Some Kickin bizzyness

So, check it, tis next ol message twill be a bit on the up and up in the ol english fun scramblin english type. Maybe you wont get the whole jist o it, but check it, this coded english is fo itself reasons twill be splained in itself. Cuz for reals some my lil twerps :) in my daily life here somehow got themselves ahold of this page and sumhow they be checkin it and kickin it with everyone, so, this just be more informational. So I gots to be a little more codified so as not to draw some deep animosity from sum of me youngins. So, just a little up and up. They be freakin readin this! Im so perplexed as to how it is so, but somehow, they gots themselves ahold of it. So, check yourself, its some fun. aight bros, kick it like some madstyle honey. peace

My Easter Holiday in Greece

So, this year I decided to take a typical holiday as usual to just some random place fairly close. You know, nothing really special, just to freakin Greece and to see the beauties of the ancient Greek Empire such as the greatness of the Athenian great structures as the Acropolis, the Oracle at Dephi, Sounion, and then a little pre-Athenian Empire work on the island of Crete at the Palace of Knossos where used to live King Minos and his Minotaur

So, these first few pictures are from the beautiful city of Athens from atop the Acropolis, one of the most important places in ancient Athenian history. This first place is an old theatre on the Acropolis where used to be recited the stories of Homer, Sophocles, and many more. You can imagine listening to these wonderful stories with such a great view of Athens as these.




These next few pictures are from atop the great hill of the Acropolis. And of course maybe you can recognize me and the awesome looking building behind me. Yea, that's also on the hill. It's called the Parthenon.

Awwww one of the greatest men in the world... and my idol, Alexander the Great!

Here's the Acropolis from a distance. And then at nighttime. I hear Pericles installed the great lights that light up the Acropolis at night

This next place is probably my favorite place that we visited. It's the Oracle at Delphi. At first you can see me with the Gulf of Corinth in the background. The next few pics are from the Temple of Apollo, which is where the Oracle resided and when people needed answers, they would travel over the vast mountains for weeks or months maybe just to get an answer. It was a really awesome and powerful place I thought. I could just sit and look at this place for hours and just picture the great importance this had on people's lives. It'll strike you dumb. If you look hard on the one picture you can see some really awesome looking person looking to the mountains!




So after Delphi we went to this great ancient spot on the coast. It was called Sounion, and this place as really awesome because you could see a beautiful sight of the Mediterranean also with the great Temple of Poseidon. This temple is very important to the ancient culture because it was the last part of Greece that the Athenians would see as they left on campaign or on some adventure and it would be the first thing that they saw when they would return. It's like when you are gone from Oklahoma for a long time, then you return and see the beautiful green fields as you drive down the Turnpike! It's a beautiful feeling.





These last few picture are from the island of Crete in the city of Knossos where used to live the ancient city of King Minos. You may recognize it the best because this is the place where they used to have the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Yuo can see of picture of the ancient freak of the world shown below in what experts believe to be a true description of it.
So, that was my wonderful Easter holiday. It was really fun and cool. But, I hope you got more sleep on your holiday than I, for I hardly got any, but then again, what's a little holiday if you are scroungin for a place to sleep at night. Maybe a dark alley, maybe a lobby floor. Hey, I'm a teacher, I always shoot for the cheapest option.

Sonnet for a typical Czech

Little tastes every day
of the finest beer in every way
My land is bountiful in beauty
We seek only the best in a cutie

Going around to every castle
It's never really much a hassle
For everything is so very close
So walk and talk and grow a vous(y)("vousy" is a beard [foasy] is pronunciation, but it rhymes bettr)

The architecture is very old
But we got great beer, and we are bold
Life on the Vltava River is without mud
Except for the occasional 1000 yr. flood

So life here has been pretty awesome
Basically cuz there ain't no opossum

A little Easter Tradition, Czech-style

So, Easter is an important holiday for us in the states. A day to commemorate the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ, and maybe a little about the Easter Bunny. Just good wholesome fun traditions we have, yea? Well, now let me welcome you to the sick heathenistic, demented celebration that the Czechs know as Easter.

So, Easter isn't really so much a religious holiday for them. Actually, it's not at all. Maybe they know about it, but it doesn't really matter a lot to them. They center on the older tradtions of Easter and the coming of Spring and celebrate it the way the pagans did centuries and centuries ago. Their holiday is about bringing fertility and a healthy spring to the year. So here it goes, you ready?

The big Easter day isn't so much Easter Sunday, it actually is Easter Monday. Yea, that's right, monday. (And they are shocked when they hear we don't have Easter Monday. We don't get any holiday on Monday, and they can't understand it). On Monday morning, the celebration begins. All the men start by gathering and going out from there. They are walking around the town with these small wooden stick (usually woven from many small sticks (very cool actually), and they take them to different girls' houses and proceed to whip them on their behinds (not hard i think though) and from each girl, they get some ribbon that they can attach to their whip. So it's pretty prestigious to get a lot of ribbons. The girls also give them some kind of a shot of alcohol. So by noon (when the men have to stop their whipping) the men are all passed out drunk with their whips and ribbons. For the girls, it's not at all any kind of sexual harrassment though, they like it. It makes them feel special or something. It's tradition. And if the girl gets whipped a lot, it means that she is going to have a healthy year! Good for her, yea!?!?

Yet, just like us, they decorate eggs also and can give them out to the men as well. It's a big celebration, maybe one of the biggest of the year, and everyone looks forward to it. The kids are all playin around throwing eggs (regular eggs) at each other and everyone else is active in the lustful whipping and shot taking. What a beautiful way to welcome the entrance of Spring and the Ressurrection of our Lord. Amen.

Full Swing of Positions with my 8th Graders

So, from the beginning of the year I have loved teaching almost all of my classes. Notice how I say "almost". From the beginning of the year, I had some troubles with my 8th grade class. They were always interesting and obnoxious and never would listen to me, and I feel they didn't like me much at all. Yet, over the months, through some good times and some bad times, we have made several changes with each other and they have grown to like me and respect me as their teacher and as their friend. We have recently switched out of our small horrible room where the noisebox is just asking to be opened to a bigger class where I am able to get a better hold on them. I've even had some fun times with them outside of class where we are able to "talk" (I use that term loosely) and really grow a little closer.

(picture of people chillin on a hill and the ruins of Okor in the background)

One of these times was last Saturday where we took the city's annual trek to the castle ruins at Okor. It's a 14 km trek one way. We started at 6am and walked and talked and I got the chance to become a lot closer with them. This day was probably one of the greatest days for me out of the year (it's up there with the week long ski trip I took with my freshman class in January). They were talking and wantin me to do all sorts of crazy things with them. All in all, I was with them from about 6am to 4 pm when we arrived back in Kralupy. Our friendship has grown substantially, and if you would have told me I would be close to this class after being here for a month, I'd have said you're a crazy person. But it's been really awesome and I love them to death actually and hopefully will start hanging out with them fairly consistently outside of class!

(they had medieval dancing and historical fighting. I had many students involved with dancing and assisting in the historical sword fighting)

THey are really great kids and really need to learn english a lot! Cute story from my 8th grade student lucy. So she was asking me how long i wanted to stay in the CZ and i said probably just one more year and she got all sad and said why not for longer? And i was saying that I want to go home and be with my family cuz they want me to come home and all, and then she got all excited and turns to me and says," You MUST go home! you must! We are nothing here. You're family is everything! You must go home" She's pretty much the cutest thing ever. When at the ruins, they were trying to find me to tell me they were sitting on the hill relaxing and Lucy sent me a text message saying :"Where are you? We sitting on a hill [using "a" and "the"are very difficult for them]. Came to us :) Lucka :) So I hung out with them all day, and little Lucy wanted to speak English the entire 5 mile walk back, and therefore, we did. It was good. And she learned new words like "mud" (she learned they are very different from"mad" and "mood"), brand (like different shoe brands), and she was trying to tell me, when she was drunk that her head was "spinning". And also about 20 other ones that she probably won't remember because we maybe just used them once and also it's because I knew the Czech word, so i told her the english word. Maybe it's better for them to explain it than for me to just tell them. Oh well. It was a good day for her, and I feel most glad that I'm gonna be able to be here for another year to foster these relationships. What can I say, they love me. I'm pretty much a god over here.