Three days until I leave, four until I arrive home. I have a force layover in Frankfurt for one night. So I will see some of you at the end of this week. I feel a bit like Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods, excited and scared. Scared may not be the best word, but I am definitely nervous!! So much happens in a year: deaths, births, marriages, new boyfriends/girlfriends, new jobs, new shows. We all change some in a year but we usually go trough the changes gradually. It's different when we haven't been around each other to see the changes and get used to them little by little. So let's make a pact, I'll accept your changes and you'll accept mine, for better or for worse. How's that sound? Hopefully we have all changed for the better. And maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe there is nothing to worry about.

I am also anticipating some glorious FOOD!!! Mexican and sushi, any seafood actually. Be prepared! Miss y'all so very much and really can't wait to see y'all this weekend.
ciao!
Jessica

I had a really nice time on the class trip. We stayed at a camp site near the town of Sušice. It was beautiful! We were up in the mountains and the camp was on a river. It reminded me of family trips we used to take to Caddo Gap on the Caddo River in Arkansas. I had so many wonderful childhood memories that I hadn't thought of in years. We hiked up to a castle on Thursday and I mean up! The castle was on top of a small mountain. Needless to say, I was a wee bit sore the next day. But the view wasincrediblee. The castle was built by Charles IV in 1356 and is the highest situated castle in the Czech Republic. I think castles are a big part of my fascination with Europe. Call it the romantic in me, but I LOVE to see the castles, even the ones in ruins. There is something majestic about them. It still amazes me that things are so old here. The history is so rich.

Well....I'll be home in nine days! Where does the time go? I have a lot of washing and packing to do and some mental preparation as well. Please go easy on me when I get home. I'm afraid I'll get to Target and never leave. There will be too many choices! Ok see you soon!

Don't have much time to write. I have to go give my last test of the year. Tomorrow I am going on a class trip with Sekunda. They are 12 year olds. It should be fun to say the least. I'll tell you all about it next week. We'll be gone until Saturday. I have so much to do in the next 2 weeks. TWO WEEKS!!!! That's right folks! Two more weeks and I will be back in God's country, TEXAS!! Yee Haw!!

See ya!
Jess

This weekend was our End of the Year Retreat. We went to a small town outside of Prague called Hořovice. It was really nice to see everyone and start to put some closure on our year. It didn't dawn on me that this was the last time I would see some of these people until it was almost time to go. Then it felt like the last day of camp, a really LONG camp. Out of 24 teachers, only five of us are returning. The Czech team will be receiving 28-31 new teachers. That's a lot of newbies. Last year the ratio was almost 50/50. So we will have some new challenges.

I also discovered a new love....cinnamon ice cream. I have been craving it ever since I had it on Sunday. I had a small waffle cone with chocolate and cinnamon. Man, was it good. I think I will search it out until I find it again. It was really that good!

čau for now!

One Down and One to Go....

The pharmacy that owns our flat came and took one of the three refrigerator that have been making our flat an obstacle course since January. Why, you may ask, did we have three fridges? That is a very good question. One that I will try to answer since I am not really sure myself. When we arrived here in August we had to plug our fridge in. It took it a long time to cool off. We were excited because we had a huge fridge with a BIG freezer. Most of our friends had very small, dorm sized ones. Well it just didn't seem that things were staying very cool. My milk went bad after a few days. I told Lucie about it and she said it must have been bad milk. Then our meat went bad. So I only kept veggies and drinks in the fridge and put the meat in the freezer. I asked the school to get it fixed.

I put a thermostat inside of it and it measured 53 degrees F. It should be around 35-40. I asked again for it to be fixed. This went on until December. One of my neighbors who speaks English asked me if I needed a fridge about two weeks before Christmas. I told him that I did in fact. The day after we put his fridge in our flat, the motor burned out and blew a fuse. This was the two days before Christmas. So then we had to put everything back in the old fridge and throw out everything in the freezer because it thawed. So when we went back to school, I told them that both fridges were not working. It took Kelly, our regional director, to give an ultimatum to get us a new fridge. The pharmacy brought us a small dorm sized fridge and fixed the fridge that our neighbor gave us. But they didn't remove the original fridge. Viola! Three large kitchen appliances and no where to put them all. We had two in the kitchen and one in the entry way which made it hard to go in and out of the front door. Then someone from the school said they were going to get the little fridge but they never came. That was in February. So finally, we are back to two. Hopefully, we will be down to one soon. But I'm not holding my breath!

This weekend is the End of the Year retreat for ESI teachers. I hope it will be relaxing and a good time to catch up with teachers I don't get to see very often. I hope y'all have a great weekend!