home sweet home

i'm home! yay! i'm not sure if there are any faithful readers left out there, but if there are, thanks for staying with me! i haven't done the most stellar job of keeping up with my blog. my mom gently informed me that "...jackie keeps her blog very updated, you know..." yes mom, i want to be better at keeping this up. but i'm still here and i'm still writing, so that's a good sign.

so now that i'm home, what's the plan? i'm home until july 20th when i leave for prague and another year once again. in the meantime, i'll be working, training, doing a bit of travelling and spending as much time as possible with my friends and family here at home. i'll also be having a few visitors over the next month. at the end of april a friend that i studied with for 2 months in quebec a few years ago is coming to visit. i think we're both looking forward to getting caught up after about 3 years! and this friday one of my czech teammates will be flying into regina to spend 3 weeks with my family, soaking up canada and training with jackie and i. we're going to work her pretty hard. but i'm really looking forward to her coming. it will be great to have her experience life like we know it - and hockey like we know it! the only thing that's going to be a challenge is that she doesn't speak much english. looks like i'll be getting a lot of czech practice in real soon!

after my visitors leave, i'll be heading to columbus to spend about two weeks with jody. it's going to be pretty cool to have that time together and even better if jordan joins us for a week like he's planning.

in june jackie and i, along with the latest canadian recruit to join hc slava for next season - jeni creary, will be flying to prague and travelling to croatia with our team for training camp. it seems the president and coach really want us there - they're taking care of everything for us. a little canadian work ethic at camp is apparently worth it! we agree. :)

july will follow soon after two weeks in the czech and my departure date to come soon after that. july 20th we take off for another adventurous year!

next year will also look a little different for me as i'll be joining staff with athletes in action as a STINTer (short term international missionary). i'm really excited because i know i'm going to learn a ton. this past year i was working, along with jackie and sara, at the nursery school just outside of prague. so in the upcoming year, i'll instead be working for AIA. we'll be spending time at the sport university, planning events with my team and i will have the awesome opportunity to learn about missions close up and how to love on my teammates even better. great news!

there are a few things you could be praying for right now: jackie and i are in the process of getting our visas sent away and we need prayer for the speedy processing of our visa applications in order to reenter the country not only in june, but in july as well. the czech just joined the shengen agreement, so we're only allowed to be in any shengen country for 90/180 days. complicates things a little.

thanks for reading and for your prayers!

blessings :)

here we go...

here's the video from the bus trip... about time, i know!

waaaaiting

i'm struggling to get the video figured out... so will do that asap so ya'll will know what i'm talking about in my blog!

in other news, sara would like me to give a little shout out to let everyone know that she's just recently posted after a few month hiatus from writing. so czech her out!

bus ride sing-a-long

this beauty of a video was shot last sunday on our way home from brno, cz. it was our second last game of the year and with the 6-0 victory (kudos to sara on yet another shut out) we clinched the czech league title.

it also happened to be easter sunday and our trainer, milo, pulled out some classic english music, including quite a few popular and christian songs that we just happened to know. fancy that! we quite enjoyed singing along - we, being the operative term and only including sara, jackie and i. the rest of our team didn't so much like the tunes coming out over the loudspeaker. so, what happened was, the girls began to try and drown out the music and sing their own song louder than the one being played. needless to say, it was quite funny.

check out the dude without any hair singing along with the girls. he's pretty much our super fan. he lives and breathes slavia women's hockey. i so wish i had footage of him cheering in the stands because it's so funny that i can't watch or else i start busting a gut on the bench.

this weekend is our last game of the season, against brno as well, but out in kralupy at our home ice. afterwards we have a team wind-up/party which will start with bowling and i'm sure progress in hilarity as we go.

it's been so amazing to live in this country and play with this team this year. i consider myself extremely blessed... it's been hard at times, but so rewarding as well. god has been present through the tough stuff with hockey and life here, and it's been amazing to see him work through it all - in myself and in others - and to see how he works all things for good!

can't wait for next year!!

jsem studentka

for the past three weeks i've been getting on the tram every morning at 8:17 to head to school. i'm halfway through a 6 week intensive czech course and having a blast. it's a really great set up for learning czech and also meeting some new and fun friends. i just happen to be the only north american in my class. there are people representing all the following countries: uzbekistan, ukraine, egypt, argentina, russia, siberia (i know it's part of russia but worth noting!), israel, moldavia, bulgaria and australia.

there are only a few who don't speak english, so i've been able to converse with a lot of them about more things than our basic czech will allow us. even though we're all from different countries, it's amazing how a sense of humour knows no bounds. many days i'm giggling in my seat or trying not to roll on the ground laughing.

today, during our first break, two of the students decided to demonstrate their tango skills in front of the class. our professor had left the room and people were just lazing around. all of a sudden the music gets turned on and edgar and masha are tango'ing' in a circle at the front of the class. i turned to ulrich, who sits beside me, (he's from australia) and we bust out laughing. he was making hilarious comments as they danced which only increased the hilarity of the moment and everyone else was laughing and trying to stay under control. our prof walked in a few minutes into the dance and, once she got over her shock, laughed along with the rest of us. i'm not sure if it was more funny or disturbing, that 37 year old edgar and 19 year old masha were dancing such an "intimate" dance. i'm pretty sure it was a mix of both.

me, being the smart person i am, just happened to pull out my phone and take some video footage of the whole event! it's currently on my phone, but will bluetooth it to jackie or sara's computer and get them to send it to me so that i can attach it for ya'lls viewing pleasure!!

i know you're worried, so i'll reassure that we do study a lot too :)

clarification

after a convo with my mom, i was reminded that the term, "tongues out" really has no meaning to most people. sorry about that! tongues out refers to the style of your hockey gear (your shin pads in relation to your skates, to be specific). in the picture, the tongues of my skates are sticking out in front of my shin pads, whereas they are usually tucked in behind. going tongues out when you don't normally do it is just something hockey players do for fun, or to be silly, or whatever. so the connotation for the blog was mostly just to indicate that it was a lighthearted, fun set of games. hope that makes a little more sense!

tongues out

jacks and i hit the ice tonite against the czech national team. the cz girls are having a weekend training camp for the upcoming world championships in march, held in latvia. lucky us, we got to play today and will also tomorrow against the cz team (made up mostly of our teammates from hc slavia).

there were a few highlights on the night, but i think i summed it up best when i gave sara the 411 on the phone: we lost 2-0, jacks played defence, and i went "tongues out". FUN.

czech out the pic below!


i'm also posting a picture of martina and i that we took after practice during my visit to slovakia. the next pic includes a few of her christian teammtes.