2012

Dobryden!

As you have probably figured out, this blog has become a difficult item to cross off my to-do list. Life in Prague has been so terrific. We have been having so much fun and have experienced so much in our (almost) 6 months in Europe.

Our trip to Switzerland and Germany went great! We stayed in some beautiful locations and drove through some magnificent mountains. Lucerne, Interlaken, Bern, and Freiburg were all breathtaking. We attempted to white water raft, but seeing as our visit was in October, most of those places had closed for the winter already. However, the trip was still a terrific success. Re-visiting some roots in Switzerland was very fun and I finally found a Swiss Army knife I liked, even though they were being sold at every corner store in the country.

We also visited the Christmas market in Nuremberg, Germany where we bought many Christmas presents for our family members. In fact, we bought Christmas presents from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Nuremberg was cold, but fun.

Two weeks ago, we just finished Christmas holidays... 3 weeks of vacation. The first week, we decided to see Italy from north to south, spending about two days in each major city. We began in Venice, where it took us a few hours to realize that there were absolutely no cars anywhere. Nothing but gondolas and water taxis. Some of the best times in Venice was just wandering through the streets and getting lost. Two other small cities that we visited were the islands of Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for Italian glass and Burano is an old fishing village with brightly coloured houses.
After Venice was Florence. The city were the Renaissance began in the late 1300s. The art galleries and museums were fascinating. We went to the Galileo Museum of Science and the Academia where Michelangelo's "David" statue is housed. Both were incredible, but seeing an exhibit like "David" was quiet amazing. While in Florence, we took an hour train ride west to see Pisa. We spent an afternoon looking around Pisa, but the only thing to see there is Leaning Tower of Pisa. We went to the square where the tower is, ate lunch, then made our way back to our bed and breakfast.
Our final stop was Rome - by far our favourite city. We dropped off our bags at our B&B and made our way towards the old town. As we are approaching, we see the Colosseum rise up in front of us as we walk. Its size alone makes it larger than life. Witnessing such a large structure that is nearly 2000 years old was humbling. The first thing we did before getting our bearings was to purchase entrance into the Colosseum. It was definitely worth it. With our ticket, we were also granted access into the Palantino where many ancient houses have been preserved. We then took a stroll through the Roman Forum where most decisions and political activity happened. Sarah and I both were awestruck at the fact that we were walking through the place were the richest people in the known world would make decisions for the rest of the Roman Empire. We stopped for a break where we spent 14 Euroes on coffee and a dessert (mistake) and continued to the other Ancient Roman sites, like the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Piazza della Republica, and finally - Vatican City. The Vatican was also in a league of its own because it had St. Peter's Square, St. Peter's Basilica, and the Vatican Museums (where Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). Again, we had such an amazing week in Italy and we will definitely go back.

We spent Christmas in Prague and had Christmas day with our awesome Aussie friends, Ray, Olivia, Ange and the Neate family. We exchanged secret Santa presents, ate a massive lunch/dinner of lamb and roasted vegetables, and had a friendly game of Aussie rules Football. Crazy game. It was a great Christmas day and it felt like home, even though home is so far away.

After spending a week of sleeping in until 11am, we boarded a flight from Prague to Orlando because Sarah's dad bought the entire family a cruise! He wanted to surprise Sarah's mom for her 50th birthday, so he was generous enough to fly everyone down to Florida for a week long cruise. She was so shocked and surprised at the hotel on the morning of the cruise when everyone showed up in the restaurant, we thought she might have a hernia. The cruise itself kicked off with a great New Year's Eve party on the main deck and during the countdown, we all witnessed a fight! It was a great way to start off 7 days in the sun. The vessel made port in the Bahamas where we saw the famous Senior Frog's bar, next was St. Thomas where we spent the day on one of the world's most beautiful beaches, and finally St. Marten where we had a snorkeling adventure, rented motor scooters to tour the island, and spent half an hour watching planes on this beach. Both the cruise and the ports were such fun and we want to say a huge THANK YOU to Tony Cosh for his generosity and love for his family.

We are back from all these adventures and loving Prague still. Sarah has started an Outdoor Club at school where she will be taking the kids rock climbing, camping, hiking, and canoeing. In the next few weeks, Sarah's job requires her to go skiing for three days at a resort in the Czech Republic, fly to Paris for a four day IB Conference, and taking her Outdoor Club winter camping for a weekend. I'll be on the couch, looking across the living room at the chest of drawers and counting the knots in the wood.

I hope you have time to do whatever you were planning on doing before committing to this blog post, but thank you for reading.

More to come, I promise.

Visiting Cousins and a visiting cousin

Over a month ago, I posted our last blog and as you can imagine, we were pretty busy. We flew back to Canada to attend Sarah's cousin's wedding at the end of September and stayed for about 5 days. The wedding was super fun and we want to say congrads again to Justine and Troy and their families. It's a shame weddings can only happen once with the same people.

Over here, school has kept us occupied, but we have still left enough room in our schedules and our apartment for people to come visit. My cousin, Scott Taylor, is currently finding himself in Europe and he found himself staying with us for a few days. He's doing what everybody dreams of doing or regrets never doing - traveling for a few months while he can still stomach affordable mystery meat and temporary bedrooms. But in all seriousness, the only regret I have about Scott staying with us is that we didn't convince him to stay longer. It was terrific having him here, he was an ideal guest (made us dinner, twice! Two more times than me) and everybody should follow his lead.

Our past month was filled with school activities like Culture Day, Parent/Teacher Conferences, Harvest Festival, after-school clubs, and two school campouts for Sarah. Also, we've started Czech lessons, Bible study, took a weekend trip to Cesky Krumlov, took a weekend trip to Karlstejn Castle to witness a Medieval Festival (there isn't enough space on the internet...), celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, and have loved every minute of it.

We are always thinking of home and the people there, but we are so happy and blessed to be living in Prague. Sarah and I begin a week's holiday today and tomorrow we're meeting some Aussies from the school for a road trip to Switzerland through Germany. We still seem to have to pinch ourselves.

Anyway, that's a very brief update on the many things we've found ourselves doing over the past month. If you want to comment on these, just reply to our email.

Long Time, No Blog

Wow. It has been a very long time since I have been on this website, nevermind visiting the website and deciding it wasn't a good time to write an entry. In my absence from blogging, Sarah and I have been to Austria with Sarah's friend Sarah Higgs, we have met the staff we are working with at Riverside School, we have met our students and begun classes, and I haven't had another Wait... What? moment. However, with all that being said, we have really enjoyed ourselves, we are alive, and we are settling in very well. A few weeks ago, Sarah mentioned that when we just arrived, we were so cautious about which streets we were walking down because we didn't want to get lost and now we're navigating public transit on all sides of the city without breaking a sweat. We feel pretty lucky and very blessed to be here. If you'd like to read about Austria and our new experiences at Riverside, you can read the next two blogs.

Riverside School

Sarah and I have been in Prague for exactly one day and one month. We have adjusted well to the culture, our apartment, we're getting better at the language, and we have just begun to meet the staff and families of Riverside School. The many planets of the "Settlingintoprague Universe" are almost completely aligned.
We are now faced with the challenge of getting used to our jobs - the actual reason we are here. Upon first glance, the school is situated on the west side of the Vltava river across from high cliffs that overlook the schoolyard. It's a very picturesque location. Next, the interior of the school gave us the impression that each staff member contributes much more that just curriculum. The walls were decorated with incredibly bright, 3D artwork and pictures of school activities were scattered on various walls. We felt that if the staff are just as great as our first impression of the school, then we have really been blessed with a perfect situation.
Sure enough, the staff here consists of teachers who are committed to the school both professionally and personally. Each person supports and lives out the Christian ethos of the school. We felt so welcomed into their community as newbies, even though they had 23 new staff members that year! We could have easily been lost in the crowd, but people seemed excited to meet us. Either they are fakers, or they were excited to meet Sarah and polite to me.
I'm teaching Year 4 (Grade 3 in North America) and the kids are really great. I have kids from 7 different countries who all speak with their own unique accent. It's very cute and I'm very happy to be teaching this class. (Also, I'm teaching the son of a Czech hero - a former professional soccer player who played for Liverpool when they won the Champions League and then for a local team in Prague. I'm really looking forward to meeting him because the staff says he's a real gentleman - a lesson to all you pro athletes who might be reading this.)
Anyway, things are going well and we're very blessed.

Sarah and I would also like to give a huge shout out to Immanuel Christian School and Durham Christian High School. Both schools gave Sarah and I our first teaching jobs and provided us with very high expectations for any school staff and school community we will be a part of in the future. Thanks to Fred, Jasper, and the staff at both schools for giving us a chance.

Vienna, Schladming, and Salzburg

Once we boarded the bus for Vienna, I thought to myself, "I'm setting myself up for failure. I live in the most beautiful city in Europe and we're going to see another 'beautiful' city. Everything I see will be compared to Prague." Fortunately, Vienna turned out to be very beautiful. The Hofsburg was a beautiful sight and so was the Parliament Building and the Rathaus. On top of the really beautiful buildings, the sculptures on top of each corner of each building were breathtaking. They were full of emotion and white as snow against the blue sky. It was really cool to see. Unfortunately, Sarah had a splitting headache for most of our first day. So on the second day we went to see Dr. Sigmund Freud at the Freud Museum. It was really cool to enter his old apartment and office where he practiced psychoanalysis. All in all, Vienna didn't turn out to be a bust.
Next was Schladming where Sarah spent three months at Bible school while we were dating. It's a beautiful town in the middle of the Austrian Alps. We spent two nights there at a small B&B and climbed a mountain (see my profile picture on Facebook). We enjoyed some time with one of Sarah's professors and had a drink while listening to an outdoor polka band. With the hike, we were now tired for Salzburg.
I should mention that Sarah and I had the great privilege to spend this time with one of Sarah's friends from Bible school, Sarah Higgs. Yes, THE Sarah Higgs (see Sarah's "Friend List" on Facebook).
Not to fear! When we got to Salzburg, we went to bed immediately and got up to take a bicycle tour around Salzburg. It was no ordinary bike tour, it was the Sound of Music Bicycle Tour! I had never seen the movie, so to bike around with some drooling fanatics who had traveled to their personal Mecca was a treat in itself. Even though I had never seen the movie, I enjoyed the tour because it was a great way to see such a really beautiful city of only 200,000.
What a relief. I was afraid the cities in Austria were going to be just like any little brother who begins seeing muscles in the mirror, only to have big brother Prague flex right behind him. In simpler terms, Vienna, Schladming, and Salzburg turned out to be that really great little brother who sometimes beats you at certain sports.

Wait... What?

One of my favourite short-lived TV shows from this year was called Sports Show with Norm MacDonald. He had a terrific segment called, "Wait... what?" where he would begin showing a video clip and then something within the clip would be very out of the ordinary which made you say, "Wait... what?" Take this clip for example. If the link doesn't work, I apologize.
Anyway, I had one of these moments last night when Sarah and I went to the movies.
We were standing in line to get snacks before seeing "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" when we decided we would like some popcorn and some Coca-Cola. It wasn't a difficult choice and is rather cliche, but nevertheless enjoyable. We approach the counter and in my improved Czech, I ask if the girl behind the till if she speaks English. Success! She understands my Czech, doesn't think that I'm German, and she speaks English.
Confidently, I ask, "May I have a Coke?"
She nods and asks, "Medium or Large?"
"Medium please."
She turns to fill up our coke and comes back and places it in front of us. Next, I say, "And some popcorn too, please."
Our server asks, "Salty or Ham and Cheese?"
I respond, "Salty."
Wait... what?
Did she just say Ham and Cheese? Sarah and I stared at each other trying to read the others' eyes as to whether or not we just heard the same thing. Ham and Cheese? As a popcorn flavour? There were so many other flavours that my mind could have processed without flaw, but Ham and Cheese? I mean, there's caramel corn, sweet corn, extra butter, and now they have Ham and Cheese? It took us a while before we gathered ourselves and walked into the theatre, but we both agreed that we need to try Ham and Cheese popcorn when we see our next movie.
Whenever anybody goes to a new culture, I'm sure there are many "Wait... What?" moments, so this will be a weekly feature in the blog. Thanks for reading this week's "Wait... What?"

Free Ballet

I had a headache on Sunday, so we decided it would great idea to take a long stroll to the Vltava River in the bright noonday sun. Only elementary kids could contest Father Sun in contributing to a splitting headache. After weaving and winding through the city, we sat overlooking the river and had a cappuccino. It honestly was a beautiful day, so we decided to move from our cafe down to the riverside and rented paddle boats like giddy tourists, but unlike giddy tourists, we knew better and brought some wine and cheese into our vessel. As we're peddling through the mucky waters of the Vltava, we meet some Aussies who are in the middle of months of traveling. We hang out for a couple hours, and then spend some time around Charles Bridge until dusk. Luckily enough, that night there was a free ballet/musical performance on a stage just below the Charles Bridge. We are lined up along the south side of the bridge with hundreds of other tourists watching a poor man's dress rehearsal, when all of the sudden a massive wind and rain storm hits the bridge. Performers and audience alike are shocked and everyone began rushing for shelter, but because there are only two exits/entrances on a bridge, you could only imagine the chaos of everyone trying to get to shelter by doing their best George Costanza. It just might have been the most exciting part of the show. Oh, and my headache was gone!