internet cafe.

so this post won't be nearly as long as i want it to be because i'm in an internet cafe at the train station in pardubice. so i spent the weekend at lukas hambalek's house with his family. we spent a lot of time with the youth group...but things are so different. the dynamic with the czech team is a lot harder i think this year as it's almost a completely different group going, and they have made it really hard to connect with them. it's a shame because i love this group of people, but it seems like they aren't excited for us to be there - they're not really making an effort to get to know us, but would rather just be with each other. i know the intern teams have been having a hard time with it. this weekend was our only time with the youth group and we feel like we didn't connect (even i felt like that and i've basically known the whole team for four years), so it's been especially frustrating for me.
friday night we went to folklore night in pardubice...it was so crowded, and there were stands everywhere. but very fun. i got to see my good friend Petr Kotas :-) Saturday we had a meeting all day, Sunday was church and then hang out time.
BUT this weekend i got to go to my friend Vlastik's wedding. well, his wife is 5 months pregnant, but it's good to see that he's settling down. he looked very handsome :-) and it was also good to see lots of other friends too...the hrabal brothers, uhlik, helena and vera, and vitek. it was almost unreal being there. sunday i got to see my friend pavel who has pretty bad cancer. that was pretty hard for me. tessa, he's gonna be glad to see you! it was just hard knowing that he was so weak and couldn't really talk to me. and dynamics were different because the other intern leader was with me and i felt like he didn't understand how deep my relationships are with my pardubice friends. rough time...i came out crying.
i've also kind of been struggling about why i'm really here - what my purpose is. especially since we didn't do much the first week but training and meeting new people. especially when it actually hit me that basically the whole summer is english camps. yesterday was really refreshing. it felt good to kind of be in "my own" place again (we're staying in dorms at the university) - it's good to have freedoms and be with the whole team. but anyway, yesterday we went into a local school, and agnes's old roommate is a teacher there. we went into a bunch of classrooms and just briefly advertised english camps. then we were in three of her english classes and her french class (nothing weirder than listening to a foreign language get taught in another foreign language) and played some games and then just had discussion time with small groups of students. in the afternoon we had a free period where the students could just come in and talk to us. how encouraging! they were so excited to have the opportunity to talk with us. i'm hoping that some will come to a pre-english camp party tomorrow night and then to english camp!
so here are some things you can be praying for:
-connecting with pardubice youth group!
-thursday we're going into another school in pardubice
-this weekend we're going to a "cottage" with the Bohumin youth group to have a pre-English camp. pray everything goes well!
-sunday is the hillsong/matt redman concert! this will be our only time to be with all the czech interns worshiping in a way we understand. i can't wait.
-next week we're in Val Mez, going into schools and hooking up with the youth group.

thank you all for commenting! i wish i was able to have more time to connect with everyone.