Phone and Address

As you know my address is:
Zach Barnes
Dvořákovo Gymázium
Dvořákovo náměstí 800
278 53 Kralupy n. Vlt.
Czech Republic

My phone is either:
011 420 777 251 829 or
+420 777 251 829 (some cell phones have the plus option. Your's may not though).

My flat!

Welcome to my flat. Come to my tour and I will show you around.
For those of you who really care, this is an outline of my flat. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm a pretty graphic person.
To the right is the open door to my flat. But what's that door straight ahead? Here, let me show you real quick.
This is our glory right here. It's got so much potential... don't you think? This is where we spend hours upon hours just living it up. Life is pretty good here.
Now that you've seen the goods, I'll show you where I live the other 12 hours of the day.
Shower/washroom. Not much to it.
Our kitchen as you are walking into it. The living room in the background. Come, I'll show you around. Kick off you shoes and make yourself at home.
So... yea or nay on the awesome blue and white?
Yea, that little baby in the corner is our fridge.
More kitchen angles, with clothesline room in the back. Yes, we have a clothesline room. I know,who'd of thunk it. Got turned around on the tour yet? Just refer back to the flat outline.
This would be the clothes line room, just behind the kitchen/hangout room.
Ok seriously now, Europe makes me look hotter, right?
This would be our living quarters. FYI the couch is a foldout. How jealous are you of me now?
And now from the other side of the room.
Mike is to the left and the next pic is as if you turn to the right. I'm a pretty precise person.

My beautiful bed in it's glory (as seen as you just walk in the bedroom. That's right, none of you better make the excuse of not visiting me because you don't have a place to stay, for as you can see, I got an extra bed right above me.

Dvořakovo Gymnazium Teacher Retreat 2005

Well, almost been here a week now and things have been pretty awesome. Spent the first few days chilling out in Kralupy getting to know the place and seeing what’s it all about. I spent a few days in Prague with some of my other teammates getting to know my way around that crazy city. It’s pretty dang awesome. But due to the massive amounts of tourists at this present moment, I was reluctant to take pictures, but I will bring some Prague pics to the table now, and more awesome ones later on. I just recently got back from a teacher retreat with my school. Me and Mike and about 35-40 other Czech teachers took a bus an hour and a half away to this weird little place in the hills freakin far away from anything. We weren’t close to any castles or chateaus or nothing. And since we didn’t have to go to the meetings, we had to seek out adventure. Us and Paul (another American who has lived in Czech for13 years teaching English) decided to make a day trek to a small town about 9 km away that had a cool chateau. We spent most of Sunday walking there and walking back. It was much fun. Very tiring as well though. I wasn’t really able to meet a lot of the teachers because they don’t speak English, but I got to meet and hang out with a bunch of the English teachers and some other guys that spoke English. We did enjoy ourselves. I mean, we literally were required to do nothing. Sunday night was a lot of fun because a bunch of the teachers gathered in the bar of the resort place we were staying at and we all sang songs… well kinda. Mike, Boris (the physics teacher), and Andrej (the “headmaster”) would take turns singing songs. So I got to sing along with one-third the songs. It was fun to hear translations of songs though also. Like “Country Rose” or “Don’t You Want to Dance With Me” or “Hey June”. We finally called it a night. And the next day we chilled out a slept in and then off we went back to Kralupy. It was great stuff. Here I am now, with my week very briefly described. Not got a lot going on the next few days. Gotta run to Prague to retrieve the keys I left at my friends place. Gotta get ready for classes. Hang out with some of the teachers I met this weekend and be awesome with them. Ok cool, classes start on Friday I found out. Ok, bye now.

Training at a glance

Today is the 21st of August, or day 37 here at training in Pasadena, California. Tomorrow, day 38, is the final day in California. We will be flying out of LAX at 7PM PST (that would be 9pm for most of you Central US folks). Things have been fun here. Kinda weird that it's all over and now I'm going to venture overseas and won't be able to speak English with random strangers. I'm sure I will have some interesting times, which is what I live for, so I'm pretty excited about that. ANyways, take a look at some of my life in the past 5+ weeks and give me some feedback. I have loved hearing back from you all. It's definitely a high point. Thanks.


We totally went to the Manhattan Beach yesterday. It was a pretty awesome time. We took the Metro and buses to get there the entire way. We like to explore the great unknown. It took us about three hours to get there, but for all day passes it just cost us $3, which was sweet. We had great times and the 3 hours was a fun time for us. We relaxed and watched a pro volleyball tourney. Grrreat weather we had and just an overall fun day, but the real fun came at the end...
Like I was saying, the fun was yet to begin. There was six of us that took the trek to the beach, which, on the way there, involved us getting on two different buses and 4 different Metros. We ended up leaving the beach around 7ish and we decided we wanted to have some fun getting back. So we found 3 different routes to get back to Pasadena, and the winner, which was the frst to make it to the donut store next to our place won a free donut (approx. 50 cents). Ben and Amy took the route that we came on. Stephen and Priya took a route which had been unventured by Czechsters to our knowledge, and me and Laura (pictured above) stayed on one bus which significantly cut the amount of changes of transportation we had to make. We totally bypasses 3 of the Metros, and stayed on one bus for most the way there. But the race was a very close one at that. We got off our bus and quickly got on the last Metro line to Pasadena. We were confident that we were ahead of everyone. But still scared in our bones. We got off, and we were hoping to hop on a bus, but the buses are completely unreliable and pretty much don't ever come. So we had to do it the hard way. We had to walk the mile and a half back to the donut store. This was the crucial moment for us. Would we get screwed out of our donut, or would we get the vindication that was so justly ours from the beginning. It was a hard fought battle that ended with us seeing daylight at the end of the tunnel around 10:00. We turned the corner to see the donut store in our being. No one was there! We were the first! It was an exciting moment. But we casually strolled up there only seconds before Ben and Amy found a way to, exhausted and sweating all over themselves, come up behind us. But we won. We got the donut. Stephen and Priya were only 5 minutes behind them. So all routes were pretty much equal length. But... ours was the fastest, thus... we won, and everyone else hopelessly and utterly lost. Afterwards, we watched Rat Race, which was sweet reflection for me. Oh the joys of complete victory...
This picture is actually from like the 2nd day. We had an awesome pool party. Here's all the guys going to Czech. Top row: Hank, Matt, Stephen, Joel, Aaron (he's kinda in charge of everything there). Bottom row: Mike, Matt, Ben, and Mr. Me.
Sometimes I forget how awesome I am, so I sit and ponder (I'm pondering) and I totally remember. These are my favorite parts of the day. Life is good... and I'm awesome...
We had an awesome fire at the beach one saturday and the good times were rolling with us. (Haley and Signe, the girls on my right and left aren't going back to Czech, but Sam, Amy, Laura, Ben, and Stephen are).

We recently held a talent show to wrap everything up. It was pretty awesome. Some of us Czechsters performed a little skit. As you can see, it had to do with one girl sitting, one standing, Ben having a bag over his face, and me just being damn sexy.
Sometimes I think Mike is coveting the sick amounts of hair I have. So I just tell him to kiss me, and things are usually all better. Sometimes that's all someone needs...
Well... I think me and Mike are gonna get along passionately well in Kralupy this year... Sometimes we just got so happy...
This is about 95% of our lovely Czech Republic team. To get ready for Europe, we have been playing drinking games every night for the past two weeks. So far we've had 15 people ralph all over the place, and only 5 people have gotten alchohol poisoning. And I guess we did have one cardiac arrest, but that may have been the night we threw knives at each other...
We had small group split sessions, which were split by regions among the world. We spent a few hours in here each day learning more teaching skills and cultural awareness. These were not so bad of times. Good times were had by all.
We had large group sessions several more hours a day learning how to teach English effectively and on different aspects of ministry overseas. These large group meetings are the ones I was more apt to hit the snooze button half way through.

The small amount of free time we had was spent relaxing and enjoying the "unspeakables" of life.

Some awesome karaoke night among the Central Europe team. Me, Stephen, and Ben (three Czechsters) were pretty slammin awesome.

TeachOverseas 2005-06

TeachOverseas.org (formerly ESI) is sending out 303 new teachers this year to 11 countries. Here's a pic of most everyone that's going. Can you pick me out? Give you a hint. I'm the one in the sexy pants sprawled out on the front lawn. I'm basically the most adorable thing you've ever seen. (P.S. sorry for the small picture, maybe I'll try and find a better resolution pic later. So yea, that's me and a fellow Czechster, Steven Cuffey, next to me on the grass) It's pretty awesome.

Czech Map

Kralupy is the city that I will be living in this next year. Just thought some of you all may be curious and seeing a picture is easier to grasp than a dictation. And for those of you who may not know where the Czech Republic is, the surrounding countries are listed so as to give more of a general sense of where you may find the Czech Republic.

Awesome fun

Here's most of our awesome Czech team. I would list everyone, but maybe later. The guy above me in the blue, Mike, is my roommate next year in Kralupy. Everyone else, though awesome, shall have thier time in the sun at a later date.

Picturing Brian, Myself, Joel, and Mike at our finest

The beach in which we went to one night.

A Sweet Purveyance

Me and a fellow Czecher, Joel, patiently waiting to enjoy American Pizza. It was some pretty good crap also. (For those of you wondering, yes, there was a firepit in the middle of our table, but as Lady Luck might have it, our persistence in squeaking out a flame did not prove valiant enough).

For those of you who were wondering just how amazingly awesome I look in one of those red things... I present to you my masterpiece...

Some of us walkin about near the University at nighttime. This includes (left to right) Sam (who is going to Hungaary), Amy and Myself of course (both traveling to Czech), and numerous other people who will be accompanying us to numerous places across Central Europe.

Hot views around campus.

Here are some pictures of William Carey University where I am staying until I leave on August 22.
Here is a picture of my room where we stay without air conditioning. I think that's the reason it is so messy... because of the no airconditioning. Just go with me on that one. In my room, chillin out with my summer roommate Steven (guy in back). Him and Matt (the guy sitting down) will be in different parts of Czech this next year with me. Rick,(the other guy) is the Country Director for teachers going to Vietnam.