Although Thanksgiving was not technically until this week and in fact it is not celebrated in the Czech Republic at all, we O-town girls have had a week of Thanksgiving and it has been wonderful! Each year, Fishnet invites all of their students to come away for part of the weekend. What’s the attraction you might ask? English practice, learning about the American holiday, good food, a weekend in the mountains, and fun! Our ulterior motive—that Thanksgiving can be celebrated as a Christian holiday in which we praise and thank God for the things He has given to us. The whole weekend was a ton of fun! We did a photo scavenger hunt, played some English name games, and played some backyard American football! We also got to see the students act out a dramatization of our holiday’s history. It was hilarious! Boy, can they act! We also watched Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving—you think the poor guy would have learned, Lucy is always up to her same old tricks, dude! I was excited to spend time with some of my students. I had three come and two brought members of their family with them. They are all adults and it was nice to get to know them a little out of the classroom. They are fun and seemed to enjoy playing of the Thanksgiving games as much as I did (and we all know how much competitive Chelsea likes to play games). So it was fun!
The second half of our Thanksgiving consisted of another retreat. It was the annual ESI Thanksgiving Retreat, where all the Central Europe teachers that work for the organization that I am here with get together to spend the holiday, do some training, and relax some before heading back for the rest of the year. These four days were fantastic! We went to a secluded area about 2 ½ hours away from Ostrava, near Prague. When we got there, we were met by all of the great people we had spent the summer with, our friends that are now scattered all over the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. It was a very joyful reunion. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner—gorged ourselves all weekend really on some delectable food that the conference center provided. (Traditional turkey dinner included). We spent time in praise and worship, fellowshipping together, we did several TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) sessions, and in our spare time goofed off! We played football, ping pong, cards, dice, bananagrams, read, watched Glee, and just had a good time together! After spending an entire summer of living together and then not seeing each other and barely having contact with each other for months, it was really nice to get to bond for a few days and celebrate the holiday. It was the closest thing that we could substitute for home. It was a wonderful weekend, full of friends and fun! I had a great time!
Central Europe Team
I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that you got to eat lots of turkey and watch tons of football yourselves! (I hope you all watched the parade too, because that’s my favorite part and I couldn’t!) Talk to you soon!
“Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.” ~ I Chronicles 16:8-10
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