My Christmas and Thereafter...

So, it's been a few weeks, and some of you regulars may be thinkin, "What the heck? What's going on? I wanna hear what's new!" Anyways, I will fill you in on a bit. Things have been pretty busy as of lately, so I haven't been able to find time to sit down and relay everything to the computer. First, school finished on the 22nd and it was quite an interesting occasion to be had. First, once again, one of my classes, my freshman class was sad that we wouldn't be able to have class on Friday because school finished on Wednesday. So, we made a compromise and on Wednesday night, we had a big blowout bash at my flat. There were snacks to be had, there was English to be spoken (kinda) and the entertainment was sky-high.
This is all of them. Juraj, Mark, Karel, Hanka, Iva, Anicka, Anicka, Aja, me, and Martina. As you can see all the snacks and foods on the small table. It was a pleasent time and this is the class that I will be spending a week in the mountains skiing with in two weeks.

Then, as some of you may already know, my sister came to visit me for a week, for Christmas, and for fun. We had ourselves a crazy wild fun Czech time. Sad to say, I don't have any pictures as of now, but I will. We walked all over Prague for a few days, saw everything there, she met all of the Americans in Prague for Christmas, and we even got to spend Christmas dinner the traditional Czech way. We went to my students' house Hanka (pictured above) and her sister Kristyna (whom I teach as well, she's a senior). So we went to their house and had carp and potato salad, and many many other Czech traditional foods. We spent several hours there talking and enjoying the time of English. They were very good to us and loaded us down with tons of presents. I felt ashamed that the only thing I brought them was a bottle of wine. Oh well, they were a great family and I hope that our frienships grow stronger. The next day we took a trip down to Vienna and we spent the next few days there seeing the city. These days were full of snow, and still now, there are several several inches of snow on the ground all over Prague and everywhere. It's pretty darn cool if you ask me. But cold. Sadly, my sister had to leave, but luckily we got her off safely. Many planes were cancelled the day she was leaving, because of the snow, but it ended up working perfectly. And then, again sadly, this ended my streak of waking up at 6AM or earlier at 4 days. It was great, I went back home and slept from 3 to 8 at night. Boy did I feel refreshed. Since then, nothing special has been going on.. Been enjoying time relaxing and hanging out with friends in Prague. But tonight, will once again be a crazy time. As you may know, it is New Years Eve, and I told one of my students that I would accompany him to some celebration he is going too. So, I suppose I will fill you in on these details as the come to. This is a brief recap of my past 2 weeks, and stay tuned to more life excitements from this end of the Atlantic. Take care and celebrate the BIG SOONER VICTORY FOR ME!!! Yea baby. Rock out. Peace out. Ahoy

We are the CHAMPIONS!

Some said it couldn't be done. Some said our team was too young. Some said that we couldn't handle a ranked team, but let me tell you the excitement and glee I had when I watched the recap of the 2005 Holiday Bowl between Oregon and my very own Sooners. It was pure ecstasy baby!!! Football rocks

The Traditional Czech Christmas

So, some of you all may be wondering, just what does Christmas look like here in Czech Republic? Do they know about Santa Claus? Do they even celebrate Christmas since they are all atheists? Do they have Christmas trees? All I have to say is... "Hey, c'mon now, I'm not living on Mars." Yes, they celebrate Christmas. It's even one of the most, or the most celebrated holiday in Czech Republic. They freakin blow the top of of life for this holiday. But what do they do?

I have heard that in America, with all the crazy liberals and the political correctness, that there is a big battle for getting Christmas taken out and substituted for Holiday. Now, I don't know if this is true, but considering America is a very Christian country, how do you think Czech Republic (a very very atheistic country) celebrates this holiday? That's right, for one of the most atheistic countries in the world, it's only proper that they give all the respect due to Jesus as possible. In this atheistic country, Jesus is the center and foundation of Christmas. People, of course, know about Santa Claus here from all the American ads and movies. (They say Santa loves Coke). But, Santa doesn't seem to make it to all areas of the world, like we so have thought all of our childhood. But, apparently, Santa has a helper. And who else to assist Santa but Jesus himself. That's right, Jesus sneaks into the houses at dinnertime and leaves presents under the Christmas tree (which they have, but they don't decorate it until Christmas Eve. It's some tradition). But it's no ordinary Jesus, but it's a little baby Jesus. Now, there is controversy whether it is the baby Jesus or just a very small midget Jesus because no one has ever seen him, and there are no pictures of this little Jesus for us to conspire over. But it's none other than Jesus himself, who sneaks into all the apartments through the window, and when he leaves, he always rings a bell to let the children know he was just there. Seriously, how christian can these atheists get?

And of course this holiday celebrated by atheists wouldn't be complete without a day of fasting, now would it. Yes, the tradition is that everyone will fast on Christmas Eve (they celebrate xmas on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day) and finally eat when the traditional Christmas meal is ready. The traditional meal consists of carp (yes, carp, you know the fish), potatoe salad, and fish soup, and of course beer. They say that if you don't eat anything all day, then when it is time to eat dinner, then you will see "the Golden Pig". I think by this time I might be seeing things stranger than a golden pig. What else, what else...?

Oh goodness, what else. Everyone seems to go overboard on making these very intricate and detailed sweet, or little cookies, that are very devoutly delicious. There's also a bunch of little nonsensical tradtions that no one really practices, but these are the most important ones.

Reality of Prayer

So I have been talking a little about Christmas and about the First Christmas with some of my classes and sometimes it seems to be just a bit difficult to convey my thoughts to my students. With what they have grown up in, it seems foolish to most of them. One of my students told me it just seemed like a fairytale, like Cinderella or Peter Pan. She said she would never believe it because it just doesn't sound like reality. Of course this same student thought that Mary was somehow being unfaithful to Joseph when she accepted the baby Jesus from God. She just doesn't get a lot of it. Thus, I am going to need some prayers for her as well as others here. This weekend I am spending all day with this girl (Zuzka) and another guy I have grown fairly close with, Honza. We are walking around Prague and gonna chat. These kids (maybe I have talked about them before), but they are some of the most fluent students in the school and love speaking English. I have spent several times with Honza at the local teahouse talking it up. So keep us in your thoughts and prayers Saturday. The idea came that we should hang out from me wanting to hear what her views of religion and all that were, so I hope there will be a lot of religious conversation (as I love to hear other's views on the subject, it will prove to be very interesting and perhaps enlightening), so keep us in your thoughts. I really have grown to like these kids very much and our friendship has grown significantly through class and through our time outside of class. They are at the age and the mental capacity where they seem to be thinking about these things more, and these two are at least open to thinking about other religions as possibly rational, so I hope it goes well. And perhaps I can get some good Christmas shopping in, in Prague. Sweet! Peace out. Til next time.

P.S. Leave me a comment or something and let me know what's going on in your life. Ciao for now.

A Weekend for the Ages

So, as the year draws to a close, that means one thing... it's freakin cold. As the cold comes upon us, what else to do than to make the most of it? Maybe you know the direction I'm shootin at here... That's right, it's time to ski baby. Growing up in the Great Plains of Oklahoma, I rarely find time to take a weekend trip to the mountains.

It's just not something common to say... "Hey whatcha doin this weekend?" "Oh, I'm just gonna go skiing. Ski on Saturday and Sunday, and come back. Be back for school on Monday, no prob."

This is not a common conversation in Oklahoma. Ours lives seem to be ridden with the utmost guiltiness of being utterly surrounded by cowfields and indians. So, where to go from here? I look around and see no cows or cowfields and.... by God, where are all the indians? I keep looking and looking, and lo and behold, I see mountains... millions upon millions of them, as far as the eye can see. The land of milk and honey has finally arrived within my eyesight.

So anyways, some of you may be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. In short, I went skiing this weekend, and it was great. To travel only 3 hours by public transit and to be at the mountains is a godsent provision that most of us can only dream of. One of my Czech ex-teacher friends is living up in this mountain resort town, so I went up to hang out with him. And it was quite a trip. Fun fun fun. Saturday I was skiing all day, and it was so strange to me to be skiing on a weekend, just for the heck of it. It was a very wonderful time though. Yet, the downer to it was that it was definitely no Rocky Mountains. Because it was so early in the season, there was only one slope open, so every time, I would go up the same lift and go down the exact same slope every time. You would thing it would be mettlesome, but it never really got boring. It brought happiness to my face.

Oh, and one other great thing that happened while I was there... (first, the place I was at was called Harrachov, and it is maybe the most popular place in Czech Rep to ski) and if you maybe tuned into your local European Sports Channel, maybe you saw something quite intriguing... Ski Jumping! There was a World Competition of Ski Jumping here this weekend, and it was absolutely wild. People were going crazy and skiers were jumping from rooftops! (not really, only from the ski jump). I never really realized (as I'm sure you have neither) just how important ski-jumping is to the everyday life of some people... especially the freakin Poles. This mountain is just on the border of Poland and CZ, and there are some really good Polish ski-jumpers. Thousands of people were traveling to this slope from Germany, Poland, and Czech Rep to see this event. They all take it very seriously. Remember watching Monday Night Football on NBC and they would always show pics of crazy fans all painted up and wearing crazy get-ups...? Well, this is how the Poles dress up and act during a Ski-jumping event. There's noise makers and crazy hats, flags, trumpets, shirts, everything. It was completely absurd. What the heck are these people thinking? Do they realize that it's just people jumping?!?! There's nothing even remotely exciting about it! They watch someone jump and then land. There's no spectator influence at all, and it's not even a sport where you really play against anyone. It just matters how far you can jump. Your opponents don't influence you in anyway. They aren't standing on the lift taunting them or screaming at them as they jump or trying to psyche them out. They don't have to ski through a gauntlet or anything where the other skiers are standing on the sides with baseball bats and the jumper has to avoid the bats and THEN see how far he could jump. It's just JUMPING! Personally, I think my form of extreme jumping sounds much more enjoyable to watch.

Anyways, great weekend, and that only scratches the surface of some of the interesting events that have been presented to my life. Tune in later for more info. There's great words of wisdom that will surely inspire you.

School Athletics

Well, there really aren't any school athletics here. They have P.E. but that's about it... except something called Floorball. This sport is very simple, it's like hockey, but played on a gym floor. No pads, no hurting (badly), just running around with a hockey stick and trying to score the ball into the goal. So, needless to say, I have began to take part in the festivities that are "floorball." I am on a team with some of my Junior students. They are fun, and they all love to play floorball. Yet, they by no means are the kind of guys you would look at and say, "Dang, he must be a good athlete!" And you may say this though, if, that is, you consider chess players athletes. But they love it and we played hard.

Anyway, the league has started and we had our first match on Tuesday. Only bummer, it was at 7AM!! So, that sucked. But, it was good. The game was fun and blood and blunders, but in the end, we succeeded in our ultimate goal... to not lose. Yet, we did not win either. It was a dead tie, 4-4. I think that everyone was happy with this, being that I don't know if they expected to win, and without me, I don't think that any of them could have expected to win (not to sound overconfident in myself or nothin), but one may tend to say something like this when they score all of their team's 4 goals, which... oh by the way.... yea, I did that. It was a good feeling. Yet, the feeling did not last too long, because once the game was over, I found the time real quick, and to my shock, it was 755! Crap, how horrible, we didn't win AND I have class in 5 minutes. So I ran and got changed real quick and ran up to class where I taught (all hot and sweaty and in my glory) for 90 minutes. Then I retreated to my flat and took myself an nice clean shower. Thus... my Tuesday morning and first floorball game at a glance.

And you thought Halloween was bad... Say hello to St. Mikulas

Halloween is ghouls, goblins, ghosts, witches, and candy. It's a fun holiday where no one takes anything seriously and life is fun and exciting for a day. Maybe it's scary, but definitely the tradition brings no scary, livid moments to the table.

Well... that all changes with the Czech Holiday of St. Mikulas Day. Welcome to December 5th, the day that the world will soon come to dread. So, on this day is the day that St. Nicholas comes and visits all the children. Were you a good boy or girl this year? St. Nicholas knows. He will decide what your present should be. Does St. Mikulas come alone? Does he have reindeer or elves you may wonder? Neither, but he doesn't come alone. From a devoutly atheistic nation, Mikulas is assisted by none other than a some angels and devils (apparently they cooperate fairly well on this day). St. Mikulas knows all. Were you good? If so, the you will get many treats of candy from the angels. If you were bad, you will most likely get some coal, maybe some other nasty gifts like walnuts or peanuts. And perhaps if you are really bad, you must recite some poetry or even some song. Now, of course you don't have to recite these stupid stanzas, but there would have to be some repercussion, yea? Well, of course. I'll tell you what it is in the words of a Czech mother to her son... "Now Karel, if you are a bad boy, you will have to recite some poetry or a song to the devil or he is going to come and take you STRAIGHT TO HELL!!!" Nonetheless, children are literally scared to death for this holiday that the devil is going to come and take them to hell forever. Pretty intense you may thank.

Now let me tell you what happens at school, and tell me if this would be acceptable in American schools. First, what I heard from the elementary schools. The oldest students come around and are dressed up as angels and devils, and all the littler students are terrified and in their classrooms crying and terrified for their very souls. And in the high schools (this is what I know more since I experienced it first hand), it is pretty much pure chaos. Classes go on normal for the beginning of the day, then all the seniors get a few hours free to prepare for the madness. They are all dressing up as angels and devils. Then the madness begins. I was walking to lunch, and they struck first blood. They come up to me, marking on my face with coal, but the worst is all the girls are armed with lipstick (no, they didn't kiss me). They dis mark lipstick all over my face (which tool forever to get off later, and to get out of my beard). Then comes the spraying of perfume. The whole schoolrooms reek of perfume by the end of the day. The next few hours of class are really nothing because the seniors are coming into all the classrooms performing their horror. They come in and read names of the bad kids and make them recite something. If they don't, they take them away. THey mark over all the students and are continuously throwing peanuts and walknuts. So, in my later classes, the rooms smelled, we all looked like we had our faces all cut up, and the floor was cracking from all the peanuts and walnuts that I would continuously step on. Oh yea, they also had some kind of Crisco that they would smear over our arms. It was pretty outrageous and disgusting. But overall, a good experience and fun, fun, fun.

Moral of the story: Life is good in the Czech Republic.