All I Want for Christmas Is You

Midday today I returned home to Prague after a rejuvenating four days at an ESI Thanksgiving Retreat in Dlouhy, Czech Republic. We stayed at a super cute retreat center that we had completely to ourselves, and the center really did become a temporary home for the 45-or-so of us from all over Central Europe.
We
-had adorable, "homey" rooms -- I got to share mine with Sharon (one of my summer roommates -- we were reunited!) and Emeshea,
-participated in 4 worship/devotional gatherings, attended 3 TEFL sessions of our choice (my choices? Teaching lower level students, How not to spend all of your time lesson planning, and Classroom Management),
-shared with each other during ministry seminars (I went to a special one on ministering to your adult colleagues),
-talked about culture adjustment/shock,
-ate delicious food (including homemade desserts -- I made my first pumpkin pie EVER, and it was delicious!),
-and had plenty of free time for rest (in many forms: naps, country runs, games of Skip-Bo, movie -- the inspiring Dead Poets' Society, massage-train marathons, Bible study, prayer, a football game, and a bazillion laughs.

We also were really fortunate to have two counselors visiting from California to give us free advice and counseling sessions, so many of us took advantage of their presence with us.

Then, on Sunday night, we had a talent show...but of course it was really just a laugh fest! I tried to reprise my performance with Karina during the training talent show this summer, though I think think I might have been a bit ambitious to try to achieve the hilarity of Heartless. Instead, I put together a rather sad attempt at singing a countrified Mariah Carey song (we all know pop music is not my forte!), and, while dawning my tacky Christmas turtleneck and an elf hat, tackled this tricky tongue-twister of a tune:


All I Want for Christmas Is You

I don't want a lot for Christmas
My heart's poll here is all agreed
I don't mind this rotten weather or
Miss Vail ski-runs I planned to ski
I just want my friends right here
To laugh and sing and drink Czech beer
Nothing can't compare
Jesus won't you please hear my...
Prayer

I don't want a lot for Christmas
My heart's poll here is all agreed
I don't mind this rotten weather or
Miss Vail ski-runs I planned to ski
I don't need my students writing
Perfectly every essay
Yankee food and drink won't do it
So no need for a big soiree
I just want my friends right here
To laugh and sing and drink Czech beer
Nothing can compare
Jesus won't you please hear my...
Prayer...Amen

I won't ask for much this Christmas
I won't even wish for home
I'm just gonna keep on skyping
Or text but when my phone's on roam
I won't email out an update
That hints at sending money, dough
Tomorrow work will call me back
Again to teach, and I'll say "heigh-ho"
'Cause I just want to feel alright when
I Facebook chat with you at night
All I want is friends...Jesus
Truly they are all my godsends

Oooo Lord
All the Christmas booths fill
Prague's each and every square
Candy, toys, books, sweaters
And every type of ware.
I smell those cookies baking
With mulled wine thirst is slaking
Kelly won't you call here the ones I really need
But -- I'm sorry -- football is still the scariest thing

Oh I do'nt want that much this Christmas
Just one thing after Baby King
Yes, you know I love my friends but
This time I don't mean Chandler Bing
I just want my friends right here
To laugh and sing and drink Czech beer
Nothing can compare
Jesus won't you please hear my...prayer

All I want for Christmas is...You

Jesus won't you please hear my ...prayer

All I want for Christmas is ...You

All I want for Christmas is you!

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Now playing: All I Want For Christmas is You (Black and White)
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Grace Like Rain

I love this song! If you can keep up with the Bible verses, it totally amplifies the effect of the song's lyrics ten times over. I guess that's just the Word of God at work!

High Street High

If you're like me, you absolutely LOVE hymns for a million reasons -- their familiarity, the lyrics that always ring true, the chords when, on those rare occasions, you actually have four parts being sung -- but you find that some get plenty of playtime while others are left out in the cold...or that it is difficult to get someone enthused with hymns when they haven't grown up with them...or that hymns are mostly left to church services and seldom played as background music at home.

If any of this rings true, then you're going to love High Street Hymns. This group is a band out of Charlottesville, VA (yes, now you know the connection...), and they have wonderful new song arrangements and melodies that use the timeless lyrics of hymns. I am so excited to have found them and can't wait for them to produce much more music in the future.

You can preview a bunch of their music on myspace, but, trust me, their CD is well worth the price!

And this is where all the hard work happens:

Exam Time!

So the past three or so weeks have been filled with lots and LOTS of testing in my classes. This week, I am finally giving the last installment of tests to my Sexta (6.1) classes, which really means they won't be finished until after next week's make-up sessions. After this last group's exams are complete, all 19 classes will have their first exam under their belts. WOOHOO! Giving exams, I have noted, is probably one of the most difficult parts of my job, second only to learning all 300 students' names. Here is a selection of reasons why:

- I have to spend a lot more time marking (aka grading) the exams (aka tests).
- I have to make very subjective decisions about which answers and sentences are "mostly" correct and therefore deserving of full points, and which are too incorrect to merit full points.
- I have to mark written tests when my classes are conversation-based.
- I have to had to learn to decipher dozens of student's handwriting. (Along the way, I have neared mastery of the way Czech's write letters t, z, g, h, and several others.
- During group exams, I have to not only watch to be sure students understand directions and do not cheat, but I also must listen for each student's oral contributions to his/her group in order to award equally-as-important speaking marks.
- I must have a sliding scale for speaking marks in order to accomodate classes with different speaking abilities.
- I must remember some minor, sometimes ambiguous marking decisions over a number of weeks, as different student groups of students (who are now on different schedules due to holidays and days off school) take their exams at different times.

Now that the last groups are finishing this first round of exams, it is nerve-wracking to think the first groups will be again taking exams in just a few short weeks. My hope, though, is that as time goes on, reading different penmanships will grow easier, my marking speed will increase, and I will gain more confidence in my ability to fairly and consistently mark exams across my classes.

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Now playing: Barenaked Ladies - Easy
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365 days to ?

Everytime you time you go to the big Tesco these days, you get a two-for-one coupon for the cinema upstairs. Yesterday, after a lazy day of crepe eating for brunch, Bible studying, The Office watching, hours of napping, and leisurely walking an hour to Novy Smichov, Rachael and I took advange of one of our many coupons to see Julie and Julie, the new flick about Julia Child and the 365-challenge her cookbook inspired in one 21st century fan. Julie sets the goal for herself that, within one year, she will master the 500-some recipes in Julia Child's cookbook. It isn't easy for her, of course, and her sanity, her time, her job, and her marriage are all put on the line. But in the end, she finds great rewards for completing the task she set out to do.

So I was thinking last night, what is something I could be doing for one year, every single day. Or rather, what is something I could not be doing every single day.

I'd thought about one particular challenge at the beginning of the month and have so far been following it. After this movie, though, I want to make it official: So, beginning with this past October 1, for one year I am setting the goal that I not buy any clothes or books for myself. This will include clothes, shoes, and jewelry, and books for pleasure (not the textbook for the Czech course I hope to take next term).

There are several points to this challenge: 1) It is no secret that I like to shop, and as a result, I really do own more than enough. I want to be more practical and to use what I have (which I really like) with regularity. 2) I no longer have spare money that should be used on clothes or books anyway, especially when I have plenty -- I need to invest the little spending money I have into more important things. 3) I realize that even as I claim to be "poor", I really have so much more than, I don't know, 80% of the world. I should be using my money, therefore, to help others or, at the very least, to not widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. I am merely a caretaker of the money God has given me, so I shouldn't be spending it on silly things when I can get by with what I have. 4) I just finished reading Francis Chan's Crazy Love (fantastic read -- go buy, um I mean, check it out at your library right now!). In the book, Chan brought to my attention that, if we are really to love our neighbors as ourselves like Jesus tells us to, we should probably be giving away at least half of what we make. For me, that is awfully hard to do when I always am going to stores or putting pressure on myself to look up-to-date and trendy...and for whom? It doesn't impress God, and His opinion is the only one I should care about. So I will stop spending money on myself that could be used elsewhere -- to serve others, for instance -- and will hopefully, in the process, detach myself from this need to impress others all the time.

Already, I know this challenge will be difficult. I admit it, I am a bookaholic; I own five or six times more books that I haven't read than those that I have read. I can't resist a bookstore, even when I am making use of library cards on a regular basis. I also have been noticing that I don't have the right shoes for walking around here in Prague. I really like heels, which are no good on long journeys over cobblestone, and I like flat slides, which will be horrible once the weather gets cold because I can't wear socks with them and because they're not moisture-proof. So already I am tempted to go buy more shoes. I am convinced, though, that I can make it the year. I have things to read and I have at least something to put on my feet, and I need to be thankful for those things.

So here's to a year of less material spending! 11 days down, 354 to go. September 30, come quickly!

* * * * *

Today, I begin another 365 challenge: the One-Year Bible. This time, I am doing approaching it from a chronological perspective, reading about the events in the Bible in the order that they happened. I will also re-read the entire New Testament by the end of the Fall, in order to make sure, at the beginning of this one-year plan, I get my fill of both Hebrew Bible and New Testament. So, 1 day down, 364 to go!

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Now playing: Sarah McLachlan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
via FoxyTunes

My first pub talk

Last Friday I was finally able to hold my first pub talk...and we started easy at Bohemia Bagel in Old Town Square, rather than an official pub. It was really, really fun! There were probably about twelve or so students who showed up in the course of four hours, and we ate good, tasty American food, tried to play Catchphrase, and chatted about everything from Anime to scouting (I had no idea scouting existed in Europe!) to international schooling. Two students brought friends from other schools, which was great -- they really helped the others get into English, I think, because one had lived in the U.S. for several years, and the other had transferred to the International School of Prague, in which English is spoken.

Bohemia Bagel is mostly a breakfast and burger-type place, but about half-way into our pub talk, some American men brought in some tables from outside and started setting up for beer pong. My students had no idea what they were playing, so after I explained that this was a popular college drinking game, we started an interesting discussion about drinking. Even though most of the students there were 18 or 19 (18 is the legal drinking age in the Czech Republic), several students said they really hate alcohol -- either because of the taste or because of its effects on so many people in the Czech Republic. This was music to my ears: that some of my students recognized what I saw in the culture of Czech drinking, that it is not just drinking but drunkenness that is common and that alcoholism is all too prevalent. This beer pong encounter also opened up a door for me to share what I think about drinking -- that I think it's fine in moderation, that I prefer wine and cocktails to beer after beer, that you should be of legal age, etc -- which was great because now they (at least those students present) know, unlike many of the expats in Prague, I don't go get trashed every weekend and don't spend all my money on alcohol.

The night ended with a student driving me home (thankfully -- it was getting cold!), but we got lost along the way. What a great bonding experience it was to try to find our way through the streets of Prague!
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Now playing: Coldplay - Strawberry Swing
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Beautiful Bratislava

So once upon two weeks ago, I had a Monday off of school thanks to St. Vaclav day (St. Wenceslas) -- yes, the patron saint of this atheistic country -- and decided to try out the international bus system on a trip to Bratislava, Slovakia to visit some fellow ESIers. It was an AWESOME weekend. Bratislava normally gets less praise than it deserves and is always overshadowed by fellow nearby capital cities Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. But I found it a gem in its own right. It is located right on the Danube, which gives it excellent photo ops. "Old Town" is simply charming, with loads of character that is not overshadowed by too, too many tourists. And the city is filled with new construction projects, apparently now only possible due to Slovakia's recent admission to EU and switch to the Euro. The blocks upon blocks of communist housing developments are also interesting in their own right, and my friends' particular flat was actually really, really nice (aside from a nice collection of deer skulls and antlers). The trip was really refreshing, and it was the perfect weekend to take it -- 70-75 degrees the whole trip and very sunny.

Here are some pics from my trip:

Gina and Ashley in front of the President's Palace


A very Communist-looking statue


Spaceship bridge


Bratislava Castle


Devin Castle ruins (just outside Bratislava)


Memorial to all those who tried to escape across the river to Austria during Communism and didn't make it.


Me, Catherine, Gina, Katie, and Kate, with Austria behind us.


Entering Devin Castle - yay!


Relaxing on the lawns...


...and enjoying a kite-flying contest! Here, our favorite one: a multicolored teddy-bear kite!


Playing in the flowers


Pondering the beautiful, quaint town of Devin






An AWESOME well -- took FOREVER for the water to hit bottom!


The cave-like opening in the cliff led to the chapel.


Overlooking Austria again.


Devin


Old Town


How would you like to have Julius Caesar on the front of your house?


More Old Town


The narrowest house in Central Europe! (Also a clock museum!)


The most photographed spot in Bratislaa


The main town square


trying famous Bratislava hot chocolate


Catherine (from Budapest) and I with all of the Bratislava ladies -- Katie, Ashley, Gina, Jenni, and Kate (one more ESI family wasn't able to join us)


The Lodge


Part of the biggest apartment development in the world, supposedly


After bagels in the main town square, I pick up a man in uniform :)


The one remaining old city gate


Catherine grabbing a last-minute cup o' hot chocolate in the shop we were supposed to go to the night before


Some famous dude...


... and the old state theatre


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Now playing: Taylor Swift - White Horse
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The #7 Zoo in the World!

In 2007, Forbes Traveler magazine ranked what it thought were the best zoos in the world. Prague's very own came in #7! This was an exceptional accomplishment indeed after coming back from a devasting flood in 2002.

So, two weeks ago, my good friend Derick and I checked it out for ourselves. Here are some pictures from our adventure.



Monkeys, in an almost-natural habitat


Polar Bears doing laps (literally - one on backstroke, the other on doggie-paddle!)


Polar Bear-looking Golden watching his look-alike friends! (The zoo lets you bring in your dog for 30 CZK!)


Double-humped camels with a little too much winter-fat.


Santa's reindeer


Dog in backpack/shoulder bag = typical


Billy Goat's Gruff


Kookaburra! I was so excited! Go Australia! :)


Kitty Cat sunbathing


Actual non-zoo kitty cat sunbathing.


Galapagos turtles! So big! And so many! (8 or 9!)


The turtles were a highlight for the both of us.


Lion on the prowl


flamingos flamingos everywhere


buzzard stare-down


"mingle with the monkeys" area


elephants! yet another of my favorite animals!


RED PANDA! so cute!


Cool pub we passed on the way home


Interesting carnival/parade/political event in Old Town Square (on our way to dinner)



Prague Castle at night!



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Now playing: Children of Eden - The Naming
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