During the first lesson with one of my classes, students worked on note-cards with introductory information about them, which I will use to get to know them and to take attendance from now on. Students were to complete different sentences with information about themselves. One of these sentences was, "I am a person who enjoys..." One particular male student in my 1.A class (15-16 year-olds new to GEKOM) was having some trouble finding words, so I tried to help him.
"Do you like sports?"
[Student shakes head]
"Do you like art?"
[Shakes head again]
"Do you like girls?"
Enthusiastically nodding his head, "No, no, no!"
No is short for ano, which means yes in Czech. So this student meant "yes, I like girls!" but because it was English class, he accidentally said that he really, really didn't like girls! The whole class was in stitches after that. I read the student's full note-card after class, and it said "I am a person who enjoys girls...I am a person who doesn't enjoy boys." Annnnd then I continued the laughter on my own
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A tough reality I have started to face this week is that it will be difficult for me to find any close guy friends here in Prague. This fact hit me after I discussed guy-girl friendships with a male friend here last Sunday, and he said he thought he was getting to the age where mixed friendships are awkward and not always appropriate. Then, the next day, I emailed another guy who I had just met to see if we could get coffee later in the week. I met him through Faith Community Church and knew he was doing missions work through the hostel industry, and I was interested to hear more about it and to learn more about him. He replied saying he could not get coffee because, due to a long-distance relationship with a girl back in the States, he does not hang out with girls one-on-one. I think his policy toward interactions with girls is very respectable, and I appreciated his honesty in telling me...it just didn't leave me any room to really get to know him as a friend. In top of this, several of the male ESI teachers are already in relationships, which also puts a limit on how much interaction with them that I can justify as appropriate.
This was really tough for me last week, and I think it will continue to be tough for me...So please pray for me that I will either will find solid friendships with guys or that I will learn to appreciate my girlfriends even more! I already am missing having male role models and brother figures a phone call away (though thank goodness for G-Chat!) Dad, Zach, Dan, Ben, Joseph, Rudy, Luke, Kyle, Alex, Frank -- I miss seeing you and talking with you face-to-face! It is definitely tough not having you here in Prague!
Right as I was thinking about all of this last week, God blessed me with girlfriends instead. From Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon, I had been at GEKOM, thanks so lots of lesson-planning, lots of classes, hosting dinner for ESI Bible study, and simply living at the school. So when Wednesday evening came around, I decided to rid myself of cabin-fever and go walk around downtown. I texted a new friend, Laura, to see if she knew anything going on in Prague on Wednesday nights. I didn't expect her to be out herself because it was her first week back at school herself, but I received a text right back from her telling me to meet her in 20 minutes for a women's Bible study. Fortunately, I was really close to the meeting spot, so I said YES! and went on to have a wonderful evening with nine other women, a mix of American, Canadian, English, and Czech. One of the girls was even a 2003 from Prospect High School in Arlington Heights, was also in show choir in high school, and now teaches English in Prague! Small world it is indeed!
So, while I was mourning my lack of male friendships, God blessed me a with a great group of girls with whom I will get to establish great friendships!
some pics from my wanderings around town before and after Bible study:
Church in Namesti Miru
Tram scene
TV tower...
If you look closely, you can see little baby statues crawling on the TV tower...something about the Czechs were suspicious of the tower when it was being constructed, and the babies are supposed to make it less scary...I don't know that they succeeded in doing that.
Sweet-looking modern church with a gigantic glass clock!
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On Tuesday, while discussing personal interests in my first Septima seminar, the topic of hockey came up. I didn't know much about Prague's Slavia vs. Sparta club league rivalry, and the class explained that it extended to pretty much every sport imaginable. The students in the class especially enjoyed Slavia ice hockey, and I told them I have never been to an ice hockey game. They then insisted I go with them to the upcoming Slavia vs. Sparta game! On Thursday, I gave them my money, and by Friday morning I had my ticket! The game is tomorrow (I will go to the rink with them after class), so stay tuned to see how it goes!
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Last Thursday evening, Rachael had the genius idea of treating ourselves to a movie at Novy Smichov (a giant mall in Praha 5). We went, but there were only a few options that fit our tastes and were also in English...so we ended up seeing The Proposal (Navrh) for the second time each! It was super cute again, but the most amusing part of the movie came halfway through when we spilled our entire bucket of popcorn! Mind you, this was no ordinary popcorn: it was delicious, hard, caramelized, and therefore VERY noisy popcorn. So much for not being the annoying Americans who disrupt the movie! We definitely had some good laughs over this.
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This past week, Prague was one of the hosts to the first round of the Baseball World Cup. Though the USA was playing in another city, I wasn't going to miss my chance to see some international baseball, so I rounded up a colleague, Lenka, and her sister Lucie to join me for Friday evening's Czech Republic vs. Mexico game. The game itself wasn't terribly exciting. As you would expect, Mexico beat the tar out of the Czech Republic (9-0). Mexico played decently considering its top players are still playing regular season Major League baseball right now, but the Czech Republic played, at best, AA college ball-quality baseball. The stadium, in a beautiful part of Prague right on the outskirts, looked like a single A ballpark. But...the price was right for sharing this wonderful sport with my new Czech friends! And none of us claimed about the fans, all of whom were really good spirited -- some even participated in a "Macarena" competition and sang a super corny rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
Kids all painted up, ready to represent their countries
Countries represented in the Prague round
The field
And again...
Lucie, Lenka, and me
The coolest thing about going to the game was this: While Lenka, Lucie, and I were waiting for our second bus to take us to the field, we heard someone calling my name. Three of the, I don't know, five people I know in Prague were also waiting at the bus-stop to go to the game. I introduced Daniel and Chris, who work at Czech Inn, and Phil, the pastor of Faith Community Church, to Lenka and Lucie. Lenka asked Phil if FCC was an international church and then if it was ICP, or the International Church of Prague. Of course, those are two different churches, but, as I discovered, the reason Lenka knew ICP's name is because, ten years ago, when she herself was a student at GEKOM, she would sometimes go to the ICP with the American ESI teacher who then taught at GEKOM. I might never have known this cool fact had we not started talking about Prague churches because of running into Phil right then!
So this morning before classes started, I told Lenka I tried ICP yesterday morning, and she was interested to hear my impressions of the church (all good!). Then she said that maybe she will go with me sometime. She can't go this coming weekend because of a trip out of town, but she might come another weekend. Praise indeed! It is SO cool to see her interested...I'm not sure if she's gone to church since her high school days or how much she's thought or talked about God, but it will be really awesome to learn more about her experiences with this stuff. Please pray for our growing friendship and how God may work through us and between us to build each other out and to share our spiritual experiences!
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On Saturday, I went on an excursion to Tábor with the Rubesh family. It was my first venture outside of Prague in the three weeks that I've been here, so needless to say, I was really excited. (Side note: The Rubeshes -- Kevin, Erin, Jad, Danna, and Kyler -- are some amazing folks here introduced to me by my awesome friend back home, Manav Kainth. They have been so fabulous to me here -- from letting me do laundry in their American-style washer, to having me call home on their super cool internet phone, to letting me entertain their kids, to driving me on cool country excursions!)
Anyway, we went to Tábor, the home of Christian reformer Jan Hus, for a Medieval Hussite festival. There was music, there was food, there were toy and jewelry vendors, and BOY! where there medieval costumes! Everyone who was dressed up was in a very long, very impressive parade of medieval dress, weapons, and musical talent -- something the kids of course loved! I had a wonderful time and took lots of pictures, which I'll share in a future blog post.
That evening, after we had returned to Prague, I took a jog into Old Town (only about 3.5 miles, but it feels like more on cobblestone!) to find myself almost exactly on the route of that evenings 5 and 10k races (5 for women, 10 for men -- how sexist! Though I think women/men can really run either...). I took a break to watch and miraculously spotted Kevin running in the crowd of thousands! I then randomly ran into Katie (an American teacher at Gymnasium Nad Alej), Sam (a former ESI teacher), and Sam's husband Nick. Only in Prague could that happen! Prague is big enough to feel big, but small enough to see people you know all over the city!
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The next morning, at ICP, Rachael introduced me to three awesome siblings, Keri, Marketa, and Jakub. It was not only wonderful to meet such friendly Czech Christians (who I hope can introduce me to some more of their Czech friends), but meeting them turned into a really fun afternoon. They invited me and a visiting English gal, Hanna, to a couchsurfing gathering in Letna Park! For those who don't know couchsurfing, it is basically a networking service that lets travelers find couches to sleep on, people offer couches to travelers, and let fun people people meet new friends. Keri and Marketa have worked in hospitality, and they are just naturally gifted in hospitality, so they like to meet new people this way and then show them their beautiful city! Go here to find out more about couchsurfing.
So off we went to Letna, where there was a giant, free-form picnic of people from all over the world! Many people were wearing sticky notes that showed which languages they spoke (many spoke three or more! I was so impressed!). One group took off at one point to hold "Free Hugs" signs around the city and spread the love that way. I exchanged information with a girl visiting from Sydney, Australia (and on her way to Hong Kong), another gal from Dunedin, New Zealand who is in Prague for the year, and another girl who works in Vienna but is from Bulgaria and offered to help me find a good way to get there to visit my friend Sarah!
As the afternoon progressed, I said goodbye to my new friends and headed off to try one more afternoon church, Prague Christian Fellowship (PCF). It was a wonderful congretation -- very international and very charismatic -- but, again, the most random thing happened on the streets of Prague walking there. I walked right into Sam Kirk, another ESI teacher stationed in Sokolov, which is in Western Bohemia. He had met up with a friend in Prague for the weekend, but I had had no idea he would be there in the city, let alone on that particular street! But there he was, sporting his requisite Cardinals jersey and everything! What a fabulous surprise at the end of my afternoon!
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Today, I had the rest of my tertia (3.1) students for the second time, and each class with them is proving to be very trying. The students are mostly 13 years old, which is that fabulous junior-high age at which boys are very rowdy and inattentive. Theirs is the class in which I am most on edge and am afraid of 1) not getting much done because I continually have to wait for them to listen (not fair for those students who do want to pay attention), and 2) losing it completely. I don't want to be a pushover in the classroom, but at the same time, I don't want to be so mean and authoritative that no light shines though whatever. I could definitely use some prayers for this class, that I will learn how to be, as a fellow ESIer put it, more than an authoritarian figure but not quite a friend. For these students, there needs to be some distance -- I can't just be their friend -- because I need to still be able to manage the classroom and enable them to learn and practice their English (which I am learning is not very great -- they are almost beginners in the speaking department). Please pray that, at the end of each class with them, I am not ready to pull my hair out! Please pray that I will have patience with them -- lots and lots of it!
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Alena is a fabulous biology teacher at GEKOM who knows a little bit of English and is also in charge of the choir. She discovered that I like to sing and invited me to sing with the choir on Monday afternoons.
School choirs seem less of a commitment in Prague than in the USA, so you can't always predict who will be at rehearsal each week. Today there were five students, myself, and Alena, and it ended up being awesome. We sang one song in Latin (thank goodness, as I would've totally failed at pronunciation if it was in Czech!), another in English, and finally one in Swahili. The English song was "Praise, Praise the Lord" and the Swahili song was "Siyahamba," which I sang myself in high school and which has the lyrics "We are marching in the light of God." I do not believe any of these ladies are Christians, but how fabulous it was to get to sing these awesome songs to God with them! It was a great end to the school day!
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Now playing: India.Arie - Little Things
via FoxyTunes
