Tag: fog

Through the Fog

Someone at the Josiah Venture office today asked me how language lessons were going. She is from Czech and I said to he, “Rozumím trochu česky” which translates to, “I understand a little Czech.” Unfortunately, that’s where the conversation ends, but that doesn’t mean I’m not learning. It was only a few months ago that I was forced to memorize, “I don’t speak Czech” in Czech, but now we’ve graduated to some level of understanding. Progress!

Today we had our second Czech lesson with Tamara today and we’re just reworking a lot of the basics. Obviously, since it’s a lot of review things are moving along relatively smoothly, but I assume we’re only a few weeks away from “the fog.” The fog is that time in language learning where things just get, well, foggy. You bein to learn more new things faster than your brain can comprehend it all. Apparently the fog is not uncommon when learning a new language but the further you push the better off you are. Eventually it will all come around and the fog will clear.

Speaking of fog, we woke up this morning and couldn’t see the large church next to our apartment because it was so thick. I should’ve taken a photo and I will probably regret that for a while. It was strange to see the faint outline of the building that’s barely seventy five feet from us. I like the fog. I like the change from the never ending California sun, but like the picture I missed this morning, I’ll probably regret saying that too some day.

Tags fog, language, weather

365 Czech Republic

Foggy Day and Bethany Gone at a Retreat

Post author By Shay
Post date November 14, 2014
1 Comment on Foggy Day and Bethany Gone at a Retreat

“I can’t go to school; it’s so foggy.” These were the first words I heard this morning as Titus woke Bethany and I up. I looked out the window and he was half right, it was really foggy, but that wasn’t going to keep him from going to school.

The fog had lifted a little by the time we walked to his school (photo above), but for the most part the day stayed foggy. I try to check the forecast on a regular basis to see what’s upcoming but I never saw fog in the forecast. Honestly though, we can’t complain. Lately we’ve been hearing from family in the States that it’s warmer here than most of the U.S. Last night I saw a map of America that showed the majority of it in blue (e.g. cold), with a lot of states showing highs in the 20s and 30s. This is like 15 degrees cooler than us so we’re very surprised. We’ve been hunkering down and expecting severe weather, but so far it’s mid November and I don’t even think it’s been below freezing the entire month.

No matter what the weather, Avery’s looking fashionable.

This evening Bethany left with our friend Rachael and headed in to Poland for a youth women’s retreat with the girls from our church. She was originally asked to speak, but with all of us being sick (yes, Avery and me are still hacking) she opted out this time around. Even though she’s not sharing, she was excited to be a part of it and hopefully grow some relationships with the young women in the youth ministry. I sincerely hope it goes well and that God uses that time to grow relationships and build a strong community among the young women.

With Bethany out this does present me with twenty four hours of Titus, Avery, and Daddy time. Tonight that meant taking the kids to McDonald’s for dinner. Is McDonald’s twenty minutes away by car? Yes. Would it have been possible for me to make dinner for them at home? Maybe. Did I want to kill time and make it easy on myself? Absolutely. But hey, you have to at least give me a little credit. We did bath time when we got home, jammies were put on, and Bible reading time went off without a hitch. Not a bad night! Now my only concern is if McDonald’s here is open for breakfast?

Tags fog, retreat, youth ministry

365 Czech Republic

Friday Fog Day

The day got off to an early start..at least for Bethany. Around 5:30am she walked Lindsey and Kailey over to the train station just down the street from our place so they could catch their 6:00m train to Prague. It was a very foggy morning and overall a day of gray. It rained on and off, but it was nice to have more cooler air. As I drove to the JV offices this morning I was surprised by just how much fog we had and just how thick it was. The sun never came out once today and as I type I can see the streetlights still reflecting off the low clouds.

Right now we have language lessons on Wednesdays and Fridays and today we were working on possessive pronouns. For the most part we are understanding what to do, but I just feel like Czechs speak so fast it’s hard to believe I’ll ever understand them. Just to answer a simple question in Czech right now is difficult and slow. Jitka (our teacher) instructed us to work hard on our vocabulary so we’ve been putting together flash cards today to start to run through on a regular basis. I think it’s going to give a jolt to our understanding of Czech and hopefully we’ll be able to catch more and more words as we’re engaged in conversation.

Since our language lessons are in our house I usually end up working from home when we’re done which is what I did today. Right now I’m working on a leadership training book that we’re hoping to have done within the next month. It’s like a high level leader training curriculum called “Walk 2:6” which is based on the passage 1 John 2:6 and written by Dave Patty. Mostly I’m working on making the book look and feel right but Lord willing it will be a great resource for our teams on the ground who are training young leaders.

Tonight we enjoyed a relaxing night at home but poor Titus kept asking if we could go outside and play baseball. I guess he doesn’t understand the rain delay quite yet. Bethany and Avery made brownies which we imported from the States via our container and they were delicious. Avery wanted to help so we got the step stool out and she enjoyed mixing and “painting” butter to grease the pan. As they were making the mix Avery had a little taste and said, “These are best brownies ever!” I agree!

Tags fog, language