McDonald's in Czech

I just had some McDonald's for lunch today and I thought I'd share about my experience. First of all, I had received a coupon to use there, which was my motivation for going. Instead of being a normal value meal (or menu, as we call it here) coupon, it was for a double cheeseburger, a small drink, and of course, a pack of Mentos. They actually forgot to give me my Mentos and I didn't ask for them.

I always get thrown off a bit at McDonald's. It's an American place where I feel like I should feel comfortable, especially with language things. After all, you can go in and order a "hamburger" or "cheeseburger." That's where culture shock comes in here. If I would, however, order a "hamburger" with my typical American accent, I will only succeed in getting blank, scared, or ever annoyed looks from the nice McDonald's workers. What the cash register people want me to say is the word "hamburger" with an incredible number of rolling r's and oddly pronounced vowel sounds. I have learned to form my mouth to do those things in order to get my greasy burger, but it's tough. After I had finished ordering and was waiting for my food to be ready, I listened to the guy at the register next to me. I knew he was ordering McDonald's food and I vaguely recognized that they were the same words as in English, but it was amazing how fast he was spitting those words out, and with an entirely European accent. Almost unrecognizable. But that's one of the neat things of living here. I'm not only learning Czech language, but also how to say some American words with a good, ol' Czech accent!

English Teachers' Retreat

One of my main responsibilities here in Brno is director of the English program at Majak. We've got a great team of teachers this semester: Sabrina Hadsell, Marian Graham, Alicia Robertson, Kristy Baysinger, and me. Before we started the semester we took a little retreat to get away and plan for our English semester. Our planning was not only for logistical issues, but a lot of it was spiritual preparation and praying for our students, many of whom we hadn't even met yet. It was a great...and very important...time for our team. It just always amazes me to see how God can take a group of otherwise strangers and bring them together to work for His glory.

And, yes, we had just a little bit of fun too. Our retreat location was the little town of Telc, a couple hours from Brno. We stayed right in the center of town and it happened to be right during the time of a Medieval Festival. Let me tell you, a medieval festival IN Europe is amazing. Enjoy the pictures!

Majak English Teachers: Kristy, Marian, Phil, Alicia, Sabrina

Telc from a church tower

Telc!

Telc from our penzion window

Medieval Festival at Telc

Telc - I love it!

Me, trying my hand at shooting a medieval, high tech bow and arrow

Drinking Kofola, Czech's own special beverage. It's basically Coke and black licorice...sound good?!

Recap...

The bad blogger is back. It's just sick that the last time I blogged was in the summer. So much has happened since then. But then, I seem to say that every time I blog. I am even afraid to make a new commitment to blog more, but I'm going to try. So, anyway, I'm going to do a little pictorial recap of the last few months to give you an idea of what's been happening with me here in Czech.

First, I had a great flatmate for the summer, Traver Butcher! He was here for 4 months and in October went back across the ocean. I miss him, and I find that I'm talking to myself a little more at home now.
Traver and me at some castle ruins that we visited at English Camp

No summer is complete without a few trips to Prague. We even made one of them in the middle of the night.
In July, we had to say goodbye to our great friends, the McNett's. We miss them a lot here in Czech, but God is already doing great things through them in Michigan!

ENGLISH CAMP - PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN

There were pirates everywhere!
The best camp team ever - The Deadly Deck Swabbers

Many of you have heard my exciting camp game stories. This year I just added to the collection of these stories. This picture shows one game where our team had to build a raft of entirely natural materials, put "a fire" on it, have four people swim it across the lake (that was me!) without getting their hair or flesh singed off, take it onto the land on the other side, and cook an egg in a pan on the fire. The first team to hard boil the egg was the winner. Somehow, that was us!

THE ROMAN HOLIDAY

A few of us took a week off and took an 18 hour bus ride to Rome, Italy. This is us at the Colosseum.
Some of the forum ruins
A weird picture taken at the Spanish steps, still in Rome.
A strange highlight for us Protestants was seeing the Pope. We got tickets to a Pope "viewing" and were blessed by him in a number of languages.
And of course, some good, ole Italian gelato!!!

WORK WEEK: THE TRILOGY

In September, in order to bring our ministry center up to fire code, we had a work week. This week turned into 3 weeks where we dry walled all the ceilings in the English department, then mudded, sanded, painted and repainted and then steam-cleaned all the carpets. It was a long week, but we've got some nice looking ceilings now!


Some of our handiwork!