Lysa Hora is a beast that we have conquered

Lydia's first train ride!!

The hike begins

This is will a nice hike.....

Finally making it up to the top!!  Victory!

We got on a 

train at 8:30am, 

started hiking at 10:05am,  got to the top of the mountain

 at about 1:30pm and celebrated the victory at a pub.  Then at about 2:30-3 started to walk down the mountain, realized we went the wrong way after about a mile, went back up the mountain and re-descended the mountain again.  Once finally at the bottom there was some "Music and Juggling" festival, which really meant techno and reggae music with lots of dreaded and plugged teens.  We made it back to the train at 6pm.  Lysa Hora is the tallest mountain around here and it basically took us all day, and although i now have no control over my stomach or leg muscles, i think it was absolutely beautiful 

and well worth it.

Also.... 

You can eat fruit along the way

AND....lydia, while climbing down the mountain, tripped over a rock, over-compensated, fell horizontal, and log rolled down some rocks.  I cried laughing on the spot.  Then again on the train home.  Then before i went to sleep.  And one more time at church this morning.  

I think we will have lots of fun together this year :) 

photo update

These are some views out of our windows.  There is also a picture of our living room and one of part of my room.  Then there is lydia at our elevator (because we are 16 flights up) and then an outside view of our place.  :)

my new address:

Fishnet, s.r.o.,
Havlíčkovo nábřeží 23
702 00 Ostrava 1

Send me snailmail!  And if you want you can send me orbit (dark green) gum, crystal light (wild strawberry) or mixed cd's so i can enjoy new tunes.

   

Dont feel like you have to ever send anything, I know its inconvenient and expensive, so no worries :)

week one is over

just a few, basic things to dance about:

     Lyd and I flipped a flat into a cuddly new home for ourselves

     I found a sushi restaurant!!!  run by asians!!!!

     My boss is a rock star and his funky latina ecstatic music makes me happy

         (you can watch his videos on you tube, ill write the address later)

     I figured out the trick to get in my front door so it doesnt take 10 minutes anymore

     I sleep the biggest bed i have ever had

     Fishnet workers are lovely and helpful and my boss is crazy multi-talented

     The zoo here is amazing...i got to see elephants! and dinosaur-sized rhinos and hippos, 

                 and a red panda which i didnt know existed and that i almost stole

     Stodolni looks like lots of fun...street of bars, restaurants, venues and discos..and chicken

 sandwhich vendors 

     Tonight i am going to "cardio dance" with jonna

    Coffee always comes with cookies or chocolate  mmmmm

    I have a real work desk! and finally get to go into the "teachers office" 

    We get a good amount of long weekends in the year for potential adventures!

   Lydia asked "where is the egg"  instead of "where is the bathroom" - ha!

blogging is hard especially now with no internet at my house, but i will try to do it more and with better detail soon :)  

     

ostrava= home

lydia wrote this:

ok. we got here at noon. shamrock and adam picked us up (fellow teacher, adam is boss). took us to our flat which is quite large for 2 small girls. we are blessed and uber lucky. we unpacked a little and rearranged... showered... then shamrock came and took us to a super cute retro cafe where we got coffee and desserts and talked for a couple hours. his english is superb. at 930pm, after over a day of no sleeping (minus restless on the airplane), our eyes were shutting - so we went home and slept together - very soundly until 11am. at about 1pm shamrock and adam picked us up and took us to eat in the very cute city center. then adam went back to work and thus began our "transportation orientation" - we have the basics down, have a monthly tram pass, can ask for a bus ticket in czech (jidenku patnact minuto, prosim), have our stop memorized (dum energitiky), went to ikea for sheets that aren't big enough for our bed, came home and hung out w/ shamrock and randomly saw fireworks over the city from out 7th story flat and then gina and i chatted and rearranged the night away in our flat. at 3am we forced ourselves to lie down. note - not tired AT ALL at that point. today we woke up at about 10am and went to tesco agaion (basically - walmart) and spent more money on food and flat essentials (hooks, cleaners, apples (jablko), toilet paper, colored pencils, a fan - no air conditioning here, stuff) and are now at librex - bookstore and internet cafe.

so - our boss is a rockstar - literally - he's been in a band for like 9 years which he described as "funky, latina, ecstatic" and lucky for us - they have a show tonight -- so we're going to that at like 6pm. one of their songs made it big a few years ago and they were on the "czech mtv". pretty stoked about that.

i have never laughed as hard (minus me and twig's trip to nyc) as i have this past month/ week here. everything is funny. our door hates us to get in our apartment - i literally cannot open it. gina has to do it. there's some special trick to it that it refuses to let me in on. so we sit there and giggle for 5 minutes and barter our lives away with the door telling it that we live there and we're allowed in. it's ridiculous. funny for now - i'm sure it will make me cry one day.  

i think in english and spanish - hardly ever czech. i said "uno momento" to some random czech the other day. i think "con" for with. minds and languages are bizzare-o that they do that. i'll be happy when i think in english and czech and not spanish. i've said "si" several times instead of "ano". i'm pretty good at saying "prosim" - universal polite word and "dekuji" - thank you.

our first experience at tesco our first day -- you have to "rent" and shopping cart and we COULD NOT figure that out for a good 10 minutes and finally used czech well and asked someone. i felt very accomplished when we figured out you needed a deset coin.  we tried a penny - note - doesnt work.  must be czech coin.

we live 7 stories up. for 5 stories going down - it's normal. the last remaining stairs just feel silly and stupid. our views are PHENOM. there are so many windows. it is so nice. 

due to the fact that gina is a creative genius - our living room looks cute and 800% better than when we got there and it's using all stuff that was already in the flat. we have 2 twin beds - like each of us - so we pushed them together in each of our rooms. i've slept w/ her both  nights and we dont' even come near touching. however - the sheets are like 2 inches too small. so that's a problem. i do miss my down comforter mucho. oh there is a slide at the bottom of our building.  really its a ramp but gina uses it as a slide everytime and causes us to giggle all the way to the tram stop.  little things are fun and funny.

the first time in prague should be about a month from now unless we can't hold out. that's when our esi retreat is. next week we have school orientation w/ adam in the morning and city orientation in the afternoon (post office, stores, getting around, etc). our other teammates get in sunday and tuesday - that is very very exciting - jonna on sunday (will be 2nd year here) and laura tuesday (will be 4th year here). we hear great things about them so we should be great friends. 

look on facebook for pics. gina is posting our last days at wciu now and pics of ostrava will come soon. if you look at my friends - premek is shamrock and he has pics up of the city and our school. this should be good for now - probably sick of reading. all is grand here. loving it loving it loving it. all exciting and challenging and delightful and funny. 

oh - we have a washer - no dryer. that should be muy interesante (there's that spanish again.)

love you all