Little Brother's (not so) Little One!

I have a new nephew! Baker Cleveland Bowen. He's my younger brother Lane's and his wife Courtney's first child. He's a few hours old here.  A blessed day in the Bowen clan! Here's all I know so far from Clud (my Step-Dad). Looks like he emailed me from his phone.

"Pete you have a new nephew arrived 2:17pm weighed 2lbs 2oz. Was 21 inches long. Are well baby has full head black hair"

Look at all that hair! Apparently Bowen boys (there are no Bowen girls, long story) tend to come out like that. I didn't 'cause I'm the oddball and had blond hair. 

While his weight sounds low to me I'm sure everything is fine as Cleve's arrival has been closely monitored. Wooohooo! [*UPDATE* That 2lb is a typo. Cleve actually weighs 8lbs. Much bigger than anyone expected so the news is even better. WooooooHoooooo!]

Maybe I'll have some photos to show soon. Oh I should also say Happy Birthday to my Mom. Happy Birthday Mom! She's certainly gotten the best birthday present ever with her newest Grand-baby. 

Like said before it's a blessed day for Team Bowen/Kelly.

Mikulas!

I apologize for being slack in writing stuff. It's strange how even living in a country where you're illiterate and can't understand anyone can become routine. I've adjusted a bit I guess. I don't really have time to get into all that right now. I've got a lesson in a bit. But I've definitely been doing some reflecting on my time here so far. With Christmas and Thanksgiving plus my 90 day visa adventure it seems like a time to look back a little. I've realized some things about myself and all that but that's a whole different post. 

This one is about Mikulas! It's pronounced "Meekoolahsh" but I can't get my keyboard to do all the funky accent marks and stuff. The "s" has a little v over it that means it's pronounced "sh" instead of "s." So anyway Mikulas I think is like St. Nicholas. In Czech Republic every 5 December they celebrate with Mikulas and his helpers. Here's my friend Marek as the saint.

Sorry it's a bit blurry. I've been messing around with my camera trying to figure out how to zoom in and I think I've been taking very short videos instead.  So Mikulas goes around town with his Angel helpers and gives out presents to children. This is in Maranatha so one character got left out. 

For some reason I don't understand Mikulas also has a devil for a helper (not pictured). They've got some wacky folk tale characters that I just quit trying to figure out. Remember this guy? Apparently he's a Vodnik or water sprite that hangs around rivers and drowns people in order to keep their soul in a little ceramic pot. So the devils go around with Mikulas and the Angels in order to hand out the lumps of coal or some equivalent. I think. Again it's hard to follow sometimes. 

But so Marek was Mikulas at Maranatha. It's a really nice tradition actually. All the parents bring their kids so they all get to have Mikulas give them a present in front of the whole Church. There is catch though. Mikulas won't just give you a present. Check this out.
The kiddies have to sing a song or say a rhyme first. Some of them are shy and some are not but it's all adorable and the parents get to have some nice pictures. Oh yeah that big guy in the back is the head Angel. I don't know the characters name. But anyway it was a really nice little get together. Here's some more photos of everybody.

This is in the main sanctuary at Maranatha.

Na slchedanou "good bye"

Guess Where I Went!

Yeh I know. You can't tell much by this picture. Here's the thing. I don't like taking pictures where people can see me doing it and looking like a big dumb tourist. I had gotten over it a bit but I haven't taken pictures in a while so I backslid a bit. Also my camera is not very good at wide shots. Unless you're right up on something you can't really tell anything. 

So anyway I went to Dublin. It's very cool town. I had to get out of the Schengen area to get a new 90 days on my passport. It's a long story and I've told it a million times so I really don't feel like going into detail. Basically all of the EU on the Continent of Europe is like one big country as far as visas go. In the old days you could just pop over to Germany for the afternoon and get a new 90 days. Now you have to go a lot further. Hence my trip to Dublin. I really don't mind. You know it's tough but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do and go to one of the coolest cities in the world for the weekend. 

That photo is of the street where I stayed my last night. (Another long story) They've already decorated for Christmas. I think those lights say "Happy Christmas" in Irish. One cool thing. Who knew? They still speak Irish in Ireland. It's not like you hear it on the street much or anything. But all the signs are in Irish and English. I was very bad about taking pictures I'll fess up right now. I kind of felt like this was a reconnoissance trip for future times when I can get someone to go with me or meet me there.  By the way, flights on Aer Lingus are very cheap to Dublin if anyone out there would care to make a trip around, say, March 25? Nudge nudge wink wink.

I did take some photos of graffiti that I thought was awesome. 

I can't be totally for sure but I think this is a Banksy. He's a famous (in Graffiti circles anyway) artist.  I don't know if that's his tag next to the cowboy. Anyway this looks like Bansky's work and he's British so it could very well be his. I just like this sort of stuff. The city doesn't seem to mind either. He is kinda famous. I got a couple of other ones that looked like his work. Check it out. 

I don't think he did the "Vote No" part. That's about the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland voted against it even though all their politicians were for it. Czech Republic has yet to decide on it. I don't know how it will shake out. Lisbon basically would create a United States of Europe. I don't have the brainpower for that one right now. I just dig the picture of Arnold Drummond. Oh and the ribcage. I can't get enough bones for some reason. 

This last one is my favorite though.

Maybe it's not your cup o' tea. That's cool. No accounting for taste as they say. 

Insomniackin'

So I'm having trouble sleeping and I'm trying to prepare for my class tomorrow (Friday). I'll probably look a bit like this guy by then.

This class is much less talkative than my other classes so I've got to have a really big bag of tricks. I downloaded a couple podcasts with funny stories that I can play for them and pause for questions and vocabulary. I have no idea if it will work but it was great fun listening to them. 

First up was This American Life it's an NPR show and therefor a bit lefty but it's still a quality show. The latest episode has a bunch of verbal histories recorded by Studs Terkel about The Great Depression. It's fascinating to hear the old cadences and speech patterns of folks from that time. 

This got me surfing around for podcasts on iTunes. I'd rather not be a shill for Apple but there's so much cool stuff on there! I found a podcast of Hardcore History that talks about how different the world would be if things went differently in 1066 among other cool speculative stuff.
That lead me to an Ancient & Medieval History podcast with Beowulf and other super cool stuff that I can nerd out on for hours and hours. If I'm lucky I may get some use out of these for my classes but if not it's still worth it.

Elections and whatnot

OK so I'm going to indulge myself at your expense once again. It may take me a while to get to my point but please bear with me. I really do have a point to make and I'm not venting hostility or anything. 

                            Is it? I really hope so.

Obviously the elections are the big news. Here in CR they only really heard about Obama. McCain was pretty much ignored. Well it's over now so it doesn't really matter I don't guess. I might as well have full disclosure. I did not want Obama to win. I have serious doubts about what he really believes. But he's going to be the President now so I might as well get used to it. As I've been thinking more and more on this I have found some hope in the result.

For a long time now American politics have been nasty. I went to Washington in 1998 just in time for Clinton to get impeached. I voted for him but felt that he should resign for embarrassing himself and our country the way he did. I saw the way Democrats seemed to forget principals they argued strongly for simply to keep their guy in power. I was working for a Republican Congressman for whom I had and still have very high respect and admiration. I saw that these politicians were good people but any time people with differing points of view try to do anything there will be conflict. They are still people with flaws like anybody else and sometimes they screw up. This did not keep me from being as extreme and vehement in my dislike of Clinton as any of some of the worst folks though.

Then in 2000 things just got worse. With the whole recount business the tables turned. All the impotent rage we conservatives had for Clinton and the Dems was taken up by many people against Bush. I was working for a lobbying firm by that time and we could not figure out why the other side could not just acknowledge that Bush won fair and square. There was no attempt to come together from either side it seems to me now.

The term conservatives have is Bush Derangement Syndrome. In fairness those of us on the right had some Clinton Derangement Syndrome in our time as well.

But when 9/11 happened everything changed. This is obvious of course but it seemed that there were much more serious things to worry about than scoring political points. My friends in New York were forced out of their homes and were stuck with the fear that something else might happen. I remember talking on the phone with my buddy when in the middle of the call he said, "Someone said there's a bomb, gotta go" click. It was a false alarm but in the days right after that happened frequently.

I was at work in DC in our office on Pennsylvania Ave when it happened. It was so surreal that I wasn't scared or anything. It seemed like a movie or something. These things just don't happen. The office manager came around and pointed out that since we were a block from the FBI building and about 3 blocks from the Whitehouse that we would close down and go home rather than take any chances. I was more worried that our house guests hadn't left yet and that I'd get to see them before they took off. Pretty silly when I think about it now. I took the subway home. It didn't occur to me that it might not be safe. They were shut down not long after I got home.

Our house guests were a rock band from London who were supposed to play a concert in New York on Wednesday, September 12. Needless to say they did not leave. We just all sat and watched TV and tried to call our parents. No luck on that front. No cell phones could get through and even the landlines were overloaded.  Watching the towers fall on TV did not seem real. It just would not sink in. Then the news reported that one of the attorneys from our office was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. I just could not believe it. I didn't know her well but I did see her everyday. It's terrible but it never seemed to make an impression on me. She just wasn't at work anymore. That changed when we all went to her memorial service. That someone like her could be murdered like that made all those arguments we had with the "lefties," as we called them, seem petty and stupid. It looked like maybe we would come to reality and see that we were really on the same side.

Of course it didn't last. Many people now like to say they knew Iraq was a mistake from the start, that there were no WMDs etc. I'm not going to belabor that argument. But thanks to that war and the way it was prosecuted Bush Derangement Syndrome came back with a vengeance. I feel like it's unfair to Bush but what can you do? He didn't really help himself all that much either. But we seemed to be stuck with the negativity and meanness that politics had become.

So while I did not support Obama I am hopeful that we might be able to get past that. I think that since he won decisively it is clear that the country wants to move past the bitterness we've had in politics. Republicans are showing a willingness to call a truce. It's clear the country did not want what they represented. Hopefully they have gotten that message and will reform accordingly. Obama's acceptance speech is a good start. He seems to want to be magnanimous and is not looking to settle scores or punish his rivals.

If I'm going to be totally honest I do not think we would have this opportunity had McCain won. I just don't see Congressional Democrats the Moveon.org types being good losers. But we don't have to worry about how they'd have taken an Obama loss. Websites like 52 to 48 With Love are a good sign that since their guy won people on the left are willing to be friends again. I think everybody wants politics to be more civil. 

While I disagree that the USA was bad or had anything to apologize for, Obama's election is a signal to people that disliked America that we really are good people. So I may rankle a bit at the implication that we need to rehabilitate our image it's worth it if Obama is the leader he says that he is. He has the good will of everybody right now. I pray that God gives him the wisdom to say yes to his opponents in Congress when he can, to say no to his supporters when he should and that both sides will give him a fair chance to lead. And I pray both sides will come together and put away the animosity of the last 10 years. 

With the exception of the Russian President, the whole world appears to be feeling a lot better about America. Let's pray Obama can live up to those expectations. I'm cautiously optimistic that he can. Or at least I want to be. 

Dessert

Lest anyone think I'm having a hard life over here I just wanted to show you my dessert I'm having today. 

Yep, it tastes as good as it looks. They really like their sweets here in CR. Every supermarket as about 2 isles devoted to candy bars and chocolate. This one is some kind of mixed berry something or other. It's not really a tart or a cake. It's sort of like a pie with no crust. The little sign it was behind in the case said "Ovocny Rez" I have no idea what that means and when I said it to the waitress she made me point out what I wanted so maybe it means "Dessert" or something general. Oh the joys of monolingualism!

First Week Ever

So I've gotten through the first week. What have I learned so far?

1. I speak to fast.

2. I speak too much.

3. When someone looks you in the eye and nods, they may or not understand a word you said.

4. People here like to talk about politics.

5. People want to speak English but are not good with open ended questions. 

6. I really need to find some things about which I can ask specific questions.

7. I've got a long way to go. 

There's plenty more but #7 sort of catches all that. 

I went through the whole week asking each class if they had anything they wanted to talk about that day or at any time in the future. You could hear a pin drop. Then on Friday I got through a whole class in the same manner when Petr Konopik came to my rescue. He's one of the first people I met here. He helped put in the swings and leads the music from time to time. He stopped me and said, "I have a question about something that is not on the topic we are speaking on." Then went on to suggest a few things he would like to work on in future lessons. This opened the floodgate and we got tons of great suggestions. I was like, "Yes finally, thank you Petr!"

So now I've got a lot more to go on. I'm pretty optimistic about how things are going. I've got about three classes with about 10 people and a few with one or two. So I've got a good mix of things to do so it won't (hopefully) get into a rut. 

On a little side note. My wifi signal mysteriously went to nothing yesterday so I don't know how much I can post for a little while. Not that I was burning up the bandwidth as it is. I'm in a cafe around the corner from my apartment. Hi!

Oh this week is their 4th of July in a way. The current Republic was founded on 28 October 1918. It's not as big a deal here as 4th of July I don't think. Nobody seems to be all that workd up. But they do get the day off and so I might also. Although I only had one girl on Tuesday last week and she might be switching to a different day anyway. I may have every Tuesday off for all I know. 

Na Shledanou!

I'm Popeye the sailor man, I live in a garbage can. . .

That's not commentary on my living conditions. My apartment is quite nice. But that's how the little song we sang when I was a kid goes. I can't remember all the permutations of it. The only one I can remember is

I'm Popeye the sailor man
I live in a garbage can
I eat all the worms and spit out the germs
I'm Popeye the sailor man. Woo Wooo!

So why am I reminiscing about silly playground songs from my childhood? I ate big ol' plate of spinach today, that's why! For those of you that don't know me this is a big deal. So big that I would actually waste your time in my blog with it. I'm not big on green stuff unless it's a pepper of some sort. And leafy green stuff is an even bigger challenge. Then when you take said leafy green stuff and cook it for hours, I'm even less likely to eat it. Eeeww!

Well today I had an English class at Maranatha from 9:00-11:00 in the morning. Every Thursday they have a Communion then everyone eats lunch together. It's a really cool thing they do here. So I stuck around for that stuff after my class.

When I sat down to eat though I got an unpleasant surprise. The gave me a plate that looked a lot like this. So of course the first thing I thought was, "Uh-oh, that looks a lot like spinach. Oh that's not good. " But when someone is nice enough to offer you food you eat it. You don't turn your nose up like some spoiled brat. So I made up my mind that I'd just suck it up and power through the meal and hope that the dumplings, knedliky in Czech, would make the rest of it eatable.  Then I started eating it and I was like, "Oh. . . this is good! It must be something else. Maybe it's a bunch of chopped parsley and herbs. Alright! I can eat this, I can do it!"  So after I'd eaten about half of it I asked Slavo what it was. He said, "Spinach, duh!" Actually didn't say "Duh." I don't think they know that word here. But it seemed obvious to him that it was spinach and of course it was.

By the way, Czechs eat really fast. At these Thursday lunches I'm always the last one to finish. I don't know how they do it. Even the little old ladies eat faster than I do. And lunch is the main meal of the day here so the portions are quite large. They are an amazing people. They must think I'm a sissy. 

Anyway, the English classes are going well. It's looking like most people don't want to work with text books and do drills all class long. I'm psyched because that means we will get to talk about general stuff they like to talk about and I can learn what's going on here. Assuming of course that I can trick them into telling me what they like to talk about. But it's coming along and I'm getting much more comfortable with it everyday. 

More to come 

I'm a teacher now, or that's what I tell people anyway.

The classes are going pretty well. I had two today (Wednesday). It's really hard to get Czech people to talk. You can ask them questions and they just look at you with a totally blank expression on their face. It's pretty funny. Anyway I got through a whole class using these text books after I had asked if they wanted to use them or not. Then at the end they all said they didn't want to use the books. It worked out fine. They all just want to work on conversation and pick up a few new words that way. Which is great but the trick is getting them to talk. It's much easier when it's just one or two people. You can usually find something they like to talk about. But they won't tell you what they want to talk about. It's a challenge for sure but it is mostly funny to me right now. In bigger groups there's usually one or two people that will speak up but the rest just look at the table. I hope they all come back but I've been told to expect some people to only show up once. Which is a bummer.  But even after just three days and four classes I'm already much more comfortable with the whole deal.

Sorry no photos this time either. When I know my students are going to stick around I will try to get them to let me take their photos for the blog. Hopefully they'll be more cooperative than some people (wink wink) I know.

The Big Day

Well here it is. I've got my first English class in about an hour. Slavo and I have been getting it all organized and now it's finally going to happen. 

Fortunately I've got books to follow so I won't have to wing it. This class is made up of adults that want a more structured, grammar oriented lesson. That's cool we can do that. No problem. I hope. 

What will be tricky are the ones without the books. So far we don't have any but if teenagers start to come they will not want to do grammar 'cause they get so much at school and the teachers here apparently are not very nice. Evidently it's a bit scary to speak up in class because they get on your case if you're wrong. I have heard that many of English teachers were Russian or German teachers before and don't like teaching English. I hope that's not true.  But hopefully I can make it fun for everybody. I certainly won't be giving anyone a hard time for being wrong.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

I love Muppets

OK so this is totally out of nowhere I know. But I came across some Muppet Show stuff on youtube. I always loved the Muppets. Never got into Fraggle Rock though. I'm that old that it was after my time. Ooof! That hurts.

Anyway it may seem dumb now but the Muppet Show was so great.
 

They had Dizzy Gillespie on singing Swing Low (Sweet Cadillac).  So we little dudes and dudettes got some culture. Check it out!  Just click here to see the video. Then come back so we can discuss. Make sure you come back though. It will be tempting to watch a bunch of Muppet Show and Dizzie Gillespie videos. It's cool I know but come back. You can play with that stuff later.

So that was so totally awesome! Wasn't it?

So maybe, just maybe Sesame Street and The Muppet Show contributed to me having a short attention span and the erroneous idea that learning should always be fun. It's totally worth it! I don't know if there's a DVD of the old show but there absolutely should be. One day I would like to have kids so I can show them stuff like this. That's not the only reason of course, no no. I'm not a complete weirdo. 

Hey! I'm not! Really! I know what y'all are thinking.

Bye Bye

Karlovy Vary

So this is the lovely town of Karlovy Vary in western Bohemia. It's about 30 minutes from the border with Germany.  This means it has a very different feel from Plzen for many reasons that I will get into. The town is famous in this part of the world for the hot springs and the spas that grew up around them. King Charles discovered the hot spring hundreds of years ago. Karlovy Vary was a favorite vacation destination for Peter The Great of Russia. As a result Russians love to come here. 

In fact the Russians have a huge impact here. For one thing, well I might as well go back to the beginning of what I know. For as long as anyone could remember Germans and Czechs lived in Karlovy Vary and got along fine.  But when Hitler rose to power he saw it as something he could use. The infamous Munich Agreement, you know "Peace in our time" and all that gave this part of the Republic, the famous Sudetenland, to Germany and the nazis. 

As one might expect there were lots of hard feelings at the end of WWII and all the Germans were kicked out. They were literally driven from their homes. So as the Communists took over the Russians again began to impose on the Czechs here. Apparently they filled the vacated German homes with people from Bulgaria and Serbia and wherever they felt like shipping people in from. I hope I'm not boring anyone with the history lesson but it really explains the way things are now for me. 

One of the things the commies did in every town was to build a huge "cultural center" building in town. It was mostly a way for them to say that "We have all the power and will do what we want." They built a big ol' building right on top of the hot springs.  Here I am in my embarrassing tourist pose.

The whole building is mostly glass except for that wall behind me to the right. What you can't tell from the picture is that on the other side of the wall just across the street is the Russian Orthodox Church. They very obviously blocked the Church on purpose just to show disrespect. There's no functional reason to put a brick wall up where they did. It's just there to say, "We are in control here." 

So anyway now the Russians are back. But now they're just gangster businessmen. During the communist era many of the buildings were allowed to run down. They're 100s of years old remember. Now Russians are bringing tons of money into the town and things are being fixed up which is great. But the Russians kind of own the town now which understandably rubs the Czechs the wrong way. 

Even with all that it is a very nice little town and one of the most beautiful I've ever been in. You really feel like your big "E" Europe here.  I mean just look at it. 

A couple other notable things are that movies are filmed here from time to time because it's so pretty. Casino Royale, the James Bond movie was filmed here. This building below is the actual "Casino Royale" where he was playing poker or whatever. 

One of the most famous buildings which I did not take a picture of was the Grand Hotel Pupp (pronounced Poop, hee hee hee) Apparently Last Holiday starring Queen Latifa was filmed there. Deidre says it's a good movie but beyond the Czech landmark I'm not sure it's my kind of thing ;) Oh and James Bond (Daniel Craig) ran down the street in front of the Hotel Pupp in his movie. Just to be sure you know, this picture is not the Pupp. 

As you could see fall is in full swing here in the CR. I'm glad I made it to Karlovy Vary when I did. The trees are really pretty.

I'm very much looking forward to coming back again when the snow comes it should be just as gorgeous. Speaking of gorgeous check out the UMC Church in Karlovy Vary.

Deidre can correct me if I'm wrong but I think her classroom where she does her English lessons in the Church. How awesome would it be to go to work here everyday? Unfortunately they don't have Church services here on Sundays. They've got a really big challenge in Karlovy Vary. Mila and Deidre are doing really well getting teenagers to come in for lessons and camps and whatnot. It's just a really tough place to get people interested in Church. Mila is a pretty amazing guy and does so much good here in KV. I don't know if I explained, Mila is the main representative of the UMC here in Karlovy Vary and "looks after" Deidre. Not that she needs looking after, she can handle herself fine. But I know it's got to be great to have him a minute away. 

So that's pretty much it. Deidre still won't let me take her picture. For some reason she thinks I've been telling everyone that she's late all the time. I must have imagined it or something. She's never late. That whole story about us being late that day in Prague was all my fault. It turns out that nobody ever noticed Deidre being late to anything. So she is not a late person, I fully retract and regret any implication that I may have given to this effect. And I apologize wholeheartedly.  Somehow I think I may have just dug myself a lot deeper.

Greetings from Prague

Hey everybody. Guess what? I'm in Prague!
Don't worry about that dude behind me. He's just some random KFC patron. Yeh, the KFC here has wifi so I thought I'd take the opportunity to check in. 

I've come up to Prague to meet with the guy who teaches  English for the HQ UMC Church. It's been really helpful so see how he does things. I'm feeling a little better about getting going. 

Slavo and I have been working on a schedule and price scheme for the classes. All we need now are students and a curriculum. I'm hoping to iron that out this week. 

Shoot, now that I've got the chance I can't really think of much to write about. Prague is a really cool town. The buildings are all pretty amazing. Even the Borg-like commie "Culture Center" building was impressive in an evil Star Trek cyborg army kind of way. 

I did manage to get a better photo of the creepy skull post on the Charles Bridge. Check it out, I have this as my wallpaper on my phone. 

I'm hoping I can get this better image onto it somehow. I feel like I need to hurry up and get out of here. But really in CR they don't care if you linger after a meal. You have to pretty much chase your server down and ask for the bill or they'll let you sit there all night.  Nevertheless, I feel a bit exposed writing on a laptop in KFC.

Well, I'll try to get some photos of the the Church compound here in Prague. It's pretty wild. You could walk past it on the street and not even see it. I've walk past it several times on accident already. (Update: I got some photos after all) But when you get inside the doors there's a whole big courtyard and tons of apartments that belong to the Church. I'm actually staying in a small apartment at the Church while I'm here. It's 200Kc (about $12) a night. Not bad. Especially since Maranatha is paying for it. The only thing is I apparently do not have hot water. Now I took cold showers in Nicaragua and didn't mind a bit. But when it's 50 degrees outside and your water is about -20 you don't really want to get too much of it on you. Therefor I might be pretty funky by the time I get home. 
This is the actual Church.

And these below are some of the apartments owned by Church. They were burned in a fire a few weeks ago and they've been working to get them restored ever since. My apartment was not up there but over by the Church.

I may be even funkier because I'm thinking about swinging over to Karlovy Vary to visit Deidre before I head back to Plzen. She has started her classes so I kind of want to see how they're doing things over there.  She thinks we'll be doing vastly different kinds of lessons. I'm sure she's right but I still can use all the input I can get my hands on to figure out how to teach the Plzners. 

All right. I think that's going to be it for now. 

Ciao

Progress and Practice

It's been an uneventful week for the most part. But I have made some significant progress. I got a PlzenskaKarta. Which is a pass for the trams. I put that to good use today. I took the picture on the way over to the office to get the card which was an all morning adventure to find. I had as bad a case of bedhead as it's possible for me to have. I admit it may be hard to tell. 

But the best news is that I've actually started doing what I came here to do, officially anyway. I have one English student. She doesn't really even need my help. She speaks quite good English already. But I've been helping her get used to hearing English again. She's going to Texas this week with a couple other women from Maranatha to meet and spend time with their sister Church there. She is putting a Power Point presentation together for the 4 services the Texas Church does every weekend.  I think she said it's one on Saturday evening and three on Sunday. Whew!

I guess she won't mind me telling y'all her name. She's Linda Cechova. Actually she is Vitek's wife. I've mentioned him before. He's a great guy and their children Stepan and Kristina are lot's of fun too. We all went to lunch after Church today. Vitek is well known around Maranatha for being the guy to go to if you want to know the best places to eat. We ended up going back to U Mansfelda again 'cause his favorite Italian place was inexplicably closed. That place is so good. I had wild boar last time. This time I had a wild boar steak. It's different, seriously. This dish has a sauce with cranberries and congac and almonds. Whoowie that's some good pig. Oh and I had bacon knedliky (dumplings) as a side dish.  So good. 

Also one really cool fact. Mila is Vitek's brother. Mila is looking after the other American, Deidre in Karlovy Vary, a town about an hour from Plzen. Their father is a well known artist here in Plzen.  He painted this huge mural.

In this painting are all famous Plzners. On the right is a guy that created a famous marionette, the guy climbing up on the ladder invented electric street lights and there's all kinds of significant people.  I don't know if y'all have noticed but if you click on the pictures you can see a much bigger version in which you can pick out a lot more detail. I highly recommend it here. This mural is so cool.  There's actually a guide to show you who all the famous dudes are. 

I took a picture of the text but it's in Czech so it won't do any good anyway.  There is so much public art and a lot of it is 100s of years old. So it's especially awesome that Vitek's Dad has such respect that they want him to do something this huge and this significant. All Czechs are fiercely proud of their cultural heroes and each town is very proud of their local historical figures.  

It's funny now that I've been here for a little while I'm starting to get used to stuff. But every once in a while I walk by something like this and I'm like, "Whoah! Holy cow! That's right I'm in Europe!" This kind of stuff is all over the place. 

There are also a few reminders that I'm in Eastern Europe in particular. There is a "Culture Center" that was built during the communist time and it is about as soul crushingly ugly as would only fit with communist architecture. 

People can laugh now about how ugly the commie buildings are which is nice. But they haven't forgotten how bad it really was either. 

This is an exhibit in the main square of town. It is a representation of a concentration camp that was operated by the Czech Communists. Not the Nazis.  The photos are the file photos of actual victims. Their names and portions of their stories are in the exhibit. 

As you can see the exhibit covers the years after WWII up until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. There were students as well as people old enough to be their grandparents that were taken. Also many, many Priests and clergy were put in the camps. Basically anyone that may at all be suspected of being against the regime could be taken. This is what the UMC faced in Czech Republic. Vitek was saying that Maranatha consisted of 3 old ladies during these years. 

But at least this ended. After the Velvet Revolution people swarmed back to the Churches. I've covered a lot of this before I know. But apparently many people started drifting off after a while. Unfortunately many of the people that became Pastors right after the revolution have since left the Church. We don't really know why. 

So enough of the gloom and doom portion of the show. Things are going well. I used my new tram card to do some aimless wandering.  There are 4 tram lines so I hopped on #1 and just rode it to the last stop. Guess what? It's awesome! There's a big park right where you get out.  It's not that far but check it out! It's like you out in the wilderness!  . . . sorta

It was nice to be able to get out in some trees though. I start to get a little twitchy if I'm cut off from them for too long. Here's some proof.  I can't ever tell when my camera is actually taking a picture. I was too busy looking around to make sure nobody saw me taking my own picture like a big loser. 

I guess I might as well go all the way with it.  My Mom likes it when I put pictures of myself in here so bear with me. 

Hi Mom!

So I had a fun day. I also got some good news about the whole teaching thing too. Slavo, who will be my new neighbor starting in October, has taught English before and is totally fluent and all that. He's Czech. Anyway Pastor Petr told me today that Slavo said he'll put together some lesson plans for me that I can use to teach English to Maranatha folks. The upshot of all this is that I should finally start to have a regular schedule of classes to teach. Having Linda Cechova as my only student is really nice but it will be good to really get down to business. 

Here we go! Hopefully. 

Egghead Time

OK so I'm going to be all tedious and philosophical this time. I don't have any pictures or funny observations (that I know of) so please bear with me.

I went to an English Movie night that's put on by my neighbor Becky as part of her work with Y.Y.M.  Maybe some of y'all know what that is but I admit I can't remember what it stands for. I do know that "Youth" and "Mission(s)" are in the name so that gives a bit of an idea what the organization is like.  

Well the movie we watched was Unbreakable starring Bruce Willis. It's directed by the guy that did The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan. Unbreakable is about a normal guy that discovers that he may in fact have extraordinary abilities. In short that he's a super hero. I happen to think that this is one of the most woefully underrated movies of past 10 years but what do I know?

 Throughout the film nobody can bring themselves to believe it's possible for a guy to have these kinds of abilities. It's a big theme of the movie. The main character goes through a tough process of discovering his abilities and believing that it's actually true. This leads him to a decision of whether or not to use these abilities. 

As we discussed the movie and the things we liked about it this quote (which I can't remember exactly so I'll paraphrase it) came up. "People can easily believe something that is impossible but cannot at all believe something that is only improbable." This got me to thinking. 

Whenever a believer (a character that thinks Bruce Willis has superpowers) in the film tries to convince someone that he really has these abilities they are resistant. People do not want to believe that someone may be extraordinary. Why is this? There are people (some of my friends among them) that do not want to believe in God, any God, much less Jesus. Why? I have not always been a Christian but I've always wanted to be. I've doubted, I still struggle with it from time to time. But my desire for God to be real and for Jesus to have really died for my sins has been constant. A world without God is pointless, hopeless, cold and empty to me. Why do so many people seem to be comforted by the idea of a Godless world? How could this be preferable to an eternal life full of love?

What is so threatening about the idea of God? C.S. Lewis was a notorious Atheist in his earlier life. But even he wanted to believe. He felt that the Christian story was a beautiful myth. A way of explaining things that were unexplainable to people of the time. The story goes that J.R.R.Tolkien (my hero) and another of The Inklings (I think it was Charles Williams but I'm not sure) locked themselves in a room with Lewis one night and refused to leave until they convinced him that God was real and he could in good conscience believe in Christianity. It worked obviously. I like to flatter myself that I could be Tolkien to some of my friends' C.S. Lewis. The big difference is that my friends do not want to believe it. How do you get past that? 

I feel like if I could crack the mystery of the desire to disbelieve I could get past it. Really I can only just be the best friend to them I can and always treat them with respect and love. But what is so threatening about Belief? I don't have an answer. So far all I can come up with is that once we believe in Jesus we have a responsibility to live accordingly. It's not a set of rules, "Do this, this and this. Don't do that, that or that." But you can't just pass the buck and say, "Not my problem" anymore. You can't help but feel your connection to people and want to help. The easy thing to do is just be out for yourself and the suffering of others does not affect you. You answer only to yourself. But at the end of the day you're alone.  Is being your own master really so attractive that it is better to die than to serve a higher purpose and have an eternal life? 

I don't mean to make this about being scared of death. But obviously if you do not believe in God then you believe that once you die that's it. You're worm food. I know that being Christian makes life worth living and gives us a much richer experience that we could ever have on our own in a random world of accidents and moral relativity. But there are many very smart people (smarter than me for sure) that prefer that very existence. Being agnostic I can understand. It does not take any amount of faith to say you don't know the answers. But atheists are just as sure (and in many cases much more certain) that they have the answer. They have figured out the true nature of the universe. Really, believing in God is also accepting the mystery of creation and acknowledging that we humans do not have all the answers.  

I'm sure there are Christians out there that think they've got it all down. The whole "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" thing. Probably many atheists think that this is what it means to be a Christian. That's one area I know I can change things with my friends. Some people have never known an actual Christian for whom they had any respect. I like to believe that's just 'cause they haven't known many genuine Christians. So when we let our light shine they can see the source, hopefully. But how do you crack that barrier of just not wanting to believe? 

So I'm not any closer to an answer now am I? I guess not. One of those myriad people smarter than me is this guy Michael Novak. He's written a book called No One Sees God that seems to cover this exact topic I've been rambling on about. I haven't read it but he has an article on National Review Online about it. I think it's definitely worth checking out. His article is mostly about the argument for Belief. I've basically just said many of the same things. So much for my big original insights. But it doesn't really attack the answer to the question "Why do atheists not want to believe in God?"  

Since I don't have the answers obviously I invite anyone and everyone to put their two cents in the comments. I'm all ears!

Big Weekend cont'd

OK so now I'm really going to talk about Sunday. I hope. 

Sunday we all went to Church in the morning of course. David talked about the Team's week and all the close connections they made. Very nice. Then we all went down to Vitek's jewelry shop so the Team could get some stuff. Vitek makes his own jewelry at his shop. It's really cool to see him work, he's a true artist. He also has some antique jewelry too btw. I left the guys there though because I had to go get ready for The Picnic.

We had a family day out at a park in town. I finally got to play fotbol! Yeehaw! It was fun but it really showed how bad out of shape I am. I managed to hold up alright though. Somehow at the end of our game it was 6 on 3. Three Petrs (including myself) against Vitek and a horde of kids and adults both. I think we won though. I can't remember for sure but we played much harder then. Tons of fun. 

Then we retired to the playground and fire for lunch etc. 

This is the fireplace where we roasted, you guessed it, sausages. I can't say how I am glad at  how much Czechs love sausage. Sausage has always been one of my favorite things to eat. I never get tired of it. So I've come to the right place. 

Sausage wasn't the only thing on the menu that day though. Periodically this loud blaring music would ring out like a demonic ice cream truck and shock everyone into silence. At which point some unknown purveyor would sing "Laaan-goshe!" Then then everybody would laugh. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then Vitek came up to the table with this stuff that kind of looked like a pizza, if pizzas were made by Lunchables sized for adults.  It was a piece of fried bread (yum) with ketchup (eeew!) with some unmelted cheese on top of that. Believe it or not it's pretty tasty. Nobody believed me though when I kept saying I liked it. 

All in all it was quite a pleasant little picnic. We were intruded upon by a beggar though. Just look at this shameless miscreant!

Just look at him! Food all in his beard! Giving us those "sad puppy dog" eyes! Shameless I tells ya! He did get some sausage before he was through though. Weiner dogs are popular here for some reason. Go figure. This guy was pretty funny. 

I planned on getting a picture of the kids in their natural habitat playing on playground but they spotted me.

These are the Prochazka kids, Petr, Barbara, and Karla. They lined up like good little kids when they saw me. I tried to get them to just go play but they don't speak much English so I just went ahead and took the picture. They crack me up. Whenever I run into them they do a bit of a double-take while they remember how to say "Hello" or "Good Morning" in English. They think it's hilarious to say "My name is. . . " in English.  Petr has the makings of a legendary "preacher's son" by the way. On the way to the park, Ivana, their Mom was teaching one of the kids words with that rolling R sound sort of like some Spanish words. I was like, "This is great! I need practice with this!" It was comforting to learn that some of their weird 6 consonant in a row words give them trouble too. Even if it's just the little kids. 

But the picnic wound down and it was time to get home and get ready for the farewell dinner for the Team. 
The dinner was at U Mansfelda, an old (I'm guessing it's old, everything else here is too) restaurant that serves traditional Czech food.  That's Karl in the white shirt. And of course I got the back Petr Balous. That's Mirek on the right. I had wild boar with the Czech dumpling assortment. Boy was it good. Oh so you think I should have gotten veggies? This is Czech Republic! Actually the boar came with a little salad on the plate which I promptly ignored. I could have been worse though. One guy had fried cheese as his main dish with french fries on the side and he was Czech. John sat next to me and got Trout. Believe it or not it tastes a lot like American trout according to him. John was on a quest to get carp at some point during his trip. 

In CR it is a long standing tradition to have Christmas Carp. Every year people go a buy a live carp. You know those things are huge. Anyway, they keep it in the bath tub for a week or so to let it's (aherm) system (ahem) clear out.  The kids play with it and all that fun stuff. Then they eat it on Christmas day. I'm so looking forward to that! Uh, not really. Well because of this John was curious to see how they prepare the notoriously gross-tasting fish. Alas it was not on any menu the whole time he was here. Which to me just proves that nobody actually likes to eat those nasty things they just do it for tradition. 

Well dinner was finished and dessert gotten through and the party broke up. I rode back with team to drop them off at Hotel Plzen.
Here's the gang again once more. Kellie, Serena, Karl, David and John. I only really got to hang out with them for a weekend but felt like I'd known them for a long time. I'm glad to say they're keeping in touch. They all got home OK (with a few adventures in customs). I really appreciate their openness and how they took Deidre and me in. We're all on the same Big Team.  Thanks guys.

pax