age | e

good news

2008-12-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

So I got an email this morning. I'll be doing my student teaching at Placer, just like I'd been hoping. Bravo for walking to work, teaching at my alma mater, and already knowing where all the bathrooms are.

quotes of the week

2008-12-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

Regarding the need for a receipt when you take back your own Christmas tree you cut down yourself from the forest:

"One year the Forest Service set up a blockade. They caught a lot of Hmong people, too. You know what they found? Squirrels! They had killed all the squirrels and were taking them back with them!"

- The old lady who sold us our Christmas tree last Saturday

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Regarding the Hmong people's apparent affinity for squirrel meat:

"At least they don't waste them."

- Christmas tree lady

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To Dr. James, a regular early morning drive-thru customer at my Starbucks store:

"Will you tell me if this sounds like bronchitis? [Pause for inhale] *COUGH!*"

- one of my fellow baristas, who has been recovering from a cold

Dr. James went on to give her a quick diagnosis from his car. We owe him a free drink.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

field trip

2008-11-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

Before the past two months, I think the last field trip I went on was to the Pilsner Urquell brewery with thirty 17 year-olds. It was another of those odd cross-culture experiences, where you stand by and watch your underage students throw back free samples of cold, yeasty beer, where you stand by as one of your students drinks a cold one right after you told him not to, where you get assaulted by a cranky old tour guide. It's a good story. Ask me some time.

It's good to be on the student side of field trips again. Especially this weekend, when Chrissy joined me and my ESL strategies class on a field trip to San Francisco. I really like this professor's philosophy: we can read all about multicultural teaching strategies that are basically tried and true and recommended by every other course anyway, or we can visit the places that our multicultural students might call home. So last Saturday we schlepped around the Mission District and Chinatown, taking pictures, seeing sites I never would have made the effort to check out otherwise, and eating foods muy deliciosos.

My favorite part of the trip was the murals in the Mission. The next time you get to wander around in The City, consider doing it up and down 24th street and up and down the side alleys. Take your camera.

And (yes, this sounds like bad advice, but...) look in the windows! I saw this huge paper airplane hanging from somebody's ceiling!

in-credible

2008-11-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

One weekend last summer Chrissy and I were wasting the day away drooling over furniture that we couldn't afford (turns out they don't appreciate wiping your saliva off the ottomans, even if they are microfiber) when we saw this incredible line of people stretching out the front door of some enormous pizza place.

"It must be new," I supposed.

"It must have quite the reputation, " Chrissy guessed. "With the ladies...." I added (in my mind).

"It must be incredible," we both agreed.

How right we were.

This weekend we queue-jumped that incredibly long line as part of a junior high group reservation to eat at John's Incredible Pizza, and let me tell you (if you haven't already figured it out): it was incredible.

Sure, the tickets-tokens-and-games arcade section is basically an upgrade on your old Chuck E. Cheese concept, but the all you can eat pizza, pasta, salad and dessert buffet was quite simply an early Thanksgiving. I myself ate 11 slices, and in a group that included mostly 12 year old boys, that was bush league.

Sure, it helped that we youth group volunteers ate for free and smorgasbords of coke and carbs puts anybody in a good mood, but I swear I would go to this place even if it weren't ministry.

I feel like that last word should be in quotes.

election day, finally

2008-11-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

Surprise, surprise, Barack Obama was not elected president by a statistically significant margin a month ago, even though the polls said so. And Sarah Palin hadn't won the Evangelical vote, either, nor did John McCain carry or lose his home state of Arizona. Prop 8 didn't pass in September, but oh, the state budget did (about 3 months late, remember, but that's a different conversation). Election Day is here, and after 3 years of their campaigning, barring a repeat of the 2000 Florida fun-fest, later tonight we'll probably know who our next president will be.

Starbucks was crazy busy today. A free cup of coffee for voters had people lined up in our lobby and the drive-thru all morning long, from absentee voters who mailed their ballots in weeks ago to people stopping for some coffee on the way to the polls. This campaign has been heavy on Joe---Biden, Six Pack, The Plumber---why not add one more? Because it's illegal, for one thing.

And some people were ungrateful! Do you have a right to complain about high quality, cheerfully-served coffee given to you free of charge, all to affirm the public good? Apparently, yes. God Bless America.

I don't know about you, but I've been getting at least two calls a week from computers or volunteers for the past two months. This week it's been two per day. I even got one two minutes after walking out of my polling place. Chrissy, however, has received zero calls. I doubt that it's because my vote is more desirable than hers, but I will suggest that word of my sultry, sexy voice has gotten around on the robo- and volunteer call lists. Feel free to call me and ask my opinion about something if you want to hear for yourself ;-)

bright spots

2008-10-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

We helped Todd and Tammy paint the outside of their house this Saturday. Sure, we just loved slowly around the walls and moved our arms a lot, but we were pretty wiped out at the end of the day.
Our friend Tim also showed up for the painting party. As the keeper of the sprayer, he walked away after clean up with a green head. He looked like the Incredible Hulk, if Bruce Banner had been a red head. He was the Irish Hulk. You definitely don't like him when he's angry.
This little article about Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama poking fun at themselves at a New York charity dinner reassured me in my conviction that most successful politicians only get so far by being generally likable people.
Chrissy saw Anchorman for the first time last night. I think I definitely found it funnier than she did, but she did laugh pretty hard at the news team brawling scene. I don't know if I can accurately call this "broadening her horizons," but well, you know.
The new Andrew Peterson CD, Resurrection Letters: Volume II, that I'd pre-ordered arrived a week earlier than I'd expected. I haven't got to listen to it much, but AP never disappoints.

reading, lately

2008-10-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest stings of leaving the "Greater Prague Area" community was losing touch with my deep and fruitful pool of interesting readers. Thankfully, there are interesting readers all over the world, including little Auburn, California. Here's some of the books they've given me lately.

Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf
I tried to read this without an Aaron Williams or a resistant C.A. team to keep me on track and gave up quickly. Somehow I found three other guys who wanted to pick this one up and are good filters. This is a very difficult read, but is has lived up to the acclaim so far.

Watchmen by Alan Moore
So it was the chance to hear a lecture about this well-regarded graphic novel (by the graphic novelist who wrote V for Vendetta) at a L'Abri conference that got me interested, and then seeing this movie trailer sealed the deal. This is a comic book for the literati and for people who think books need more pictures, and it's a more interesting way to see how the fall of modernism and the postmodern connundrum can be discussed than from reading wikipedia. Plus, the blue guy is naked all the time.

The Shack by William P. Young
I don't really get the controversy on this one. Again, this novel is a more entertaining distillation of a broad swath of theological meditations. Some of the metaphors are initially surprising, but a few turns of the pages lets us know that surprise is a critical part of our encounter with God. This book is not the Bible, but not since Rick Joyner's The Final Quest has a work of theologically-driven fiction struck a deeper chord in my heart. I already understand why people have been grateful for this one.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Long after its fifteen minutes of fame have passed, I finally read Life of Pi. If you haven't read it, read it for the first section---when he's growing up in India---which is one delightful scene after another. The ocean crossing is the heart of the story, but becomes tedious towards the end. And---spolier!---the epiphany at the end both satisfied and disappointed me. While I fully agree that telling the story of life is "a better story" when God is behind and at the center of everything, by the end of Pi's interview we are left to believe that the incredible story of a boy and a tiger is just an aesthetically superior interpretation of very different events. That, according to Pi, faith may be compelling and satisfying, but it is a leap from reality.

catching up in broad strokes

2008-10-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

This week I wrap up my third session as a teaching credential student at Chapman. This was probably the easiest part of the program. Three months until the great student teaching juggle show begins. It's all uphill from here.

We started volunteering on a more committed basis at our church's junior high group at the end of last August. We're still really enjoying our time with the students. We feel like our main "ministries" there are (1) the ministry of attendance, (2) the ministry of sympathetic looks exchanged and post-meeting debriefings shared between the other leaders, (3) the ministry of purposeful silliness, and (4) the ministry of liking people.

Chana High School has its ups and downs, but Chrissy seems to be progressively blooming on this rocky hillside. The faculty at Chana has been much more welcoming than at Chrissy's previous teaching job, and Chrissy already feels much more a part of a team and a community, if I'm to summarize what she's been telling me over the past few weeks. It's still the Chana continuation school that I always heard about growing up in Auburn, but unencumbered by such prejudices, Chrissy has done well there and done a lot of good so far.

Being teachers, New Year's Day for us actually happens sometime around the end of August. So this past August we started our second year back in the states since returning from Prague in July 2007. God has blessed us here in Auburn

with more good friends than we were hoping for when we were packing our lives into four suitcases at the flat in Červený Vrch
with a comfortable place to live
with jobs that we mostly enjoy
with hope and hopeful directions to walk in
with a church community we're loving more all the time
with beauty from the ashes from my mom's unexpected death almost a year ago

baby shower with a twist

2008-10-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

Our friends Kyle and Colette, who...

are cool
have a last name that is fun to say
are having a baby girl in a few weeks

...had a baby shower this afternoon at Kyle's parents' house (two of three of the above items also apply to them). The "twist" to this baby shower was that it was a co-ed baby shower. This is simultaneously "as" and "not as" fun as it may sound.

The "as fun as it sounds" part was that having guys there doubled the size of the party and tripled the hilarity, I'm sure. Kyle is a charmer of women to be sure, but his comedic talents shine amongst his male brethren of the masculine gender. For the "not as fun" aspect, I leave you to a Google search of "co-ed," and recommend that safe search is "on" and the Bible is "open right next to you." Actually, just take my word on it.

For pictures and the rest of the story, I'm sure that there'll be a post on the booterblog sometime this weekend. Just know that it was fun, it was cute, and it was windy.

people in process

2008-10-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

Any time we meet someone we're encountering them at only one point on a line. That point---such as Sunday, October 5th at 9:55pm or Thanksgiving 2007 or the day they took up the clarinet---is just that: one moment in the whole span of his/her life. He/she is a person who is growing, or at least a person who is becoming the person who he/she will eventually become. As much as it is useful to remember that our living, thinking, speaking and acting happens only in the present, we would do well to be mindful that we are all persons in process.

This would give us

humility to accept that we all must grow
patience not to stamp and fret upon the pace of that growth
space to let the Spirit be the quiet power that compels our growth
safety to speak the thoughts of our minds and work out the movements of our hearts
freedom to speak correction and disagreement without being dogmatic
freedom to listen to our brother and to be thankful for God's gifts to him
freedom to receive our sister and not to make our thoughts of her only worries
a fresh call to prayer every day

because you have to start again somewhere

2008-10-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

Writing in a journal (you know, the paper kind?) threw us off track here on le blog. Facebook compounded the problem. And excuses like dust in an abandoned back room layered up until I never even visited blogger anymore. So here's a little dusting.

An angry woman got her frappuccino later than she'd have preferred, and she let three or four of us know. I wasn't one of them, thankfully, and not getting yelled at let me place where I'd seen her before: oh yeah, she was the one at Chrissy's Back to School Night who was offering anger management sessions at an affordable price.

one down!

2008-05-28T00:11:00.000-07:00

This evening I finished my first session at Chapman University. Hurray!

With the sudden drop off in work I suddenly perceive that I am awash in free time (odd that I didn't notice this free time before I started back to school...). That combined with a heart that still beats with ambition and momentum, I feel ready to

re-take-up Spanish, and this time learn those 500,000+ palabras I missed the first time
read at least nine books
catch up with all of my friends around the world whose emails I have been putting little stars next to but not answering
update all of our address/phone book
write in my journal every day
write poetry
think about starting to run again but then reconsider
order next session's textbooks and complain about how expensive they are
memorize the Sermon on the Mount
plan a surprise birthday party for Chrissy and then spoil it by mentioning it on this blog
make lots and lots of frappuccinos
write a long and completely self-indulgent list like this one

Tomorrow I begin my reading holiday, Lord willing. And I shall read what I wish to read and nary a textbook shall oppose these eyes.

Surprise!

2008-05-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I (Chrissy) received an award from Placer School for Adults, the "Newcomer of the Year" award, for taking on a challenging new distance learning program and helping to expand the program. My mom flew up from Costa Mesa yesterday and surprised me with a visit. She came to see me get the award, bought me flowers, and then we went to dinner. Today I played hookie from work and went shopping with my mom before taking her to the airport.
I have a wonderful mom.
Love you, mom.

As grandma Nettie said last night, "You can always use some time with your mom."

some light reading for courtney

2008-05-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the long set up, but for those of you who have known me in the past four to six years, the end of the ramble may amuse you.

So while Chrissy took to the mountains this weekend for an action-packed weekend of free-range scrapbooking (or something like that), this evening I had dinner with an old high school teacher of mine. A missionary friend of their family from Guatemala is visiting, and the family had invited a few of us they thought would be interested in getting to know her better.

She's really quite a remarkable lady who has seen God and has been Christ in the flesh to so many people. I only got to hear a few of her stories, but these few were quite beautiful and (sadly) exotic to my own experience. Tracy says that the only difference between living "on the mission field" and living in your hometown is where you tend to set your expectations for how you'll see God work. I think she's right.

This really isn't my main point, but it's probably a more important one.

Anyway, another former high school teacher of mine was also among the guests, the one and only Mr. Schroeder. We caught up a bit, and in the course of our conversation he mentioned a name that took me back to my freshmen year at Placer High School.

Sometime that spring we had an assembly in the school's big, orange, theater-style auditorium. Our speaker was a guy in his early thirties, I imagine, who was an adventurer/jack-of-all-trades type. He had lots of stories for us, and I suppose the "educational justification" for him being there was that he kicked butt or something. At least I thought he did.

Anyway, he stuck around and was later a guest speaker in my drama class, where he talked about his experience being a professional actor. He talked about what it took to get cast in the parts you wanted and such, such as learning to ride a unicycle if that's what the script called for. He also said that in your résumé you needed to have something that set you apart, something that made you different. For him it was that he could sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" backwards, the last word to the first word.

As a freshman, I thought this was so cool in a quirky, novelty act kind of way. In fact, I remembered this act over the next four years, and when I was a freshman at Vanguard, I pulled it out of my memory, took four days learning how to do it myself (along with "Banner Spangled Star The"), and performed it during Vanguard's annual talent show, "The Big Big Show." It made the splash that I was looking for as a know-nobody freshman, and actually opened a few really amazing opportunities for me in that community.

And, if you've known me for any longer stretch of time in the past four, five, six or so years, then you've probably heard me sing one of these crazy songs once or twice. Once it comes up people won't let you get away without a quick performance.

Including tonight.

I had forgotten the guest speaker's name until tonight. His name is Willie Weir, and this is his blog, and this is his homepage. Hopefully this link will up his place in the Google line a bit ;-)

i met arnold schwarzenegger last night

2008-04-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

So on the first night of my second class at grad school, the director of our local Chapman campus walked in and simply announced:

"Actually, the whole Tuesday night program has been invited to meet the governor."

As the Czechs would say: "Cože?"

Our professor---this was news to him, too---joked that we were going on a field trip and that we would all have to sign permission slips. We laughed. He said, no really, you have to sign permission slips.

We did. It was no hassle, but less funny than the first joke.

And last night we all filed into a conference room in the governor's office in the capitol in Sacramento, where we met some ordinary people who are doing amazing things. We were met by cabinet officials, the governor's chief of staff, his cabinet secretary, the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and then the Governator himself. He chided most of us for not wearing any green on Earth Day.

Thankfully he did not pinch us. The man has huge hands. I couldn't take my eyes off of his huge hands.

To be honest, apart from the genuine coolness of his story and the honest celebrity appeal, his story was the least interesting, but I think only because I've heard his story before. It was a cool opportunity to get to hear from our state's most public public servant (although I sincerely imagine he feels the same way about us). It would be fascinating to pick his brain (no, not like in Total Recall) for more reflections on what he calls the best job he's ever had.

All in all it was the coolest Civics lesson I've ever been a part of. After the Q&A we were led onto the floor of the Assembly Chamber, where the professor who set this all up, who is also an sitting assemblymember, described her job to us right where she does it. It is far too dry and unfitting a comparison to say that it was like an "I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill" lecture, but in the end, all of her stories and discussion covered all the same material.

Oh, and Happy Earth Day, Mr. Governator, sir.

nuh-uh

2008-04-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

A customer had finished paying for her drink in the drive thru today, and, as you might expect, she drove away. But then the next car, a big, white SUV pulled quickly past the window without a word, and the next car, black, did the same. We were confused.

And then we saw them both pull around into the opposite parking lot and that the second, black car was actually a CHP patrol car. It's my guess that the white SUV driver thought that our drive thru would fashion a quick (caffeinated) escape from his pursuer.

Note to self: this doesn't work.

ewi crood zi, rog orog

2008-04-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wonder how it is that some people can come up with so many imaginative nonsense words. Now I know how they do it.

They play Scrabble in great desperation.

jots and tiddles

2008-04-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

Note to writers and bloggers: you help your reader when you use bullets.

The above sentence lends itself to multiple interpretations.
Maybe it's because my other textbook is definitely the driest I've ever been assigned (like an extended owner's manual for a DVD player or a Buick or something), but I truly love one of my education class textbooks. Wow: people who know how to write, how to tell stories, how to dazzle me with pictures and diagrams (read: shiny objects), how to incorporate a well-thought-out philosophy without being preachy. I even strongly suspect the authors write from a Christian worldview while not to a specifically Christian audience. Call me nerdy. It's a good book.

Here's what's left of my infamous snowball fight injury. And below, here's me posed with a punching pickle! Yessir, Mr. Pickles has opened up (sandwich) shop right here in Auburn (close to Staples). Let's hear it for local businesses you never think to eat at!

And here's my dad, entranced on his birthday by one of Abbey's delectably delicious Pizz-oo-kees (not copyright infringement because of the unique spelling...which rather suits Abbey anyway, right? ;-)

spine dos fish family

2008-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

A silly way to say "back to school," emoticon.

Yes, I started grad school this week in my first session at Chapman. We've been back in California for gettin'-on-a year now, and it's time to take the next step. We were planning to have me start in June, but timing related to student teaching says that now is the time to start.

So far so good. It's been long enough since I was a student that I've been looking forward to this, and I imagine a year of this (including student teaching) will be enough to give me my "fix" for a good long time. I'm already a day through homework and still alive.

when bruises make you cool

2008-03-31T22:06:00.001-07:00

This past weekend Chrissy and I went up the hill on a junior high group snow trip with the church. We're in a small group with the couple that leads the group, and they needed some extra hands/eyes/older persons to help keep things on the up and up with about 25 or so junior highers. So that meant us. After a day of remembering how to/teaching kids to snowboard, another day of playing and tubing in the snow, a couple devotions, some stupid human tricks, etc., we're pretty sore and tuckered out, but we had a great time, let me tell you.

We mediated radio station battles on the way up, mostly involving the pros and cons of the All-Disney station. Never in my life did I expect kids to be in a debate between AM and FM bands and have them all choose AM radio.
I helped build the coolest snow fort I've ever seen---and all I did was dig where I was told. Seriously, it was six feet of snowball protection from trench bottom to wall top. Add in an actual tunnel, an ammunition closet and a staircase, and you'll know what I mean. And that was just the guys' fort. The girls had a twenty-foot long trench, complete with ergonomic snow seats. A World War I general would be proud.
Those forts were later part of the most epic snowball fight I've been part of for as far back as I can remember. The only hitch came about halfway through, when one of the kids accidentally broke the "no snowballs above the shoulders" rule and clocked me with a direct hit to the forehead. It smarted a bit, but it was the open-mouthed looks I got that told me it was more serious than it felt. Needless to say, the band-aid on my forehead has had me tell the story many times in the past two days.
Chrissy won the group over when the plastic sled she was riding slid her directly into a tree. It was one of those crashes that you just knew wasn't a good one. You should see the tape. But fortunately the sled made most of the noise, and she walked away from it with "just" a hefty bruise on her leg. But the way the junior highers tell it, the sled might as well have deployed air bags.
What else? It was camp! There was spaghetti, worship songs, arguments about pool tables, pre-teen flirting, glow-in-the-dark football, criminal background checks, a one-upping water-balancing competition, and surprisingly good coffee.

We had a great time. It'll take us all week to recover.

sort of a testimony

2008-03-23T21:21:00.009-07:00

This Sunday I had the opportunity to say something in church about why I follow Jesus. Here's what I told 'em.

When my wife and I returned from living and working overseas our friends offered this advice: when people ask you “What was it like over there?” have three answers ready—a two minute answer, a thirty second answer and a ten second answer. It’s not everybody who wants to hear all the details, so today if you ask me what it was like over there, and I can tell you’re not up for the evening-long slideshow, you’ll get my stock five second response: “It was really amazing, but difficult.”

This morning you’re getting more or less my five minute answer to the question “Why do you follow Jesus?” I hope you take my meaning that I have both (1) a shorter and (2) a fuller answer to this question. And of course, if you really want to hear the 20 minutes-and-more answer, you can always take me out to lunch. It goes particularly well with pizza.

Our father in heaven

A big part of my story with Jesus is personal. That’s not to say that it’s private, but it is to say that a lot of the reasons I follow Jesus sound a lot like answers to questions like this: “Why are you friends with Kyle?” “Why did you marry Chrissy?” “Why do you spend so much time at Starbucks?” and “Are you really going to wear that shirt?”

(In case you were wondering, Kyle and I are friends because we’ve spent so much time together, I married Chrissy because she captured my heart, I’m at Starbucks so much because it’s my job, and yes, even if you don’t understand it, I really am going to wear that shirt.)

Another part of my Jesus story is wrapped up in specific moments in my life where I can put my finger on it—it was God who made such-and-such happen, and I just know I didn’t make it up. They’re good stories, I promise. But they don’t fit into a 5 minute answer, so I’m sorry to say it, but you’re out of luck this morning.

Also, I’ve been more or less following Jesus for at least 20 years now, and that has a lot to do with why I’m still more or less doing that now. It’s hard for me to change hairstyles, so you can imagine it’s hard for me to change the fundamental way I look at the universe. Go figure.

Hallowed be thy name

But especially in the past seven or eight years, it’s been in learning more about who Jesus was that I’ve come to find his life, his story and his personality so much more compelling.

For one thing, Jesus is different. People were intrigued way back then with how different he was—by his confidence, by the way he could touch a sick person and they would be well, by the way he would speak hard truth to the politicians and they would be silent. Truth be told, he freaked a lot of people out. And when we really look closely at his life today, quite often he still freaks people out.

But there’s something deeply fascinating about that differentness to me.

Thy kingdom come

Was Jesus a great moral teacher? Absolutely. But when we look more closely at what he was doing among the Jewish people in the first century, we can see that he made himself out to be more. He seemed to say, “Guys, this temple we have, this book of laws, this whole system of sacrificing animals to wash away our guilt and sins, this whole way we’ve always had of experiencing God and his world—they’ve done their job, but they’re just signposts”--and this was the shocking part—“and they’re pointing to me.”

Come to find out, Jesus wasn’t just getting people back in touch with good morals; rather, he seemed to understand that the mission of his life was to unlock a whole new way of experiencing God and what God wants to do to restore this broken world we live in—including our busted up and lonely lives—our decaying cultures and planet—our wounded relationships—a whole creation that’s gone wrong and desperately needs to be made healthy and whole again.

Give us this day

As the story unfolds a little further we learn that the reason Jesus could offer this new way of experiencing God was that he was God, and that in deciding to play by the rules that we all live with in our life under the sun—rules like gravity, time, fatigue, tight budgets, temptation, sickness, death—in playing by these hard rules Jesus showed us that God isn’t far away and distant from our problems, but loves us enough to get his hands dirty—to touch sick people, to talk with bigots, to have family members who didn’t understand him, to eat with prostitutes and tax collectors and not feel ashamed by how people might think that looks.

Later in the book it says that one big reason why God can help us with our problems is that he understands what it’s like to have our problems. He was here—he had them himself.

Forgive us our debts

Except for one of our problems, of course—the problem that we all have of hurting and fearing and mistrusting the God who only has love for us and who wants us just to love each other—this problem which we call sin. And it’s that enormous, mysterious, baffling and explosive way that Jesus decided to absorb the horrible consequences of our collected fear and violence and prejudice and carelessness and outright evil—all that sin that he had no part in himself—it’s his decision to take it all onto himself that we celebrate this week. And it’s the way he looked death, our greatest enemy, in the face and said “Is that all you got?” that we celebrate this morning.

As we forgive our debtors

I celebrate today because I am learning what it means to say “I follow this Jesus.” I celebrate today because I’m learning to see the hope that it promises. I celebrate today because I’m learning that loving people when they are unlovely is something so much bigger than just being a nice guy. I celebrate today because I’m learning that when I sing “Jesus Loves Me,” it’s true today when I’m a young adult like it was when I was a college student, like when I was a teenager, like when I was a child.

I’m pretty sure it’s been more than five minutes. Thanks for your patience. I hope you’ll still want to take me out to lunch.

there is too such thing

2008-03-21T15:48:00.002-07:00

Today I had a free lunch. Here's how:

Last night our small group from church met at a certain Mexican-themed restaurant named after a division of General Motors, Inc. For kicks, let's call it "Buick's."

We waited to be seated---a reasonable amount of time. We enjoyed our free chips and salsa. We ordered our food. We talked. We laughed. We asked for one drink to be re-made. We waited. Nothing out of the ordinary for Buick's.

But we kept waiting. We waited more than 40 minutes before we even saw our server again. And we weren't the only ones. Another group seated near us eventually gave up and left---just as their food was brought out. The server chased them out the front door, but they were gone. But what to do with all of their sizzling, hot food?

Why not give it to the other group, our group, patiently waiting (and about to make the same move)? And they did. And those other people had ordered delicious food.

And so had we. And soon our table was a Tex-Mex feast of sizzle and spice. And we had more food than our stomachs could hold in one meal. And to further emphasize how sorry they felt, they decided not to charge us for the food we had ordered. So we got double the food for zero the price.

So today I ate my dinner for lunch. Thanks, Chevy's.

I mean, Buick's.

headliner

2008-03-12T21:39:00.002-07:00

So Chrissy made the front page of the Auburn Journal yesterday. And it wasn't because she got caught. Ahem.

Check it out here! We were a bit afraid of how it would turn out after some of the interview questions she had to field (it kind of felt like an ambush...), but thankfully the kind of thing we were afraid of was restricted to the, um, colorful comments posted by local concerned citizens afterwards.

But for now, we're famous! If only because people came in to Starbucks all day yesterday asking if I knew that my wife and her school were in the paper. There you go. She's famous, and I'm famous, too. Vicariously.

phebruary photos

2008-02-22T10:30:00.014-08:00

It's time for another round of photos! Consider the outside of your monitor a picture frame and enjoy 'em.

This is a picture of where Chrissy works teaching English Language Development for adult students in Auburn. They call it the blue house, which, if your monitor is working properly, you will quickly see why.

Since the start of January, on Wednesdays we've been eating dinner and watching American Idol with my Aunt Tana and Uncle Barry (and usually we get to see Raeane and Jared, too). Though every time we've eaten something fab-u-licious, this time Tana outdid herself with a whole meal of variations on everybody's favorite appetizer, Li'l Smokies. Needless to say, my cousin Shane and I were more than excited and had more than our fair share.

Last Saturday we went walking in "the nature" through Griffith Quarry, an old favorite historical/nature park near Auburn. Go for the trails, stay for the great big hole in the living rock filled with algae-swamped water that has nowhere to drain. But don't fall in.

And here's a lovely dose of perspective brought to you by Chrissy. For those of you readers a bit farther north or in Central Europe, seasons work a bit differently where we live in Northern California. Here there are two seasons: hot, dry and brown, then cold, wet and green. Winter here is like having two months of the muddy pre-Spring season, then a month of early Spring, then Spring. After three winters in the Czech Republic, we are counting our blessings.

'Tis the sinister season for poison oak. For in these months 'tis naught but branches and only the tiniest of leaves. But they pack a punch---so don't touch! If you haven't experienced the fruits of an encounter with this shiny triplet, count yourself fortunate and scratch your itches without fear.

Chrissy the Triumphant. Joel the Hydrated.

spilled milk

2008-02-19T21:09:00.003-08:00

How many gallons of milk will fit in the back of your truck?

At least 43 fit in mine---and then some.

We had more-than-a-mini milk disaster today at work when after investigating why a gallon of nonfat felt a bit on the warmer side one of my co-workers discovered that the refrigerator was more than 20° over the prescribed limit. This is not to imply that the milk was boiling, rancid or even lukewarm, it was just too warm to serve. Bravo, Starbucks and her mighty standards (and bravo, Health Department, too).

The refrigerator was easy to fix (they tell you not to put things on top of vents for a reason), but it contained most of the rest of our milk supply for the day---something which matters, um, a latté. So I took off, store credit card in hand, to the closest supermarket. There I seized upon two shopping carts, commandeering them to the dairy section, where I summarily transferred all of the milk in Safeway's refrigerator into my carts. Okay, not all of it, but the take was impressive.

Impressive enough to attract quite a bit of attention from my fellow shoppers.

"Having a lot of people over for breakfast tomorrow?" asked one.

"Trying to give the cashier a story to tell?"

"You should of bought a cow."

One woman suggested that I take the no-good milk and use it in a cosmetic milk bath. When else am I to have so much milk on my hands? She even offered to buy the cucumber slices to lay on my eyelids.

I accepted the help of the bagger to accompany my lactic cargo and me to my truck, where we lined most of the bed with rows and rows of the stuff, almost enough to prevent completely any risk of them sliding around during the trip back.

It all worked out in the end. My shipment arrived just as my fellow baristas were steaming the last available milk (from other refrigerators, of course). Not a drink ordered was not handed out. The only casualty of the day ended up being the too-warm milk---each gallon of which I had to spill out into the sink at the end of my shift.

Don't cry.

super duper god bless america tuesday

2008-02-05T15:19:00.000-08:00

Today is a red (and also white and blue) letter day, a proud day, a civically responsible day, a day of duties fulfilled. Today is Super Tuesday, but for Joel and Chrissy, it's been so much more, and therefore---more for America.

Get a load of the patriotic things we've been up to today:

We voted in the primaries
We completed our income tax returns
Joel changed the oil in our...um...Japanese car
Chrissy administered a standardized state exam
Joel went to work at Starbucks (whistling the Star-Spangled Banner on the way)

And there's conceivably still time for at least one of us (or both) to serve on a jury, to write a letter to our congressman, to participate in a 21-gun salute, to eat a slice of apple pie and to watch an episode of Smallville.

Basically, Uncle Sam wants us.

lost

2008-02-01T03:54:00.001-08:00

It took the skills of Sayid (and fortunately not those of Charlie) to get our rabbit ear antennae to find a signal, but we were able to catch the season premiere of Lost last night, this time all caught up with the rest of America.

It'll be strange watching it one episode per week (although it'll probably make us less edgy than watching three episodes at a time), but forget it---Lost is back. Yay.

nametags

2008-01-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

So after a 20 minute long debate with myself in bed I threw on some clothes and went to the Men's Breakfast at church this morning. I was ten minutes late and found that I was wearing black socks, but the food was warm and I met some new people.

A men's breakfast potluck is not a good place to meet girls. Fortunately, I am happily married and this is not an issue for me. It is a good place, however, to learn who's wife is a good cook.

It's also a quick study in the sociology of nametags. In my several years of attending gatherings of well-meaning friends, strangers and people you're too ashamed to ask their names again I have come to see the benefits of having everybody wear nametags. If nothing else it's an opportunity to passively introduce yourself to people in the supermarket when you forget to remove the nametag after the meeting.

I sometimes wonder if wearing nametags is a secret penmanship contest and one of two of the guys in the group are mentally ticking off who's crossed their t's and dotted their i's, who has smudged a little on the last letter and who has drawn the most perfectly round o.

Things got more complicated at this particular men's breakfast when the discussion leader picked out twelve guys to give us a picture of what the twelve apostles would look like. This was all fine and good except that for the rest of the meeting I didn't know whether this one guy's name was Dennis or Simon Peter. And imagine my chagrin when the clerk at Save Mart pointed out, "You must have been made fun of as a kid, Mr. Simon the Zealot."

At least I didn't have to be Judas. Even in the post-Christian world this name continues to be unpopular. And plus, nobody wants to kiss you. Which would not have been a problem this morning, as we have already established that there were no girls at the breakfast this morning.

catan city (composed in the style of a fourth grader)

2008-01-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

Settlers of Catan is a fun and interesting game. It is cool. It is fun. My sister and her husband (his name is Jon) got this game and they took it to my house and we played it. I remember I liked it cause I played it when I was in Sokolov a few years ago with Brian and Beth and Emily. They're married now. I mean Brian and Emily are married. Beth is married to Paul and he's a different guy.

So we played Settlers of Catan last night and I liked to play it again. It was interesting. In Settlers of Catan you get cards and you build stuff with the cards. I like to build cities with the cards. I couldn't build the longest road cause Chrissy blocked me. I said "I hate you! You blocked my longest road!" She said "Yes." And she laughed. I don't really hate her. She's my wife and she's pretty nice except when she blocks my longest road. I get pretty compedadive. But it's cool.

And that's why I think Settlers of Catan is a fun and interesting game.

attack of the mold!

2008-01-17T17:36:00.000-08:00

Kitchen floors have been known to make many sounds. Among these are *stepstep*, *stomp*, *creak*, *clipclop* and, when little feet are involved, *pitterpatter.* But one sound they should not make is *squish.* Unfortunately, this is the sound that Joel's dad's kitchen floor was making earlier this week.

Dad left home in the early evening for a meeting at church to a *stepstep* and returned to a *slosh.* The subfloors had been inundated with an old, until now unknown small leak that Monday night became a larger one. The damage is pretty significant, and tomorrow a crew is coming to gut the kitchen floor down to the studs and joists. Dad's taking it with grace and humor today, but it's another big blow in what's already been a really tough couple of months (to put it lightly).

So we're going to do some unexpected packing tonight, skipping out on the incredible closing shop sale at Borders in the Galleria (it would take something this big to keep us away). Please remember to step in for Dad when you're talking to Jesus these days. And to call down brimstone and judgment upon the mold, if you think of it.

mystery solved

2008-01-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

We have discovered the secret identity of Merry Mistletoe.

yuletide csi

2007-12-28T11:52:00.000-08:00

In the matter of Merry Mistletoe, Auburn, California, December 2007:

We arrived home late on the evening of Monday, December 10th to find that we had had a visitor. Who it was we don't know, but one "Merry Mistletoe" (if that is her real name) had left a package on our doorstep with tissue paper, a box of gingerbread and holiday fudge and an envelope with the words "The First Day of Christmas" on the outside. With nothing else to go on---no latent prints, unfamiliar handwriting and a sudden, irresistible appetite for gingerbread---we took the evidence into the kitchen, dipped into the tins (disregarding all Halloween wisdom about eating unwrapped candy from strangers) and dipped even further into a mystery for the ages.

Or for the Agee's, rather.

Sure enough, another package arrived each day for the next eleven, each filled with holiday cheer, tissue paper and intrigue. As the days ticked down and the gingerbread disappeared we were left with great questions:

Who is Merry Mistletoe? Will she bring more gingerbread? Just how many maids were there a-milking again?

And now Day 12 has come and gone and still we don't know the identity of our strange, sly, sweets and savories supplying secret Santa. It looks as if this case might go cold---cold as a sudden winter snap.

Merry (if that is your real name), if you're reading this: Who are you, is there a Santa Claus and please, send more gingerbread.

collagi

2007-12-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

One of the things we haven't taken care of yet with our new apartment is getting internet. That's still a ways off. Or not. We'll see. And this blog is one of the foreseen and I'm sure deeply missed victims of this. But we've been just as busy, it being the holiday season and all. Here's a collagéd update.

Every year my extended family in the Auburn area celebrates Christmas together at the beginning of December in a huge progressive dinner. We open name gifts, see about half of everybody's houses and decked out halls. This year Chrissy's parents were in town to join in. It was great to have them chauffeur us around :-)

Right after Thanksgiving some good friends from high school invited us to go to a Christmas market (basically) in a nearby historic mining town (yes, I have described Auburn as an historic mining town---this is a different one---we're a dime a dozen up here). Here are Nancy and Elliot and my friend Melissa.

Whenever we go to download pictures from our camera it always seems that there are more pictures of me than of Chrissy, and in most of these pictures I am doing something ridiculous (if you can believe that). So in view of showing some of pictures in a way that preserves Chrissy's personal diginity, I've put some of the recent examples in some collages by themselves.

By the way, here's the first pictures of our new kitchen. We'll get some...er...less graphic photos of our place up soon. Promise.

thank you

2007-12-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

Thank you, friends, for your emails, cards, comments, thoughts and prayers. It's been an unusual week, and one that surprised me with how good it was, good in that deep-down way, like that moment after you've been crying and then you laugh---a much deeper-down kind of laugh than usual---that kind of good.

I've written a lot about this past week, but that's not what we've decided to use this blog for.

But among the things that have made this an amazing week is this: though much of it has been about mourning our loss and much of it has been about celebrating her life, the strongest refrain this week has been about celebrating the life that we are to inherit in Christ, which Mom has seized a foretaste of ahead of us.

Peace be to you from the one who was, who is and who is to come---even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.

hard news

2007-12-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

For those of you who keep up with us through this blog, my mom passed away Sunday morning. She had open heart surgery three weeks ago and was recovering well, but her condition started to deteriorate a week ago, and she went home to be with Jesus early Sunday morning from the emergency room.

The funeral is this Thursday.

We're doing well, I think: we're crying when we're sad, we're laughing when it's funny, and we're sleeping at night. We appreciate your prayers.

Joel

yay!

2007-11-14T20:57:00.000-08:00

We start moving in to our new apartment---at last a place that will be home for more than 10 months at a time---on Friday.

In the parlance of NorCal, this is hecka cool. Sick.

Dog.

october photo show

2007-10-30T15:51:00.001-07:00

So Jon and Abbey hosted a pumpkin carving night last week. They spread out a tarp on their living room floor, brought out all kinds of cutlery (including a genuine scalpel and the infamous Ginzu knife), plopped down a bowl for plopping in pumpkin seeds, and by the end of the evening we had filled their porch with jack-o-lanterns. Here's the full line-up:

Here's a close-up of the pumpkin eyeball and the "punk-a-lope"/roadkill pumpkin.

Here's two more, including the pumpkin monster on the left. Unfortunately you can't see the persimmon-laden branches for the arms in this photo.

And everybody's favorite, my sister's ninja pumpkin...and its unfortunate victim...

The only downside of this night is our unseasonably warm late-October weather, which had all of these pumpkin growing hair after only two days. We had to throw ours out last night, two nights before Halloween :-(

And this is a birdhouse in the pasture on the hill above the house where we're living these days.

And...I think it was last weekend...we went to a marching band competition in Loomis. Both of us used to be band geeks in high school, so this was especially fun for us. I marched in the Loomis band review four years straight. Our friends John and Laurie had invited us to watch with them, and my cousin Blayne (yes, the wasp in the hair cousin Blayne) was marching with my old high school band and our friends. On the whole it was more enjoyable this time around to be on the side of the street.

This is us after the band review. Looking oh so good.

But not quite as good as this guy. Does life get better than a drum major in full Scottish attire? I submit that it cannot.

connotation and denotation

2007-10-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

We went to the movies to see We Own The Night last night. It was a pretty good film, but the best line of the night goes to the twenty-something girl waiting in front of us in line to buy our tickets:

"Only one person on register? This is retarded."

Her description was spot on in both senses of the word.

autumn

2007-10-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

We're having our first rainy fall week in Northern California. I agree with Beka---fall reminds me of the Czech Republic. I miss the thirty minute walk down the hill through the yellow-leaved trees in Sokolov, the heavy moisture in the air and the broken asphalt plastered with puddles. And I wish that I had walked through Stromovka in Prague this time last year, or better yet---visited Český Krumlov. Trooper backpacked through Český Krumlov last fall and showed me his pictures.

I only know it from these pictures, but autumn is Český Krumlov's best dress.

Fall has always been my favorite, but it has made me a bit homesick today.

On another nostalgic note, I read a review on Radio Praha of a new exhibition in Prague of a typical 1970's Communist era apartment in the big, gray concrete block houses (panelaky) that we came to know...and...sometimes have positive feelings for. Looking at the pictures in the review I was struck that the furniture, appliances and cabinets from the typical 1970's Communist era apartment looked like they'd been taken from Esmeralda, the apartment I lived in during my second year in Sokolov. Somehow this puts it into a bit more perspective.

a few li'l updates

2007-10-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

So, here's a few little li'l updates:

Chrissy's got a spiffy new job as an ESL teacher for adult students. She's really busy this week with orientations, meetings, paper work and the like, so I'll just give this blurb and maybe she'll give us more details later on. But we're really excited about this. Yay!
I'm now in my seventh week at Starbucks. It is by far the stickiest job I have ever worked, with the ridiculous exception of one week at Gleanings For The Hungry when I jumped into a huge vat of rotten peaches. Seriously, I feel like I have whipped cream all over my arms sometimes (well, not really). I found caramel sauce in my hair two weeks ago. Either this is place is a hurricane of sugar or I am a messy barista. Actually, I think it's both.
My mom is going to have open heart surgery by the end of the month. She seems to be the least worried out of everyone, but we would all rather just be on the other side of this.
So my World Series prediction is a complete bust as of two days ago. But who saw the Mets not making the playoffs? And the Angels---they're my A's rivals, but I hafta give respect to a great team. Here is my revised prediction: The Rockies will continue their incredible run and beat the Indians in six.
Condolences go to readers who are Cubs, Astros, Phillies and Angels fans. If your team isn't on this list, you never told me you liked them. If you're a Yankees fan, [insert disparaging remark that in no way communicates sympathy].
This video made me laugh out loud all alone in my room. Half of me hopes that it's real. The other half fears deep down that it is.

disc golf and unwanted guests

2007-10-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went disc golfing with my cousin Blayne and brother-in-law Jon. I have not disc golfed for a long time---and I've never done it with all of the proper equipment, either---so today I woke up with a very sore right shoulder. It may as well have been my first time. It was Blayne's first time, too, and Jon was a great coach.

Blayne and I loved it. After the game we took the discs we had found on the course and threw them all over the yard, giggling and running to retrieve after each throw. We did this until sunset. We are hooked, I think.

The game was also memorable for how it ended. On the 11th pin, Jon and I were searching for lost discs in the bushes when Blayne yelled that something had just bitten him in the face. Probably a bee sting, we answered. You'll be okay. I don't see it anymore.

But then Blayne yelled and took off running up the hill. We still didn't see anything around him and thought he was being dramatic (do you know Blayne? he does things like this). From the top of the hill Blayne yelled that it was time to go home. This was fine by us. We were already close to the cars again. Blayne had me check what he said was a bump on his scalp, as if to prove that yes, he had suffered greatly. Do you feel it? he said, pointing to the place. He parted his thick hair, and (lo and behold) Jon and I saw that a wasp had gotten stuck in Blayne's hair. The lump Blayne felt was actually a very confused and angry wasp that was stinging him on the scalp again and again and again. Jon came to the rescue and successfully extracted this cootie-from-hell with a credit card.

Blayne really does have a lump on his head now. But he's fine (see "giggling and running" in paragraph two).

Boy or....Girl??

2007-10-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

Something embarassing that keeps happening to me here in California as I sub is that I keep thinking girls are boys or vice versa. There's a new haircut-- well, new to me, maybe not so new in the pop-culture scene-- where guys and girls have the same haircut. This short bob with a fringe of bangs that's swept across their forehead. At first glance it's really hard for me to tell- boy or girl? Today was my 2nd time making this mistake! I called on a student and asked him to go sit by the "boy" across from him. Ooops. The class just errupted into all-out laughter. Thankfully, the uh, girl, took it pretty well. I still apologized to her later 'cause I felt like such an idiot. Let's all hope that I get better at detecting girl faces vs. boy faces.... since hair cuts just don't seem to help these days.
- Chrissy

Can you tell? Boy or girl?

5 more amazing things about america

2007-09-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

Last Monday marked the two month anniversary of our return to the land of spacious skies and amber waves of grain, etc. Here's five more things that are great about this fair land.

1. Electric driers and fabric softener. Though I came to appreciate crusty shirts and towels---for one thing you'd know right away if something is clean, and for another, there's something positive to be said about that mild 30 second full-torso exfoliation---it is a wonder of convenience to regularly finish laundry in 2 hours rather than 2 days and for those clothes to be soft and fluf-fay.

2. HGTV. Yes: Home and Garden Television. As much as I remain less-than-enthusiastic about the TV, this interior design and makeovers network has created a warm conversation space in my heart. Oh to have a room of one's own.

3. Starbucks Coffee. Especially when you work there ;-) My nerdy inner coffee snob has definitely taken up more and more space on the afore-implied couch-with-tasteful-throw-pillows of my heart.

4. When business people know that you want to give them your money, you're the cat's pajamas; you're the bee's knees (yeah, the bee's knees).

5. Major League Baseball. If all goes well, next Wednesday I'll catch an A's game---my first major league game in two years. And if you're not, say, an A's fan, this season's got a pretty good play-off chase. My impulsive and moderately-informed guess for the World Series: Angels over the Mets in six.

phantastic photo blog

2007-08-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed the story (or the event itself), when we were in Pasadena for ESI training, I chipped my front tooth on a drinking glass. There are many kinds of drinking problems; mine is an overapplication of force. Actually it was just a busted filling from a pool accident these many years ago. We got it all fixed up so fast that not all ya'll got to enjoy the hayseed fun of it all.

Here's a pictures of the house we're staying in for the time being. My whole family built this house over 15 years ago. My uncle, aunt and four cousins live in the big part on the left, my grandparents live in a small apartment upstairs on the right, and we're staying in a small apartment downstairs on the right (it used to be a garage).

A few years back when my cousins were younger, my uncle, a terrific carpenter up for any challenge, decided a typical swing set and playground wasn't adventurous enough...so he built a pirate ship. Although it's now old and weathered and has long since been overrun by scurvy spiders, the ship stills terrorizes the seven...er...lawns.

And this is our neighborhood canine companion, Gunner. Say hello, Gunner. Yip! Good dog.

And this is the lovely Chrissy, who asked the sky to coordinate with her T-shirt for this photo shoot. You too can request that the sky color coordinate with your wardrobe by visiting this website: www.wearblueclothes.com

And for those of you who missed it, here's a shot of the lunar eclipse from yesterday morning. A few of you might be complaining that the moon looks really small in this picture. That's because the moon really is that small. And it's made of cheese.

say it out loud

2007-08-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

Driving around Rocklin today I saw a financial business with this name: "Rabobank"

This is, I feel, a dangerous name. I will not be banking here, thank you.

good news

2007-08-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

Chrissy got a call last Monday, and on Tuesday she started a gig as a long term substitute in Rocklin. The past few days have been kind of crazy, but she's handled it with the characteristic grace-under-pressure that we've come to know her for.

And I, on that same fortuitous Monday received my official starting day at Starbucks. Next week I start work for The Man---rather, the kinder, gentler, javalicious Man.

an experiment in google bombing

2007-08-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Does google bombing still work? Let's find out:

Last Thursday, Chrissy and I went to see one of the Sacramento area's newest music sensations, The Art of Whimsy. This organic folk rock trio warmed our hearts, set our feet tapping, and had us humming their tunes all the way home from Dos Banditos(a charming fine Latin dining experience in Nevada City, where the chips and salsa keep coming all night long, where the quesadillas are oh so gooey, and where the beans and ricewill have you humming their tunes all the way home from an Art of Whimsy concert).

So, please pardon that Dos Banditos dangling modifier and give The Art of Whimsy a fair listen to, especially if you're anywhere near Nevada City, the Sacramento area or Dos Banditos, which are places where you can go hear The Art of Whimsy in person.

The Art of Whimsy. The Art of Whimsy.

Art. Whimsy.

The. of.

All jokes aside, this band is really good. At least good enough for me to take all the time to format all this.

czech this out

2007-08-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

We were shopping in North Highlands (near Sacramento) this afternoon when I heard two little girls speaking in Czech.

"Jano, kam jdeš?" she said---where are you going, Jana?

It was all I could do not to try and but in on their conversation (as if I would have even understood it). It remains a foreign language to me, but it is nevertheless a familiar one.

In my attempts to eavesdrop, I did have the good sense not to follow these two girls around the store. One tends to attract criminal records doing things like that.

harry potter is crap

2007-08-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

not

wealth, weddings and waste

2007-08-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

I lived in Orange County---the richest county in the richest state in the richest country in the world---for four years as a university student. It is a place (1) that God has blessed with great wealth and convenience and (2) where many people have replaced God with said money and convenience. In my own experience living and visiting here it's been a mixture of both. But thankfully I've known many people who recognize #1 and do their best to be vigilant over #2.

Nevertheless, this summer (my third summer in California since starting my Czech odyssey) I've noticed and and been shocked (not so much disillusioned, just shocked) by this great wealth and convenience that America and especially Orange County enjoys widely. I suspect one reason for this heightened sensitivity is that this is the first summer when I've gone directly to Orange County rather than starting in Auburn (which is still a wealthy and conveient place if not quite as ostentatiously or as widely ostentatiously)---so I haven't had a little "buffer" between the Czech and the O.C. (Michael: "Please don't call it that.") that I've had before.

Part of this sensitivity probably has to do with the two beautiful weddings that I've attended since returning stateside. Please understand that I don't wish to criticize these weddings (except to say that I dislike fruit filling in wedding cakes)---weddings are supposed to be big celebrations and to be invited in any capacity is an honor and a joy. Nevertheless, these beautiful weddings were both more than a little bit more than I've bcome used to in the Czech.

And part of it probably has to do with living in Prague this past year. After two years in Sokolov, I came to see Prague for the international, cosmopolitan hub that it is, where foreigners are common, English is widely spoken, and trams are frequent. And then to return here where even the convenience of Prague pales in comparison---wow.

And, lastly, there is waste. Lights and computers left on. Long, long showers. Suburban society built on a decades-old given that everybody has a car. Growing up in a time and place where electricity and gas are abundant and cheap. No or at least inconvenient recycling (although---kudos to Costa Mesa for paying for its own sorting). Huge portions of food, much of which goes into the trash. I'm not pointing fingers---I'm part of this system and enjoy the comforts derived from it---but right now I notice.

I need to figure out something to do with what I notice. What do we do with three years' worth of lessons of adopting a different lifestyle? How do we hold on to what God has taught us?

- Joel

the five best things about america

2007-07-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

a list by Joel after two weeks back in his homeland

1. Cheez-its. Including the spelling.

2. Everything---no, everything, including freeways with traffic, new cell phones with complicated alarm clocks and the DMV---yes---is so convenient. I am thankful.

3. Near universal air conditioning. No joke: the air conditioner in the room where we're staying at ESI training has a setting for "Super Cool." It is.

4. Public friendliness. I got into a conversation in an airport line with a woman from Albuquerque about the creative ways Europeans pronounce that name. Yes, Europeans have heard of Albuquerque, and no, they wouldn't have shared this with me in an airport line.

5. Worshipping God by singing songs about how good and amazing he is---and doing this in English with other people who speak English and love God in the same way. Please don't take this for granted. It is one of God's very good gifts.

reverse culture shock, part i

2007-07-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

It's hard to be in a crowd of people speaking English. On one hand, being in a noisy crowd, I'm used to not listening---after all, I don't speak all that much Czech and wouldn't understand much anyway. We tone it out and the noise disappears. On the other hand, whenever we were out walking in Prague and we heard people speaking English, our ears would perk up and it was all we could do not to hone in on every word.

Well, now we're back in California and most people are speaking English most of the time everywhere we go. We haven't been used to hearing English as "background noise" for a long time and we catch ourselves inadvertantly eavesdropping on just about everybody.

So if you find that we strangely know your evening plans, your cousin's cell phone number or that you think that guy over there looks funny in that shirt, don't take it personally. We're adjusting.

back in the ussr (or a, rather)

2007-07-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

We are tired. We are grungy. We smell of disinfectant and recycled air. We are jet-lagged. We are a bit wigged out.

But we made it. Talk to us soon. But now we must sleep.

operation box and other updates

2007-06-29T01:05:00.000-07:00

When your like is run on a school calendar, June is usually a busy month. This year is no exception for us. But here's some quick news about us:

1. Last week we mentioned that we're moving everything out of our offices. It turns out that everybody's moving not just out of their offices, but the library's moving out, the computer labs are moving out, and so on. A monumental migration calls for massive moving management machines, including that so simple but so necessary mobile technology: the cardboard box.

So the principal cut a deal: last Tuesday, if you came to school with a big, empty box, you could go home. And yes, this post's title is accurate. It actually was called Operation BOX.

2. Last weekend we finally made a trip to the last country in this neighborhood that we hadn't yet visited---Austria. We joined our fellow teachers for an extended weekend bus tour of the Carinthian Alps in the Southern Austria. Our overall impression of Southern Austria is that these people are hardcore. They don't just climb mountains---they climb them and then they jump off the tops with parachutes. They don't just build roads in the mountains---they build roads through the mountains; the tunnels are miles and miles long, and when you're out of the mountains, where other countries would build over- and underpasses for their freeways, Austria builds another tunnel. It's a beautiful country, and it was a nice chance to spend time with the faculty, even if most of them don't speak very much English.

3. The good-byes continue. It's been a month already since we started, and we still have another week and a half. This weekend we're making our last trip to Sokolov before returning to Prague for packing, last visits, last meals and...ahem...getting up at the proverbial crack of dawn to catch a flight home. Please keep us in your prayers.

joel and chrissy's summer gps

2007-06-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

So here's a quick look at where we'll probably be over the summer. If you're in the area when we are, shoot us an email---we'll send you our new cell numbers when we have 'em.

June 30 - July 2: Sokolov, Czech Republic

July 3 - July 9: Prague, Czech Republic

July 10: 30,000 feet up for most of the day

July 11: Costa Mesa, California

July 12-15: Joel goes to Nashville for Brian and Emily's wedding

July 21-28: Pasadena, California for a week at ESI training

July 29 - August 6ish: Costa Mesa, California

August 7ish and beyond: Auburn, California

cleaning house

2007-06-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

So we found out yesterday that we have to move everything out of every office in the school---there's going to be some refurbishing work done this summer, and space must be cleared for the work. So we're cleaning out our desks---which is not a shock, since we'd be doing it anyway. But it all makes a convenient metaphor for...

...some "things I found" "on my desk" that I've been meaning to blog about.

1. Last weekend, as some of you may have read in our email newsletter, we went with one of our classes on a school trip. We had a great time, we're happy to say, although all day Saturday I think we walked up and down 15 or 20 (thousand) mountains.

We introduced them to s'mores, an American campfire staple, which they loved, and by loved we mean devoured in less than 15 minutes---the whole bag. We expected them to like them, but not quite to this degree (these sharing of foods experiences don't always work out).

2. We're saying our last good-byes to our students today and at the beginning of next week---Monday will be the last official day of classes.

3. In Czech current events news, a local group of mischief makers shocked weekend TV watchers when they hacked into the television feed of a Sunday morning weather update program called Panorama. The show is just 30 minutes of outside camera shots of popular Czech vacation spots mostly in the mountains so that people can get an idea what the weather is like in such and such a place. These guys hacked into the camera and presented their own version of the day, which included a flash and a mushroom cloud, which you can watch here.

just when you thought castles were passe

2007-06-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

A favorite comedian of ours (who is from Europe himself) has a bit about the way Americans and Europeans look at castles. Americans, he says, look at a castle and see Disneyland. The cameras come out, jaws drop, oohs and ahhs commence. Europeans, on the other hand, being residents of the world's greatest treasury of castles of all makes, models and states of repair, see a castle and say to themselves, "Now who put that bloody castle here!"

After seeing our share of castles in the Czech Republic (fun parenthetical fact: the Czech Republic has the highest ratio of castles per squre mile than any other country in the world), we've slowly come to see it from our neighbor's point of view. Castles are great, but they are after all, just castles.

Just castles. Never thought I would say that.

Anyway, in the past few months, we've been to a few "gems" that have really perked us up to castling again, including one of the crown jewels of central Czech, the Konopiste chateau (pictured above). Now this is a castle that I could live in. No drafty hallways, no cold stone walls (although admittedly, no Coldstone either), no touristy museums of medieval torture elements. And, per the requests of its last royal resident, fully equipped with 14 modern toilets, showers and a slow-moving but stupendously posh elevator.

Too---and this was the real eye-opener of the place---its aforementioned final resident, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (best remembered for being the unfortunate victim of the assassin who kicked off World War I) left the place fully equipped with enough hunting trophies to make any Green Peace type throw in the towel. This avid (to put it mildly) hunter even documented each and every kill; the grand total came up to---I kid you not---more than 300,000 confirmed kills. At least 3,000 of those trophies hang from the walls of Konopiste. I'm pretty sure that this was the guy who shot Bambi's mom. In fact, that just may be her up there on the right.

hail to the convoy

2007-06-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

So last night we got about as close to the President of the United States as we probably ever will be. Our apartment in Prague faces out on the main road going to the airport, so last night at about 9pm we stood out on our balcony and watched a looooong convoy of police cars, limosines, and well, they looked like SUV's but they were probably tanks go by.

It was cool.

As you might have expected, security is intense out here. Just along our road, taxi service was suspended three hours before, all trash cans were removed, and there were yellow-vested police officers stationed at every corner. They even blocked out cell phone service as the convoy passed.

So when Vlad'a asked us this morning, "Did you see your president?" we just smiled and said yes.

"He probably wasn't in the cars," Vlad'a replied. "He probably took the subway."

Maturita Pictures

2007-05-30T01:39:00.000-07:00

Here's Joel and I getting ready to have dinner with our colleagues
at a post-Maturita celebration.

This is what a classroom looks like when it's set up for Maturita exams. Each class gets their own room where all the exams will take place. The student on the left is using his 15 minutes to prepare to speak about his topic for English.

Here's Joel (right) and our colleague, Ales (left) examining Jake for Maturita.

final exams

2007-05-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

We have reached what I think is safely called the middle of the end: maturitas are upon us.

Rather, I should say that maturitas---graduation exams---are upon our students, as we have the somewhat cushy-by-comparison job of listening and asking questions and writing down notes and assessments as such while our boys and girls have the weight of four-plus years of ever-building expectations squeeze every last ounce of sweat out of them and into their smart black suits and dresses.

If anything, for as bad as it sounds like they smell, they actualy look great. And, hopefully, will sound great, too.

For a synopsis of what a maturita day looks like, follow this link to my explanation from last year. Arabská's got a slightly different version of this, but from what I've seen it's basically the same. So remember our panic-stricken students this week when you're talking with Jesus. They need all the help they can get.

a short rant of the ungrateful

2007-05-22T00:49:00.000-07:00

I already don't know anybody's phone numbers since I started storing them in a cell phone. I don't ever look for anything myself anymore because my wife knows where everything is. And now Blogger says that it saves my posts auotmatically as I'm typing them up, presumably so I don't have to remember to push the button myself.

In the spirit of this "ungrateful" mini-rant, this is what they call "learned helplessness." Sign me up.

rites of passage

2007-05-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

I checked another box this week on my roster of "The Complete High School Teacher Experience" by reading Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go! to my graduating seniors. Even though there were a few wisecracks (Pavlo brought special attention to the bright, almost psychadelic colors, for one), for the most part they listened reverently, as I did back when Mr. Bobo read it in our last Civics class lo, these many years ago.

It was also fun to teach Seussisms. Although I don't know when's the next time Lucka will meet a howling Hakken-Krak or when Martin will play his tartinkas.

Tomorrow is the last bell for another year of graduates. More on this to come. Stay tuned.

styro-home

2007-04-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

So this is another on-the-late-side post, but recently, seven months after first setting up the scaffolding, the grand completion of encasing our apartment block in styro-foam was completed. Why styro-foam, you ask? Well, not because they want to send the whole building by freight, if your first guess was the same as mine. But for insulation. Insulation done one huge, soft exterior panel at a time. It's communist condominium facelift craze that's sweeping the former Eastern bloc.

There are few things that we will miss now that construction is over:

1. the surprise appearance of construction workers immediately outside our 6th story kitchen and bedroom windows at any time of the day
2. the soft serenade of electric drills on Saturday mornings
3. pointing out our house by telling people "it's the one with scaffolding"
4. the gentle lapping of the painters' plastic sheets against our windows
5. the soft temperature-non-specific snowfall of little bits of styrofoam

But now that it's finished and our building (at least our half of it, pictured on the right) boasts a warm, cheerful and rather stylish (for a concrete apartment block) facade, we have to agree that it was all worth it. And it makes a funny sound when you knock on it. Pity that we have just two months to enjoy it.

what our students in prague are asking us about virginia tech

2007-04-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

The Virginia Tech shootings are in the news just as much in Prague as in the US. Our students have questions. Sometimes they ask us. And we try to answer. These are some of the things I wish I had said. Remember to pray for teachers for when students ask questions like these.

"Are you scared to teach in the United States?"

I once told an interview committee that the Columbine high school shootings in 1998 were one reason why I want to be a teacher. That made me look nice and heroic to the committe, but I did mean it. I can't do everything and what I do do is flawed at best, but who is going to be there to listen to people if it isn't you and me?

"So, have you decided to stay in the Czech Republic now?"

Well, no. But thanks for the offer.

"Why are American schools so dangerous?"

Actually, statistically, there aren't many places safer to be than public schools in the US. We hear about shootings like this on the news and it sounds like it happens everywhere, all the time, but there are so many places where it hasn't happened. Of course: it shouldn't happen even once and each time is a tragedy.

"Why do Americans always shoot each other?"

That really isn't fair and it's not true. Yes, there are way too many deaths from guns in America than there should be (and there should be zero). And there are more deaths and injuries from guns than in the Czech Republic. But many, if not most Americans who have guns try to use them only in safe and responsible ways.

"Why do Americans insist on having guns and then the wrong people use them for bad reasons?"

It's a combination of history and politics, people with good intentions and people with bad intentions. In 1789 Americans didn't want to leave one tyranny and then become part of another. They had just fought a war for that reason, and they didn't want to lose what they had fought for so easily. I think that part of the having guns debate is rooted in the early history of my country, and sometimes when people insist on this "right" there are consequences that nobody wants. As Americans, we need to think about whether calling this a "right" is more important that being open to ways of controlling who can get guns.

Is it easy to get guns in America?"

Well, no, not really. Each state has different rules for this and in some states it's more difficult than in others, but most states do criminal backgrounds checks and make you wait for a few days or weeks before you can have the gun you want to buy. It isn't like in the Czech Republic, though, where you must have psychological testing every two years for as long as you own a gun. Of course, even good systems fail sometimes---this shooter shouldn't have been able to buy these guns according to the law.

represent

2007-04-24T01:45:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago I found this t-shirt in a popular clothing store in Prague. Although I did try it on to snap some photos for the novelty's sake, I did not opt to buy the shirt. It would be cool to wear the shirt in Prague, but considering my near-future residence in the Greater Sacramento area, to wear this shirt after July would be to commit a major tourist faux-pas: wearing tourist shirts of the city while inside the city.

in memoriam

2007-04-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

About this time last year I taught a student the English euphemism "the great thingamajig in the sky." You know, when someone or something passes away, often we'll say that it's gone up in the sky, as when a plumber dies ("He's gone to that big waterworks in the sky") or a dog ("He caught the big frisbee in the sky") or a joke ("It wasn't funny the first time, Joel").

This post is to inform you that Honza the Hamster, my beloved pet who joined my life 2 1/2 years ago in Sokolov, has recently started running in that big hamster ball in the sky. Honza was beloved by all who met him (with the notable exception of Aaron Williams, who was, admittedly, nice to him anyway). He was an international hamster whose travels took him all around Central Europe, including Ostrava, Berlin, Hodonín, Krakow and Bratislava. He loved bringing people together and then pooping on them. He was laid to rest under a blossoming cherry tree close to his home in Prague.

He is survived by other ESI pets, especially Hezky the Cat and Benji the Dog.

spring has sprung

2007-04-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

Perhaps we in the Czech Republic will finally be able to put away all our talk about what a strange and warm, snowless winter this has been. Perhaps, now that the trees and bushes have all budded and blossomed, now that the Easter markets have come and are about to be gone, now that the daylight hours are stretching closer and closer to 8pm and soon will overtake even that evening hour, perhaps now we can say that Spring is officially here.

You may feel like pointing out that the calendar beat me to it almost three weeks ago and so did a groundhog in Pennsylvania. But we who've spent a few trips round the sun in the Czech Republic tend to be more hesitant. We're still a month before those three days in early May that Czechs call "the three frozen men," when traditionally the last snows may fall. But I think I'll shed my hesitations this year along with my long-since-closeted winter coat. Spring is here. Let there be claritin!

What you'll find in this post and also the next three (which have all been put up this afternoon) are some of our early Spring pcitures and wanderings. We've been outside enjoying a warm sun and lots of new green everywhere, and haven't been keeping this page so up-to-date. Like we said in our recent newsletter, Chrissy's former teammate Courtney arrived last Friday for a visit and is staying with us until Saturday. It's been great re-connecting wit her and enjoying her enjoy so many things and people she hasn't seen for almost a year now. God has been good with opening bright memories and, we pray, making new ones for Courtney, her friends and students, and us, too---who get to share them together and every night in Courtney's exuberant storytelling.

We hope you enjoy the pictures and the stories from these four posts. Ahoj!

Pictured: (1) Chrissy sports the shades on a walk through historic Prague, (2) the forsythia bushes around our apartment building are in full bloom, (3) and so are the blossoms in front of the Veltrussy cheateau, where Joel recently visited with some fellow ESIers

zoo praha

2007-04-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we visited the Prague zoo with our friends and ESI teammates Matt and Jenny Thomas. That means that we were joined by their two year-old, super-friendly/smiley daughter Anna, whose faces and reactions to all the animals made the trip that much more amusing. Prague's zoo is actually pretty good. It was hit pretty hard during the 2002 floods, but some say that the flood was the best thing to happen to the zoo: pictures of homeless animals with busted cages triggered global sympathy---and donations to match.

Like I said before, the weather has been pretty spectacular overall, but an overcast day and it being a holiday weekend for Easter, meant that we practically had all the animals to ourselves the whole morning. That also included the kid's play area, where Chrissy and I dared a few animals to bite us...if they dared. Okay, so it's not much of a threat when the animals-in-question are made of wood, but it made for some fun pictures:

castling

2007-04-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

So some of my ESI comrades, Zach (pictured above in front Nelahozeves), Stephen, Andrew and I all took a walk through the Czech countryside recently. Our main goal was to conquer two local castles, but seeing as the gates were left opened and unguarded, our conquest of each was, shall we say, less than epic. And, to be honest, they technically cheateaux, but conquering a cheateau sounds too much like "breaking and entering," whereas "conquering a castle" is still widely considered cool and worth putting onto a résumé. Regardless of nomenclature, we did take a lot of pictures, chase a few peacocks, and cross the mighty River Vltava, as pictured in this semi-epic, dramatic silhouette picture.

na shledanou to plesi

2007-04-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

We said our "good-bye" to maturitní plesi two weeks ago with a little trip out to Sokolov. The students who are graduating there this year are the last students Joel taught at ISŠTE. After this year, I won't have any former students still studying there (provided they all pass their final exams...)

Although I got to talk to lots of student still studying at ISŠTE, we spent most of the ples visiting with students who graduated last year or the year before. I've been surprised how much fun these Sokolov plesi---being more filled with catching-up than dancing and taking pictures and such---have been. I hope to blog about what my relationship to Sokolov has been this year, soon.

I had a wide range of feelings to hearing about how my former students are responding to their first year of life after high school; I was mostly encouraged or at least sympathetic, but I left ples sometime around 1:00am praying for a lot of people from my former home.

cupid's bad rap and other stories

2007-02-16T04:20:00.000-08:00

This week has naturally been an ideal time to talk about romance in English class. This morning, for instance, the girls of 4.C gave their male classmates some excellent advice on some of the finer points of feet off-sweeping. Some students from 4.D shared some romantic stories, and all this week, Mr. Agee's classes have been trying out the latest Valentine's craze, speed dating.

In case you haven't heard of it or seen it on TV or in movies like Hitch, speed dating is a way to meet lots of potential dates all in one crazy night. The idea is that you get exactly three minutes with every person of the opposite sex, trying to impress them and woo them into a "real" date. It doesn't sound like my cup of tea (even if I were still single, which I blissfully am not ;-), but as an English class game it's pretty hilarious---especially when the guys and girls aren't evenly matched and some people have to play opposite genders.

All this talk about romance has also brought out a lot of students' thoughts about Valentine's Day in general. V-Day is a new phenomenon in the Czech Republic that rode in (along with lots of other voices vying for attention and consumption) shortly after the fall of Communism. A lot of Czechs dislike Valentine's Day for this reason, seeing it as an unwanted guest from the West. A lot of my students see Cupid's day as part of American economic and cultural dominance, even though it's local businesses that market the holiday (and even though the celebration comes from 5th century Italy, I believe). Some students are surprised to hear that lots of Americans bemoan the commercialism and the apparent artificiality of the day, too.

It's not that Czechs are against a day for celebrating love and romance. They've got their own traditional date for just that. On May 1st, girls stand under the new cherry blossoms, waiting for a kiss from a husband, boyfriend, father, brother, uncle. It's for good luck and beauty. Incidentally, May 1st is also international Labour Day. So there's plenty of available working men to help get the job done.

There you have it. It's a bit late, but have a Happy Valentine's Day.

to have or to have not (a seat)

2007-01-31T04:29:00.000-08:00

So I found myself in front of a class of 27 energetic sophomores today (instead of the 15 that I'm used to). Blessed with so many eager-to-learn, um, learners, I decided to try out an English simulation activity I stumbled across on the internet called the Global Inequality Game. I found it here.

The Global Inequality Game

The idea is that this class of 27 students simulates the population of the whole world---or in other words, during the simulation, each student represents about 240 million people (and I thought I had issues). Around the room there are six signs for a particular region in the world, like "Europe," "Latin America," "USA and Canada," or "Africa." The class has distribute itself in the right proportion so that each sign/region has the appropriate, approximate number of students.

Basically, once they've decided where everyone should stand, you move everybody to Asia.

Next, you take 27 chairs. Each chair represents 1/27th of the world's total wealth. Those are some valuable chairs. Now the students work together to decide where the chairs (i.e. the wealth of the world) goes.

You're left with some thought-provoking images. Take a look:

Here's Asia. Lots of standing people here.

Compare this to Latin America.

And now to Africa.

And now look at Europe...

...and the rest of North America.

Oh yeah. And then there's Australia and the Pacific Islands. It seems that nobody lives there anyway :-)

january 24th, first day of winter

2007-01-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

So, by traditional Czech reckoning, it came more than two months late, this morning we woke up with a blanket of snow all around outside.

And skiing enthusiasts everywhere rejoiced. One student said that he was going skiing right after school was over today. There was a giddy student snowball fight during lunchtime. All of this after what was recently declared officially the warmest Czech winter since records started to be kept in 1775.

As they say in their three-fold way, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

dressy caz ples

2007-01-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

"Are you guys having a killer time?"

This weekend was the ISSTE maturitni ples, which, if you haven't been following the blog over the past few years, is like Senior Prom, only taken to the next level and hosted in the Czech Republic. I'd been looking forward to seeing former students and colleagues for months--and I couldn't feel prouder of the students I left last year who are now on their way to graduation. They've still got a lot of work to do, but this (for the most part) was a well-deserved celebration.

But this was a really different ples in another way, too. Friday afternoon Chrissy and I made it all the way from our apartment to the bus station in Prague before we realized that we had forgotten to grab our ples duds---my suit, her gown---from the closet, where they hung all ready to go. By then it was too late. So I went to ples by myself, dressed to kill in my maroon sweater and teacher-corduroy pants.

I almost didn't make it past the bouncer (plesi have bouncers? well, I know now), but a student rescued me ("He is a teacher. It is okay.") After that I was a bit self-conscious over all, but as one former student reassured me, "It is how I remember you."

the 12 updates of christmas

2006-12-20T05:03:00.000-08:00

A lot has been happening around us since we last blogged! Here's our Christmas “wrap-up” in a festive format:

12. Christmas concerts
Even though in the Czech Republic they don’t have Thanksgiving in November as a convenient starting line for Christmas music, our Czech friends and students love Christmas music. Whether it’s koledy (carols) or instrumentals or fully orchestrated classical choral works, Christmas music is in everyone’s mouths these days (and presumably their showers as well). We’ve been invited to so many Christmas concerts featuring students or colleagues or whoever, that we could have gone to at least one concert every night for at least the past two weeks. We’ve attended three already, with at least another four on our schedules.

Big on half of the programs is Jakub Jan Ryba’s Czech Christmas Mass, a 200 year-old choral oratorio that drums up Christmasy feelings the way Handel’s Messiah would do for us. Our school choir performed it last Wednesday in an historic church in central Prague last week.

11. The carp buckets are out
The Czech Christmas turkey is fried carp. Every Christmas Eve, families gather together and chow down on potato salad and carp filets—watch out for the bones! How a fish achieved such an important place in the traditions of a land-locked country we can only speculate. But one sure sign that Christmas is upon us comes when grocery stores start filling huge buckets with water to sell shoppers live carp as they round off their Christmas preparations.

Often, after everybody has inspected the tank and chosen the perfect fish, they’ll fish them out with a net and thwack the fish into oblivion right then and there. But just as often, people will take their chosen fish still alive home with them and let them swim around in their bathtubs for a few days, for maximum freshness, I imagine.

10. Our Christmas tree
You can read the short story of our Christmas tree below. We wanted to show you what it all looks like now that it’s decorated. In’t it purty?

9. English seminar Christmas party
So I decided to teach my English seminar class (of all graduating students) about white elephant Christmas gift exchanges. Their homework was to bring a nicely wrapped but horribly tacky white elephant gift (perhaps that was redundant). Which they did. Clearly, they understood. Chrissy and I were also grateful to pass along several choice items that we inherited from previous ESI teachers.

Props go to...actually, I’d rather not know who it was...who brought pink lingerie. The boys kept stealing it from each other, taking turns trying it on. How nice.

8. Job Fairs
We’ll blog more about these later in a full report, but yesterday we finished our last Job Fair—our 2^nd and 3^rd years have been making resumes and preparing for job interviews over the past few months, and, beginning about three weeks ago, one by one they’ve been interviewing each other in a whole-class Job Fair.

For now, here’s a picture of Martin, looking oh, so professional with his freshly drafted cover letter and loosely-tied half-Windsor knot.

7. Our new oven
Some of you expressed concern that the apartment our school has so generously provided for us came to us without an oven, just two trusty gas burners. Well, we’ve taken those gas burners to their culinary limits, let me tell you, but last weekend...

...as a Christmas present to us, Chrissy’s parents provided for us to buy a trusty little electric oven. Gone are the days of seeing if you can make pizza on a skillet and going to other houses to bake cakes. To celebrate, my lovely bride baked some cookies. It was doubly sweet.

6. Story time
One of our Christmas lessons this year has centered around one of my favorite Christmas stories, O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. You can read it here if you’ve never read it before. It’ll take you about five minutes. We use it as a backdrop to discuss Christmas gifts—what’s the best gift you’ve ever received? ever given? What makes a gift a good gift? And then we read them the story.

Hearing our students’ responses has been fascinating. Here are some interesting things we’ve observed:

· Most people can remember some gifts they’ve received, but not many remember great gifts they’ve given.

· It splits pretty evenly how many think Jim and Della’s gifts are wise and how many think they are foolish—and the split isn’t boy-girl or younger-older.

· Although most agreed that Jim and Della could have shown their love for each other in less expensive ways, everybody hoped that someday somebody would be want to sacrifice so much for them...

· I sensed that most of the students were building their opinions without a clear idea of what they meant by “love”—do you have a clear idea of what love is?

To follow-up, the students are writing journals about a few topics related to generosity and sacrifice. I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say.

5. Christmas caroling
Since last Thursday we’ve been singing English Christmas carols in Mr. and Mrs. Agee’s English conversation classes. This is really exciting for some students, and others move their mouths at least. But for the most part our classes have really enjoyed it. We, however, are carol-ed out already, singing the same set of seven or eight carols five or six times a day. I hope that it’s made a nice memory for our students though, even if they only remember standing and shouting out “FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!” every time J

4. This afternoon
...continues the annual Arabská volleyball tournament, in which most of the classes over the next two days will pass-set-and-spike it out for the honor of playing against the teachers in the big finale. Chrissy and I are in a bit of a pickle, as we teach all of the class-groups and are teachers. We’ll let you know who decide to root for J

3. Holiday plans
So we recently ironed out how, where and with whom we’re celebrated Christmas this year...

This Friday we’re hosting some Czech friends over for an “American” Christmas dinner. Last year they hosted us to a traditional Czech Christmas, and we hope to return their hospitality.

Sunday we’re having dinner with any of our teammates in Prague who didn’t make other plans (i.e. went back to the States), then we’re going to a midnight mass.

Monday we’re having full-out Christmas dinner with our teammates and some others and having a jolly good time.

2. Post holiday travels
On December 26^th, we’re taking a train (several, actually) to Berlin for our first bit of traveling-for-traveling’s-sake. We’re re-tracing our steps in a way, as we both made this same trip this time two years ago, but Berlin is a terrific city, and we’re looking forward to seeing lots of the places we didn’t have a chance to get to last time. We’ll post some pictures when we get back.

1. ...a jednu koroptev na hruškovém stromě
which, in Czech, translates to “and a partridge in a pear tree.”

Vésele Vánoce a Šťastný Nový Rok!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Stromeček

2006-12-14T02:08:00.000-08:00

This week Joel and I bought a Christmas tree, or stromeček, as the Czechs like to say.

Joel predicted it would be at least a two hour job and I didn't believe him.

I was wrong.

Buying the tree wasn't all that difficult. Joel whipped out his Czech skills and managed to communicate what kind of tree we wanted and that we needed a stand as well. So far, so good.

Challenge #1: getting the tree into our flat. Our elevator fits two people- and that's two people squished in together- so there was no way our tree, Joel, and me were going to get in the elevator. Joel, being the gentleman that he is, carried the tree up five flights of stairs to our flat, while I took the elevator up and opened the door and cleared a path for the tree to be brought in the flat.

Challenge #2: sawing off the end of the tree's trunk. We discovered an old, rusted saw in our hall closet and Joel went to work. After 10 minutes of sawing with no results, Joel asked me to bring him a hammer. There's pictures below of Joel using the saw and hammer.

Finally, after about an hour of grunt work, Joel cut the trunk of the tree off and got the tree into the stand!! And now we have a beautiful stromeček in our living room. We're putting lights and ornaments on tonight for the bible study we're hosting. So, I'll post a picture of the completed tree later :)

a non-story

2006-12-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

So this is a total non-story in that, well, it didn’t actually happen. I recognize the lameness of this. But the way it played out in my head—the way it would have happened made me laugh. And at least one person is going to suffer through it with me.

So I was in church last Sunday, listening to the sermon translation in my headphones. Translation in church makes for an interesting phenomenon in that there’s really two similar but not identical services going on at the same time. So there’s two groups of people mingled together in the congregation, each responding to different words, different sets of meanings, and different timings of delivery. The typical example is when we Americans laugh at a joke in the movies and our Czech co-watchers, reading the subtitles, laugh three seconds later (or not at all).

The pastor referenced a verse in some epistle, and the translator reported: “Where, O death, is your victory, where, O death is your—I’m sorry, I don’t know the word.”

Keep in mind that this is a non-story and what follows did not actually happen, but at this point, I, ever the helpful teacher, said, in a loud, helpful voice: “STING.”

Everyone was confused. The pastor, momentarily thrown off, took five seconds to check his notes and continue. My fellow Czech brothers and sisters were startled at this strange utterance in tongues. Perhaps the more charismatically inclined waited for an interpretation. And after first nodding in agreement, my fellow headphone-wearers, who had surely filled in the missing word to themselves, proceeded to chuckle and make a note to themselves to go rib Agee after the service. And the translator, pausing his interpretation briefly in line with the short interruption in the pastor’s sermon, did nothing—as he never heard my helpful suggestion behind the glass where he does his good work.

Joel

nekecala

2006-11-29T02:03:00.000-08:00

Last week, 4.B and I were discussing whether or not it's ethical to buy and sell wild animals. Part of the discussion inevitably went to our pets---if Tereza says we shouldn't buy giraffes, why should we buy dogs and cats?

Lucka piped in at this point.

"I've got a big spider. It's as big as my hand."

Really.

"Actually, we have 17 spiders like this."

No way. You're joking. You mean you have 17 tarantulas in your house?

"No, I'm not joking! And we live in an apartment."

Really.

"And when I was younger, my father used to sell them like a business. We used to have 300 little tarantulas in our apartment."

You really are joking now.

Well, Lucka wasn't joking about any of it. And today she brought me a small (keep in mind: small for a tarantula) tarantula skin to prove it. I guess tarantulas shed their skins like snakes. She told me I could keep it. "Thanks," I said, "but eww."

I almost gave my officemate a heart attack when I told her the story. Pray for Alena ;-)

Joel

the country ball

2006-11-27T05:51:00.000-08:00

Surprises never cease in Central Europe!

Last Tuesday we, along with all of our fellow teachers at Arabská were invited to a Country Ball at a nearby pub to learn some "traditional dances" and have a good time together as a staff. By "traditional dances" we assumed that they meant traditional Czech folk dances. Imagine our surprise when what we were learning was actually American square dances and the Virginia Reel. Go figure.

Two visiting American teachers from Chicago, also there, though it would be country line dancing. I'm not sure who was farther off.

It hurt the overall attendance that it went late on a school night, but we had a great time.

nazdááár

2006-11-22T05:28:00.000-08:00

So my colleague and officemate Alena gave me some great advice yesterday. She had noticed my cell phone sitting on my desk while I was grading papers and had seen that I'd written "Ahojky" as a greeting on the main screen.

When I wrote Ahojky there last year, I took it to be a cute way of saying "Hi there!" in Czech. Well, she said, yes. But it's also associated (by stereotype) with ditzy teenage girls and homosexual men.

So yesterday I changed my greeting to "Nazdááár," which is a significantly more macho way of saying "Hi there!"

Perhaps I'm compensating. The jury is out.

Joel

a native master

2006-11-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

I received a great compliment from a student this morning.

I like english very much and i'm glad that I could be learning it with a
native master. Thanx for all.

In English, it seems, my belt is black.

Joel

surprises

2006-11-02T03:07:00.000-08:00

Maybe we were tipped off.

A few weeks ago, our building manager posted a notice on the main entrance, announcing a "surprise" water inspection would happen on what is now last Tuesday. It struck both of us that this notice circumvented the nature of purpose of surprises, but apparently "surpise" wasn't the point, and last Tuesday our water was shut off. Surprise!

Actually, the notice did it's job, and we were prepared with jugs and pots and half of a bathtub full of water, ready for a dry day.

Being that we're both in the same neighborhood, our school was also "surprised" with a no-water day, so regular classes were canceled, and everybody had fieldtrips. Chrissy and I and two of our fellow English teachers went with three classes to see a musical version of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Probably the only real surprise of the day was this: you can actually do Animal Farm as a musical. Actually, it was pretty good. But---and there's no surprise here---the songs have yet to leave our head. Fortunately, reading about it on a blog will save you from catching the tune.

ANIMAL FARM! ANIMAL FARM!

Joel

Ouch!

2006-10-30T03:57:00.000-08:00

So, if blondes can have their moments, then I claim that redheads can too.

Last Wednesday afternoon, I had a redhead moment.

When I was out shopping near Wenceslas Square, I tripped on a man hole cover and landed on my chin. Good thing it was my chin and not my nose, right? Thankfully, two very solicitous Czechs (no, "solicitous Czechs" is not an oxymoron :) came to help me and gave me their kleenexes to help stop my chin from bleeding. Not knowing how deep the cut was, I went to a Lekarna and got some bandages. But, I was shooken up and so I called Joel and asked him to meet me. Joel took one look at my chin and said I needed stitches. Not what I wanted to hear! So, we made our first trip to a Czech hospital where I did indeed get stitches. On the positive side, it was a very good hopsital visit: we got a doctor who spoke English!

A cute sidenote is that our friend's son, Nehemiah, asked me why I had a bandage on my chin, and, when I told him that I fell down, he looked at me sternly and asked, "Chrissy, were you running?" His parents are always telling him not to run in the house, and so Nehemiah assumed that's what I was doing. Well, being an object lesson for a 3 year-old is, I suppose, a worthy cause :)

Chrissy

the poor little rabbit who wouldn't jump

2006-10-19T03:17:00.000-07:00

Substitue teachers never had a chance in Prague. Before they could negotiate contracts, form unions, or babysit Mr. Stryker's second period biology class, some Czech principal pulled the rug out from under them. And in the process, that principal many years ago made me not only a fulltime teacher, but also, about twice a week, a substitue teacher.

"Supply" lessons, as we translate them to be, are actually not so bad. Over the past two years and a bit, supplies have been a time to meet new students, have non-lesson-related conversations, play games, or (usually, I admit) catch up on grading while the students, er, "study."

This year I've compromised. I dangle the carrot of free time in front of my students as long as they'll complete some outlandish English task first. I've started with "I'm a little teapot," sung in mass spojeno choir. The results have been, well, really funny.

This morning, 4.A, who performed the teapot song in supply last week, returned the favor, teaching me a Czech children's song, complete with a dancing circle (we held hands), and a "London Bridges"-esque "bunny rabbit" crouched in the middle. This is the rough translation:

Little bunny rabbit in his hollow all alone
Poor little bunny rabbit, what's the matter?
Why won't you jump?
Hop and jump, hop and jump? Hop and . . . JUMP!

They got me. I was taken in. Even though we needed those 5 minutes to finish the lesson...so it goes.

Joel

"fun-size" updates

2006-10-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

You remember those "fun size" candy bars that you would get for Halloween? You know, small on the size, small on the fun? Well, here's the blog version. Only these will be fun.

We're starting an English Club at Arabská. Five students showed up for an informational meeting last Monday. This is a nice number, says I. We'll see where this goes. The first meeting is next Tuesday.

Cafe Cože, a Christian English club that meets monthly in Prague, is also this coming Tuesday, but in the later afternoon. We're planning to be involved with it this year (it'll be Chrissy's second year there). I've heard about it for as long as I've been in the Czech Republic, and now I can go!

Please remember to pray for Sokolov and ISŠTE, my former town and school, as the ESI teacher assigned there this year has decided to return home early. Please pray for peace, grace and healing for her heart. And please remember her teammate, who soon will be alone in Sokolov. And pray for ISŠTE and my former students and colleagues.

Tonight is the Greater Prague Area (or "GPA") Bible study. We'll meet at everyone's favorite pseudo-American restaurant, Bohemia Bagel, and talk over the 121st Psalm. Read it with us this week, if you feel so inclined.

And lastly, a factoid about our own US of A that I just learned this morning after a student stumped me: did you know that New York is called the Big Apple because of jazz music? Yeah, I didn't either.

Joel

Karlstejn Castle

2006-10-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

Almost a month ago, my friend and fellow ESI teacher, Stephanie, and I trecked out to visit one of the Czech Republic's most popular castles. Karlstejn Castle, like most castles, sits at the top of a large hill. And while its worth it to hike up the "hill" (more like a mountain if you ask me...), its even more worthwhile to stroll at a leisurely pace up the hill so you can enjoy the scenery. And, of course, so you can enjoy a tasty snack as well.

Joel was at the Ostrava baseball game, so he didn't get to join me, but this weekend Joel and I have both been invited to visit Karlstejn Castle with our friends and Czech tour guides, Ivanna and her son, Richard. When I visited the castle with Stephanie, we took the regular tour. Ivanna has informed me that she can go online and book the "premium" tour.... ooooh! Joel and I will let you all know what we think....

baseball fever, after all

2006-10-02T04:03:00.000-07:00

I confess.

On the way to the baseball game I thought of the title for this blog entry, and it wasn't "baseball fever." This is Central Europe, you see, and they're not known for a love of baseball over here. So in a flash of mediocre wit, I pre-named this blog "a baseball temperature"--- not quite a fever, but still a bit warmer than usual.

How wrong I was.

The final game of the Czech National Baseball League's play-off series between the Ostrava Arrows and Krč Altron was nothing short of a raging, malarial fever. At least if you were sitting on the Ostrava side of the stands, which (although I inadvertantly wore the opposing team's colors) we were. They literally drove halfway across the country to support their boys, and they got the most out of the same three cheers again and again, every half-inning. My ears rang the whole game from the airhorn blasts and tram bells.

Our American contingent stood up to sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. And I think in doing so we won the respect of the Ostrava fan bus crew.

And the result? Although they almost blew a six run lead in the eighth, the Arrows ruled the day. All together, a nice substitute for play-off baseball, starting this week back in the USA.

Go A's!

- Joel

september newsletter

2006-09-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

A Long, “Last” Newsletter – Notes From the Czech Republic
September 23, 2006 – (23. září 2006)

This is the last newsletter from the Czech Republic that you’ll be receiving from me.

From me. Next month, be on the lookout for a newsletter from the Czech Republic from Joel and Chrissy—us! the newly-wed missionaries back for another year to teach English and be Christians-in-another-place—now together. We would be sending out a joint newsletter this time, except I thought I should update you, my friends who have supported me for the past two years in Sokolov, on what’s new in my third year, a lot of things that Chrissy’s supporters through last year probably already know about. So here goes:

A NEW CITY, A NEW SCHOOL

The second and third biggest changes for this year (the first-biggest being we are married) is a move from little Sokolov to the big city of Prague, and from teaching at ISŠTE the past two years to teaching this year at Gymnázium Arabská. I’m in the same country, but Prague is a different world, to be sure, the first time I’ve ever lived in a big city. On the upside, Prague is an international city full of people used to living side-by-side with people from all over the world; lots of them speak English! Among the things I’m still adjusting to is how long it takes to get where you want to go, how isolated you can feel in the city from friends and teammates who live just a few miles away, as well as the noise and the pollution.

Arabská is also a different world. Whereas for the past two years I’ve been teaching at a vocational and business high school, Arabská is an academically-geared, university prep high school. I’m convinced already that some of my students know more about English than I do. This is the school where Chrissy taught last year, and largely because the faculty knows and respects her already, I’ve felt more immediately welcomed than I would have expected. I think I’m gonna like it here.

The biggest challenge so far is that between the two of us, Chrissy and I are teaching every student in the entire school. That’s one lesson per week for 21 groups of students—each. With about 15 or so students in each group, that means I’ve got about 320 new names to learn. Chrissy’s got a leg up on me—she taught half of her students last year. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

A NEW ESI COMMUNITY

We were glad to be a part of ESI Training this July, our first chance to get to know the new members of our ESI team in Central Europe this year. As returning teachers, Chrissy and I were able to talk about a lot of our experiences over here, both in the classroom and just about living as North Americans in the Czech Republic. It’s refreshing for us to encounter this place and culture again, through the eyes of our new teammates, who have now been here just over a month. It’s good to catch hold of their enthusiasm, their sense of novelty, and the day-at-a-time dependence of God’s faithfulness that we who’ve been here a while can too often take for granted as “experienced” as we think we are.

This year the team in the greater Prague area is trying to meet once a week for Bible study and conversation. We’re discussing a new Psalm each week, sharing stories from the week, and praying for concerns and needs that are brought out. We ask that you’d pray for our little group, that God would help us to communicate genuinely and honestly with each other and that He would write these Psalms into our prayer lives.

REGARDING WORK VISAS

On the Top 10 list of Things We Least Enjoy About Prague, coming in somewhere between #9 (Waiting outside for a tram in January) and #3 (Learning the Czech word for a strange animal body part after eating one) is: Visiting the Foreign Police. As foreigners seeking to work in the Czech Republic, we need more than just our passports—we need work visas! Applying for one of these is a rigorous process that probably in the past included animal sacrifice. Okay, just kidding about the sacrifice part. But it feels like that, sometimes. Once our visas are approved, we have to pick them up somewhere in the innards of a dank, dimly lit office building full of hundreds of other foreigners waiting for pretty much the same thing—it’s the Prague headquarters of the Foreign Police. There we will wait for at least three hours for our numbers to come up, then rush into a smoky room to get the visa glued into our passports and get a final stamp of approval—hopefully.

This year we applied for my visa at the Czech consulate in Los Angeles, and we’re happy to report that it’s approved! Weeks earlier than we were expecting! Chrissy’s application is still being processed in Prague. Please pray that it will be approved quickly and without complications.

Waiting in line at the Foreign Police. Our number was #774. Also keep in mind that we had arrived at 6am.

REFLECTIONS AT THE START OF A THIRD YEAR

· So far I’m really enjoying being back in the classroom. It’s an exciting and rewarding new challenge to teach students who already have such a strong grasp on English.

· I’m struggling a bit to know how to maintain relationships with people in Sokolov, where I was for the past two years. Sokolov isn’t all that far away geographically, but as we’re building a new life in Prague, it feels more distant every day.

· Being married is great! It’s a wonderful blessing to have my teammate, my best friend, my co-worker, and my wife all be the same person.

· Chrissy and I have chosen Matthew 18:20 as the theme verse for our first year of marriage: “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” We pray that in, around and through our marriage, our teammates, students and colleagues would see Jesus with us.

We’re grateful again for your support—both financially and with your prayers. We’re excited for this new year and for the opportunities God has in store. We’re also excited to hear back from you! Please let us know about your life, what God Is doing around you, and how we might pray for you in return. It’s all part of the good work of

Making Him Important,

Joel (and Chrissy!)

Sound bite from Chrissy's Class

2006-09-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

As part of the introductory lesson I've been teaching, my students have been taking learning styles surveys. You know, the kind of questionnaire that tells you if you are a visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic learner. Yep, that kind.

So, as part of the speaking activity, students have to tell me what types of class activities best help them practice their English. One student put it best:

"Well, since you are Native American, we must speak with you most."

"You mean since I'm a native speaker?" I clarified.

"Uh... yes."

It's good to be back.
- Chrissy

future perfect

2006-09-12T02:38:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent example of that devil of the English verb tenses, the Future Perfect:

By this time tomorrow, I will have met all of my classes for the first time.

A great way to take advantage of having native speakers of some foreign language on your faculty at a school in say, the Czech Republic, is to have them preside over one conversation/speaking oriented lesson per week as a complement to students' other foreign language (let's say English) classes that focus perhaps more on grammar, vocabulary, writing and reading and are taught by qualified Czech teachers. This is a sound model. Lots of schools with our situation use it.

So far one downside I see with this is the sheer number of different groups of students we teach. I'm teaching about the same number of hours as last year, but on an each-group-once-a-week schedule, that means Chrissy and I teach 21 different groups of students. Each. That's a lot of record keeping. That's a lot of names and faces to learn. That's 21 repetitions (each) of welcoming speeches and class rules presentations. Between the two of us, this year we'll teach every student in the whole school.

But how cool would it be if they all gave us Christmas presents? Cha-ching.

Joel

the first day of school

2006-09-04T02:36:00.000-07:00

So it wasn't really the first day of school today. But all the same, students and teachers filled classrooms and offices this morning for an official welcome, a quick hash of announcements, and then a (I imagine it to be) chipper zatím ahoj --- "See you tomorrow!" The first year students stuck around, getting a big orientation, a tour, and, I hope, cookies.

Of special note, part of the welcome included an intercom message from the former Minister of Education distributed all across the country (including kindergartens, or so I hear). She can't get out of her job (she wanted to, it seems) because the tied-up government (both coalitions in Parliament have 100 seats) can't agree on a replacement. She sounded a bit bitter, one of my officemates said.

I was mostly thrilled that Arabská does intercom announcements. Really now, if this is a part of every morning, then I'll consider adding the American Pledge of Allegience and the cafeteria menu in English to my morning class routine. I'll have to ask Chrissy about that.

In the meantime, we'll be sending out a newsletter within the next two weeks to spread the word on our latest and about this new blog. Until then...

Zatím,
Joel

tady jsme doma (we're home)

2006-08-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

So this is the first official post on our new blog! We're settling in to our new home in Prague. Our new flat is great---we can walk to just about everyplace we would usually want to get to, the furniture is all new, the neighbors smiley, and after a bit of unpacking, it's looking like a home. We'll post more on here as soon as we can, but for now, here's an adorable picture of us from our wedding two weeks ago:

Čau for now!

getting the show on the road

2006-05-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

August 5, 2006: Costa Mesa, CA

1. Wedding
2. Marriage
3. The New Blog

COMING SOON

(items not listed in order of importance)