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.