We are HOME!

Well we have been home for almost for 2 weeks now and it seems like just yesterday that we were in Prague! This is a just a short post but more reflections from our trip are soon to follow ( Yes, English Camp will be included..)

On Friday August 28th, Casey, Chris and I will be having a BBQ at the Rurik's place to share some stories, experiences and hopefully an eye-catching multimedia presentation capturing our time over in the Czech Republic. We will also ask the question "What comes next?", "Where do we go from here?"

So please come enjoy some burgers, dogs and fellowship. All of you loyal blog readers are invited and we would love for you to be there!

And here are the rest of the details

When: Starts at 6pm but come anytime after that

Where: The Rurik's home

We will provide the main entree but ask that you bring a side dish or dessert to share (...or both!)

Coming Home

Wow. Tomorrow we fly home.

Right now Jory, Casey, and I are sitting in Martin and Jane's flat after two full days in Prague. We have met with all kinds of new friends around the city, including a delicious dinner at Nina and Andre's apartment and seeing a bunch of our good friends from the multisport at a park to play one last game of ultimate. It is amazing to know so many people in this city all of a sudden. Three weeks ago we arrived and it was almost a lonely (though exciting) place to be; today we can plan two full days of activities with various people around the city. I feel like if I were to come back in a year or two I'd have so many people to see.

Speaking for myself, I can say that I am so ready to come home. I look back on the trip and I can't believe how long and diverse this journey has been. I miss Silverbow Farm and my family, and am excited to breathe Washington air again.

We would all like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has read this blog and supported us throughout all phases of the trip - from Jory's phone call to me many months ago to our long days at both camps. We will continue to write in the blog when we return home so that you can get an even better picture (we'll post pictures too) of what the last few weeks of this trip have been like. An especially big thank you goes to everyone who supported us financially, because of you we were able to take this trip by storm without worrying about finances. Of course the best way for you to hear about it is to ask once we get back - we'll tell you all about it!

I've begun a list (surely I'll continue it on the plane) of foods to eat upon my return:

-chicken fajitas

-waffles

-barbecued anything

-blueberries

-corn on the cob

-milkshake

-farm eggs

-tofu

-funfetti cake with blueberries

I've been incessantly writing things in my notebook, I'm sure I'll post more when I have more time. That includes my daily 100 words, which I've miraculously managed to keep up on! (Almost.)

I will miss:

-gelatto

-European pizza (I had one with smoked salmon and artichoke on it tonight)

-Prague's awesome public transportation which includes metro, bus, and tram

-Martin, Jane, and everyone else we've met in the Czech Republic

Once again, it's been such a long journey, I want to show all of you all the pictures we've accumulated and tell you about the people we've come across and gesticulate wildly as we remember anecdotes.

Our flight leaves at 11:00 tomorrow morning, we have a short layover in Atlanta, then we come into Seatac in the evening.

I'll follow the sun around the world from a place I've never been to the land I've known my entire life. Beautiful Washington! Bustling blueberry bushes! Breezy Gig Harbor! Key Peninsula covered in blackberry vines and hay fields! I'm coming back!

Back To Prague

Wow, well I really don't know what to write right now. It is 2:00 in the morning and I am sitting in good old Hotel Angelis, across the street from the Staropramen brewery with the quietude of Prague around us again. This morning we woke up at 6:30 to see off Brandon and Nikki (our two new good friends from Chicago) off from the camp since they had to leave early to catch a flight. Since we were up before everyone else, we decided to walk about a kilometer up the road to an old monument sitting under a tree beside a field. It was a beautiful morning to be walking and the fields in the morning were fresh and extremely pleasant to be in. Breakfast was at 8:30, we packed with all the kids, and by 11:00 were on the bus back to Prague. We went out to dinner at a delicious restaurant with all 22 leaders who were left in town (at camp there were 14 American leaders and 10 Czech leaders). I had grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and spinach salad. Casey had a lamb burger. Jory had pork ribs. All were delicious. Afterwards we went out for some of the best gelatto we've yet encountered - funny story was, I was singing as we walked after dinner about how I was still kind of hungry and really wanted a grapefruit to Tyler and when we got to the gelatto shop there it was, grapefruit gelatto. After wandering for a while, Jory and InShil have spent the last few hours trying to burn DVDs full of pictures for various team members. It's an on-going process still.

English camp was amazing. I know you are all very impatient to hear all about it, but unfortunately it is late and the vast majority of the details will emerge when we get home, as we may not have internet access again until then. It was a really good time for all of us. I can say that for me personally (though I was sick for over half of it, which I eventually recovered from) the combination of beautiful scenery, kids that were energetic and intelligent, and fellow leaders who loved fun and discussing some hard aspects of life made this camp one of the most memorable I've been to. I feel like I'm not doing it justice the way I'm describing it. Oh well (for tonight).

Tomorrow we wake up early again to see off another wave of fellow leaders as they head to the airport to fly back to the Washington D.C. area. We'll meet our friend Molly and go to church with her, then ideally hook up with Petr and Eva from sport camp to play some frisbee! I'm really excited to see those two again. Then we're heading to our friend Nina's for dinner and who knows what other hijinks. Should be a full day on not a whole lot of gas in the tank.

Speaking for myself, I am so excited to come home. I've been having irresistible visions of Silverbow Farm, have started making lists of foods I want to eat, and can't wait for a great week with so many family members around when I return. It has been a long trip, and there is not one part that I regret. Soon I'll be on the plane for the next step in my never-ending quest to live my life.

Other Updates

To get a sense of how I'm feeling at the moment, I'll refer you to my April 3 All of 100 (http://allof100.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-i-feel-about-my-stomach.html), although what I have now is more intestinal and less enjoyable. That said, I think it's just passing through and hopefully I'll feel rosy again tomorrow while we head to camp.

Jory, Casey, and I are leaving about three hours before the kids so that we can set up a frisbee golf course at the camp! Somehow we have been dubbed "professional frisbeemen", so we will try to create a course very rapidly for the kids to enjoy throughout the week. For English lessons, I am working with the advanced group, Jory with the intermediate, and Casey with the false beginners. We have many fun and exciting games planned already, including an in-class snowball fight (because we're way cooler than your English teacher ever was).

An important update that I've been forgetting to give: I brought War and Peace to read on this trip because I only wanted to carry one book, and though Russian names can be difficult to distinguish, I have made progress. I am currently on page 525 of 1455! A short way into the read, however, I was incredibly disappointed to realize that pages 67-94 were missing - what a letdown! I pressed on, and surmised from the context that this section was completely filled with the description of a single dinner party. It is a great book though (great in the sense of it has colossal ambition and is capturing all these different aspects of life).

Not much else to write about at the moment. Everyone else is out on the town for the night, and I think I'll go lay down again. Have a good day everyone!

Good news.... Bad News... but there's pictures!

So we have been enjoying Prague, walking around the city, seeing the river and the castle all of which have been very beautiful! Casey got in safely late monday night. The rest of the team has finally arrived and we had our first meeting tonight followed by delicious pizza. The team is wonderful and i have a feeling this will be a great team to work with and have an awesome week of camp. More brainstorming and coming up with lesson plans tomorrow. We will leave for camp on saturday. And.... the bad news, we will not be in the blogosphere until we return from camp. There is no internet at the camp. But we will journal our thoughts and take photos to update you all when we return.


Casey made it!







At Prague Castle!



Some things to keep in mind for prayer:

• pray that camp goes well, everything runs smoothly and stress is minimal
• that jesus would be the center
• we as leaders would be intentional about being relational with the students
• patience as a team with one another, to work well together
• lastly,Chris, Casey and I be open to what God is speaking and showing into our lives at camp. We would respond. Be authentic with the students. Allow God to work in and through us at camp.
  

Love you all,

Jory

OK, A Few More Pictures

Via my camera which went a couple places that Jory's didn't (unlike me and Jory, our cameras aren't a married couple). 

The uber-classy hallways of our great elementary school. The open door is "Lake Huron", where the girl leaders slept. Us men slept just beyond in "Lake Erie".

More ice cream bar love. That's a real life Magnum that Jory's holding. I have a cheaper, inferior brand that was just as delicious. Yesterday, as a celebration of our last day and a successful frisbee tournament, we went to Penny Market and each got a Magnum from the South American Explosion line, he went with Columbia Aroma and I got Ecuador Dark (the other was Maya Mystica).

Old Faithful Jablonec. A pipe overflowed during the storm and created a geyser just outside of the school! This storm was intense, it became very dark when it hit and thunder and lightning were all around, very heavy rain and just about the craziest wind I've ever felt. In the locker room a big window was left open and immediately the entire room was wet from the huge quantities of water blowing in. It took three people to push the window closed. That was when I went outside in the atrium (partially sheltered from the wind) to take a shower.

There's the kilt.

Multikemp Has Ended

Well it is now Sunday and Jory and I are sitting in Martin and Jane's flat in a huge concrete apartment building on the outer edge of Prague. We have just eaten a delicious dinner consisting of lasagna, cucumbers, nectarines, bread, carrots, and tomato/mozzarella/basil. It is so nice to be relaxing in a home after six days of sleeping in crowded school rooms. We left the camp around 1:30 and drove back to Prague with Martin; tonight we will sleep in a hotel room (sounds amazing!) and spend the next few days exploring and meeting up with other English camp instructors as they arrive.

Now for some pictures from the last few days:

Here is Jory as "American Tourist" during the evening program. He very enthusiastically said "dobry den" (hello) to everyone who said anything to him and took many pictures and mispronounced a whole lot of phrases, including his favorite - "you smell like a pig" (which I have no idea how to spell in czech). The character was a great hit. Side note: the pictures of me singing Satisfaction in a green kilt didn't turn out too well, so no go on those for now.

This one is self-explanatory, it happened after some rain in the late afternoon one day.

The softball tournament! It was yesterday morning and as soon as we arrived at the fields it poured for two straight hours. Jory's team made it to the final, when the field had been reduced to a shallow sea with sea grasses and muddy tidal areas near home plate. My valiant team unfortunately lost 8-3 in our first game, but Jory's scrappiness led him all the way to the final match. To end his semifinal, he made a stooping catch in centerfield and threw to third for a double play. Unfortunately his team was not a match for the high-powered offense of the other team in the final, and as the rain ended the final ended as well to the scattered sounds of cheering from the ramshackle dugouts. Everyone rode in steamy city buses back to the city where a hot shower was enjoyed by all (but not necessarily the same hot shower).

Due to rain, our intricately planned frisbee tournament was held indoors in two big gyms in Liberec, the next town over from Jablonec. By intricately planned I mean we changed all the teams the campers had created when we arrived then quickly drew the bracket you see above, creating rules on the fly. It involved a lot of intense conversation between Jory, Jitka, and I as the campers waited expectantly, trying to make a fair tournament for thirteen teams in small gyms. Several misunderstandings and near angry outbursts later, it worked! The tournament was a great success! It was really fun to see all these different teams play each other, and it was especially good for Jory and I to see our frisbee players leading their teams. One of the guys, Jerka, would move the frisbee in the same way I do whenever he caught it; though he couldn't really throw it well, he pivoted just like me. It was amusing and flattering I must say. The two finals team were both very good. One was led by Eva and Petr and some others, they were the skilled team with good strategy and good throws that steamrolled everyone in their side of the bracket. The other was led by Simon and was full of fast, big guys who made you pay any time you dropped the frisbee by immediately fast-breaking to their endzone. The final was epic, but Simon's team pulled away and won in the end with their speed and power. It was a great tournament, and we were only late for dinner by fifteen minutes.

Frisbee players! I will miss them all, they were a great group to run around with each day, and I really grew to respect them as I got to know them off of the field. Thank goodness for facebook to keep in touch now that we have all left each other.

I hope you all have the chance sometime today to relax like we are right now, relaxation is incredible! Although I will miss playing frisbee each day...

A List Of Things I Did Today

1. Wore a kilt for the first time.
2. Took a shower outside in a thunder and lightning storm.
3. Had a conversation with Jory in which I could not formulate or articulate my beliefs.
4. Thought a lot after that.
5. Tried to teach myself a new backwards throw in frisbee. Its crazy, but unfortunately it failed miserably when I tried it in the game.

čtvrtek

If anyone can correctly pronounce the Czech word for Thursday, I will buy you a bratwurst in Prague and bring it carefully back to you.

Here is Jory throwing a frisbee, a typical activity in our day, as you might guess.

Jorys state, Washington, rocking out to a Stay by The Hollies. That is Lucie up front with the fake dreadlocks flanked by Jerka and Petr on guitars.

A very typical photograph, this is what our faces look like as we simultaneously enjoy our daily ice cream bar - see the Lords Prayer - and talk about the days challenges and joys.

Discussion Groups

Chris and I like to be independent so thats why we have 2 posts within minutes of each other and standing right next to each other... ha

Anyways, I wish i could speak Czech also. There were some good things and questions asked tonight that i am sure somewhat got lost in translation. One question asked by Jirka in my group was clear

In response to the question "Why dont you believe in God or what is holding to back?"


If God is so righteous and good, then why is there so much unrighteousness in the world? Why are so many people dying of diseases around the world. Shouldnt God help them, they didnt do anything to get those diseases?

I was and am stumped. Good question from a czech student.

Post answers if you have any.