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Czech it out.

Emptiness and detachment

I am writing this from a quaint B&B--The Elms--in Bedford, England. I am here by myself, all week long. I have done some things, and I have done nothings. I have written a lot, and it has come to my mind that perhaps I should transfer some of my ponderings to a blog, so that some of my dear friends and family will know A) that I am alive and well and B) that I am thinking, and that I wish them to think as well. What follows are smatterings of thought from the first half of my solitary holiday.

25 October
So. Yesterday I arrived in London. I embarked on the off-chance of meeting up with Dan and Jayne Taylor. I failed, but as a consolation prize I met up with the whole England Term '09 group from Bethel at the ever-lovely Celtic Hotel (this is the the part where all you ET alums let out a big sigh and say, "Weetabix? Tea for two?" go ahead... just do it). It was as it should have been: an awkward, bizarre surprise, but more or less enjoyable. I walked into the room where everyone was, and, being a year older than all of them, got strange looks of, "We know you, but why are you here?" As expected.

I finally got to The Elms about 10 p.m.... an hour and a half after my train pulled into Bedford. I could have taken a taxi. I could have even asked directions. But no... I think there's too much "man" in my family--thus bleeding into the usually-sensible women. Therefore, I was bound and determined to find my B&B on my own, 9:00 at night, in a strange city, with badly-scrawled directions from GoogleMaps. I had also forgotten how confusing streets in the UK can be. They are not blocked out symmetrically as in the US. Some streets start with one name and change 2 or 3 times over the course of a half mile. Some have a round-about in the middle of them, and you find yourself stuck in a Chevy-Chase style of navigation to get out of them. You begin to learn all the street names by heart (because you've gone around that bloody roundabout so many times), but you still don't know where the blazes you are. Some streets just stop in the middle of nowhere. And some don't have names at all. Or, they do, but you would have to be a resident of that street for at least 5 years to discover it.

Anyways, I got to The Elms (after almost making it all the way into another small village). Thankfully, Bedford is a safe enough city and there was no damage done, apart from blisters and slight dehydration. But gosh darn it, my pride was still intact. Ha.

(Just for kind manners' sake: You are allowed to stop reading this at any time. Don't feel as if you must make it 'til the end--this is merely a purging to get rid of the slight guilt I feel for being an inconsistent blogger.)


26 October
In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty... in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.
--Deepak Chopra

I lifted that from the Facebook page of a friend back in the Czech Republic.
I am tired. I am in Oxford. And Oxford, while beautiful, is too peopled. If I could extract the presence of the buildings from the presence of the people, it would work out alright. When I travel alone, I feel detached, as if I am merely an observer. And that is exactly what I am. When I am alone, I get to examine life. But the examination drains me. But I find myself searching peoples' faces, asking them, "Do you care? Do you? Do you?" And they stare blankly, and walk into Debenhams. And then I shrug, and follow them. I don't know why. Poor people, they didn't ask for my analysis. They just came to do some shopping.

When I travel alone, I have time and energy to think. I am able to devote more than 5 minutes to thinking. This is a good thing. So, I turned to a question that had been on my mind ever since I moved to the Czech Republic. Why am I a Christian? This is a pressing and very important question--one that I need to be able to answer in a non-Christian society. I thought about this on the bus ride to Oxford. I tried in vain to come up with a profound sort of C.S. Lewish-ish quote. "Just answer the damn question for yourself, you fool!" I said, almost out-loud. I wish I would have. Okay. I went to the essence, the core of it. I am a Christian because I want, I need, I am, life. I want the fullest, most complete, most true life. And the farther I get into this full, true life, the more I never want anything else. And I know I will not get the full Truth ("You can't handle the Truth!" So true.), the full completeness of life here on earth, so I live with the hope and the faith that I will experience Life in full when my earthly life is done. "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." 1 Corinthians 13:12, in case you're wondering.


28 October
I was going to go to St. Neots today--another town near Bedford, just to "look around." I got back from breakfast and decided, no. Not today. I thought, I will get some work done today instead. I got to Costa Coffee and decided, no. Not today. I finished Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." It had a sad ending, but a complete one. It ended as it should have--how the book wanted and needed to end. Rarely do I find a book that ends right.

I planned to go to the Hobgoblin (this is a pub) tonight, but chickened out just before I opened the door. I proceeded to walk around Bedford for the next hour, searching for a more "friendly" pub. I have discovered that no pub looks friendly to a young single girl traveling alone. It is unfortunate, but true. It is at times like these that I wish I were a man. Then it wouldn't matter, and I would be sitting in the Hobgoblin with my fish and chips and pint of Guinness. But, such as it is, my better judgment told me to accept my position and situation, and so here I sit at... drum roll please... Pizza Hut. But I intend to enjoy myself to the fullest extent. I have a glass of chardonnay before me. I never knew you could order wine at Pizza Hut. My surroundings--the music from the 90s, the ghastly, too-bright colors of the carpet and walls, and the young family sitting across the aisle from me--do not fit with my thoughts and state of mind. But it makes it humorous, and kind of quaint. So I will embrace it. I intend to get dessert, too. I think that will help.

I do not talk much around here. It makes sense--why should I, when I know no one? I only notice this because it is a complete 180 degree change from less than a week ago. My demeanor has completely changed. I do not smile much. I can imagine that I have a sort of off-putting air--a non-welcoming look on my face. But I need it to be that way. I am not so naive to think nothing could ever happen to me, just because I am in a country whose language I can understand. But inside I feel alive. I feel a sort of emptying of emotions, of worries, of responsibility. I feel cleansed, and free to think through things I have not had the time or energy to think through. I must look strange here, a young woman alone, sitting writing at a Pizza Hut with a glass of chardonnay. I don't care.

I don't know how to end this smorgasbord of a blog, so I'll cut it off like a Monty Python skit (i.e., a weight drops from the ceiling onto the stage) or even better, like Shakespeare (Exit, pursued by a bear). If you made it to the end, my apologies.

Blessings on you all, and thanks for all the e-mails/letters. They are much, much, much appreciated.

Birth and re-birth

We had our first English Club last night. We packed 18 students into our building, ate cookies, drank tea, and discussed such in-depth questions as: "Would you rather eat moldy bread, or lick a dirty toilet?" "Would you rather eat a bar of soap or drink a bottle of liquid soap?" "Would you rather have all the hairs on your body plucked off one by one or have all your toenails and fingernails pulled off?" Our brain cells were enlivened--especially when someone turned on Hannah Montana's latest hit, and we all learned the dance steps. Well, mostly everyone. I "took pictures." I'm lame.

Three guys stayed until midnight, long after everyone else had gone home. The guitar--the great connector-- was brought out, and we joined in together with "My Heart Will Go On" on a rusty, out-of-tune upright piano. Is there anything better? Doubtful.

One of the students began to play a Czech worship song on the guitar. There are not many who are so openly Christian, but this guy is. I thought, am I that brave? I am a foreigner--I am excused to be strange and have stupid religious views. But this guy lives every day as a true Christian in an atheistic community, and he doesn't care. He is not careful not to offend anyone. So what if his Christian lifestyle spurs on conversations and controversy? He is the 21st century Paul of Tarsus.

And there are others. There are others who are working hard for change--and not just on Sunday, not just at Youth Group, not just during their five minutes of daily prayer. It is constant, and it is noticed. It is incredible--and an honor--to live among these people. I thought that I was going to this place to share my faith, to open eyes, to teach. No, I am the one that is learning, that is having my eyes opened. You want a testimony? Talk to a Czech Christian. They will give you a real-life account. Most did not have the opportunity to "grow up" with Christianity in their family; they had to make their own choice, their own commitment, to follow Christ. It is a daily thing to choose to do it, to be real, to be true. I have never seen this kind of faith.

I am alive. I breathe in and out, I walk, I talk, I think. It is here that I see what it means to live in Christ. I have never understood this before. There is a deep joy that comes from this life--it is the best and, for me, only way to describe it. It is rooted, and it does not leave. It is not always exuberant, not always energetic, but it is a quality of joy that is unlike anything else. I hold out my hands, first to receive, and then to pour out. I am experiencing life, both again and for the first time.

Teach me to care and not to care

Cheb has got me wrapped around its finger. It never ceases: each day I come from school filled up. I think to myself, when will the high stop? When will I come back down from the clouds and realize that I am in a foreign country where few share my language, my customs, my beliefs? When will I realize that this is hard?

But it is hard, as all teachers know--whether you are a teacher of subjects or a teacher of life. It is hard to care so much. In one of my classes today we read an excerpt from "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah, which is about Beah's experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone in West Africa. I asked my class, does it matter what happens in Africa? Fred said, yes, of course it matters. Frank said, no, I don't care. I care about what happens to me. Why should it matter to me what happens in Africa? Fred said, what about your ancestors? They stole from Africa. Your history includes Africa. Now, Fred is Vietnamese. Frank is Roma--a Gypsy. They come from completely different backgrounds, and neither one is truly and fully "European" in the colloquial sense of the word. But Fred cares about Africa. Frank does not. They argued in class--and in English!--for a few minutes, until they decided they simply had different opinions. And then they made up (talk about maturity), and their catch phrase for the rest of class was "war and peace." I loved it. It was all I could do to keep myself from bursting into a passionate rant. I have to keep myself on-task, you know. 45 minutes goes by quickly.

But my heart breaks for people like Frank. To not care? What's that like? What can I do for them? What do I say, to show them how to care, to show them that I care? What will it take? And it is only October.

I plan for much more of this to happen. I am not here just to "do my job." I am here to care, whether they like it or not. Can I make them care? Probably not. But there might be a chance. I want fights in class. I want debate, argument, heated opinions... Is this a young teacher's folly? Probably. Shake your head at me all you want. But I am here, I am ready, and I am going to milk this for all it's worth.

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

A Small Lunchtime Anecdote

I was standing in the lunch line today with a bunch of little kids. Usually I use my Teacher Power and cut in front of whoever is nearest the trays and silverware, but today my lessons ended early and I had nowhere else to be but in line with the cheeky little Czech youngsters. One kid cut in front of me, and immediately the one ahead of him turned around, pointed at him and started jabbering at me in Czech. I assumed the intended accusation was to see whether I would do anything about said cutter or not. I said "It's okay" in English. That gave me away. "Učitelka?" (Teacher?)
"Ano. Anglicky." (Yes. English.)
...jabber jabber jabber...
"Učitelka?"
"Jo. Jsem z Ameriky." (Yeah. I'm from America.) BAH!!! Eruption. Ten small children turned around, wide-eyed and suddenly hysterical. I was an instant celebrity. Apparently they had heard about me--or at least about someplace called America. One lad kept asking me the only English phrase he knew: "What is your name?"
"My name is Ms. Roe. What is your name?"
"My name is Jan." Silence. "What is your name?" Sigh.
...jabber jabber jabber... They asked me questions I couldn't understand. "Česky? Česky?" (Czech? Do you speak Czech?)
"Nerozumim. Ne Česky." (I don't understand. No Czech.)
"Česky?"
"NE."
...jabber jabber jabber... More questions. I shook my head. They kept asking questions, only this time louder and slower. "I still nerozumim. Ner!O!Zu!Mim!" Kid, it doesn't matter. I don't speak Czech, no matter how slowly or loudly you speak, and I am most certainly not stupid, which I know is what you're thinking. And now your little brain is infected with, "All Americans must be stupid. They can't understand me." It's not AmeriCAN, it's AmeriCAN'T. Ah, me. Thus are stereotypes born. Alas. Attempt at gaining favor with the young'uns = Fail. I'll stick to befriending the lunch ladies. I get extra dumplings from them.

Calling All Onions

Last night I went to a bonfire at a Czech cottage.

Homemade guacamole. "Healthy" water. Canned bamboo. Fresh grilled fish. Tiramisu. Guitardrumskazooharmonicavoices.

It was the music that was the connector. These people, these free-for-all bonfire-ers... all we needed was an out-of-tune guitar, and life could start, could include all of us, regardless of backgrounds, views, stories, lifestyles, beliefs. We sang OutKast, Dispatch, Beatles, Jason Mraz, Paul Simon. We sang everything we knew, everything we didn't know but didn't care a lick about it anyways because who needs lyrics when you've at least got the music? Until now I have taken it so much for granted. The piano lessons we plodded through for so many years, the endless choirs and concerts we sang in, the tinkering around with the guitar (the most beautiful tool of procrastination known to man)--it all has new meaning. Right now, my dad is singing on my iTunes, right along with Elizabeth Hunnicutt and Damien Rice. I have taken what belonged to one home and transplanted it in another, and miraculously, it fits. It is a connector in every culture. It is transient, real, truth.

The music, the people, the day-to-day-ness that life has drifted into--it makes this place feel right. Everyday I walk home from school, exhausted but full. The leaves are just barely beginning to turn here. Last year I saw those first few colors as I drove down a lonely county highway in the middle of Minnesota, going to a high school volleyball tournament. How is it that I see those same colors, see that same change, 4,500 miles away, and still feel right? We are not so different, you know.

I think God may have modeled humans after onions. That top layer--the appearance of it, which is also the thinnest, mind you--is peeled off easily. In fact, it even falls away, crumbles at a touch. The deeper layers--the stories, the experiences, the cultures--they have a little more solidity to them. But the core of the onion is the thickest, and the most potent. Do you not cry when you slice through an onion? If you peel the layers off one by one, the tears do not start until you get much further in. The soul of the onion is what makes us weep in earnest.

Maybe this is the reason I travel. I want to see if there are other onions out there like me. And what I have found so far in my short life is this: American onions, Czech onions, British onions, Thai onions--they all have that same potent center, that connecting "something" that has no sufficient definition. In my opinion, it is a Connection by which we were created. The same One who created onions, created guacamole, created music and souls and connections and life.

Perspectives

Photo 1: Charles Bridge by night (Prague)
Photo 2: My teammate and I on the train to Karlovy Vary (a spa town) for my birthday
Photo 3: Prague skyline

Vitejte v Chebu

So, I am here.

And here I sit, in a cafe, first time by myself, first time successfully ordering a cappuccino, by myself, and indeed feeling rather pleased... with myself. It's amazing how nerve-racking these little things can be in a country that uses far more letters in its alphabet than I care for. Also, I never thought I'd see the day when German is as welcome a sight as English. Thank you, high school German teacher.

I am trying to take it all in, but I am so "in" it that it's hard to get my bearings. My new world is filled with color, with oldness, and with this new language that my mouth can't handle. I read a quote from Annie Dillard this morning: "We keep waking from a dream we can't recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees." That's exactly how it is. It might be a form of culture shock, but it's wonderful.

I am learning. The citizens of Cheb are proud of their town; they may not be religious, but somehow they managed to gather 9 million crowns to rebuild their cathedral's spires exactly the way it was before it was bombed in WWII. And they are knowledgeable in their history; they are not afraid to talk Communism, to talk Prague Spring, to tell their stories and share their views. They are open and honest, and it is refreshing and new.

The picture, for instance, is of a beautiful garden the city renovated only a few years ago. During Communism, it was known as a "jungle" of sorts--overgrown weeds, gnarly trees, litter and garbage everywhere. And then suddenly Communism vanished, and one of the first things the city did was to bring beauty back as much as they could. The buildings were re-painted (hence the bright colors everywhere), gardens were brought back to life--it was a 'rebellion' of beauty, in a sense. The garden, then, was renovated and had a sister garden in a German town only a few kilometers away. They brought in "gardens" from dozens of different countries, each one having its own little plot to represent a new world community, no longer ostracized by Communism. A couple years ago, they decided it was too expensive to keep up, so they simplified it down to what it is today in the photo you see. But what a beautiful story, yes?

I see hope here. I see life beginning again, and in more places than just gardens. I think it is in people too. Another thing I have learned: there is a great similarity between Czech people and American people--it is the simple fact that they are all people. Crazy, eh? It is ridiculous to stereotype, to assume, to generalize. The feelings, needs and wants that are felt in Grey Eagle, Minnesota are also felt in Cheb, Czech Republic. There is no one above, no one below. Simplistic, but true. And what is known is not always so readily understood, and truth is the only goal anyways.

'Welcome to the Real World'

Re.al.i.ty. noun. The world or the state of things as they actually exist.

We leave for Czech tomorrow. Tomorrow! I do not know what it is that I am feeling. I feel that tomorrow is inevitable, and so there is no need to feel extreme emotions. No matter if I am terribly excited or terrified, it shall come all the same, and nothing I do, say or feel will slow it down or speed it up. So I'm leaving.

I have been wondering, though. I wonder about life and its rhythms and how we look at it. It is almost the end of summer, and people are going back to school. It is "back to reality" now. But the thing is, what exactly is reality? I remember traveling around the UK for England Term a couple years ago, and we would lament to each other how horrible it would be when we would have to get back to "real life." We knew we were living The Dream--traveling, reading and writing for three months--but all dreams end. But when I got back to the United States, it was all wrong. It was not "reality" as I had left it--I didn't recognize it anymore, because I had been altered, along with my sense of what "reality" was. Thus, I went through a few months of a bitter "reality check," trying to come to terms with my own country. Reality became warped--nothing was familiar, or how I thought it should be, at least.

The truth is, we can't go "back to reality"--we are always in it. We never left. It is what we choose to make of the reality we live in--whether or not it will become familiar is an entirely different matter. This next year in Czech will be reality for me. All the traveling I have ever done--it is reality. All the "staying in one place" I have ever done--it is also reality.

You know, we live far too much in the future. I do, anyways. It's always, "Next week I will start eating better." "Tomorrow I will call my parents." "Next semester I will really start taking school seriously." Do we honestly think that "reality" will wait to happen until we want it to? Who says, "I am not really living my life right now, what I'm doing now doesn't count"? But that's our mentality. We think that when we reach a certain goal, age or season in life (graduation, job, marriage), that's when life "really begins." Bollocks. Live life now. You have no excuses. Reality is now, and you will always be in it.

Findings

I am officially done with training, and now they say I am a Teacher. Apparently I now have the authority to mold the brains of 300+ Czech students according to what I think proper. Or something.

So to celebrate, my mom and aunt flew down to Pasadena to spend the weekend with me. Yesterday we went to Huntington Gardens, where beautiful gardens imported from China, Japan and Australia (why Australia? There are no gardens in Australia) grace the rolling hills of Mr. Huntington's estate.

But that wasn't all; the estate also housed a gigantic library full of old books and manuscripts (Gutenberg Bible, anyone?), including an exhibit featuring the one and only Samuel Johnson. (Boswell: I asked, "If, Sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a newborn child with you, what would you do?" Johnson: "Why, Sir, I should not much like my company.") Next to Johnson's exhibit, a "double-elephant folio" of bird sketches by Charles Audubon filled a chunk of the adjoining room. Bah. As I looked at Audubon's larger-than-life sketches, I got a little twitchy and short of breath, and couldn't stand them for long. But the thing that caught my eye was at the bottom of the exhibit, on a little placard giving the history of the folio: "Almost all of Audubon's work was self-funded, and his neglected family was often poverty-stricken because of the consuming passion he placed on his profession." Audubon was so concerned with drawing pictures of nasty little winged rats that he drove his family into the poorhouse. But look what he has left us--the Audubon Society would be nothing without him, obviously. And Johnson was so consumed with using his gift of writing "correctly" and faithfully that we have more writings by him than almost any other author in history. He literally wrote himself into his grave.

And then, we stumbled into Huntington's art galleries. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Charles Gainsborough were suddenly transported from the British National Gallery to Pasadena, California. John Constable's "Salisbury Cathedral" loomed large in a forgotten corner. Canaletto. Rogier van der Weyden. Jacques-Louis David. Claude Lorrain. And then, I turned another corner and saw a J.M.W. Turner staring me in the face, as if to say, "Remember me?"
"What are you doing here?" I asked, more than a little bewildered. "Do you know you're in Pasadena?" I stared a little longer, shook my head, and went to go find the Americans.

But right before I left, Rembrandt tapped me on the shoulder. I stood there, dumbfounded. Rembrandt? In Pasadena? Why? The Lady with a Plume, with those sad, deep eyes, bore into mine. The placard said the painting was a collaboration between Rembrandt and a pupil from his studio, but the eyes were Rembrandt's. If you ever have a chance, look at Rembrandt's eyes. They are haunting, they dig down into your soul, and they will leave you shaken.

And then I ran headlong into the Americans. Lined up, one right after the other, was every single artist I had ever learned about in my art history classes. Motherwell. Frankenthaler. Diebenkorn. Bellows. Robert Henri. George Luks. Edward Hopper. Tears started to well up as I left, sorry that I only had fifteen minutes with them. They were old friends that I was allowed to only see in passing--reminders of the time that really wasn't so very long ago, when I immersed myself in their histories and wrote endless pages analyzing and critiquing, and reveling in their spirit of simply being. I sense myself drifting into a sort of post-college nostalgia, hence making this post much longer than it should be. But it was a good thing for me, to go back to those things that I loved. It was a reminder that it doesn't ever have to end, to be totally separated from the "real world." What Rembrandt paints about--that is the real world, really. He paints what we cannot say, what we can only express with our impotent tears and sighs.

Unimportances

“All of us are prisoners of a rigid conception of what is important and what is not, and so we fasten our gaze on the important, while from a hiding place behind our backs the unimportant wages its guerrilla war, which will end in surreptitiously changing the world and pouncing on us by surprise.” –Milan Kundera

I went to a wedding back in Minnesota this weekend—one last chance to see family and friends. It was wonderful; no one tripped down the aisle, everyone showed up on time, nothing was spilled on the bride’s dress… a fairytale beginning for the dear couple. But as I prepared to head back to Pasadena, chaos struck. I tried to save some money and fly standby, only to come back to my roommates crying after seven hopeless hours trying to find a flight into LAX. I flew to California early the next morning, wondering if my $300 booked ticket was worth it—if anything was worth it. Why was I going back? How did I ever convince myself that it would be okay to leave my home for a whole year, to completely start over? Why wasn’t I grounded in a job, in a familiar land, in solidity, like everyone else? Why wasn’t I getting married, too? My year in the Czech Republic seemed dismally unimportant in the whole scheme of things. I should be working toward a dream job, a family, a good retirement fund. I should want stability. I should want a 50-year plan. I should want a 401K in a time where the very concept of one is a myth.

But who am I fooling? It is the unimportant things that are the most important, says Kundera. I go through the days here literally hour by hour, information session by information session. Our days are governed by mealtimes. We get fat, and we swear we will wake up the next morning at 6 and run it all off. We live for the weekends. (On Saturday, we are going to the beach.) We are tired. We set ourselves with the challenge of making it through the next teaching practicum, and then wake up again the next morning and do it all over again. Life is a series of small goals, and it is easy to lose sight of the big picture.

So where is the balance? It is in simply being, of course. Later on in his book Kundera writes, “There is no more boisterous, no more unanimous agreement than the agreement with being.” The balance is in being able to recall, to look back at where we’ve come from and see where the small things got us. The difference Kundera writes about is when we choose willingly to forget the small unimportances. If this happens—and it does happen, too often—that is when the war turns ugly. The unimportances, for better or for worse, are what change the world. Built from the bottom up, they catch us by surprise when the end result—that “big picture” that we have so lovingly planned out—turns out much differently than we ever intended.

connection

We have teaching practicum four days a week. Once or twice out of those days, I sit shaking in a small classroom, watching my students (most of whom are 3 times my age) file in and take their seats, chatting in Spanish, Cantonese or Mandarin. Most of the time we overshoot our students’ speaking level, leaving us grasping for any loose threads that they might be able to understand. We teachers are scared and unsure; our students are good-natured and forgiving. Usually, our feeble attempts leave our students more confused than when they first started, and we cry tears of frustration, anxiety and hilarity when it’s all over.

But sometimes, you see a light turn on. All of a sudden, it crosses over from being “memory work” to "understanding." It clicks, and it is an amazing thing to watch the brain work right before your eyes. One beginner student, whom I had taught the lesson before, was having trouble coming up with the right vocab word for the sentence her teacher wanted her to complete. From the back of the room, I watched her shake her head in frustrated concentration. All of a sudden, without even looking at her face I could see her eyes light up. She bounced out of her seat a little and chirped “Car!”, which was one of the words I had taught her. Taken aback, her teacher stammered out, “Well, yes, you do drive a car. But do you remember 'bicycle,' what I just taught you?” Our alum observer looked over at me with a huge grin, his eyes laughing. He knew, too--she got it. It’s quite an incredible thing for a teacher to experience, having their students actually learn something from them.

Life turns beautiful when moments like these happen—when a truth is discovered, when you finally connect it all together.

Has it been a month yet?

The days here in Pasadena go by slowly. This is not to say that I am miserably lonely--quite the opposite. Rather, so much is packed into each day that, when evening comes, you have to remind yourself that it has not been a week since you arrived--only 24 hours. I am learning how to do this thing that they call "teaching." I am not quite sure how I got myself into all this; surely no one explained it to me thoroughly before I got on that first plane. Suddenly I find myself worrying about how I will explain the differences between pair, pare and pear. I fall asleep at night running through word games and 7 different ways to go about listening techniques.

I am also learning what I am going to be up against in the Czech. Here are the facts: Population: 10.3 million. Atheism: 60%. Prostitutes: numbering anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000. Government: corrupt and constantly changing. (Officially: something called "bi-cambral parliamentary democracy. I know the definition of perhaps one of those words.)

Still, I am not a numbers person. The percentages are interesting, but this is also how stereotypes and generalizations are made. What hits home for me are the personal stories from the alum teachers. I am sure I will have many hard stories of my own before the year is up, but the stories of 12-year-old girls standing along the roadside "for sale" and the young woman who ended up in a brothel after accepting Christ only a year ago are hard to handle, even as I still sit here in care-free California (air-conditioned, of course).

We read an article in one of my sessions on how religion is viewed in the Czech. It is not surprising to read about the enormous decline; all of Europe has followed a similar route over the centuries. But what makes you turn your head is this line: "The Czechs say they're the most atheist country in Europe, and they say it with some pride... This is how Western civilization may look in 50 years, because people here believe they live a full life without any religion." And later: "There is a sense of emptiness, but not despair." Emptiness, but not despair? The sentence was written to give off a positive point, but I see the opposite. If one is despairing, one is searching for another answer, because life as it is now is unbearable. But if one is merely empty, there is nothing. This state is worse than dead--it is neither dead nor alive. There is no feeling, no searching, no hope; so many Czechs have grown so used to this 'despair' that it is normal and expected, and so it becomes accepted.

These are facts from witnesses, but I hope to God that this is not so. It is good to learn what to expect, while we are there, but I do not want to expect this. I am not sure I could bear to look into the eyes of a young national to find nothing there--not even despair.

Blessed in order to bless

The above quote by Annie Dillard sums up perfectly my thoughts on life in general, as does this quote by Jack Kerouac: "So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry." But in order to bless, one must be blessed--must be poured into in order to pour out. In my 21 short years--and even more so in these past six months--I have learned what it is to be blessed. You--whether you are family, a friend, or a sort of distant acquaintance--have been the one to teach me this. But we all of us are merely transporters, if you think about it. Check points, in which the blessings pass through from one person to the next. They are not intended as a sort of "the buck stops here" mentality. You are blessed in order to bless. This is what makes the world go 'round; not money or fame or power, don't you think? The world does not work on a basis of how much you or I deserve something; it is a grace-filled, hope-filled, faith-filled sort of sensibility that is our only hope of ever making it through alright. These past few months of preparation for the Czech Republic have been put in fast-forward mode for me, and suddenly I find myself believing I am ready for this. Whether this proves true or not--only time shall tell! No matter how you have supported me in this new adventure, I feel I owe you a true and honest account of how your support has affected me. I am interested in giving you a real and personal view into what life is like in the Czech Republic through the eyes of a young American who really has no idea what to expect. Thank you, thank you for what you have done in order to bring me to this new place in life. Buh ti zehnej--God bless.