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.

Středa - Wednesday

Tonight I really wish that I could understand Czech. Our frisbee players are divided into two groups - named after states - and mine is Tennessee. Jitka, our fellow coach, is a leader of this state with me, and tonight we divided into small groups to discuss questions following from the speaker. These questions are geared toward the Christian faith, but I feel that they deal more generally with life. For example, the main question last night was, What are you running for? In other words, what motivates you to live life to the fullest. This question was difficult for me to answer, and I wish I could have understood Jitka, Petr, Ana, Simon, Verka, Katya, Esther, and Jindrich as they each shared what seemed like very personal thoughts. It has gotten me thinking though...

Camp today was great, we played frisbee for four hours in morning, then I was back out there again this afternoon with other kids, since they can sign up for any sport they want to try in the afternoons now. Jory had the afternoon off so he got to do airsoft! I think I am going to try on Friday. A Czech guy about my age showed up in the afternoon and joined the game. He was visiting a friend at the camp, but he was very good at ultimate! He plays on a club team in Prague, where there are five club teams, a very high level of play, and the world club championships will be held there soon. He was much better than me and it was really fun to play with him, since most everyone else cant throw or stay spread out very well. But it is so fun to play frisbee all day.

Each state is performing a dance or lip sync to an American pop song from the 1960s over the next two nights. Jorys did Stay by The Hollies tonight, and tomorrow night I will be a part of a one-night, crowd-awing performance of Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. Pictures definitely to come.

Tomorrow brings seven plus more hours of ultimate, along with all the meals, hang out time, poorly translated jokes, and butchered pronunciation of language that that entails. Jory and I have been brightening each day with a trip to Penny Market or Interspar for a delicious foreign ice cream bar. It is such a good walk and relax and talk time that other leaders are starting to join in.

Ahoj!

Ahoj - pronounced AHOY - means hello! I have learned a few other words like oběd and večeře which mean lunch and dinner. Also joty parajot means yellow submarine in Russian.



Documentation of our epic delay. Jory got yelled at as he tried to take this picture by the ladies at the desk, but luckily he was able to get a stealth shot afterwards.



Here is the coaches and staff singing Yellow Submarine in real Czech style on the first night of camp. The theme of the camp is the 1960s, including the Beatles, Forrest Gump, and Soviet style exercise regimens.
Playing frisbee! The infamouns McFlugin drill. That is Ana throwing the frisbee with Simon guarding. Eva, Lucie, Katya, and Petr are watching. Only two injuries so far! Not a good rate, hopefully we will have enough left for the tournament on Saturday.

It is late here, and so goodnight!

Multisport kemp Day 1

The first day has come and nearly finished. There are about 160 people total at the camp with 130 being participants. We have 16 students, 7 boys and 9 girls, in Ultimate. Our group of students that we are teaching is very fun and some speak really good english so that has been helpful and will be for the rest of the week. The students arrived late afternoon, so there was no instruction but just introductions and getting to know the students in our sport. We have 2 deaf girls in our group which will make the week interesting. We do have one fellow coach named Jitka who is pretty nice and good at frisbee who can translate most of what we say. Tomorrow, we will begin instruction tomorrow morning and hopefully start playing some games as well. We are also in charge of organizing and implementing a tournament on saturday for the whole camp... interesting seeing that we have never done a ultimate frisbee tournament before and there will be about 15 teams.

As for Chris and I, it is somewhat more challenging than we had thought adjusting to the language barrier. Coming to this multisport camp first before english camp without knowing anyone here is hard but we are adjusting. Everyone speaks czech and english but unlike Martin, people are not used to having to translate into english so that has been testing our patience on multiple levels. There are a few people who have stepped up and helped translate meetings and such so it has been fun building those relationships. Honestly, I don't know what God is going to reveal to us at this camp but I think this language barrier might be involved. This trip is very different from the mission trips and cultures we have engaged where spanish has been the main language and we are with people who can help translate for us. Something that has amazing to see though is God's love transcend this language through these people and their heartfelt worship and desire to follow Jesus. We are connected through our desire to serve the Lord which is always really amazing to experience when you travel abroad.

Pray for strength and energy for us as Ultimate and dealing with the language can be draining physically, mentally and emotionally.

Pray for the relationships that we are beginning to build with the students.

Openness to what God is trying to reveal to us.

Pics to come later, time to go.

Jabloneč

Something I have just written in my notebook amongst half-finished 100 words.

My life is amazing. These Czech men and women are like kinsmen my heart has dreamed of. They love to use their bodies at every possible moment. After returning from dinner at a pub and a walk through an incredible forest park with trails and fields interspersed, many of the people were already getting ready to "go swimming". Naturally - though it was nearing sunset and cool outside - I agreed. What going swimming meant was running on sidewalks and between concrete buildings until we ended up at a lake, stripping down, and swimming half the width of the lake to a plastic blue island. The water was cold but not frigid, brownish-tinged, and somehow comforting to my skin and muscles. On the way out I could flip over onto my back and look at the sun setting the waz I had come. Around the lake were a skinny dam, ducks, and the land covered with fir trees and great square apartment buildings. The Czechs were just dutifully loving being in the water and the motion of their bodies. By the time I got out, pink clouds on a navy blue sky above, I had this deep, irrepressible feeling that my life was complete. Not that I was done living, but that every facet of myself and the world had fit together perfectly. Now I have taken a shower in this gaping primarz school where we stay - I was naked in a rustz room tiled with orange and blue, unused showerheads all around while the basement air filled with steam - and I feel like my mind and body are used and content. I have written this in a dark locker room on a bench looking out of a bank of dark windows to a night so untouched by the streetlights that I can barely see the difference between hills and sky, I can hear the footsteps and phrases of the others in the halls in echoes that travel mysteriously far. I do not know what unfathomable convolutions of history have made these moments, but somehow they have created the perfect chord that is left resounding in my body.


Other comments/observations.

The keyboard is difficult here, it is easz to confuse y and z and impossible to find an apostrophe. So I do not use contractions.

We had a seven and a half hour layover in Rome airport which was trying on our patience but ultimately worked out all right. At one point we found a luggage cart abandoned on the back roads and it turned out to be one of the most energetic characters we have met yet. We named him Leonardo the Matador. It was great watching people get angry when they changed the gate at the last moment and yell in Italian at the ticket scanner ladies. But we got there, after an hour and a half drive to the camp from Prague to Jabloneč.

Like I said already, the people are great here, many have taken English in school so communication is not too much of a problem.

Now I am tired and I am heading the way of the buffalope, to sleep!

Athletes in Action: Multisport camp

Grant that the remembrance of the blessed Life that once was lived out on this common earth under these ordinary skies may remain with me in all the tasks and duties of this day.

Let me remember-
His eagerness, not to be ministered unto, but to minister:
His sympathy with suffering from every kind:
His Bravery in the face of His own suffering:
His meekness of bearing so that, when reviled, He reviled not again:
His steadiness of purpose in keeping to His appointed task:
His simplicity:
His self-discipline:
His serenity of spirit:
His complete reliance upon You, His Father in Heaven
and in each of these ways give me grace to follow in His footsteps. Amen.

- An excerpt from a John Baillie prayer

A prayer I read this morning in preparation of our first camp.

Chris and I are leaving for the airport in a few minutes to begin our main journey and purpose for this trip. We have a had wonderful time exploring Barcelona and Rome and we are feeling rejuvenated and ready to begin this next phase in our trip.

Pray for us in next part of our journey. Little expectations exist which allows God to work and I am grateful for that but also somewhat nervous because the language barrier and the only thing we do know that we are doing is teaching Ultimate Frisbee, a bit scary I guess. Pray for the kids and that they would be receptive to the message of Jesus Christ as well as our hearts to be open to share and furthermore open to what God has to share and teach us while we are at camp. Pray for energy each day to wake up with fervor and excitement as well as strength to teach frisbee for 7 days!

More updates to come and thanks for following

Roma

We have worn out our feet here in Rome, walking at all hours of the night and day everywhere. Jory's friend Katie has been our intrepid tour guide, navigating us through the streets, gelatto shops, monuments, ruins, markets, crowds, and Italians in this city. Jumping pictures are the in thing and I have not climbed so many stairs in a long time.


Now the bow of our little ship points northeast to Prague and we stand with grim and sweaty brows, ready for another harrowing journey that will leave us at the multisport camp for the seven days.


More pictures:

Here we are on top of the cupula at St. Peter's Basilica, replete with new friends and worn-out calves from climbing 551 stairs. Probably the highest place we went, a great view of Rome all around and the church is magnificent. The Pope even came up to the cupula with us to share the view and offer us some refreshing water. OK, maybe that's not true.

The view from Katie's apartment, overlooking Campo di Fiori, which is just about the most thoroughly used plaza I've ever seen: Market in the morning, dining all evening, clubs until the wee-est hours of the morning.

Our shadows on the Colosseum. Pretty self-explanatory.

Gelatto Resistance

It is very difficult to just walk by a gelatto shop. Here are a few pictures from the last few days (captions included free of charge):

This is a view of the whole city from Parc Gual (a World Heritage Site, for all my fellow archaeology ihummers) where we walked around all this really cool terrain and pathways designed by Goudi.

No way a geology museum!

Gnarly wound number 1. Hopefully there won't be any more... I though my palm was split in half at first, but it's fine, barely skin deep.

Entering La Bocaria, a giant market with all kinds of delicious things on display. We went questing for fruit drinks that cost only a euro and were delicious. I double-fisted with blackberry banana and strawberry coconut and Jory got some other intriguing combination.

Barcelona

We have arrived in Barcelona, not much time to update because my internet time is quickly dwindling. Yesterday we flew in around 8 am and wandered the city the rest of the day on little to no sleep, eating delicious food and finding our way through narrow, twisting, cobblestoned avenues. We saw a beach, a cathedral, parks, a million statues, a million fountains, several statue/fountain combinations, and eventually found a plump cone of gelatto resting in our grateful hands.

The hostel we are staying in is really cool, lots of young people around. We are sleeping in a room with ten other people, all of whom are really cool, and today we might wander the city with some of them or go on a bike tour. It is cloudy this morning, a nice change from the scorching weather yesterday.

This city is awesome!

I Have Excitedomnia...

...which is easily mistaken for insomnia.

In slightly over six hours, Jory and I will engage the full power of our 737's jet engines and point the rudder towards the rising sun. I have just gotten off work and am in the final throes of wrestling various "necessities" into my green backpack. In another hour or two I'll be ready for a brilliant moment of sleep before an even more brilliant awakening: the awakening into the first day of our adventure to Europe!

A list of things you may or may not be able to expect out of this blog:

1. Semi-consistent updates ("semi-consistent" is as of yet undefined)

2. Photographs

3. Stories fictional and non-fictional

4. Asides

5. Shout outs (for example: What's up Liz! And "Joe" too of course!)

6. Ruminations

For work tonight I was in Port Gamble as the sun went down over a vast, meandering stretch of the Puget Sound. Lightning cracked above our heads and fuschia red spread further and further up and around the sky. The scope of the sky and the water below us was beautiful; I'm going to miss Washington!

Soon we will land in Barcelona at 8 am local time, ready to walk through the narrow streets as the sun glints off windows and buildings with a delicious bakery in mind. But for now it is, as a great human once wrote, "Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere."

One Week Until Takeoff

Jory and I will be leaving in just one week for Barcelona, where we will do some exploring before heading on to Rome and Prague. To prepare all of you, here is an extra pun:

I was playing baseball, and I was on deck. My teammate struck out. Then my coach shouted at me, "Europe!"

Our first week in Prague Jory and I will be Ultimate coaches at a multisport camp, after which Casey will join us so that we can train to be English counselors at a Young Life camp where Czech high schoolers come to learn English.

More explicit and flowery updates soon to follow.