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.