic six months ago and He has not let me down. It has been good, bad, challenging, rewarding, beautiful, ugly, stretching, comforting, and sometimes frustrating. I am constantly amazed at all the moments when I realize that the reason certain things happened the way they did was all so God could show me he was in control-always and forever. This may sound crazy but I know now that for me, moving 5000 miles away from home to work at an international school was better for my sanity than staying in Chattanooga and getting a job in the public school system. In His own way, God was protecting and providing for me even though I did not know it. I am truly thankful that I had no real idea-or expectations-of what it was going to be like. It had made the adventure so far that much better.

This past January I was able to go to a conference called Passion in Atlanta, GA. Throughout this story I have been talking about defining moments in my walk with Christ and this was no exception. For the first time, I went to a conference truly expectant on God to reveal himself to me. I can tell you right now that that is exactly what he did. At this four day conference I was able to witness and be a part of true worship to the Heavenly Father and also learn more about who Christ is from men and women who are serving Christ themselves and have been given the great gift of speaking about Him. It has been a month since the conference and I still cannot come up with the right words to use to express how much God taught me during those four days. This is the best I can do at the moment. Maybe one day some day I will be able to make true sense of it but for now this is all I have.

The God who is omniscient has shaped me and molded me into the person I am today. And the most beautiful thing about it is that He isn’t finished yet. That is my favorite part of this story. I know that His plan for me doesn’t just stop here. His plan will take me all the way until the moment I die and go live with Him for all eternity.

This is what God wants from all of us. He wants us to follow Him and trust that He is the one who will lead us, guide us, and save us. I am truly thankful to be able to call him my own.

Song of Solomon 2:16a

“My beloved is mine, and I am His”

A week where too many things are going on...

2010-01-31T14:09:00.005+01:00

Imagine with me for a minute about a normal five day school week. I think of five full days of school, some more productive than others, where each day you go into school at 7:30 and leave around 5:00. Well, this week was most certainly NOT that week. It started off with a normal Monday and Tuesday but by Wednesday things changed. The new school staff needed to go pick up their visas from the Czech consulate in Dresden, Germany which is about two hours away from Prague. The school decided to send us all together-bright and early I might add-this past Wednesday. We all thought that this was going to be a quick trip in to the consulate where they give us our visas and then we would go on our way. It turned into quite the opposite. We arrived at the consulate and upon giving our passports and proof of valid heath insurance, we are told immediately that we do not have the right insurance because it is not from a Czech insurance company (a law that went into effect Jan. 1). They tell us we can’t have our visas... Our fearless leader then decides that he is going to try another route by bringing the foreign police into this mess because they had previously told him that we didn’t need Czech insurance because we applied for visas before the law went into effect. What became of all this was several hours of sitting in the small consulate office praying that the phone would ring to tell the people there to give us our visas. The phone did ring but....the people at the consulate still said NO. So we were sent home without our visas and a knowing that we would soon visit the city of Dresden again... I now know a little of what it might feel like to try to get a visa in the U.S.A.

This trip was probably enough to make it a memorable week but we like to do things differently here in Czech. The very same day we went to Dresden, the school had scheduled the demolition of the extra wall in my classroom. After school on Wednesday-while I was still in the process of getting back into Prague-a group of about 12 students and other adults gathered in my classroom to knock down the wall. I am happy to say that it went wonderfully and that over the course of Thursday and Friday I-with the help of some wonderful students and staff-cleaned and organized my awesome new GIGANTIC classroom-can you tell I am excited?? Take a look at a few of the pictures to see the amazing change.

Before

During demolition

One of the volunteers taking out the drywall

After sweeping and mopping

Front of room finished!

Back of the room

Guided reading and small group math area :)

So the week ended up being quite different from a normal work week but hey, who doesn’t like to change things up a bit every once in a while?

Until next time...

SNOW: four little letters, so many different meanings…

2010-01-20T20:57:00.000+01:00

As a girl from Tennessee, I believe my first reaction to snow will always be excitement. I mean can you blame me? I lived my whole life up until now in two different states where school would be canceled if there was just a threat of snow or ice. So this is where I start with the idea of multiple meanings of the word snow. The first is excitement. The little kid inside of you jumps for joy as you see the pretty white snowflakes fall softly to the ground. You imagine all of the snow gathering together in soft piles that just beg to be made into snowmen or snowballs. From this perspective snow seems perfect. For some- those who never get snow-this idea is what sticks in their heads.

For others, there is another idea about the meaning of the four-letter word called snow. This second meaning of the word is drastically different from the first. For these individuals, SNOW-remember that pretty white stuff floating in the air?- means wet shoes, slow trams, dripping roofs, and the dread of slush once the temperature raises slightly above freezing. This precise meaning of snow has been actual life the past week in Prague. The snowfall that occurred the weekend I arrived back in town is supposedly the most snow that the city has ever recorded. Sounds exciting right? Well…it was, for about a day. At first it was very pretty and the inner child in me was quite excited about seeing so much snow at one time. That excitement stopped around 7:15 Monday morning when I walked outside to go to school and had to trudge through un-shoveled sidewalks with a suitcase full of school supplies brought over from the states. As the week continued, the city tried to catch up with all the snow that had fallen and you had to occasionally watch out for the man driving a 4-wheeler up and down the sidewalks to attempt to brush off the snow. With as much work that was happening, there seemed to be little progress toward getting the snow out of the streets and off the sidewalks. But we pressed on anyways…

As the days have progressed, the temperature has warmed up a bit. Now, it is very nice not to freeze when you walk to school but with the warming temperatures comes melting snow on the ground and get this!! Falling icicles off the side of the buildings that could seriously injure you! I don’t know about you but that fact makes me feel really safe about walking down the street. So imagine walking to work… all at the same time you are looking at your feet trying not to fall on the slippery ice/slush, worrying about icicles or chunks of snow falling off the buildings and injuring you, and to top it all off you have to dodge the police tape that has been put up everywhere to try and warn people of the falling snow and icicles. Now this police tape would be a good idea if they wouldn’t tape off both sides of the street forcing you to either duck under the tape (my personal favorite thing to do) or walk in the street and avoid the cars that might come and run you over. All this in just a ten-minute walk to school…

So, going back to that original word SNOW…. Even though I still love it, I will no longer wish to live in a place that has this fun white stuff for the majority of the winter. I think in all this God is trying to make me be very thankful for those boots I just had to get over Christmas break….they sure have come in handy J

Until next time… that is if I don’t get hit by falling snow first!

Home sweet home...

2010-01-12T22:44:00.001+01:00

Home sweet home…

So December 19^th finally rolled around and I was SO excited to leave the city of Prague to go visit my home in sweet Tennessee. After a day of travel that involved navigating 2 very large airports (all I have to say is that I am happy I can read signs and follow directions or I might still be there) I was reunited with my family and life couldn’t have been any sweeter than in that moment. It had been 4 wonderful, challenging, tough, life-changing months and I was pleased to find out that my mom and dad were still the same wonderful people. Boy was I happy about that! The sweet hugs and reunions carried on over the next few days as I was able to meet up with the majority of the most important people in my life.

I personally think one of the best parts of this trip home was walking into Walmart and knowing that whatever I wanted was most likely in this store-and in English! I thought I had momentarily gone to heaven. Ok, I am only kidding…maybe. I had come to town with a lengthy list of wants and needs that ranged from clothes to school stuff to vitamins and dvd’s. It was quite a list I must say and each day my mom would say, “where are we headed today?” I would then proceed to list off all the things still needed. This constant running around was interrupted by a sweet trip to visit family in NC for Christmas and of course a visit to Chattanooga to visit with friends. I was able to gather all of my necessities and enjoy my short time in Knoxville with the people I love. The time in Tennessee was short but wonderful and soon it was time to head to Atlanta for a gathering of 21,000 college-age individuals all there to worship and learn about our wonderful, amazing, incredible GOD. There is much more to be said about this later…

If we jump past this conference we end up at the Atlanta airport on Tuesday evening January 5, 2010 (please pay attention to the date-it will be important later) I am currently exhausted from lack of sleep and an emotional overload from a number of things. I board my plane bound for trusty London and land in the middle seat in the middle of the airplane. The flight takes about 8 hours and I am so tired that I manage to sleep about 4 hours despite the fact that planes are very uncomfortable.

As we land in London the pilot starts talking about snow in London. I remember thinking that this is strange, I thought London didn’t get snow??? Apparently not true this January. After waiting in the plane for a gate and being bussed into terminal #5 I make my way to the beginning of security for my flight to Prague. As I am waiting I realize that a lot of people are being told that their flights have been canceled. I am ushered through the security line so I assumed I was in the clear as far as flights go. I make it through security with the new projector and computer still intact and go to wait out my layover in the mildly comfortable waiting area for all international flights. I am assigned gate awhile later and am waiting for the crew to start boarding the plane. So I wait, and wait, and wait. About 20 minutes after the plane was supposed to take off for Prague the crew announces to all the waiting people that the flight had been canceled. We were to proceed to gate A21 and go get our luggage. I would be lying if I didn’t say that my initial reaction was a bit of a relief because I knew that I would have to teach the next day being so exhausted…but what came after this reaction was about 5 hours of searching for luggage (three large bags due to all my previously stated “necessities” from America) , standing in line for a hotel voucher that ended up being 45 minutes from the airport, and a realization that I was alone in this gigantic city that I always wanted to visit just not by myself or under these circumstances. After figuring out how to store my bags, buying tickets for the London underground, I managed to make it to my assigned hotel for the night. I was fed and went to sleep that night hoping that I could get a flight out of London the next day-see they had stopped rebooking at the airport so I was required to wait and call later. I was up bright and early the next morning and after being on hold for some time with the airline I find out that the next flight would not be until the next evening at 7pm. So if you refer to that all important first date that seems like a million years ago, that puts me in Prague 3 days after leaving the U.S.A. I decide there is nothing I can do about it so I proceed to sleep most of the day and the next morning-Friday- I went out and explored a little bit of the city.

Friday evening I arrive early at the airport, check my bags-again-, go through security-again-, and go to check on my flight. One of the first things I see is PLANE DELAYED….imagine my excitement at this point. I remember thinking that it didn’t matter what time I got into Prague that night, as long as I ACTUALLY made it back. Well…the 7:05 flight didn’t board until 10pm and once we are all on board- with some who I recognized from my original flight-the captain comes on and tells us we are about 10^th in the queue for the deicer. This didn’t sound too bad until he said the airport only does about 7-10 planes and hours…more excitement was going through my head. Two hours later-time check is midnight in London, 1am in Prague-we actually take off (a fact to which I am still super impressed with). We land in Prague at about 3 am and are greeted by about a foot of snow on the ground. I manage to retrieve my 3, still very large bags and made it back to my apartment at 5am…needless to say I was incredibly thankful that it was Saturday.

So after a weekend of sleep, unpacking, and enjoying time spent with my roommates, I am back at school and playing catch-up but slowly getting back into the groove of things. I am very thankful for those in my life and was grateful to see most everyone over my break.

Until next time…

Thanksgiving in Germany

2009-12-03T20:59:00.001+01:00

Thanksgiving....

A time to be thankful, a time to eat great food, a time to travel to Germany, and a time to buy American goodies at an Air base...sounds like a great break to me. This year I was able to travel to a tiny little town in western Germany to spend thanksgiving with some new friends. It is amazing that even in Germany, I was able to spend thanksgiving doing absolutely nothing except eat great food and hang out around the house...yes an actual house.

One of the highlights of this break was our trip to the military commissary where we were able to stock up on all the nonperishable American food we cannot get here in Prague. We felt like kids in a candy store that had all of our favorite candy that was priced in currency we actually understood! We stocked up and brought our goodies back with us on the eight hour trip that took us on four trains and a bus (and that was just one way!)

Even though I was away from my family and miss them terribly, I am very thankful for new friends who invited us into their home and fed us great food and shared their dog and children with us :) I will be traveling home in just two short weeks and couldn’t be more excited about it!

See everyone soon...

Trams, Metros, and a whole lot of people....

2009-11-23T21:55:00.001+01:00

My life here in Prague is quite different than the relaxed Chattanooga I just recently came from. Here in Prague there is no car for me to drive, ok let’s clarify....there is no desire to drive. So, I am one of the thousands who get to enjoy the streets, trams, and metros run by the DPP-or Prague Public Transport for those who do not know Czech. There have been many memories made over the past three months that include one of these three ways of traveling within the Prague limits so I thought I would give you a little insight into the workings of this treasure of a transportation system.

We will start with the metros. I would assume that most have been on some form of a metro/subway system before so you know how it sort of works. As you go down the initial stairs into the upper level of the metro station you are greeted with a variety of different shops or ticket stations depending on the area of town. As you make your way past the tourists trying to count out their newly acquired Czech Korun in order to by an 18 or 26Kc metro ticket you hop on the sometimes quickly moving escalator taking you down into the depths of the earth to meet up with your chosen train. Things seem fine as you are standing on the right side of the escalator-so that those who want to walk can pass you on the left- until you feel that slight rush of air that comes out of the station. Suddenly you can sense the frantic thoughts of the people around you trying to decide whether it is worth it to rush down the escalator in hopes that their train is the one actually in the station. Before you have had a moment to decide there is always someone-who has decided it is worth it-rushing past you in a flurry. I immediately find myself very stressed out.....

After you survive the rush of wind that cause a flurry of activity and manage to board the metro going the correct way, you spend your travel time standing amongst people who are all trying to get to their various destinations. Sometimes you find a place to sit but mostly you master the art of metro surfing....it is a newly acquired skill that I am quite proud of :)

So if the metros are not enough for you, you should take a ride on the local trams that run just about everywhere in the city and will get you where you need to go-as long as you get on the right one (speaking from experience). The trams are a bit different because the adventures you take on them depend on the time of day and where you are traveling.

The best memory I have of the trams occurred on night not to long ago when I was coming back from the mall with one of my flatmates. After going up the wrong way from the metro-which is easy to do considering there are about 12 exits at some of the bigger stations-we found the correct exit and were greeted at the top by a massive crowd of people all waiting for various trams. As the trams come around they start to get backed up so the drivers will open up their doors at different points on the street. So you can never quite be sure where to wait for your chosen tram. We knew that we could take two different trams to our flat so we waited patiently among the other 100 people and eventually we saw one of our trams coming down the tracks. We immediately begin to think about how we are going to push our way through these people in order to get to this beloved #16 tram that promises to take us to our home. As we fight the crowd and jump over bags that have been placed on the ground in order to get on the tram in the 15 seconds it is stopped, we find that the tram is so full that there is no way we will get on it. Feeling a bit defeated and still stressed from pushing through the crowd we are trying to decide the best place to stand and wait for the next promising tram. In just a minute the #10-which also promises to take us home-comes rumbling down the tracks behind a couple other trams. So there we are, on the sidewalk, maneuvering our way around people in order to be in the best possible spot to be able to get on this tram. It finally stops and opens its doors and we are ushered into the tram with the rest of the people on the sidewalk and are left laughing-because it is better than crying-about the craziness that is the Prague public transportation system......

Gotta love life...and I most certainly do.

Until next time....

Krakow, Poland

2009-11-19T18:02:00.003+01:00

Krakow....approximately a 9 hour train ride from the city of Prague and 1/3 the size. This beautiful city welcomed us at 6:30am on Saturday morning with a rising sun and quiet streets. After disembarking our very warm sleeping “couchette” as they call it, we headed to the train bathrooms-where we proceeded to give the money collector lady both euros and korun because we were lacking any polish Zloty to give her-and freshened ourselves up and set out to find our hotel. After a short walk through part of the town we checked in to our hotel and soon set out again to find the bus station this time.

We found the buses and boarded an old green one where the driver assured us it would take us all the way to the parking lot of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The camp is only about 60 miles away from Krakow I believe but we were on a bus that stopped every few minutes and we were driving through small towns and back roads. So the trip took about and hour and a half. We made it to the camp and decided to take a guided tour in order to get the full effect of the camp. Just imagine a group of 20 people all wearing headphones with audio receivers around their necks. The camp was very sobering and a lot to take in. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and after the first part of the tour I decided not to see the other camp Birkenau. One camp was enough for me to understand the horrors that went on during WWII.

After traveling back from the camp we set out to find dinner and landed at what you would call a Milk Bar. They were set up during the communist era and served the purpose of feeding lots of people for very cheap but lacked the customer service that we in the U.S. are accustomed to. This particular restaurant had pretty good service and decent food. I was able to try perogies for the first time and they are actually pretty good! After dinner we had dessert at the famous Camelot cafe and were in bed by 8:30-no I am not kidding.....

Sunday morning greeted us with rain but it soon tapered off and we ventured out to find a polish breakfast spot. We ended up at a cafe tucked back in a corner off the main street. Breakfast was quite good but it reminded me more of what you would have for a lunch due to the fact that it was meats and cheeses with bread and a few vegetables. But it was good regardless. One of the best things about Poland-at least Krakow-is that the food is rather inexpensive. We didn’t have to worry so much about watching what we ordered on this trip.

After breakfast-I guess brunch is a better name for it-we set off on our Rick Steves authored self-guided tour of the city. We saw a student art gallery, went into a museum that had an original Rembrant painting, visited St. Mary’s church in Old Town where mass was about to start, and even saw the lovely decapitated head that you could climb into-probably my favorite part of the tour. We did a bit of shopping in the Cloth Hall and also ventured up to the castle.

Since it gets dark so early now because it is November us girls were in search of a warm place to kill time while we waited for our train scheduled to leave at 10:15pm. An eclectic english used and new bookstore was found off the beaten path-thanks to Rick Steves!- and so we took up residence there until they closed. When we found ourselves once again on the streets we landed at a local McDonald’s-my grandmother would be proud :)- and ate dessert while waiting until we could go to the train station.

We finally boarded the train that would take us home again to Prague and settled in for the night. It was a bit more comfortable this time because we figured out that there is a heat adjustment that goes along with each “couchette”- imagine that! After finally getting to sleep I was awakened by a knock on our train door at 1:30 in the morning. I struggle to get the twelve locks to our door opened and am greeted by big boots, blue pants (because I could only see their feet and legs), and a command to show my passport-good thing I brought it! We all show our passports and they go on our way-what would they want with 4 American girls anyway? The best guess for this interruption was that they were looking for someone who might be on the train. But your guess is as good as ours. After waiting for about an hour we manage to continue on our way and make it back to Prague at 7am.

Things are always quite an adventure around here but that is part of why I love it! There is always something to laugh about : ) I believe that is all for now.

Until next time....

It's the little things in life

2009-11-09T20:03:00.004+01:00

After a tough day at school-or as I like to call them, learning experiences- sometimes it is good to just come home and read a book. So that is just what I did. I put on my current favorite music and sat for a little while and just went into my current alternative world- The Time Traveler's Wife for those who are interested which is a bit different from most books I have read but still a good read. I love being able to leave the current world behind and follow the characters in a story on their life journey.

Another added excitement to my evening is that Erin, one of my flatmates, and I were finally able to make chocolate chip cookies with brown sugar-instead of molasses which is definitely not the same- and real chocolate chips! After tasting a bit-or a little more- of the dough I was in a little bit of heaven. So like I said....it's the little things in life that tend to give me the most pleasure.

As for the other part of life right now, I am currently at the beginning of another full week of school and things in my classroom seem to range from absolutely hectic, where I wonder what it is I am doing here, to amazing map creations from my 2/3 graders after just being introduced to the concept. All this in just one day. Talk about having some extreme highs and lows.

So for tonight, I am choosing to enjoy the little things in life-like the chocolate chip cookies that are about to go in the oven-instead of worrying about the crazy world that is called school. I ask for your prayers as I try to push through the tough times while still trying to enjoy the little things in life that mean so much.

Until next time....

Athens, Greece!

2009-11-07T14:02:00.003+01:00

Athens....Greece that is-not Tennessee-was a very different city from what we experienced on Hydra. Still Greek, yes, but much busier. This city of 4 million people I believe, is much like any other big city- trash on the ground, cars driving everywhere, and Athens has the added benefit of motorcycles and scooters driving on the sidewalks to go around the traffic. Some of these things I have come to expect but the scooters on the sidewalks were quite a surprise.

The evening that we arrived from Hydra we ventured out from the Port of Piraeus to find our Marble House pension. After a metro ride and turning the wrong way down a really busy street we found our home for the next couple of days at the end of a street just off the main road. Luckily, our room was rather quiet. I suppose all the night life was happening down at Gaza- at least according to our helpful pension owner.

After settling in that evening, we went out in search of the Plaka in order to find dinner. We were walking according to our map and suddenly we come upon the towering Acropolis all lit up for the night. It was quite a sight I must say. Unfortunately, our stomachs were commanding that we find food so we kept walking and found ourselves on a busy pedestrian street full of shops and restaurants everywhere. As you walk down the street each restaurant has a greeter who calls out “Hey ladies, for you there is free wine.” One even offered us free wine, dessert, and a 10% discount. They must have been pretty desperate to get our business-we did end up eating at that one :). We eventually found a suitable restaurant and enjoyed our first meal in Athens. It definitely did not disappoint.

The next day we were up early to enjoy an entire day in the cool and windy city. We stared the day off with breakfast of course-we couldn’t avoid the amazing pastries- and then began our Rick Steve’s self guided walking tour of the city. We saw the Parliament building with all the pigeons, the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, several churches, street level of ancient Athens,

Mars Hill where Paul preached to the Athenians-one of my roommates read his sermon to us at the top which was pretty awesome-

and then of course the Acropolis. The walk up to the Acropolis wasn’t too bad and once we were up top it was quite windy and cold-especially if you were the not so bright one who only brought sandals to wear because you thought that it was Greece so it should be warm! Not so much....

After another night at our pension it was Sunday and we had only a few hours in the morning to walk around the city a bit more before our flight back to Prague. We decided to get breakfast at a local bakery and sit at a comfortable cafe for while before we took on any more of Athens. After breakfast we ventured out to find the Roman Agora and the Temple of Hephaestus-which has a completely intact roof since being completed in 415BC, and then did a little bit of shopping at the local markets. After stopping to pick up our belongings at the pension we made the journey back to the Athens airport and made it back to COLD Prague later that evening.

That is all I can think of at the moment to tell you about Athens, so I hope I gave you a good glimpse of what it is like to visit Greece....I certainly enjoyed it and I am sure you would too!

Until next time...

Hydra, Greece-the island with no cars

2009-11-04T20:07:00.003+01:00

Wednesday, the 28th of October, started off bright and early with a trip across town to the airport at 6:30 in the morning. After checking in at the airport and only having to turn around once, we were soon on our way to Athens, Greece. After arriving at the airport and another long trip on the metro we found ourselves at the port of Piraeus. We quickly found our tickets, had time to eat a gyro at a local restaurant, and were soon sitting on a fast ferry known as a hyrdofoil. Next stop... Hydra, Greece. After a very loud start we are off to our little island as the sun is setting in Athens. An hour and a half later we disembark on the island that would be our home for the next two days. As we get off the boat we remember that the confirmation email from our Botsis house accommodations simply told us to ask anyone on the island for directions to our pension. We walk into a nearby store and ask “Can you tell us where the Botsis House is?” The elderly gentlemen stepped outside with us and gave very clear directions to the effect of “walk up this path and turn right and you will pass a tavern on the left and before you get to another tavern your place will be on the right....” Well, we confidently walked according to his directions and after having to ask for further directions only once we find ourselves at the Botsis Guest house.

After settling in at Botsis we decide to wander around the little town for a while, find something to eat, and after purchasing yummy crepes we were off to wander around the town a bit more. We wound our way up and down some of the steep streets-good thing most of the steps are painted white!-and eventually ended up on top of what we would call the fortress on the outside edge of the island.

The next morning I got up early to go and explore Hydra in the daylight. What I found was a quaint little town full of donkey’s hauling various goods from the ships to their respective stores and houses. Talk about taking it back a few years. On this island the only motorized vehicles were a few garbage trucks that rumbled through the streets each morning picking up the trash. One other thing that we noticed immediately on this island was a very large abundance of cats. Big, small, and in all sorts of colors, they would attend your breakfast, lunch, and dinner just hoping for a little snack. Some were even so friendly that if you sat down next to them they would climb in your lap as if they had known you their whole life. As a cat lover, you could say I enjoyed having them around for a couple of days.

Later that first morning, as I continued to explore the little island with no street names, I found a swimming area built into the rocks below a summer restaurant. I decided to go down and sit for a while since the sun was shining and it was pleasant outside. This was pretty much what I did for the rest of our stay on Hydra. I would take my bible, journal, and present pleasure reading book and find a place to sit and watch the ocean and read a bit.

During our stay on Hydra we ate a lot of crepes, breakfast croissants, feta cheese and bread. It was like a little piece of heaven to all of us. The island was like nothing else I had ever seen before with all of the houses built up into the hills and all sorts of streets going every which way. I still think that everyone who has the chance should visit one of the little greek islands just to relax and explore. That is all on our trip to Hydra. I have attached a few pictures to give you an idea of what this beautiful island looked like.

An Athens update will be coming in the near future....

Until then....

22 in Prague

2009-10-19T20:03:00.003+02:00

My, my, what a year. Student teaching, graduation, wonderful summer vacations, a move five thousand miles from home, and finally a birthday in Prague. To top it all off it snowed on my birthday. I never thought that would happen. God has taken me on a great journey the past 12 months and there is still so much that lay ahead.

On my birthday last week I got to work and some of my children thought to bring me chocolate and flowers-a very typical gift here in the Czech Republic. They were so sweet. That evening my flatmates bought pizza which we ate before going to a Czech musical version of Joan of Ark. We were in the front row of the balcony section of a small theatre. The musical was....interesting to say the least. I might have understood more if it was in English...but I still understood the gist of the story since I was given the advice to read about her life before attending the musical. It was a great birthday even though I missed all of my family and friends being here with me.

The very next day-Kristen's birthday :)- we went on a school staff retreat. As new teachers/staff they rented a van for us to ride to the camp in and after the driver having to ask for directions we finally made it to camp Immanuel. This camp was recently renovated and beautiful on the inside. Here I was thinking camp-like cabins and public showers and restrooms-and we were given rooms that had comfortable beds and for most of us our own bathroom. There was even a kitchenette in our room. Once settled in we were served an amazing lunch-all meals after that were just as good-and given some time to talk and listen to God. The rest of the staff arrived later that day and we proceeded to have a good, sorta restful :) weekend.

To top everything off, when we started getting closer to the camp I noticed snow on the ground. I was very pleased to see that there was also snow on the ground at our camp. It snowed almost all of Friday and some of Saturday and there was probably a foot of snow on the ground. It was beautiful and of course we played in it! We made a snow-woman and had the required snowball fight or two.

It has been a good past few days and we are already one day into our five day work week. Next Wednesday is our big trip to Greece...SO be looking for fun pictures and maybe even a post about that adventure. :)

Until then....

The Past few weeks

2009-10-10T15:54:00.003+02:00

Saturday afternoon here in Prague and I am at home working on lesson plans and catching up on some much needed rest. Combining the first year of teaching with a very distracting European world at my fingertips makes for some tired days. I am taking a day off from traveling and exploring so I thought I would take a minute or two and update you on the past couple of weeks.

Last weekend two of my roommates and I went to Brno, Czech Republic-the second largest city in the Czech Republic- to cheer on some friends who were participating in a peculiar race. In this race there were teams of three people who took turns having two people ride bikes and one person roll a wagon wheel-no I am serious check out the pictures- over a 45 mile trek through the Czech countryside.

This is a race that happens each year and it is based on a story about a man who made a bet with some of his friends that he could chop down a tree, make it into a wheel, and then roll it to Brno within 12 hours. This man did indeed make it so now we have a race in honor of it. There is even a giant wheel in the Old Town passage of Brno. We had a wonderful time in Brno and enjoyed the relatively small city center compared to gigantic Prague.

After our Saturday in Brno, we geared up for another week at school. This week was a little bit different though because on Wednesday the group of five new teachers at CISP had an early morning wake up call (5:30 to be exact) to travel the two hours to Dresden, Germany to apply for our work visas. We arrived in Dresden and started the application process. As they were going through our documents they started having issues with some of the things we had brought and were considering sending us back without approving us. It was then that one of our leaders told us "Now would be a good time to start praying." So I and my fellow teachers began to pray that God would allow our applications to be processed. Within a few minutes things started to look up and after a couple of minor changes we were interviewed and had a "applied for visa on October 7th 2009" stamped into our passports. We were then back in the van towards Prague with only seeing the city center from the van window. No worries though, we have to go back in a couple months to pick up our visas so we plan to sightsee a bit then. :)

Also this week, my students teacher from last year came in town to visit and she decided to come help out in the classroom and give me some much needed time to plan for the next few weeks. It was such a blessing and I am very grateful for the time.

So this officially catches everyone up on the very busy goings on in my world at the moment. We have plans to go to a Czech musical that is the equivalent to Joan of Ark on my birthday which just so happens to be on Thursday :) We also have a staff retreat this weekend so I am sure I will have plenty of stories to tell.

Until then...

Salzburg, Austria

2009-10-05T20:15:00.002+02:00

So a few weekends ago I was given the opportunity to go to Salzburg, Austria....but before I get to that let me back up about five days. Tuesday begins and I realize as my students are coming in that there are quite a few less children than there normally are. By noon that day, I only had six of twelve students in my classroom. This makes teaching a bit hard to do wouldn't you say?? But it only gets better. By the next day I am starting to get sick and I still have very few children in my classroom. On Wednesday, my director sends me home and I proceed to be sick for the rest of the week. This would not have been a huge problem with the exception that my roommates and I were supposed to go to Salzburg, Austria that weekend. I was still a bit sick but I REALLY wanted to go to to Austria. Well....I decided to go so on Saturday morning bright and early we leave for the train station. We are running a bit late so to get to our train we must sprint...you can imagine how this would go normally for me but add on a couple lungs full of fluid it is not a good combination...So we make our train and get to Salzburg and it is a beautiful city! We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and went straight to our hotel...no make that a hostel which is on the second floor of a restaurant built on top of a big mountain in the city. We had to ride an elevator up inside the mountain to get to the top...interesting to say the least. We wandered around for a while and the next day we went on a Sound of Music tour :) I believe this was the most exciting part of the trip for me. We were driven around in a large tour bus with "Sound of Music" painted on the side and a tour guide who would burst out into songs from the movie and laugh at his own jokes. Besides this, the tour was wonderful and we were able to see the countryside of Austria which was gorgeous.

We decided not to stay in the city for another night due to the fact that one of my roommates had an allergic reaction to the bedding at our hostel. So we took an afternoon train back to Prague. We were on our way back when the ticket guy came and asked to see our tickets. We gave them to him and after a minute he says "these are one way tickets, not round trip." We kind of stare at him for a minute not believing it and then say "well....what do we have to do?" We then had to pay for a ticket on the train to the next big stop and once there we had to go buy another ticket to Prague. Not the most thrilling idea ever considering how expensive this two day trip had been. We eventually made it back to Prague with fun stories to tell and I was pretty excited about sleeping in my own bed :)

That is all for now....

Weekend full of activity

2009-09-21T17:39:00.001+02:00

So this weekend started off with a trip to a local pub (well not that close..but i will get to that later) where one of our friends' band was performing for the first time. We got there and this pub had an very interesting decor and an even more interesting group of customers. Oh, and this pub probably wins the award for smokiest. I mean if you can see the grey haze in all the pictures and had to wash your hair twice the next day to keep from smelling I think you win. Overall, it was a pleasant evening and we cheered on our friend with our homemade orange t-shirts ( I thought I was back in Tennessee for a minute!). When we decided to go home that evening we realized it was too late to take any of the normal trams or the metro so a half hour was spent trying to figure out night buses and where to go and when. After a failed attempt to catch bus number 54 we ended up in a taxi...good choice all around.

So after a late night, we slept in on Saturday and went out in the afternoon to meet up with some people from the school. The first grade teacher and her family invited us on a beautiful "Prague Walk" around Vysehrod which is a park in the original castle fortress. It was a beautiful day and we went into the cemetery that is in the park where all the famous musicians, politicians, artists, and various others are buried. I, of course did not know who any of them were but it was still neat to see the place.

After our "Prague Walk" our friends had us over to their home where we had a very good Czech dinner including ice-cream! Guitar Hero was played by the guys and we even watched "School of Rock" All in all, it was a great day.

Monday has come and I had several children out because they are sick so please pray that I will not get sick...mainly because I am not sure what I would tell a substitute to do with my students all day! :)

That is all for now....

Since i promised....

2009-09-17T19:53:00.001+02:00

Today was our fieldtrip.....can I just say that is was an experience of a lifetime. We left the school this morning and promptly walked 32 students across the street onto the very narrow strip of concrete where you wait for the tram to come and pick you up. So we are waiting while I am constantly counting heads making sure no one has run across the street and gotten hit by the fast moving cars and buses zooming by us. The tram did come and we hurried on while I once again counted heads to make sure we didn't leave anyone behind. We took the metro through the two busiest stops on the metro lines and arrived at our destination...well almost. After a short walk to to the Charles Bridge area we finally got to our boats.

My class was on a boat by ourselves with a tour guide that did not seem to like children very much. He started off trying to make jokes with them and clearly children under the age of 13 do not get sarcasm. So we are continuing on our tour when the guide makes the mistake of mentioning the fact that a shark was thrown into a canal off the river and now they have a sign up that warns against sharks....obviously there are no sharks in the freshwater river and it was done as a joke. BUT my students were unable to understand the joke and preceded to ask him questions about it for the next 20 minutes. So all in all the fieldtrip was a success in that we didn't loose anyone but I do not think I will be having this experience in the near future....maybe we will wait a little while longer to go on another trip :)

So apparently that is how it is done in the Czech Republic....

2009-09-16T18:14:00.000+02:00

So it is Wednesday evening and I am currently sitting in my favorite chair with my feet propped up and I don't think I could be much happier...except maybe if someone would magically appear to cook me a lovely dinner :)

This week has been a good week. The students in my classroom are beginning to listen a bit better to me and I am settling in to the groove of the daily school day and constant lesson planning. I think I am going to really enjoy teaching. I love seeing the children get excited about new things and they always have so much energy! Hopefully it will eventually rub off on me a little...

This past weekend I was able to go out and enjoy the beautiful weather of Prague. On saturday I went out with Melodee, one of my flatmates, and we went up the funicular railway to the top of Petrin Hill. This hill overlooks Prague and at the top of the railway there was a beautiful rose garden...hence the picture on facebook for those who saw it :) We got a little excited about seeing all the roses. A short walk away from the railway is the observation tower. It is actually a scaled down version of the Eiffel Tower and was really cool to see up close. We decided not to tackle all of the stairs on this particular day but I am sure that one of these days I will end up at the top.

After walking around a bit we decided to walk down the hill and it was a very nice walk. We got ice cream and took our time...this is opposed to the brisk pace that is normally kept around here. :) We eventually ended up at the Flora mall where for a moment we felt like we were back in the states. Overall a very good way to spend a Saturday.

On Sunday I went back to the young Czech church that I wrote about a couple of week ago. The church again had great worship and this time I was actually able to hear the translated sermon and it was also very good. The people there are friendly and we were invited to go to a pub afterwards with a bunch of people from the church. (Now when could you say you went to a pub with church people in the states???)

Tomorrow is my first field trip with my class and so we will see how it goes. I am excited about it because it is a boat ride on the Vltava River. I am sure I will have fun things to talk about after this adventure. While you are waiting just imagine what it would be like taking 12 second and third graders on a tram/metro with only one other adult with your class. I will let you know how is goes soon :)

Until then....

One week down...

2009-09-11T18:00:00.000+02:00

This was the first week of school and it was a big period of adjustment. I realized that my capabilities of teaching are way different right now compared to the teachers I worked with during student teaching. I don't know why I ever thought my classroom would be the same as theirs my first year teaching. Talk about hitting a wall.

This week has been tough and rewarding at the same time. I am far more exhausted than I have ever been but still have the desire to go out and explore a little bit this weekend. My body is going to hate me after this year, I can already tell. I am slowly getting used to the routine of school and am thankful that being up in front of the kids is a natural thing. It was confirmation that teaching is what I am supposed to do. Now, if only I could get the classroom management under control and actually get a language arts curriculum instead of having to make one up myself (still a first year teacher talking right now) I would be set.

I am trusting in God's faithfulness and know that He will pull me through. I am so thankful for those around me and for those back home who love me.

Thats all I can think of for now....I have the mental capacity of a Kindergartner

Until next time...

ready for bed at 8? never thought it would be so

2009-09-07T21:45:00.000+02:00

So far I have learned that sleep is very precious when you work hard all day. It only took me 21 years to realize it. Before I talk about today lets go back a day and talk about my Sunday adventure. This weekend my flatmates and I decided to be adventurous and go outside the city limits of Prague to a town called Benesov. Now this town is about 40 Kilometers or 25 miles from Prague. Due to the fact that we could not walk that far we took a train. So I got to ride on my first train ride on Sunday. I was very excited but soon realized that it isn't all its cracked up to be. Those dreams of a really nice train with comfy seats and special compartments vanished when we got on our first train. This train reminded me more of a long bus that followed train tracks. But all in all it was an okay ride. It took us about an hour to get to Benesov where we promptly got off our train and walked out of the station. We were told by Rick Steves that we could follow the yellowed marked trail out of the station towards Konopiste castle. Well...when we got out of the station there was no clearly marked "yellow" trail. See in the Czech Republic there are lots of yellow road signs so we thought maybe we should follow those. We started wandering around the town so Melodee used google earth to find where we were compared to the castle so we would know at least what direction to head in. We started following the road that read Konopiste 2Km. We went down a couple roads and eventually made it to a path that went past a wheat field. My flatmates told me it looked just like North Dakota. :) Eventually we made it to the castle and walked around a bit and took a stroll through the rose garden and walked around the lake. I have no pictures of this event because sadly I left my camera at the school over the weekend. Maybe I will steal some of Melanie's when she posts them on facebook :)

We made it back to Prague later on Sunday and the stressing about school ensued once again. School today went well but I am hoping tomorrow will go better. I am dreaming of the day I won't come home at six and still have three hours of school work to do. I do have plans to actually see the city and places around me. :)

This post was a bit long due to my over stimulated brain and very tired eyes. So forgive my rambling.

I will have more to update on soon....

2 days down and 170 to go....

2009-09-03T18:28:00.000+02:00

I thought I would update you on how the past two days have gone. Yesterday was our first official day back at school. Thankfully it was only a half day. I think they know we need to be slowly introduced to one another. :) The day went wonderfully and all the kids were well behaved and interested in what I was talking about. I came home very pleased with what happened. We even went out to a pizzeria last night to celebrate our survival. Yesterday made it so much easier to go in today and feel confident about why I am here.

Today was our first full day back at school and it also went well. I can tell the students are getting used to school because they are starting to become more active and I can see more of their personalities. Right now I am operating on the "take it one day at a time" mode but soon I hope to be able to plan weekly so that I actually have time to see the beautiful city I live in and possibly even take a few trips to neighboring countries. We will see how that goes....

I will never again ask my mom why she stays at school so late or why she always brings things home with her. I am now one of those people. Sometimes I wonder if I should just move into the school. :)

I want to again thank you for your prayers and all your support throughout this process. I am confident that I will continue to adjust to these new surroundings and I am so appreciative to all those who have helped me get to where I am now.

Hopefully sometime soon I will be able to venture out into the city again and then I will post some more pictures on facebook. School just simply is not as picture worthy as century old buildings and paddle-boating experiences....

Until next time.... Dobry vecer!

Exhausted and things are just getting started

2009-09-01T19:17:00.000+02:00

So today was our open house for the school. It went very well and I got to meet all my students who are in town right now. I am very excited about this school year and feel a little bit more comfortable after meeting my students. The downside to all this excitement is that I am exhausted and things haven't really started yet. I can just imagine how I am going to be two weeks from now. No wonder teachers look forward to breaks as much as the students. :) Tomorrow is our first day and I am thankful that it is only a half day. It is helping me adjust slowly into teaching and I am grateful. I am also very thankful for all your prayers. I can feel the peace of God as I go through each of these new experiences. Tomorrow is a day in history for me because you only have your first day of teaching once. :)

On another note, this Sunday I was able to go to a Czech church designed for young people. It was sort of like the equivalent of a college campus student ministry. The worship songs were sung mostly in english and they used common worship songs that you would sing in church or hear on the radio in the U.S. It was neat to find out that worship music spreads among many countries. The music was in english but the pastor spoke in Czech. How did we understand what he was saying you ask? We had our very own translator for about 8 of us english speakers. It was a neat experience and very encouraging to see young people in a former communist country worshipping our God.

I will keep you all updated on the happenings at school and thanks again for all your prayers!

Be looking for a monthly letter coming to your inboxes soon.

Until then....

Didn't know there was so much to do...

2009-08-29T13:54:00.000+02:00

This past week has been a busy time of meetings, working in my classroom, meetings, more classroom work, and yet more meetings. I have not been out and about too much this week. It has been mostly work and home. I am getting the feeling that things are coming together and I am learning how to be resourceful even when there are not too many resources. It is very different from the states where you can just go to the School Box or even Walmart for whatever you need. Regardless of this it has still been a wonderful time of getting to know my roommates and those whom I work with.

Today we have plans to go paddle boating on the Vltava River and then possibly a trip to IKEA is in the works...most of you can just imagine my excitement. :)

Next week will be exciting and really busy as well but I cannot wait to share with you all how much God is working in my life as well as in the lives of those around me.

Until then....

6 days and still walking....

2009-08-25T08:56:00.000+02:00

The past few days have been an amazing adventure and wonderful time of adjustment. I have found that Prague is a city full of old history while still embracing the changing of times. Just tonight we were walking in the new town square towards the national museum and what do you see?? A sign for Mcdonald’s! Things are very busy around here and you always see many people walking around.

This weekend I was able to go to the Klementinum which is the second largest building in Prague after the castle. We were able to go on a tour where they took us into the mirrored chapel, a library hall that housed many century old books, and we were able to go up the astronomical tower where the top held amazing views of Prague.

On Sunday, my roommate and I went and explored the royal palace gardens and part of the castle courtyards. We were able to go to a Czech Catholic mass in the morning where even though I couldn’t understand the language I could still feel the peace of God in the cathedral. Later that day we went to an international church that had wonderful worship and very friendly people.

Monday was the first official day of school in service and I was able to meet the other staff members and get to dig into my classroom a bit more. I am feeling more and more comfortable here every day. I just have to remember that if I want to wash my clothes that it will take almost two hours to wash them and several hours to dry them. Not quite the same as in the states. :)

Until next time...Na shledanou!

Talk about different....

2009-08-22T14:26:00.000+02:00

So I have been in Prague for 3 days and I have successfully ridden a metro, eaten out, gotten money out of an ATM, and went grocery shopping. I even had ice cream in the Old Town Square. :) Things are much different here than in the states but all the people I have met have been very nice and also very helpful in answering my questions!

Thursday I had a meeting at the school where they took us on a tour, showed us our classrooms and talked about the school itself. It is a very interesting story and a very big mix of cultures. But I am confident I will adjust and learn a lot! Oh and I already had a parent meeting....thats right, 18 hours after getting here.

I think I am up to 4 or 5 words in Czech...but its a start right? The language is almost impossible to understand but I am hoping to catch on eventually.

Friday we had another meeting at the school where they gave us some important tips on how to get to the post office or find different types of stores. After the meeting I went out with one of my roommates and her friend and we went and got a sim card so I could actually have a phone! I was also able to apply for an open card so that I do not have to buy a ticket every time

i ride the metro or tram.

It has been a very busy but fun time here and I am gearing up to start inservice next week for school. Please pray that I will be able to get everything together an organized for the students who come next monday

Thank you for all your prayers and I will try to keep you updated!

Welcome

2009-08-02T06:41:00.000+02:00

Welcome to my blog! I started this so that those who wanted could follow me in my journey to glorify God through teaching precious 2nd and 3rd graders in Prague.

God has truly blessed me and has enabled me to raised almost all of the support that I needed in about 6 weeks!!

I am tentatively scheduled to leave on August 18th.

Please pray that I am able to get everything done and be prepared to make this big move over the ocean.