22.9

When I first got here in Kralupy there were these signs all over the place. 22.9 they said. Everywhere. It seemed to me to be some sort of conspiracy. Come to find out, there was a big referendum on this day (the 22nd of September, hence "22.9") It just happened last week. The referendum was over whether Kralupy should have a square or not. Every city in Czech Republic and all over Europe have main central squares. But Kralupy does not. They lost it when they were being bombed by the Allies in WWII. So there is this sense that Kralupy needs to have a square and should have one.

Yea, so pretty much like every post every 10 meters has these signs. So... the 22.9 is the day of the vote, and the 7.088 means 7,088 in English, and it is how many votes they were looking for.
So for the past month, everything people talk about is this referendum. People are doing stuff to aid getting the word out and all these sorts of things. It's like the city runs around this amazing thing. So anyways, it just happened, and I thought I would give you a little taste of what life was like in the everyday aspect.

Maybe you can even tell the "22.9" signs in the front of my school. (This is my school by the way). School and politics apparently are no problem here.

So you're wondering maybe how it turned out? I think it passed. Not too sure though. It's kinda sketchy on the whole details, but I do believe that this did go through. But I think it will be a while until they start tearing down this building and get everything finalized. I mean, seriously, they are in no hurry. There has been this huge hole in the middle of the road for the past 4 months at least, and they are starting to fix it now, but they just keep digging more and more deep holes in the road, and they're big ones also. So things kinda get crazy when things need to get done.

Another fun story. I'll label this one TERRORIST ATTACK

So, they have been planning this "Terrorist Attack" on Kralupy for at least the past month. Kralupy has a nuclear plant fairly closeby (I teach there actually) and has this huge rubber plant that the city is actually centered around. So it would be a probable target for an attack. So, they got hundreds of people in the community to volunteer as victims. Students over 18 were a part of this as well so they could get out of school of course. So anyways, this was the same night at the big referendum. I think they were supposed to blow up a train or something, and starting at 2am they were supposed to go into "terrorist mode". So... the ambulance and fire, and all the emergency people have known about this for at least a month. And the thing started around 2am. Anyone guess when they showed up to help? Yea... around 3. And the hospital they were supposed to go to was in the city of Kladno, and no one got there until like 5! So of course everyone died. It seemed to be a total disaster, and basically they realized that if a terrorist wanted to blow up Kralupy, everyone's pretty much screwed. Ah... life in the Czech Republic. Sweet as honey, baby.

Oktoberfest 2005

So to start our amazing trip, we bounced on a train over to Plzen, Czech Rep. Fun little town. Heard of the beer Pilzner? Yea, that's where this comes from. It's the most famous Czech beer, FYI. P.S. notice how happpy I am? I think I'm a little more tired at the end of this picture series.
So, its about 230 am and our big ol bus decided to stop. Thus, Ben and I are deciding what we should get to make it for the rest of the all night bus ride along with the wee hours of the morning that we would spend in the freeeeeeeezing cold bus station! Oh the treasure of road trips.
Ahh... the pleasures of Oktoberfest. It's 8 in the AM and me, Stephen and Laura are admiring the great ferris wheel that Munich has to offer. We're up for an exciting day I tell you.

Paulaner tower. these are all over.
Our group on the way back from Munich. It was pretty way tiring trip, but fun.

An Interesting Experience with Oktoberfest

So... it's Sunday night, I have one class in the morning and haven't really prepared anything for it. I know I will and I will probably get into bed late perhaps, but that's life. Some of you may know a tiny bit about what I did on my weekend this week. Me and 5 of my fellow Americans in the Czech Republic took an adventure down to the great nation of Deutchland (that's Germany) to a wonderful small town named Munich for a local festival called Oktoberfest. Yes, the name is deceiving, for it is really held mainly in September, but that's life. In order to search for the best prices on travel as possible, I searched and searched, and I felt that I had finally found the best deals. So we were all to meet up in a city in Western Czech Republic called Cheb. but our plans very quickly changed from what I had seen as the most profitable scheme to get us there cheaply and by nightfall.

Our bus was full! I don't know how this happened, but it was, and it sucked. So, me and Chrissy and Laura had to wait for another hour for the next free bus to come by. The good thing about this bus ride was that we had seats on the bus, the bad thing is, is that these buses are packed and people actually stand in the aisles the entire ride. So, when I think about it, I think that we could have gotten on the earlier bus, but we would have had to stand. And our bus being 3 hours, it would have sucked. But it was cheap. So we all finally got to Cheb, a few hours behind schedule, and desperately looking for the prime deal to get us to Munich before morning so as to maximize our time at this wonderful festival. Our options ended up being to try and get t Nurnberg and spend the night in the train station or take a train to Plzen and take a night bus to Munich. It was the only sure bet for us, yet, we were not sure if we would be standing on the5 hour bus ride there. Oh yea, and we were not sure how much the price was. We were hoping it was going to be cheap also for we don't want to spend this money that we teach for. So we got on the bus, and I ask the man how much for a ticket to munich. And he says 1050 kc. We were hoping to pay no more than 500 kc, so this totally sucked and this means that we pretty much paid what we would have for a normal train. That's about 40 bucks to you all. Way expensive for Czechs, normal for Western Europeans and you Americans. So that sucked. We got on the train at 130 and got there 530. The ride was kinda fun though. I wasn't allowed to sleep pretty much though. I talked to Petr the guy next to me for the first hour. He's from Slovakia and was excited to experience Oktoberfest. And then we made a pit stop for about half hour or so, and then for like two and a half hours more I spent talking to this German named Martin. It was pretty sick. He was in front of me and we talked about world politics to world travel to world religion. It was crazy. He seemed very open to my explanation of Christianity (and though I thought about what I was telling him, and I thought that it would have totally creeped me out if I were him) it was really awesome his response. He thinks that he will be a Christian someday, but still is checkin everything out. He was a Buddhist, but last year he spent traveling Australia, and Asia, and seeing Buddhist and their lives made him reconsider. He's a pretty steller guy. And then I got to sleep for the last half hour

So... we arrived to Munich at 530 and we chilled and slept in the bus station for like 2-2.5 hours. It was really super cold, probably like 40's or something. Sucked a bunch. But come 730ish, we finally got a group ticket for transportation lines and boarded the S-Bahn (like a Metro) and headed into the heart of Munich with all the other foreigners from all over the place. Then we got there and it was pretty sweet. At 830, there were people walking around and goofin off all over the place in their Bavarian garb. We walked around for a little bit, got some Euros from the ATM and then got some pastries and a bakery. It was good to be back in a place that looked familiar (I was here last summer for 4 days). So, time came, about 10 when we finally ventured off into the great festival of Oktoberfest. It was packed. There were people everywhere and no one spoke German! I would try asking people questions when need be, and no one understood. Totally crazy. So anyways, we finally found a place to sit, outside one of the big tents, and we chilled here for about an hour and got something to drink. By the time we had left our table at 11, people were singing songs, yelling, making jolly good noises to everyone around. It's like a giant birthday party pretty much.

So then after this we walked around for a little while longer and and saw the masses and masses of people that had come to attend this grand event. I believe that some sick amount of people are supposed to attend Oktoberfest during the 2-3 weeks that it goes on. Like 6 million maye? Maybe at least 3 million. So, we walked around some more and showed the newbies the town. By this time though I was stupid tired and just wanted to sleep, so I took a nap in one of the gardens when some others went on a walk. So we hopped on the 5 pm train back to Munich, and this one was much more planned out and we got our cheap tickets all the way back to Prague, not payin more than 10 bucks. It was a long weekend, but it was fun, and I'm glad I went but I am glad to be back. Great trip for the memories. I'll try and include some pics here fairly quickly as well.

The Aroma of Prague

This is an interesting site in Prague that me and some friends went and walked around (Mike, Stephen, Jodi, me, Ben, Courtney, Chrissy, and Stephanie). It's a pretty wicked awesome site. There's faces and animal shapes hidden throughout, it's fun to walk around, yet still a little creepy.
Last weekend, me, Matt, and Stephen took a little boating outing on the vast Vltava (the Mighty Mississippi of the Czech Republic). It was fun, paddle boating around Prague. We decided that we could maybe perhaps enjoy the nice weather and sweat less if we vied for our tans, thus, my shirt is nowhere to be seen.

a little around Kralupy

This hill in the background is a very important hill in the folklore of Czech. Many years ago, when Father Czech stumbled across Czech Republic, he climbed to the top of this hill, looked out across and declared, "This will be a land of great beer."
A great beutiful picture of the essence of Kralupy.
The mighty Vltava. The river that Prague is centered around runs through Kralupy

A trite of a morning

Here's a fun morning for us to talk about. Yesterday morning, I awoke to the sound of voices. I was quite perplexed at the moment, and as I lay in bed, I contemplated whether I should or should not get up and tackle them. As you could see, many things run through my head at 6 AM in the morning. So anyways, I hear voices. And it wasn't just any old voices. To me, there was definitely women's voices. What is wrong with hearing women's voices at 6 AM you say? Nothing, that's why I didn't get up. (Let me give you insight to my thought process first... the day or two before, Andrej, the headmaster, told me that the janitor was going to be bringing a new chair in sometime and taking an old one, because this one was "more better".) So, naturally, I thought that they were bringing in the chair... at 6 in the morning. I mentioned it to Mike when he woke up, to see if he heard anything. I think he thought me to be crazy. But later in the day he told me that Andrej told him that the janitor had found someone in our place. Apparently the guy was all hopped up on some wacked out drugs or something, and he crawled through one of our windows. Scary! Anyways, I guess when he walked out of our place is when the janitor saw him and started to talking to him. That's when I awoke. So anyways, he was so doped up that he didn't take anything. Both our computers were just sitting out, so we feel very fortunate that nothing was taken and now we know better to keep our windows open when away from the flat. So, anyways, funny story, huh? We like to joke about it now since nothing was taken, so thats awesome. OK, well... that's the story for the day. Laters.

Things not found in the Czech

So, you think you may want to help out a poor English teacher in the Czech Republic, huh? Here's a list of things that I have not been able to find and I think may be a little awesome to take part in:
Crushed Red Peppers
American Candy (we just get Snickers, Twix,and Kitkats)
Doritos, Fritos, or American chips of any sort
Coffee (the coffee sucks here, they got great tea though)
Spaghetti Sauce (apparently in Czech Republic, this means Ketchup... sick)
Pictures or posters of awesome proportions
Anything English (like magazines, parts of newpapers, comics. These can be used in class)
Some good TV shows (maybe seasons in full on dvd or vhs is awesome too)
Mac N Cheese
CD's (comedy or musical)
books
black beans
normal sized american spoons (we have little baby spoons and big hunker spoons. sucks)
and anything awesome that either reminds me of you, reminds you of me, or anything else

Thanks a lot. You guys rock

First Day

So I had my first day of classes yesterday, and it was quite interesting. I actually only had one class. But that was enough for the first day. I taught my youngest students, 8th graders. They seem like they will be a lot of fun this year and I am excited about teaching them. One thing I did realize though, was that they don't really so much speak that great of English. Funny story. So I had them all tell what they did over summer holidays. Croatia is a big hot spot for Czechs, so many of them went there. But several upon several of them said they went to "sunny camp". Now, as you can imagine. Running through my head is... "what the hell is 'sunny camp'". So, I tried to use my own brain, and I translated this as summer camp. So, I feel like this could be a good topic to talk about. I said, "So, many of you all went to "summer camp". What is it that you do at summer camp". I got all blank stares, and weird looks. Until one of them finally says to me, "No, not summer camp, sunny camp". Hm... I see. Come to find out, sunny camp can be roughly translated into real English as TANNING. So that kinda sucked. Yea, this class was all but two girls, so stereotypes are the same there still there with the whole sunbathing thing. I can tell that this class may be more tough than I assumed. More interesting errors I came across as teaching. Um... I told them they couldn't have cell phones, yet I received a text message during class. When I asked them what they liked to do, one girl responded, "Martin". I figure she meant she liked to hang out with Martin. Their English blows. Other of the 14 year olds answered that question with "beer". Yea, the drinking age of 18 isn't enforced. And I definitely used the word "whatnot" during class. How can they understand "whatnot" if they don't even understand "excited". Oh yes, last one. When I asked them if they like America, they responded with adament "no's". When asked why, they respond with one word... McDonalds. Ladies and Gentlemen, I leave you with that. McDonalds has proven to be the impervious psyche of what is known today as "America the Beautiful". Stay sassy America.