May and June were both excellent months. I enjoyed not only very pleasing grades in my hardest class (AP US History with Mr. Beaman), but also two trips to two different Disney parks. In May I went to Disneyland with RHS' choirs, and in June I went to Disneyworld with FBLA. I didn't load any of my Disneyland photos, but here are some pictures of the crew that went to Disneyworld:
L to R: Me, Jessica Nomie, Amanda Lehman, and Marty Olson.
The Sterninator!
I preferred Disneyland to Disneyworld, maybe because I was with more people I knew, but both ended up bein' quite enjoyable.
When I returned home from Disneyworld near the end of June I was greeted by the most lovely sight I could at that time imagine: boxes.
Indeed, after weeks of waiting, my brand new computer had at last arrived.
I quickly began the process of putting her together. It was rather overwhelming at first, but I soon got the hang of it and was well on my way to completely assembled computer.
It's a beautiful thing. I still haven't completely settled on a name for the old girl yet, but I'm open to suggestions.
OF course, as you all know, on July 11th I began my journey to the Czech Republic. Two planes, three buses, and what seemed like days later we arrived at our training site in Eastern Czech, the Hotel Malenovice. Mere days later we were on our way to the Sport-grill in Jesenik, the location of our camp, but not before giving one of our interns and one of our team members some haircuts:
Lauren worked on Brad's hair; she wants to be a cosmetologist.
Shelly soon took over Brad's haircut and Jenna started on Kenny.
Kenny said he wanted a Mohawk, but Steve (our leader) seemed to think that that was a bad idea.
So Jenna got started with the clippers again.
Brad: the finished product.
Kenny: the also finished product.
The camp we stayed at is actually a hotel that's associated with this lovely restaurant. The food here was awesome! One day I decided to take pictures of all of our meals so y'all could get an idea of what we ate. These are examples of some typical Czech meals.
Breakfast: buffet-style.
Lunch: Soup and fried cheese and french fries.
Dinner: Roasted chicken and mashed potatoes.
This is the building where all of the campers slept (the leaders stayed in the part of the hotel connected to the restaurant) and had a big(ish) room where we had our evening program (when we'd have music and listen to the night's speaker, usually Brad) and other activities.
My bunk.
Laundry day!
This little house was right next to the fields were we had sports time and it reminds me of Hobbiton for some reason.
Jahnel decided she really wanted to try on some guy shorts, and ended up borrowing an entire guy outfit from Scotty.
This is one of the games we played one night before evening program; it's similar to the game "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." CAVALIER!
Another popular game was "Viking." I won't explain it now because it really requires a demonstration, but, suffice it to say, it involves a lot of yelling and funny motions.
Of course, we were running an "English Camp," so every morning we divided into our various groups and had class. The class I was in had the students with the least experience with English, so we kept our translator busy, but class was still a lot of fun. We used flashcards, matching, and role-playing to practice vocabulary with our students.
Of course what camp would be complete without window boxes containing marijuana?
Sadly, camp could not last forever, but before leaving Jesenik we took several different group photos.
The Good Shepherd team (L to R): Top - Lauren, Sue, Mary, Me, Kenny, Jenna, Steve
Middle - Jenn, AJ, Shelly
Bottom - Brian, Scotty, John
The intern team (L to R): Top - Brad, Jahnel, Kevin, Tina, Greg
Bottom - Dada (Yeah, there should be an accent mark over the first "a," but my computer isn't smart enough for that.)
The Czechs: hahahaha, seriously, I couldn't even begin to spell these names properly.
Okay, this isn't the greatest photo, but notice the man and woman in the top left. That's Jodi and Simeon. These two are from Australia and they taught one of our English classes. Simeon is actually a professional musician and provided all of the evening program worship music at our camp.
After camp our team members got to go stay in the homes of various students from the camp. There weren't enough student homes for everybody, so Jenn and I got to stay with Monica and Pista (which should have an accent mark of the "s" and is pronounced "peeshda").
We spent a few days with the student in their hometown of Bohumin, but soon had to move on to our next destination. In retrospect, though none of our students made formal decisions for Christ at our camp, many really seemed to be opening up more to the possibility of the message we were sharing. The evening program was always excellent, and though toward the end of the week when we started talking about sin, forgiveness, and Jesus it seemed like everything was conspiring against us, I think some of the discussion groups were able to have some very deep discussions after evening program. In my own group I was able to see at least one student go from feeling persecuted whenever we talked about sin and Jesus to telling us that she was willing to consider what we had been talking about, and we later heard that she asked how to become a Christian, although we don't know if she actually did it.
After saying a tearful good-bye to our friends in Bohumin we boarded a bus and headed over to Poland to tour Auschwitz.
The sign over the front gate of Auschwitz I reads "Arbeit Macht Frei" or, "Work makes you free."
The conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau were obviously horrible. This building was originally designed to stable horses and no changes were made to it before it was used to house the Jews. Each level of each individual bunk bed, though probably designed to hold only one, generally held four to five people. This building alone probably housed one thousand prisoners.
Fingernail marks from the wall of the first Auschwitz gas chamber.
After that rather depressing field trip, we traveled back into Czech for the last few days of our trip which we spent in Prague. I must say, Prague is probably one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. The beautiful old buildings and cobblestone streets make for an atmosphere that the word "breathtaking" barely does justice to. I probably couldn't tell you the names of much of what's in these pictures, so I'll pretty much let the photos speak for themselves.
My feet were just a little dirty after walking around Prague in flip-flops all day long.
And so we left Prague, indeed, the entire Czech Republic behind. It was both sad and wonderful to go home. While we all seemed to miss our families and the normalcy of our lives, we would all be missing the awesome people we met in Czech, and I for one miss the connection I felt while I was over there. I not only felt remarkably connected to the awesome people on my team, I felt so close to God over there. Every day I felt more compelled to pray and read my Bible than I ever I have, and I learned more about myself in Czech than I thought there was to know! I just hope that the spiritual growing I did in Europe will last. I already have a lot of changes in my life that I want to make, and I now know that, with God's help, I have a lot of growing to do.
Of course, my return home was not without activity. First I had to unpack.
Then, obviously, I had to play with my new Ipod mini.
And I really needed to finish The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide.
And then it came down to it. The moment I had been waiting for since 2003. I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which my brother was kind enough to pick up for me.
Needless to say, I laughed, I cried, and in the end, I pretty much just cried. Seriously Rowling, you don't have to kill good characters in every book! *tear*
So that seems to bring everything pretty much up to date. Some other stuff has happened, but I'll post about it once there's been a bit more resolution in the situation. And now, I leave you with this:
Make of it what you will.
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