Ahoj. :-P

Time for another update... well, past time, but sometimes life gets busy (and I confess sometimes I also am just lazy). I have not been out of Praha since my last update but I think I still have some interesting things to talk about. I have definitely done a lot of historical "sight seeing" around Praha lately and those things are worth mentioning. :-)

The past 2 weekends I have done a lot of Praha-venturing, and some additional during the week. For you nerdy and music people... I went to the National Museum a couple of weeks ago, which was really interesting. Its been 40 years since 1968 when the Russians came blasting in to Czechoslovakia (which no longer exists yo. :-P) to silence the new surge of "Communism with a human face"... a violent time in this area, people being gunned down by tanks right in Wenceslas Square. So there was a lot of information on that on display at the museum, and videos playing, and it was fascinating and horrifying and heart-wrenching. Kosťa was with me and he related a story of his grandfather shouting at the passing tanks in the countryside, at the very risk to his own life... apparently a Russian gestured back to him from the tank, moving his hand across his neck meaning "silence or you die". Also there was a display about Jan Palach, a student who burned himself to death in protest of the communism in 1968. He is memorialized on the square and some see him as a hero... but here is a "thinking" question... what did his self-destruction cause for the greater good? Yes, he sent a powerful message... but perhaps his life could have benefited the cause more than his gruesome death?

The museum also had many displays of rocks and minerals (found one from El Paso County, CO!), of animals of all species (I enjoyed this...) and of the more "ancient" and prehistoric peoples who lived in Czech Republic and Slovakia. All of that was incredibly fascinating to see. If you are in Praha, GO to this museum. SO worth the effort, and the building itself is gorgeous--it was built only by donations of people and businesses in the Czechoslovakian times of ČR.

This one is for the music people. I visited the Bedrich Smetana Museum, which is located right near Charles Bridge on the Vltava river. It was a great little museum, and included original scores (including from Má Vlast [My Country]), notes he wrote to people, programs from his concerts, even a piano he once played. Very cool. Pics on photobucket. I also had the pleasure, the previous weekend, of attending a concert at the Church of St. Nicholas in Malá Strana (VERY beautiful church...) of a performance of Dvořák's Requiem (Opus 68 I think? I dont have a program since they werent free :-( ). The performance in the vast (although chilly...) cathedral was amazing, about 100 solid minutes of orchestra and voice combining to commemorate the many-centuries anniversary of the murderous death of St. Wenceslas (Václav). You will have heard his name in a popular Christmas carol. :-)

Speaking of St. Václav, I had the opportunity of finding a unique painting of him on Old Town Square, which you will see to the right. It depicts Václav riding his horse gallantly, and above him, the hand of God reaches down as if blessing the famous Czech ruler and saint.

This weekend I also got to see the beautiful autumn colors of Petřín Hill, one of my new favorite places here. It is near to the castle, and at the top is a tower which somewhat mimics the Eiffel Tower in Paris. We climbed up this hill, which was a bit exhausting (considering how much walking we did that day...) and enjoyed autumn leaves crackling in the wind and falling around us. We observed the "Hungry" or "Bread" wall, constructed during the reign of Charles IV (I think), by peasants in dire need of bread... so rather than give free handouts, the king gave them a job to do. This wall is pretty magnificent and interesting. Once you pass through it there are lovely parks and gardens. You also can go in the direction of the castle and visit Stráhov monastary, which I would like to do sometime.

Also I saw again the Cathedral of St. Vitus. Very beautiful in my opinion, though the fun is taken away somewhat due to the heavy amount of tourists. Also, to my great disappointment, the Cathedral tower was closed for maintenance reasons. :-( I was pretty disappointed, because I had been looking forward to seeing Prague Autumn from the top. Shoot. But I got to see (however uncomfortably due to the thick crowd) the lavishly decorated chapel of St. Wenceslas, and beautiful stained glass windows, and my favorite, the lovely light glimmering on the walls from said windows--the little things are most beautiful. :-)

Other than that... most of my time here has been school, honestly. I have gone to a few Nation2Nation parties but never for long... the thick crowds of drinking, smoking people in a club do not suit me. The last party I went to I observed a drinking game hosted by the Russians (their turn to host that night) which made me ill, and involved people drinking WAY too many shots of vodka. I could not stay the entire game because it made me queasy. I just pray that the people I am here with realize that getting drunk usually has consequences which are not so desireable.

I have gotten to spend a little more time with people in the program here, which has been a benefit of sticking around Praha more. I got to go shopping with a girl from Canada the other day. She is nice, however a bit pessimistic which was frustrating. I need to get better at relating to people who are very different from me... it doesnt mean we cant get along, this I am learning, but I am not often sure of the best way to communicate. The people I know express very strong opinions about things that are quite opposite of what I think and I am often too scared to say anything against them for fear of being ridiculed. Usually this relates to politics, in which many of my fellow students are better educated than I am (some even poli-sci majors) and I get intimidated. I have not gotten to spend any more real time with my buddy or my friend Kuba, which has been disappointing. I hope Kuba may go on the trip this weekend to Karlštejn Castle, and some others (including my Canadian friend) are going. In a couple of weeks I will spend the weekend in České Budějovice, my buddy's hometown. It will be challenging but hopefully a good opportunity to get to know her better (finally!)¨

So I guess this update doesn't have much in the way of "wow look what God is doing!" news, but I hope it has been interesting. I know He is still moving here but I confess it is easy to be repressed by spiritual darkness here that I can feel really strongly some days. Especially since NO ONE in my program are Christians. Most of my exposure to Him comes on Sundays at church. Please pray that I have the discipline and desire to fervently seek Him all week long in an environment which is devoid of His praise and worship. He is why I am here, He is what matters, He is why I want to come back... please please pray I remember this day in and day out and wake up with praises on my tongue...

Oh and PS: I have one set interview for an English teaching job in vsetín on the 25th of October, and I just got an email today from a school in Brno that I have been in touch with, and I will soon be meeting the director of that school as well to discuss employment opportunities for next year. :-) So that's a bit exciting for me.

Finally. :-) Sorry for delay!

Well, I have a lot to update on because it has been nearly 2 weeks! I apologize. :-)

I suppose the best place to begin is sport weekend. This was 26-28 September at a cottage very near to Vsetín. You might remember that I had a cold going into this weekend, and it was definitely at its worst when I arrived to the weekend. It was nice to see everyone again... and great to finally participate in some CB activities... but this weekend also posed a LOT of challenges and few encouragements. Right away it was clear I would need a ridiculous amount of translation. (this sure has motivated me to get my butt going on learning Czech...) Thankfully, throughout most of the weekend I could participate in 95% of activities but it certainly is an experience to be "handicapped" in a way. From an educator's standpoint, it is like standing in the shoes of an ESL learner in a US classroom--no idea whats going on unless someone has the ability to tell you or communicate it somehow! This frustrated me a lot, mostly because it meant I was a kind of tag-along on some of the activities--there but not really contributing anything and I didnt like that. Also, I wasnt able to talk to some of the people I consider friends. I have some Czech friends who do not speak much English. I learned that while i can read and write Czech fairly well, enough to communicate through email and ICQ (instant messaging), actually understanding what people say is nearly impossible. I can pick up words but often not enough to understand context. So that was frustrating. That on top of being pretty sick made it a tough weekend. Athletes in Action put together some tough activities that would have been a lot more fun in good health--PLUS it was cold and raining all weekend! Lots of mud and slipping. Needless to say I left in probably worse health. On the positive side, there were a few non-believers there, most of them pretty young guys from Maják (Lighthouse) church's organization Atletico. One of them, Boris, randomly came up and talked to me the first evening, though I must not have been doing great at my Czech, or he didnt expect me to speak Czech, because he seemed to not understand me much. Please pray for this young guy, he's had what seems like a crazy life for only being 14. He smokes and drinks and his arms have NUMEROUS scars of self-mutilation. :-( But Athletes in Action put God in the forefront and these guys got to hear about Jesus so thats great. :-)

Then came the first week of school! This meant a lot of classes for me because we "test" classes for 2 weeks before finalizing our decisions--unique to our program. Another temporary discouragement for me was Intermediate Czech. Mostly due to my inability to understand much spoken Czech yet, I left the first class halfway through--no way I would have been able to be successful in there. I was really depressed that afternoon but also resolute. I bought a popular czech children's book and I intend on learning to read it this semester, plus I memorized about 30 words that evening. :-P In elementary Czech i am way ahead of the others who haven't been exposed to Czech before, but I am still learning new things and also able to apply more advanced concepts to what I am learning so it will still be a good class for me. I looked through our book and there is still a lot I havent learned so I am happy. :-) I really enjoy this class. I am going to purchase some more books this weekend that I saw in a local large bookstore for foreigners to learn Czech. :-) This is the most useful topic for me right now.
After attending many classes I have settled on the following for this semester:
Elementary Czech
Cultural History of the Czech lands (learning awesome things about CZ history and places to go!)
European Integration (great professor, good, challenging class for me... poli sci)
The Medieval City (taught by a CSU professor and also quite interesting and new to me)
I wanted to take the Comparitive Governments class but it is at a time which I just cant handle weekly, 4:15-7:30 Thursday nights. Meaning, if I was taking that class, I would be there right now rather than sitting on my bed typing thsi update and eating a yummy dinner. :-) BUT I will probably go to that class and just sit in sometimes to listen because it looked like an amazing class.

This past weekend I went on a Buddy System trip to a nearby town called Kutná Hora. In this town about 1500 years ago or so, silver was discovered in rather large quantities. :-) Historically, this made "Great Moravia"and Bohemia a suddenly wealthy place, and all Bohemian mints moved to this city, making it quite rich. The mines were abandoned about 700 years ago. This all makes US history seem so young. :-D In this town we saw a church (more like a chapel) in which the bones of 40,000 people have been arranged into crazy pyramids and other things like a chandelier! Its absolutely crazy! Go to my photobucket to see pictures. :-) There were also some skulls from Hussite (Jan Hus) warriors from the Hussite battles. It was crazy to see their injuries and also how some of them were healing and then later died (even though they lived for a while after their injury with a hole in their skull!) that was kind of creepy and I had a conversation with a couple of girls about the fleetingness of life but at that time we didnt get to anything much deeper. Then we had a traditional Czech meal for lunch at a unique restaurant definitely aimed at tourists. I sat with the same girls from the bone church and also one of the Buddy Leaders, Kuba, all of whom I had a good time talking with. Next we went to the 700 year old mine and learned some history, donned white coats and helmets and lanterns, and had a 30-minute tour through some tunnels of the first layer of the mine. It was coated in limestone from years of water dripping through it, it was kind of beautiful in a way. :-) It was basically like a man-made cavern, complete with lakes and some interesting rock formations. After this we went to nearby St. Barbara's cathedral, a place I want to go back to with more time eventually. It is a truly beautiful church, though while discussing it a bit with my new friend Kuba, he expressed his disgust at the "blood money" used to construct such cathedrals. We began a spiritual talk in which I learned he is an atheist and has even studied some of the Bible for school research. Though, not all of it. He was asking me a lot of questions upon learning that I am a Christian. he feels that the dominating atheism in Czech Republic is a good thing and says he doesnt believe in the resurrection. Unfortunately, our talk was cut short by the sudden realization that we might miss our train, so our group of 25 had to haul to get to our train on time, we barely made it. :-)

As for this week of school, nothing great to report, nothing exciting... at this weeks Nation 2 Nation party the US gave a presentation and that was interesting, I tried to participate some to meet people. I saw Kuba again and got to talk with him some more just not about anything spiritual. Due to the smoking and drinking I left as soon as our presentation was over because particularly the smoke bothers me and i have an early class. Today I basically also got asked out by an Egyptian man on the street who was travelling through Czech. :-P That was an interesting experience. I told him I would get together with him tomorrow with a friend, but when he learned I have a boyfriend and was not available tonight he said he won't be in the country tomorrow anyway. I was bummed that I wouldnt get to come with a friend and share Jesus with him.
So, praises...

• my cold is 99% gone. :-) Just fighting a titch of a leftover cough.
• some young guys got to hear about Jesus at sport weekend, as well as some people going to mládež who may not be believers yet.
• nicer weather this week. :-) A bit warmer and beautiful autumn weather!
• the opportunity to finally build some relationships with CESP people and even finally some Czechs. :-)
• the ability to take some classes which are interesting and still learn a lot in the lower Czech class

Prayer Requests...

• Please pray for the Egyptian man who I talked with today, that he may somehow know Jesus even though I was unable to share with him...
• pray for my friend Kuba, and that I can build a good friendship with him. I am going to invite him to a hockey match next weekend with some friends, I think, and hope maybe he will continue his questions. pray he would look into the evidence for the resurrection!
• Pray for the people who heard about Jesus at sport weekend--pray they will continue to have the seeds watered and their hearts softened to the Savior. :-)
• Pray for many of my fellow CESP participants who spend so much time partying and feeling crappy the next day... my roommate Ashley, and Sarah, Judy, John, another John and so many others I cant even remember names to. Pray they would know there is more to life that is so much better than waking up with a hangover.
• Pray that my Czech improves quickly and that I may be able to speak more with my Czech friends next time i am in vsetín. i will not be there abour 3-4 weeks so hopefully I can learn a lot in that time.

Well, čau for now, enjoy your weekend and I will update again soon. :-) Keep in touch prosím!