Tag: language

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

365 Czech Republic

“What people are bad robot”

Post author By Shay
Post date July 16, 2014
1 Comment on “What people are bad robot”

“What people are bad robot.” That’s a translation we came up with tonight while studying Czech. It’s also about as clear as we are on this new language.

Tomorrow we’ll have our second formal Czech lesson and Jitka (our teacher) got us our new books and gave us a little homework. Czech is not easy. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Just the basic greetings and salutations can be enough to make my head spin right now. There is a lot of formality to the greetings when you’re talking to someone you don’t know and if you use the informal and not the formal you can offend, so that’s a little tricky. I guess we’ll just have to take it step by step. See what I did there?

Even though there are no words, the IKEA instructions can sometimes be like learning a new language. I began building our wardrobe today and I’m just not in the groove of building IKEA furniture…yet. I messed up one hole and hammered something I wasn’t supposed to so I was little frustrated. In the end, I think I’ve got it right but I’m only half done. There’s another section to build and then I have to put the doors on. Hopefully I’ll have time this weekend to finish it off.

I’ve begun working a bit here in the Josiah Venture office and at home. My team (Creative Communications) has some big projects coming up and I’ve been helping with the discussions and starting to take a more active role. It’s been good to start slow here and get back to normalcy before diving head first, but I’m excited to get some projects going while we’re moving in and learning language.

Bethany made cookies tonight, but as she was about to put them in the oven I heard, “Oh no…” from the kitchen. Then I said, “What’s wrong?” Bethany replied sadly, “My cookie sheets don’t fit in the oven.” Welcome to Europe. Our tiny little oven/stove just doesn’t cut it with these big cookie sheets. Thankfully the oven has a few other sheets included with it so Bethany cleaned them and we used those. We got some great cookies, but I’m guessing we’ll probably have to get some cookie sheets that actually fit. Here’s a fun fact about Czech: you can’t really buy chocolate chips. Bethany brought a huge Costco size bag of them here, but if you want to make chocolate chip cookies without importing, you need to cut the chocolate chips up yourself! Oh the humanity!

I feel bad for Titus sometimes. These photos (above) kind of symbolize a little bit how his life is right now: upside down. Yesterday he said, “Dad, I want to go to In-N-Out.” Sorry, pal. Then tonight he said, “We go swimming there?” in reference to our friend’s house in California. Can’t do that either, buddy. I know this probably isn’t as hard on him as I think it is, but I also know that he understands our life is much different than it was before. We’re trying real hard to explain things to him like taking off your shoes when you enter someone’s house (cultural thing in Czech), and it’s going pretty well. It’s just weird for me to be experiencing the change with him and not having the experience ahead of him. I guess it’s like language learning–we’ll just have to take it one step at a time.

Tags kids, language

365 Czech Republic

Say It Right, Broken Flight, And A Little Too Tight

Post author By Shay
Post date July 9, 2014
1 Comment on Say It Right, Broken Flight, And A Little Too Tight

Today was a bit of a rest day. We had a full day yesterday traveling from Bratislava and we spent the evening cleaning and packing as we made a small move from the place we’ve been staying to another missionaries house just down the road. Our container is scheduled to arrive tomorrow! We believe we have at least a dozen people coming over to help us move our stuff in, so that’s a huge answer to prayer. I’m sure it will be like Christmas getting all of our stuff and moving things in.

We didn’t have a super full day (which was a nice break), but we did have our first Czech lesson in Czech! We’ve done lessons in the States, but today Jitka got us going on some vocabulary and common greetings. Above is a photo of some commons places we were learning. We were saying things like “I am at work” (far left) and “she is at home” (or “doma”). Czech is definitely not an easy language and some words are quite difficult for our English trained tongues, but I thought we both did pretty well today and we’re looking forward to continuing this language learning journey.

This little bird (above) flew right into a closed second-story window at the house we’re staying in. I heard the thump, saw feathers flying, but never saw a bird. Assuming it had just flown away I didn’t think much of it until about ten minutes later when I went outside and found him sitting on the ground like this. He sat there for a bit and let me get very close. Eventually he flew away, but I thought it was worth sharing.

The last thing on our agenda today was to receive the appliances we purchased the other day. They called and said they would be arriving between 5-7pm at our new apartment so I decided to go over alone because there’s just nothing in our new place for the kids. The delivery guys showed up just a little after 5 and even though I couldn’t speak much to them I tried out some new Czech I just learned. I said, “Tady” meaning “here” for the washer and dryer. To be honest I thought was saying “there” but it still worked! Well, sort of…the washer and dryer didn’t fit.

Apparently not all doors are made the same. The door for the wash room just wasn’t wide enough for our machines. There was probably about a half-inch of overhang and they just weren’t going to make it through the door. It’s actually going to work out just fine because the previous missionaries had the exact same problem and the hoses and hook ups have already been moved to other side of the wall. Now they will sit on the other side of the kitchen in a small hallway type area and it’ll be fine (shown below). We’re just thankful to have them! They also brought in our fridge which we didn’t have any issues fitting. It’s really fun to see our little home coming together.

Tags bird, dryer, language, lessons, washer