stop asking... here

well...

I've been teaching.  All the preparation finally has purpose.  Our schedules appear to be changing quite often, but i thiiiiiink i have an idea of what my year will look like.

I began working in the Elementary school.  I have a 1st grade class, a 3rd grade class, and a 5th grade class...all of which i teach twice a week.  They are adorable and fun of course... but im having a bit of trouble in the discipline area....  Their teachers tell me to make them fear me in the beginning.  That feels impossible really.  I was supposed to assistant teach, but i think the czech teachers were excited for a break because so far they have all left the room and told me to teach every time i have been there.  And although it is just so easy to come up with really great fun and educational lesson plans on the spot....Ive started to plan ahead a bit.  I lost my voice, yet the teacher still wanted me to teach her class.  As i began, Andre interrupts and says, "You sound like your dying."  Dev then adds in "Why dont you just clear your throat?"  Brilliant, why didnt i think of that?

I have two one on one classes and am enjoying both.  I am grateful to have such kind and flexible students! 

This next week i start three new classes.  A youth class of 15 students, an adult class of 7 and another adult class of 6.  I'm hoping they are as great as the classes I have had so far. 

A few weekends ago we went to Prague!!! It was magical and beautiful and overwhelming to stand in front of history like that.  We walked around the New Town Square, and The Old Town Square, and saw the clock, and the castle, and we crossed the Charles bridge and rode paddle boats, and went in the church of our lady before tyn, and and drank wine on a hill overlooking the city, and went dancing, and played in a park.... and more.  Oh and we stayed with friends in their mansion of a place which was fun.  One, because their place is cool, and two, because they are too..

Back in Ostrava, we also went to Younglifes first movie night of the new year and met a bunch of highschoolers and leaders.  It felt like home...like ThElement.  I think i want to get involved with it.  Then we went out with some people to Stodolni for beers and dancing, which, of course, was fun! 

Other updates - 

-Lyds semi cut back on her chocolate craze.  She is still failing at many things and it is still amusing, although ive had a few of my own failures to add in as well.  

-We are still laughing through life....especially at the random things that keeping occuring (taking trams and walking home holding large pieces of vacuums and a huge box of corn flakes.) 

-Its cold!  Its only september geez.

-My cell phone is prettty much just for show.  It can't call, or receive calls.  The three button doesn't work, and apparently neither does the alarm since i have now overslept twice for class.  Apparently in two weeks i will have a shiny new one and i will call someone with it!  

-Our washing machine does not work. (We will be getting  a new one no worries.)  Since i moved here a month ago my clothes are a months worth of dirty.... So today i finally decided to hand washed some of them in our bathtub, wiped the sweat from my brow and wondered what year it was.  Maybe it was because i had just finished doing the dishes by hand too.  :)  

-We are going to Prague "for work" again this weekend.   

-We got our visas!!!! woot woot.  

ok that is more than enough for you to read.  

who knew

I too am a TERRIBLE speller. And even worse at grammar yet now its my job to not suck at those things. ha! It will be an interesting year for me. 

People have been lovely and hospitable and had us over to their homes for feasts.... i've spent two weeks eatting and my pants are already tight...fried, sweets, whole milk, various forms of bread, beer, chocolate.... 

lydia is a disaster!  She falls, trips, gets hurt, breaks things, has to redo things, gets lost, tye dyes clothes, the list continues... its amazing. We just keep saying "Fail" and laughing hysterically. I love it. 

Fishnet contracted with an Elementary school for the first time this year and they are letting me work there! So mon-thur i will be there for two of their classes and I am so excited. Ive already started a one on one class with woman and i think its going good. I have to get the rest of my sched next week.... it should be community classes and teaching at businesses. 24 hours of class total.  But it takes me so long to plan plus teach myself freakin grammar things that its at least 40 hours. 

oh annnnd - my boss is wanting to start making enligh teaching videos that are more fun and funny then the ones out there and has created a green screen room at the school. On my first real day of work he asked us to help him with a practice shoot to check lighting and such...Yet .we ended up having to get in wardrobe (flight attendants!) and be in a few scenes about airport security and the body.  DId i mention about his black face character? He's called Jon Bourno. He paints himself black with a fro.... this is the character he wants to use to teach for the videos. ha!  One of his music videos has this character....You tube.... kuličky štěstí and the song called Stydlivý.  Not a normal first day of work, but really fun! 

Younglife and the YMCA are here and pair with Fishnet to make lots of community activities so i am going to go check out if there is anything i want to get involved in with them. 

annnd Im leaving today for Prague!  woot woot.  

sidenote - Mullets are big here. And two toned hair. Top one color, bottom another. Bascially every hairdo is just terrible and oh and tragic. People rewear their clothes all the time and nothing matches. Its like 1992 here with the clothes and the music they play in public. 

thats all

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