Poorly written post about Czech Christmas traditions :)

I've been terrible at even thinking of what to blog about recently! Here goes something...

In Czech they celebrate Christmas on the 24th, so tomorrow evening Tessa and I will be celebrating with our czech family!

Traditionally, Czech people buy carp, keep it in the bathtub for a few days, and kill it on their Christmas day. Why? I don't know. They don't know. It's just tradition.

As I've walked around the city the past couple days, I've seen giant tubs of these fish, and hoards of people lined up to buy them. Walking into a supermarket the other day, Tessa and I laughed as we noticed the fish swimming around in front of the building, and we stared for a couple seconds at the funny scene.

We however will not be eating carp. I don't think the kotasovi really want fish swimming around in their bathtub, so instead we'll be eating schnitzel. And that's good stuff.

So merry Christmas. Christ our savior was born - hallelujah!

a day with the kalenskys

God's provided me with good families to hang out with this month.

the kalenskys are full-time czech missionaries with awana. they run the awana program at our church and help other churches throughout the country (and surrounding countries) to start and organize awana. today they had tessa and i over for lunch, and then i was able to go to awana with them and talk to the older groups about being a missionary. some great opportunities. and the kalensky family is awesome. here's why:

this is radek sr. radek jr is a "DJ" for his rapper friend, kalwich. we were all making fun of him, but then the radeks disappeared for a while. radek jr announced, "i'd like to introduce to you DJ coffee man!" radek sr rapped his way into the kitchen and proceeded to make us coffee, even though he couldn't see because of his sunglasses :)

with Dasa and DJ coffee man. he charges for photographs with fans

DJ coffee man making coffee in the background. it was so pretty i didn't want to drink it. radek jr photobombed.

radek jr kept playing games on me. he told me that men could balance water on their thumbs, but women couldn't. when i showed him that i could in fact balance water on my thumbs, he walked away and left me stranded.

views i like

from our kitchen window

beskydy mountain. taken from dana's car on the way to frydlant

Czech language

Ok, I'm advancing very slowly with Czech language. It's so difficult but so interesting! The more I find out, the more I'm amazed and put off by learning it. Here are the basics:

In English, word order means everything. In Czech, word order is flexible, but to have the sentence make sense, they have to change the endings of words according to its role in the sentence. For example, English sentences are generally subject-verb-indirect object-direct object. Not so in Czech, and so each of these words have to be changed to make sense. Already difficult because you have to be aware of what you're saying grammatically! But the way they order the words in the sentences changes the meanings of the sentences slightly too. Here's the example from my book:

Petr miluje Evu. This means Petr loves Eva, not another girl.
Evu miluje Petr. It's Petr who loves Eva, not some other guy.
Petr Evu miluje. Petr loves Eva, not likes or hates her. Loves her.

And so my work is cut out for me! Ahh!

Thanksgiving

Written thanksgiving day on a train, and posted now :)

If I was in America right now, I would've sent the morning finishing up baking. I would've played in a tent with my niece and read her some books. I would've had a cup of tea with my sisters. I would've traveled to my grandpa's and spent the afternoon chatting with my 56 relatives, and I would've stuffed my face so full that I would've grown a food baby.

But for some reason, God has allowed me to be in Czech today, and I'm not enjoying turkey and family today. Instead I missed my train and lost the money from that ticket. So I bough another ticket and forgot about my discount card, but the ticket lady took advantage of my inability to speak Czech well and refused to give me a refund. I spent an hour crying at the train station because I felt so misunderstood and sorry for myself.

It's hard living here sometimes. Thankfully this thanksgiving day, God's helped me to not totally focus on the bad stuff. Today, this is what I'm thankful for:
-spending the morning with kids
-getting someone new connected in the church
-eating a good Czech lunch with friends
-meeting new people
-Pardubice train station's new coffee shop (albeit almost as expensive as Starbucks!) where I could cry in private for a while
-seeing old friends
-Skype
-Czech Republic
-God's grace on me (though I mostly forget about it)

marek & monika

i've been hanging out with a fun couple from the church once every couple weeks, and they've been a blessing to me. they've fed me, watched movies with me (and explained them :)), and taken me on family adventures with them. they've also helped me with my czech by providing me with one of their daughter's books (she's 18 months, and i'd say we're at the same speaking level :)) and correcting my infinite amount of mistakes. i wrote monika an email this week, and instead of entitling it "to monika" i wrote "inside monika." oops.

a couple weeks ago they took me to a halloween party at the pardubice castle. marek works for panasonic, and his japanese bosses rented the place out to the company for the day. so we got to explore the place (it was my first time inside), and we had fun eating kielbasa and drinking hot wine. i appreciate them and the time they've been giving me!

many things about this picture: sorry for the creepiness of the lady and the head that monika's holding...if not for those things, i'd love this picture. we're also holding paintings of our names written in japanese. as i said, marek has japanese bosses :)

posing with the figures in the statue. a natural czech family right there

the awesome ceiling in the castle. and me :)

monika and marek

encouragement, please

there have been several mornings these past couple weeks where I just haven't wanted to get out of bed, and when I do finally get out, I just spend the rest of the day wanting to get back in.

So, I need words of encouragement. Send me some scripture or cool quotes, or something. I'll take anything :)

travels

tessa and i had the best treat this month: our friend jenna came to visit! we got her going right away, and pulled her around prague's beautiful streets as soon as she got off the plane. we also got to travel to vienna, bratislava, and some other awesome places around czech. unfortunately the weather was cloudy and gloomy the whole time - it even snowed at one point! but we still had tons of fun.

i'll try to limit the amount of photos that i post! all these were taken by tessa.

jenna, we loved having you here! thanks for making these fun memories and for just being an encouragement and friend.

showing jenna the ceiling at the train station that hardly anyone notices because they rush by!

just hanging in prague :)

fabulous roofs and the castle from the Charles Bridge

early morning train to vienna!

quick stop in Brno, Czech's second largest city. we got there at like 7 in the morning before the markets were even finished setting up!

cool picture in Brno

grumpy sleepy picture on the train heading to vienna

i honestly don't care much about starbucks - i was just thrilled to get a pumpkin spice latte!

having fun outside of st. stephen's cathedral in vienna

AMAZING.

we spent far too much time in vienna taking pictures under this tree.

jenna photo bombing the picture of me holding schonbrunn castle in my hand

striking a pose

schonbrunn palace in vienna

first thing we did in bratislava

being happy outside the bratislava castle!

on a train to moravia

stramberk. the most awesome non-touristy sight in czech.

collecting leaves like a 5-year-old

this is just outside of pardubice - castle ruins called kuneticka hora that we rode our bikes to

kuneticka hora

czech smiles

the best picture from the trip

tessa on a hill

met up with some youth group girls for hot chocolate!

contrast of fall and winter outside our window

waiting for friends...it was so cold!

at pardubice castle

it's not what i want to be doing...

could be my slogan for my life.

the last two years i worked with mentally retarded students. it wasn't what i wanted to be doing (though i loved it all the same!)

now, i'm in czech, and my teaching jobs (and other life things) take up a lot of time. it's not exactly what i want to be doing. i enjoy it all the same, but when i sit back and analyze it, i want to be doing other things instead. never totally satisfied.

there are things about living here that are tough and that can be draining. traveling takes up so much time. people can be pretty rude; this morning as i was coming back from my walk, a lady literally turned her head to stare at me as i walked by (i'm not sure why? maybe it's the red hair...sometimes i smile at people and they glare at me in return). i can only laugh off people's annoying attributes so many times before it starts to irk me.

BUT LET IT BE KNOWN, as many annoying things as there are about being here, my love for the people is greater than the rest.

but, the reality of it all is that it's not so bad. i've been reading this blog lately, and she has a post from may 15th that i'd encourage you to read. she doesn't want to be working, but she HAS to. that is her ministry.

God, would you let me view my work as ministry for you, and let me be satisfied in you.

girls' weekend

this past weekend we went on a mini-retreat with the mladez girls. the theme was "beautiful princess or ogre?" and was based off of shrek. so we spent some time hanging out, praying, sharing, looking at pictures, cooking, and eating. the weather was gorgeous, and tessa (and some other girls who grabbed her camera at times) got some great pictures...

playing a game

playing a game that was translated for us the whole time! so not really playing :)

we stayed right beside this church

a rousing game of freeze tag

lunch! obed!

lots of fun singing and dancing

beautiful Barca

i had fun curling everyone's hair!

all the girls together on sunday morning!