See you soon...

We're closing up shop in the CR. We no longer have convenient net access, so we'll blog more upon our return. We'll talk in a couple of weeks. Blessings.

These are the days

I spent all of Thursday with my good buddy Mira. He's probably my closest Czech friend and, sadly, Thursday was the last bit of time we'll have together before Kate and I head back to America. It was quite a day: we went rollerblading in the hills above the city, demolished one another in bumper cars, hung out at the cheapest hole-in-the-wall of a pub we could find and finished up with a few games of Czech bowling. We also had quite a bit of honest conversation and good Czech beer interspersed throughout our activities and eventually had to part ways. It surprised me how emotionally difficult it was to say goodbye. I've only known Mira for about nine months, but we've become good friends, which is rare in this culture.

Friendship takes time here. Friends are quickly and easily made in the States, but it takes a big investment here for someone to consider you their friend. The upside (as if time investment is a downside) is that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mira is now my friend for life. If I'm ever in Europe again, he'll find a way to get to me. And if he's ever in the States, I'm taking him out for some barbecue and he's crashing on our floor for as long as he wants. Hesky, Mira!

Animals

We're finished teaching and have some down time. Today, it's off to the Prague Zoo with my baby. And tonight, it's chilli at the house with our friend Mira. Good times.

Change is good

Last night: Hung out with a group of students at a pub for the last time(at least with those particular kids).

Tonight: Last installment of Cafe Coze, the youth outreach ministry I've been working with this year.

Everything's wrapping up and winding down. It's definitely difficult, but God's been graceful with the goodbyes. We feel confident that our time here has been well spent.

P.S. In updating the page, I lost the past comments. I should be able to recover them soon, but I'd like to thank Tim and Brent for sharing the musical glory days. I knew you were both rockers at heart.

Making the Band

During the last lesson of my recent unit on music, I separated my students into groups of three and gave them their objective: create a fictional band with your group in which you will choose the name and genre, create a one-page biography, write original lyrics to one song and create a poster or flyer advertising an upcoming concert. I gave them roughly two hours of classtime to complete the project. One of the biographies nearly made me fall out of my chair when I just heard the name. The complete biography that followed made me proud of my students who could be so creative in what is, for most of them, their third language. I edited one or two spelling mistakes, but my favorite reads as follows...

Johnny Cash-Credit Revival
Harmonica - Johnny Accordion
Vocals - Johnny S. Cash
Light Drums - Johnny Pear

We met in kindergarten and have been best friends ever since. When we were 13 years old we made our first project and we were very influenced by or Mormon parents because we were born in Salt Lake City, Utah. And how times go. We grew up and decided to play another style of music - pure techno and our band name was Cradle of Synthetic. With this new project we had big success mainly in Texas (they take every opportunity to include 'Mr. Alpert's huge state' in an assignment). One of our main skills was writing lyrics. Once we met Freddy Mercury from Queen in a special club called the Pink Elephant. We gave him the lyrics of our song, he changed it a little and it became the hit, "We Are the Champions." But our real history started after Freddy's death. Our frontman, Johnny S. Cash, had to spend two months in a mental hospital where he was cured by electric shocks. The pain in our hearts was so big, that we decided to change our music style to Old School Country. Also, we changed our name to the Johnny Cash-Credit Revival because he is our idol! He's a god! He's our guru! And by chance, he has the same name as our frontman. Our big goal is to preserve country music and keep country progressive. Our strong side is our live concert, so come and see us!

You should hear their song.

The hardest kind of goodbye

This is our last week of teaching. I've planned parties in all of my classes in order to end things on a very informal and relaxed note. I've been prepared to say goodbye to these kids. I knew and they knew it was coming. It's definitely hard, but in seeking closure I've been thinking of a great analogy that my friend Sarah came up with a few weeks ago. Life is more of a novel than a collection of short stories. The characters and scenery change, but the story continues and it's all going somewhere. So, it's not the end, it's just the beginning of the next chapter.

So, I've been prepared for this week of goodbyes for quite sometime. Last night, however, I had to say a goodbye that I wasn't quite expecting. My grandmother has had cancer for quite some time and she's already outlived the doctor's expectations. A few months ago, we thought she only had two weeks left. My family's been hopping on and off planes, flying out to California to spend their last time with her. From the information they'd give me, it sounded like she was doing exceptionally well and I truly thought that I'd get to see her when I trek out to California in six weeks. Last night, though, my sister called and said that her kidney has begun to fail and that kidney failure is a much less-painful way to go than by cancer. So, they're letting it take its course and she has about a week left at the most, only a few days of which she may be coherent.

Due to the difficulty in calling and not wanting to have to limit my last conversation with my grandma to a short phonecall, I wrote a letter that my dad will read to her. Now, I'm no stranger to writing. I was an English major and have written hundreds of pages in my life, if not much more, but that two page letter was the hardest thing I've ever had to write. How do you say goodbye to someone in a letter? What greeting do you write at the top of the damn page? I stumbled through every word and it's without a doubt the most rough and unpolished thing I've ever written, but I know that it's the most honest. It's hard not to feel helpless from 6,000 miles away.

There is a silver lining in that she is a believer and I will see her again. That's an incredibly peaceful thought.

Almost gone

We'll be leaving the CR exactly one month from today. Until about two weeks ago, we thought that we'd be with our students right up until the day before our departure. Now, because things are so laid-back yet still beuracratic around here, we're being forced to take a paid vacation for the last two weeks of June (something about all teachers receiving one-month paid holiday time a year and us having only taken two so far). While it will be cool to have some down time before we head home (strange, this place is more of a home than we've known anywhere else as married folk), it's hard to learn that we have two weeks left to wrap up teaching responsibilities and have those 'last-day' goodbye parties with our students. Man, this job sure tugs at the heart.

On a lighter note, we got to canoe the Vltava river last weekend and stayed a couple of nights at a hostel that doubled as an all-night dance club. Never thought I'd sleep to techno beats massaging me to sleep from the floor below, but for $7 US a night, you can't really complain.