A Letter From a Frank and Tired Man

As the year draws to an end and as one life achievement is withering into another life achievement in the making, some of us find ourselves in awe of the strange wonders and how life could possible continue on like it has gone the last few years. Some of us find ourselves in a rut of unfullfilling merriment and often a stupor. However, I, find myself siting in the Frankfurt International Airport waiting for my 8 AM flight to Prague trying to achieve the goal of making it to school by 10 AM with the aid of friendly taxi I hope. Well... after a long announcement in German and seeing everyone get in line where it seems that i need to go eventually, I have come to the conclusion that my plane is starting to board. So... I suppose I should finish this later, although it will only seem like a second to you due to the fact that only one line of break will be the pause you see. But... I also have the unfortunate luck of leaving the adapter to my computer in America (yes, the very same one I took back to get fixed... and yes, it is fixed, but when it's not hooked in, it is in essence, still broken. ok, gg

So, in the essence of it all, I made it back safely. Let me tell you what's happened since I last saw you (aka, 3 lines ago). I got on the plane and got an entire row to myself. I slept a bit and we arrived in Prague at 930. I proceeded to be one of the last people out and I rushed through the airport only to be stuck in a long Customs line. I waited in it for about 15 minutes and then realized that I was going nowhere so I went to the EU citizens line where no one was and they let me through. I rushed outside into an awaiting taxi and got to school at 1005, 5 minutes after my class was supposed to start. Fortunately, it was a strange day and my class wasn't meeting thankfully. Then I started Senior examining at 11AM and did this for an hour or so and then we ate lunch (which was just below mediocre for this day. I think continued with my day by getting stuff ready (all while wearing a suit, mind you) to go to get my visa prepared for next year. I travelled with the assistant principal to a city 30 minutes away and got all this done fairly quickly. Then she told me that I need to go get some coffee and give her some time to go to the hospital in town to see someone. I said ok and, by this time i had been up for over 24 hours and just about wanted to die. I was sitting in an estranged coffee shop in a strange town just chillin for an hour and everyone is pretty much lookin at me like "what in the world is that guy doin in a suit and at a coffeeshop?" It was apparent that I really shouldn't be there or anywhere else except bed. But I strove forth and made it home finally about 5ish. At this point, I had decided that I didn't care about staying up later so that I would be able to sleep through the night. I hadn't slept so I was feeling a little sick, and I just wanted to go to bed. So... I went to bed, was awakened by 3 phone calls, and I woke up at 9PM and it was dusk out and I was like "sweet!! I slept through the night and it's like 5AM now!!" But... alas, I was wrong. Thus is how my first night back in Czech Republic went. I'll fill you in on my trip to America here shortly, but now... as I have previously stated, I don't have my adapter for my computer, so I have to weigh my time on my computer for a bit now. I have 71% left, so let's see how far that goes. Peace

The Curse of Badminton

So... this is a short, but very necessary post. I was introduced over a year ago to a wonderful sport with the name of "Badminton". Some of you all may have heard about it (You know... it's the sport that you see the Chinese people playing when you walk into the gym and you laugh at them cuz it looks really stupid.) Well, yea, that's me now, and at the beginning of the year, I even got my own Badminton racket. Aren't I a dufus? And... regularly all year (sometimes twice a week, sometimes twice a month) I have been playing and playing, and I must admit, I'm getting quite a lot better, if I do say so myself. But, my opponent with whom I have played against year in and year out, has ALWAYS (might I note an extra emphatic ALWAYS) beaten me. Yea, at the beginning, I totally sucked and he killed me every time. I was usually happy if I got a few points. But now, it's usually quite a showdown every time, and for the last month or so, every time we play, it's rather close. And on several occasions I've come within 2 points (19-21 being the final score), but for some strange reason (I like to refer to it as my personal own curse) I'm not able to finish. I've tried everything! And it still doesn't work... (well, actually the only thing I've tried is getting new shoes... but I really had to cuz my dog ate the toes out of my old ones and when I'd play, my toes would come out of the shoe and it doesn't really help me out that much. Imagine running around and playing in sandals... ) But I still fared (or is it faired?) quite well as I have so previously stated. My day is coming though. Mark my words! Now you listen to me! Vojta!!! Listen up! One of these days, I'm gonna think of some devious trick to play on you and snatch that "World Champion's Belt" right out of your hands. You're not even gonna know what hit ya. (Just kiddin man. I like playin and lookin forward to playin again. I just gotta learn to finish. But it will be nice when we play and I can actually win a few times. I'll maybe feel like I'm on Cloud 9 or something).
Vojta, do you see the fury in my eyes? Be careful... be very very careful.

That's all for now. Talk to you all soon. I'm comin to Tulsa on Saturday, so please email me, and let's hang out. Bye bye

Letters from Iwo Jima... or maybe is better "Dopisy z Iwo Jimy"

So... I'd like to tell you about this film that I saw yesterday night at the Kralupy cinema. Well... I like to get out of my flat sometimes on Friday night, so that Benji just doesn't drive me completely out of my mind. A little sanity is good for the nerves. So I checked out what movie was playing and I saw that it was "Letters from Iwo Jima". I had heard about this film and heard that it was good. It was directed by Clint Eastwood and Stephen Spielberg, so I thought it was sure to be a killer flick. I looked longer at the list of movies playing this month, and saw "Flags of Our Fathers", which is playing on Monday. This film I am quite interested in because I read the book a few years ago. But I was a little shocked and confused as to why they would play two American films about Iwo Jima almost back to back. And I was even a little more confused that I saw the Clint Eastwood had something to do with this film also... Well... I knew that "Flags of Our Fathers" has to do with the story of the people who raised the American Flag on Mt. Suribachi and the story of them and their infamous photo that was snapped. But I really had no clue what "Letters from Iwo Jima" was about. And I didn't know why in the world Clint Eastwood would work on two films about the same thing........

Well, once I walked into the theatre, I realized and remembered EXACTLY what this movie was about. It's about the Fight for Iwo Jima taken from the side of the Japanese. Which was quite a cool way to do it and you get to see the humanity of everything. But... there was a small catch (a problem if yo will). Because the film was taken from the side of the Japanese, they of course had to speak in their mother tongue, which makes the most sense. So... I'm sitting through this two and a half hour film, filmed in Japanese with Czech subtitles. I looked at the paper again as I left and it definitely didn't say anywhere that the film would be in Japanese. It just said that it was an American film. So... it just sucked a bit. I mean, it was a lot of action and so thereforethe language and vocabulary weren't so difficult, so i really didn't have much of a problem translating the subtitles, but i probably would have understood a bit better if there had been some English. It's true that everytime they caught an American, I was so excited, cuz I was hoping that he was gonna speak English or something.

Anyways, it was quite a nice film and I would look forward to seeing it with English titles sometime. But I would reccomend it to anyone out there who would so desire to catch a glimpse of what happened under Iwo Jima.

The Luxuries of a Sailor's Life

When the sun sets off of the horizon, the beauties of life are evident. And one would guess that therefore, the life of a sailor would bring about some of the greatest evidence for extraordinary beauties in life. Well my friends... I've come here today to tell you that I'm not, nor do I ever desire to spend the rest of my days sailing the 7 Seas. But... in the journeys that have been brought to me, I feel like I can be confident and say that I have experienced many of life's beauties and perhaps sensed the reality into which it has been created..... or... maybe not... but you could imagine if I had, yea? So... with all that said and out of the way with... now for some real news perhaps.

Well... there really seems to be not so much to speak about at the moment, so i'll just jabber about nothing for a bit perhaps. Less than 2 weeks now and I'll be back in the states for a week for the exciting times to be had there... my sister's wedding. Hm... after thinking about this for a while, I'm kinda curious as to what the life of a sailor would look like. Being on the sea all day, looking out for pirates and for those humongous whales that'll capsize you. You know I read a book once about a dude whose boat was capsized by a whale and he had to survive in his little dingy rubber raft for like 77 days i think it was. And so it went through, day by day, what happened everyday. I really don't know how he could exactly remember what happened everyday, but it was a good book. He was pretty smart about how to live in a raft for 77 days and how to catch rain water to drink and how to catch fish and to dry them, and blah blah blah. He lost a lot of weight obviously, but it was pretty wicked awesome. One of my favorite books actually. so... if you're interested in it, it has a blue cover... my copy is at a friends house in Norman, so whatever you want really. Well, anyways... I don't really expect myself to go on some deep sea voyage anytime soon... but then again... I never really know what my next adventure shall be. Life can be interesting at times... So... we'll just have to see what happens next and hope that I write about it somewhere here.

Hm... Interesting answer from homework today was regarding the story of Romeo and Juliet. When asked how the story ended, one student notes "Happy End :) "
It's times like these when I'm really proud of my teaching abilities here. :)