The Visa Saga Continues

Written by Brittany

Many of you followed our visa journey back in August as we tried to get our visas to leave on time for the Czech Republic. Well, now that journey continues, and it's just as crazy as last time.

When we were preparing to leave, we did not have much time to acquire our visas, so we got visas that lasted for only 90 days, because they had the fastest turn-around time. These visas expire on November 20. We thought renewing our visas once we were here would be much easier than acquiring them in the first place, but a law change that happened at the end of June changed that.

According to this new law, 90 day visas cannot be renewed in country. Which means, we will have to leave the Czech Republic and go to a Czech embassy in a different country to apply for long term visas and employment cards. When we first heard this, it was definitely overwhelming. We thought our visa frustrations were over, but as we are quickly learning from other ex-pats, these frustrations never really end.

Thankfully our supervisor, Jessica, knew of a consultant, Richard, who we could hire to help us make the appointment at an embassy, figure out what documents we need, and all the other details. Jadon, myself, and our teammate Annie (who is in the same situation) hired Richard, and he has already been a great help.

So what we know as of right now: The three of us have an appointment at the Czech embassy in Berlin, Germany at 1:00pm on November 10. We're still waiting to find out exactly what documents and other things we need.

Please keep us, Annie, and our other teammate Dennis in your prayers as the four of us try to navigate these confusing visa waters. We are so grateful to have Jessica for her practical and emotional support.

Unrelated to visas: This past Saturday, Jadon & I traveled to a small town called Český Krumlov, about 2.5 hours south of Prague. The whole town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (a place that is listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as of special cultural or physical significance). Which basically means that the sites are preserved for their value. 

View of the town from the Castle

Our bus left Prague at 8am, and we were in the town from 11am-8pm. We were able to explore the castle and the many winding streets, as well as enjoy some delicious food, coffee, and just relax in the perfect weather. It was one of the best days we've had here so far. (To see more pictures: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.919632976677.1073741838.69601108&type=1&l=81de5de8b9)

Praises: 
- Fixed washing machine AND a microwave!!
- Health. After a full month of sickness, we are both finally feeling back to normal! (And prayers that we continue to feel that way.)
- We leave for Paris in FOUR days!!!
- Our health insurance cards are finally here! It seems like many things we have been waiting on are coming together.

Prayer Requests:
- Obviously the visas are our main request right now. That we do everything correctly the first time and that we can remain peaceful and patient as things get figure out.
- Traveling. We will be flying to Paris (!!!) on Friday and returning next Wednesday. Prayers that everything we've booked works out and for safety as we travel.
- Our oven is still broken. We aren't sure where we're at with that, but hopefully it will be fixed or replaced soon.
- We are starting our Bible study with two of our friends here tomorrow, so prayers that the Lord can use that to strengthen our personal relationships & our relationships with Him.

Adding the Extras

Written by Brittany (Sorry if this post is weirdly highlighted. I can't figure out how to fix it.)

Since our last blog post, we have managed to keep ourselves pretty busy. Settling into a routine here, and finally adding "extra" things to our schedules. Between the 25th-30th of September, we went to a classical music concert, sightseeing at Prague castle, our first Sparta Prague hockey game, and a Shakespeare performance. (To see pictures of our busy week: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.912944754927.1073741837.69601108&type=1&l=9465abf401) We also began drama club, and I began meeting with some students after school. This has been a fun week adding in all the extras, and also a pretty big "oh yeah, this is what it's like to have a busy life!" Jadon adds tutoring this coming week, and then I think we'll have all the main extras added in.

Prague Castle

English Drama Club met for the first time for a little over an hour on Wednesday afternoon. It was a great experience! There are some students who have graduated from the high school, but continue to come back for drama club (they go to nearby universities). They, and other younger students who have been in EDC before, are a great resource for us, as they know how everything works. We played a couple "ice breaker" games with them, and finished with an acting game they chose. It seems like this is going to be a wonderful way for us to get to know students better and to build connections.

Cultural Tidbit: Nearly every Czech female has a last name that ends in "ova." It essentially means "belonging to." So the female "belongs to" her father/father's name. And when you get married you'd have your husband's last name, plus "ova." So if you had a brother and a sister (or husband and wife), they would actually have different last names. It would be something like Dan Mifka and Denise Mifkova. Interesting, isn't it? We have also seen the last name changed with non-Czech names, like book authors or fictional characters. Here's a "real world" example for you: 

Praises:
- Drama Club! We are really looking forward to how this shapes our year & our relationships.
- We have one full month of school under our belts! Only 9 more to go ;)
- Making time for fun extras (hockey games, Shakespeare performances, etc.)
- In under three weeks we will be traveling to Paris for four days!!

Prayer Requests:
- Our stove and our washing machine decided to quit on us this week. Our landlord has been to look at them, and hopefully they will be fixed soon. (Silver lining: we are supposed to be given a microwave to tide us over until the stove is fixed! We have really missed having a microwave!)
- Health. We have been passing colds back & forth the last few weeks, and Jadon currently has a cough he hasn't been able to shake.
- Visas. There were law changes this summer, and the way visas & employment cards work has changed. Thankfully we have experienced people working with us, but it looks like getting our new visas & employment cards may be more complicated than we expected. (Though with our Chicago visa history, we really shouldn't be surprised.)
- Health Insurance Cards. We still do not have cards for our Czech health insurance through the school. All the forms have been sent in, so we're just waiting for the insurance company to send them back to us.

Our School in the Czech Republic

Written by Jadon

Well, we have lived in Prague for a month, and we are doing very well.

It occurred to us in the last few days that many of you who casually follow our blog or our Facebook accounts would probably like to know more details about our school and our classes.  Well you are in luck! This blog post is for you!!

The name of our school is Gymnazium Arabska (both of those words have accents on the last ‘a’, which I don’t know how type on my American keyboard).  The term Gymnazium indicates that the school is somewhat prestigious, and that all of our students had to apply and be accepted before they could attend.

Our flat is about a 12 minute bus ride from our school—only two stops—and there is also a tram line that will get us almost all the way home from school with only a few extra stops. So getting to and from school is quite easy, which is a welcome blessing.

In the Czech school system, teachers do not have their own classrooms. Instead each teacher moves around for each new class, similar to how a university teacher in the United States would. This means that instead of a classroom, both Brittany and I have our own offices, though we each share our office with two other English teachers. Fortunately, we do each have our own desks, so we can spread out all our stuff. Because we are always changing classrooms, we are getting our exercise doing extra sets of stairs—our school has four floors—and we are constantly checking our schedules to make sure we are headed to the right classroom.

Another aspect of being a roving teacher that we are just starting to learn is that each classroom is different. Some classrooms have whiteboards, others blackboards. Some have projectors and screens, others have no media capability at all. I had one classroom today equipped with a Smartboard—which I almost wrote on with my dry erase marker… The point is, if you are planning to show a Powerpoint with pictures of the various landscapes of the United States, you might have to change classrooms, trade with another teacher for the hour, etc… You get the point.  For the most part, however, there is always a work around.

As for our specific classes, both Brittany and I teach 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th years (sophomores, juniors, and seniors). We each have 5 classes for each year, that’s 15 classes in total for each of us! However, we only see our 2^nd and 3^rd years once a week for 45 minutes (which is not very long, though we are getting used to it), but our 4^th years we see twice a week. So we each have 20 classes to teach a week, but only four preps. This means that we don’t have a lot of class planning to do per week, but we do have a lot of remembering to do. After you have taught the same lesson 5 or 10 times, it is really hard to remember what you have said to whom, and what you haven’t. It is also hard to remember names when you have 206 students—Brittany has 214—and you only see some of them once a week.

But all our students have a really good handle on the English language already, and we are enjoying teaching them.

I’m sure I left some details out, but seeing as this post is quite long already, you’ll have to ask about anything else you want to know in the comments section.

Praises:

-We continue to feel more at home here in Prague and at our school.

-We found a delicious Mexican restaurant close to our church (Mexican cuisine isn’t very common here).

-Brittany planned our first excursion into Europe (Paris) over our first school break in October!!!

Prayer Requests:

-In October we start a Bible study, Czech lessons, and begin our responsibilities with the English Drama Club at our school. So, prayer that we don’t re-overwhelm ourselves in a few days.

-I have been asked to tutor three boys after school in English, and that will also probably start in October.

- Brittany will be working with three of her female senior students outside of class. 

Taken during some of our sightseeing last weekend overlooking Prague

Faith in Things

Written by Brittany

It’s very easy to be superstitious. Athletes, and fans, will wear the same socks, shirts, even (gross) underwear for their games. They have pre-game rituals that, as the commercial says, are only stupid if they don’t work. Even I have a teddy bear that has traveled with me everywhere since my friend Lisa gave him to me when I was 17, a St. Christopher (patron saint of travelers) bracelet I’ve worn every day so far in Prague, and a Blackhawks hat I wear every time I watch one of their games. And when I was in high school, I had my hair French braided for every standardized test I took. Do I put real spiritual stock into these things? No. Do they bring temporary comfort and confidence? Absolutely.

These first two weeks at school, our students have been doing individual presentations. They have to bring one important item from home and introduce it to the class, saying why it is important to them, what it represents, etc. This has been a great way to learn more about our students as well as assess their English speaking skills. What I didn’t expect to gain was insight into the spirituality of some of the Czech people and a small knowledge of where they place their confidences.

As students brought items from home, one word kept popping up: “talisman.” Objects ranging from necklaces, bracelets, and charms to an American quarter, a heart shaped rock, and a small, antique wolf statue. The students described these as things they keep with them when they take tests, when they travel, and just on normal days for protection and luck. Even if students did not describe their items as such, when their classmates asked them questions, the query, “Does it bring you luck?” came up frequently. The idea of an object granting luck and giving protection is clearly shared among many.

Coming from a culture where you don’t often hear people speak seriously about talismans and objects bringing protection, it has been interesting to listen to the students speak about their small faiths in these objects. We know there is a growing Christian community in the Czech Republic, but we also know that there are many, the majority, who are not Christian. Listening to my students, I just kept thinking these talismans, these objects, were perhaps how they were filling their Faith-void. 

I am not writing this to make a statement about the evil-ness of talismans and superstitions. And certainly not about Czech faith. I have been here just three weeks and would never presume to have anything more than an incredibly shallow, surface-level knowledge. But I am writing this to share an observation and a prayer. That these young people can learn that aside from short-term comfort and shallow confidences, talismans are not needed, that there is a Protector who brings never-ending comfort and strong confidence. I don’t know if Jadon or I will be called on to specifically share the Name and Love of Christ with any of these students, but I pray that we can lay a foundation and that we start them asking questions. When objects fail to live up to the faith we put into them, where can we turn?

First Week of School Completed!!

Written by Jadon

We made it through our first week of school! And have now enjoyed a very much deserved weekend.

Last week, both Brittany and I met with 11 of our 15 classes. That’s roughly 150 students each! And, since classes did not officially start until Tuesday, today (Monday) we have four new classes each and somewhere between 40 and 60 new students each!  But classes are going well, and we are trying our best to learn all their names.

Our time hasn’t been all business, however, since we really only had to have two “lessons” (really they were more like ice-breaker activities) planned for this last week, and, going forward, we will only have four preps a week (which is the only possible way that having 15 classes can be remotely manageable).

Anyway, on Tuesday we stopped at the McDonalds on the way home from school to get celebratory drinks and pastries from the café, since we had made it through our first day teaching in Prague. Then on Wednesday, we decided to spend some of our afternoon exploring the city.  We managed to find Old Town Square—a very touristy area—and explored the area a bit, even being lucky enough to eavesdrop on a tour guide talking about the astronomical clock (picture below). We missed hearing and seeing the clock on the hour, but when we circled back to head home, the clock had just struck the hour, and the square was packed full of people, so maybe finding it at 4:30 was actually a blessing. (To see the rest of our Old Town pictures, visit this link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.904090124677&type=1&l=63bb617aa6)

This clock not only tells the time and the locations of both the sun and moon in the sky based off the the zodiac constellations, but also many other things that I can't remember now...

 

On Saturday, in the park across the road from our flat, there was a free open-air opera.  It was a Czech opera titled Čert a Káča (The Devil and Kate), and though we knew we wouldn’t understand a word, we decided we couldn’t miss the opportunity for a picnic and free opera so close to home. So, we grabbed our lunches and headed to the park. Except the park is very hilly/mountainous, and it was a good 30 minute walk from the park entrance to the opera viewing grounds, most of which was like climbing a small mountain. But there were tons of elderly people climbing with canes or ski poles, and families with small children in strollers that the parents were pushing or dragging up the rocky incline, and at least one pregnant woman, so we kept going. And it was a lot of fun (not the climbing, the opera). It was long and in a different language, but we are really glad we went.

And now it is Monday again, and we have another week ahead of us, even though our bodies would rather stay in bed.  But that is just the Monday morning blues.

Praises:

-We have made it through the scariest week of school without any major occurrences

-We have found a church that we really like, and that has lots of members in our age range

-Our Internet is still working

-We are continuing to adapt and relax in our new home and environment

Prayer Requests:

-We still have many students to meet for the first time, and that we can slowly start to remember all   their faces & names

-Continued strength, energy, and courage for both the school year and our new environment

-That we would continue to make friends outside of our workplace

One Week Down!

Written by Brittany

We made it through our first week (and two days)! It's hard to believe we've already been here that long, but at the same time, it seems like we've been here much longer. It's amazing how many new things you can learn in a day and somehow (by the Grace of God) still retain most them.

Our week was very full. On Monday we went on a trip with our school to Germany which was really nice but really long! We were picked up at 5:15am and did not return home until around 10:45pm! We saw a lot of beautiful scenery, but everything was either in Czech or German, so we never really knew what was going on. (To see pictures of our Germany trip, you can visit our Facebook album here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.899771923387.1073741831.69601108&type=1&l=0de5859a8d even if you don't have Facebook!)

The rest of the week was divided between time at school and time getting all the necessary things done when you move to a new city. We had to report to the Foreign Police on Tuesday morning. Our deputy headmaster went with us, so we really did very little as he spoke to the policewoman in Czech, and apparently all went fine. Then Tuesday afternoon we finally got our transportation cards, which makes getting everywhere SO much easier. Now we can get on & off buses/trams/metros without having the buy a new ticket each time. This week we also successfully paid the Internet bill; then when the Internet went out, we went back to the provider's store and got that worked out. We also had our first Starbucks and McDonald's, both of which we live quite close to!

At school, we've been given our keys and shown our classrooms. We change classrooms every period, so we spent some time going through the school making sure we could find all of them. We also now have our offices. Jadon is on the ground floor and shares his office with two Czech English teachers. My office is on the third floor (which here they call second floor - it can get confusing), and I share it with two other Czech English teachers. The whole English department seems really nice, and there are two other new teachers, so it's nice not to be the only ones with a million questions.

My Door

My Office

My Desk

Jadon's Door

Jadon's Office

Jadon's Desk

This weekend has been really nice as it has been our first real time of relaxation. Friday we were able to go to the McDonald's, which has a much more cafe-like feel here than just fast food, and get our year plan made for all three classes, which feels really great to have that completed! Saturday we had our first Teach Beyond team meeting and got to meet everyone who is here in Prague with us from our organization. And then last night we were invited over to our new friend Shara's flat for dinner. It's so nice to have connections here so quickly. If we're ever lost/scared/confused, we already have so many people we can contact for help!

Praises:
- Getting registered at Foreign Police, transport cards, and Internet fixes went well & relatively easy
- Our stove & oven have been fixed
- Though are Internet was out for about 29 hours, it is back & working well
- Making connections with both English & Czech speakers

Prayer Requests:
- Strength, Patience, Energy, Excitement: all that is needed to start a school year well!
- For our students and the other teachers at our school; also for the other teachers on our Teach Beyond team & their schools
- Continued grace and provision as we transition

We're Here! ...well, We're There!

Written by Brittany

As most of you have probably seen from our multiple Facebook updates, we have made it to our apartment in Prague!

On Thursday afternoon, our plane ended up leaving Chicago about 90 minutes late due to (direct quote from the pilot): "a major cock-up with the fueling." His updates were hilarious, but you could tell he was frustrated, as we all were. When we were finally able to leave, he said, "Now we'll let the people here deal with all the paperwork, I'm about to fly this plane like I stole it."

Since we only had a 2 hour layover in London, we ended up missing our flight, but with very little hassle we were able to get booked on one that had us arriving in Prague just two hours later.

Once we landed (Friday afternoon), we were met by Milan, from our school, and Kelly, from Teach Beyond. They then took us around showing us our apartment (which we now must call a flat), our school, a shopping area, the bus stops, etc. They also helped us get new phones and get some Czech cash. If you would like our Czech phone numbers, just email us. We can receive texts for free, and I don't think it's too expensive for us to send them; however, our main communication back to the States will still be Email/Facebook/Skype/FaceTime.

Today (Saturday) has been very successful. Though the day started slow and overwhelming, we began sorting through the stuff that is already at our flat, reorganizing, and unpacking. Here is, by far, the best thing we found in our flat:

You know we'll be hanging this up!

Around lunch time we headed to the grocery store, which was bigger than what we were expecting to have so close to the flat (only a five minute walk!). People have been warning us about the overwhelming experience of grocery shopping, but it really wasn't that bad. We learned we have to bring our own bags, which we did, and weigh and sticker our own produce, which we didn't do this time, but will try it out next time. Our only misstep was purchasing paper towels that we thought were toilet paper. And the store has much more "from home" things than we were expecting. Including vanilla Coke, Oreos, & Dove body wash! The rest of the afternoon was spent eating lunch, organizing, relaxing. We felt much less overwhelmed as the day went on.

For dinner, we went back to the shopping area (picking up toilet paper & more vanilla Coke) and stopped by a fast food place that sells fish & chips. They didn't speak much English, but we were able to get our order across correctly, and though they spoke little to us, they seemed very friendly. This is definitely a place we intend to go back, as the fish & chips were delicious, and their main foods are pizza & kebabs. Yum!

Tomorrow we will go to church, possibly up to the city, and continue organizing our new home. While it is definitely different, we don't feel as lost as we thought we would.

Praises:
 - One of our suitcases (the one with most of my clothes) didn't make it on our plane, but it is being delivered to our flat as I type!
- People taking us under their wings these first few days
- Easy shopping & restaurant experiences
- Having such quick access to Internet and communication

Prayer Requests:
- Continued rest as we adjust to the time change (we're 7 hours ahead of US Central time)
- Ease as we figure out more detail-things: transportation cards, putting the Internet in our name, etc.
- Our stove & oven do not work, we're supposed to have someone in on Tuesday to look at it, so prayers that it's an easy fix.

Thanks for so much love as we begin this new adventure!