Culture Shock

I was a little emotional over our dishwasher yesterday. At first I was thrilled because our dishwasher was washing mountains of dishes, our washing machine was washing mountains of dirty laundry, and the children were washed. Then I got frustrated because we ran out of hot water before I could take a shower. Again. Every time this happens I think about our small water heater hanging over our toilet in our flat in the Czech Republic. I think about how we had to turn the heating element off during the day so our electric bill wouldn't exceed our rent. I think about how costly our way of life here would be there. Then I think about my definition of costly.

New Blog

The blog has been divided & I've decided to leave the travel dialog here, and the family/other personal posts over here. The link is where I'll keep in touch and post about home, children, artwork, and the random things I find blog-worthy on a regular basis. This one will remain reserved for travel dialog.

Sadness

Please spread the word & sign this free petition. The school that hosted us in the Czech Republic is going to close. Petition

19 is Not a Typo

Chad is abroad again. He took a class of 19 students to the Czech Republic, back to Kamenicky Senov where Thomas & I built snowmen, visited the fountain, celebrated the witch burning day, back to Novy Bor where we found fresh foods, ate fresh baked treats, visited friends & fountains, and saw St. Mikulas traverse from the church tower to the ground via zip line, back to Ceska Kamenice where we made such good friends, and of course back to Prague where the memories are so intense I can't begin to type all of them out. Nineteen students flew over to take the metro, then a bus,THE BUS, ha ha...to Kamenicky Senov, where the men will stay in our old flat, the women in the dormitory, while Chad & the other two professors will stay at a hotel. They are getting a grand glass tour & will make some incredible art. I can't wait to hear about the trip & if you couldn't tell, I'm feeling a little nostalgia. Not saying I want to return at this time of year while people still burn coal or anything, but nostalgia has occurred. I'm rather jealous that I'm not there sharing the excursions, or sharing my intricate knowlege of bus schedules or showing the students how to get the best foods in Ceska Lipa, or Decin, or the places for children to play or potty safely, or well so many things that were such a challenge last year, but alas, only important to other non Czech vegetarian mothers silly enough to move to Bohemia. Thomas misses our life in the Czech Republic, and reminds me of it quite often. Amazing how things turn out.

Crepes

One thing I'll always regret is not going out for crepes with my friend Kelly when we were younger, single, and I didn't need a babysitter to take a road-trip. She gave me her extremely comfortable couch once and we were hoping to go out for crepes the next morning to a place she knew of. Unfortunately I slept in, and I say it was unfortunate, because Kelly has excellent taste. Ever since I've had the desire to learn how to make a decent crepe, or at least something that resembles a crepe. I began last summer. Then we moved to the Czech Republic where I learned to cook on the nuclear reactor, and ate Palacinky. Tangent ahead!

The one vegetarian dish I could always order at a restaurant was fried cheese & fried potatoes. Most restaurants offered one or two of the following vegetarian options as well, and these are direct quotes translated from Czech to English by Czech menu writers...Pizza (ketchup with cheese), Mixed Vegetable (fried cauliflower or broccoli), or Omelet or Pancake. It's the translation of Omelet that still has me confused. Okay, so crepe is French, yes? France is in Europe too, just a couple countries away from the Czech Republic. Crepes are very popular in the Czech Republic, available even in fast food stands throughout Prague, they are called Palacinky. So when I ordered Omelet or Pancake in restaurants I was often served crepes. Yey, except when you expect a big fat cheesy scrambled egg & get a thin dry crepe topped with a sprinkle of tasteless cheese and fruit the mouth stops watering, the beer hangover commences. Then when you learn this and order an omelet on purpose to get a crepe the tastebuds go through another shocker to find a fat eggy mass of mushroom, scallion, and cheese coming at them. It was always a crapshoot. I couldn't even go off of the context clues, like fruit in my scrambled egg, no...I won't go into some of the grosser combinations of vegetarian fare I ingested while dining out. It's not a veggie country. Sometimes I got really excellent crepes filled with fruit, cream and chocolate sauce and sometimes I got good ole fashioned greasy spoon eggs and cheese until I learned to ignore the English translated menu & learned to look for palacinky in the Czech one. Even in Prague. I won't admit to the date that I learned this, because it was really way too long after my arrival. So my question is, can't someone in the Czech restaurant biz figure this out? I mean they serve Coke Cola, so I'm sure there's people who know enough to translate one of the countries top foods correctly into the English version, right? They don't even have to use an English word, it's French. Maybe this is my million dollar idea. I know I sound like a spoiled American brat here, but really if you were to offer an English menu, wouldn't you check in with someone who speaks English once in a while or am I off base. Are crepes called omlets and pancakes in Australia and England? I actually preferred translating the Czech menus myself, since there was always much more available that way & I learned more, but the servers HATED it when we did that. Guess we were too slow and wound up buying more beer that way... Don't even get me started on Czech customer service rituals.

So anyway on Sunday I snuck into the kitchen and made some peach/mango filled crepes on an average American stove. Not my best attempt since the nuclear reactor has evidently burnt (sorry) its impression on my cooking hand. Someday I'll be able to pull off a perfect crepe from whatever pan & stove I'm handed & maybe Kelly will be able to join me.

Arachnophobia

I was given a poem about spiders once, rather off-handedly on the back of a piece of scrap paper. Poetry is wonderful, especially the unexpected kind. This particular one made a metaphor of old spiders hatching many babies as stories being spread over time, and in the end thousands of tiny spiders spread their stories through a village. Quite romantic in way, if you aren't totally paralyzed by the mere idea of an 8 legged creature. Don't even mention the time that I slept on and lived with a couch infested with Black Widows, I was born this way. Needless to say I was frustrated with the beauty of the poem, but kept it because I really wanted to overcome my squeamishness and appreciate that beauty more fully. Years went by, I lost the poem, many things changed, and I had a baby. A short time after his birth, I remembered the poem one morning while assessing the new mileage on my body in a mirror. It was a quick assessment, and a quick thought of the poem's take on age and motherhood, and then, of course, spiders. I shuddered, donned my robe, and returned to the wonder and craziness that was our new life with baby. The same night I found 3 baby spiders on my baby. Shudder. I looked in his bed and found more. I looked at the wall. There were more. Somewhere in there my mom entered the room, as she was taking care of us at the time. She found more. I may have screamed a little, but not enough to scare my baby. We looked up. There were hundreds of little spiders crawling on the ceiling over the bed I shared with my precious little baby. My mom was amazing. I remember her moving furniture, standing on the bed with a vacuum cleaner hose, and pulling a silk cloth from the ceiling that could have been filled with more spiders. She was so brave and managed to completely eradicate or scare the 100's of spiders out the window, and thus save my son & I from immanent doom. I don't remember if I slept that night or stared at the ceiling. We never figured out where they came from or where they were going, and it never happened again.

So in my excitement to leave this place, finish this adventure, and embark upon the next I'm attempting to put it all in perspective. It's hard for me to completely recognize the beauty of a place until I've left it, and over the last few moves I've tried to get over this, to be more patient, relish, and observe it's beauties while I'm in it, rather than look back. So while I was feeling particularly down the other day, longing to be home in the states again, I tried to focus on the beauty of this experience and find a metaphor I could use to describe it. The spider poem came to mind. I don't know why, I've read and loved a lot of poetry about location and identity, but no, nothing that appropriate would do for my brain. Spiders came to mind. Then I thought this experience was quite a lot like being paid a million dollars-well make that a billion or some other grand reward-to get into a bathtub full of spiders and out really quickly. That sounds awful, and our experience has been far from awful. It's been a wonderful growing experience, and we've been blessed with many opportunities and will benefit for the rest of our lives in ways I have trouble relating. That is just where the stream of consciousness went.

I guess to me, facing the challenge of a bathtub full of spiders is extremely scary, but leaving that tub would give me an amazing reward I cannot describe.
****Please do not Fed Ex me a bathtub full of spiders****
I imagine looking over the edge of the tub would be frightening, would those spiders bite? Would they crush under my weight? They're most definitely going to crawl...Then I would cringe, close my eyes, and jump in. And OUT. The out part is most important here, because spiders crawl quickly (probably their most scary talent in my opinion) and cling. I would have to shake out my hair, brush myself off, and check my shoulders. Then Joy! It would be over. I did it. I would have a billion dollars or some grand reward. But I would have to keep checking my shoulders to see what remained.

I'm thrilled to be leaving next week, but I'm a little scared. We're leaving with a huge reward, but I'll have to keep checking over my shoulders.

He's almost 3

Prior to this photo session we had the following exchange when we moved the big chair and found a couple of old toy parts.

"How did my stuff get under here, Mommy?"
"What stuff? Oh those things. I don't know? How did they get under there, Thomas?"
"This is a problem, Mommy. A PROBLEM."

I find this hilarious, for some odd reason. Happy Weekend!

Our Stove

So we've rounded the bend and are in the final stretch! It's JUNE (sung in a high pitched falsetto, if you're wondering) and two weeks to pack our stuff and head back to the states. I just can't stop smiling. No, that's not true, hormones man. Don't mess with the crazy pregnant lady weeping over EVERYTHING, because she's, "just so happy." Seriously, the morning (translate=all day) sickness, swollen large feet, headaches, emotional roller-coaster, and what-have-you were not expected when I first viewed the double lines on my positive pee stick. I panicked, but for completely different reasons.
I didn't start this post to whine. I started to sing a couple of songs of gratitude to the Czech Republic, or well our adventure here. First, the people who garden in their underwear or serve sausages wearing speedos & cowboy hats (seriously, it happened) make me smile. If you had to live through the ridiculous winter here, I bet the first thing you would do would be to shed your crusty wool sweaters and roll in your yard too. There's no average profile of the semi-nude gardener. They come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and thank you to the young black lace bra and white mini skirt we saw gardening while we rode the bus the other day. Way to go with a simple pony-tail and minimal make-up. Way to take a risk, because you really have a great youthful body & women here have a hard time going with the "less is more" look. Semi and full nudity seems to be located in just about any housing location, and that's what strikes me. Nudity is not an issue for me. Dude, whatever, I'm a figure sculptor, but in my life, it has always been accompanied by a sense of family, privacy, and in my adult life, the wafting scent of pachouli. So back to what strikes me, makes me rubber-neck. The display of comfortable nudity in the housing development environment. It just blows my mind to see the brand new row homes one just like the next, with their 4 foot pools, matching trim, 2.5 kids, and competitive lawn mowing, adorned with comfortably nude and semi nude people going about their suburban business.

Next, our nuclear power plant, I mean our old stove and old thin pots make me smile. It's ability to only cook on rip roarin' hot makes great fried potatoes. I now know how to pull off a mean batch of fried potatoes. While I've had more time to cook here as a full-time-stay-at-home Mom, you would think I would have done much more experimentation in the kitchen and added more to my repertoire than a mean batch of potatoes. Chad entered the kitchen a bit during our stay here, so did Thomas (of course he made bubble soup in the sink. The attempts were a family affair. I think it was because Chad was forced to join us at home most nights and take weekends since businesses and his school studio access were not available 24/7. Czech's know how to schedule holidays. There were other reasons (enter crazy morning sick preggo lady a few months back), and the random availability of anything vegetarian, but the stove was a challenge. Most people have this stove here, and I think that's why soup and goulash are so very popular and souffle, not so much. We spent many strange meals together here (remember when Mom tried to feed us soup and toast with mustard for dinner?), and I will always smile while thinking back to our first attempts trying to get the stove to work like we think a stove should together. Chad discovered a rice making method on this stove and I will never forget his plastic bottle strainer. It was the most romantic pot of rice ever.

Cuteness

phone ears = headphones
AND
Thomas made his own birdie costume. Brainstormed, designed, and fashioned totally solo.

Food for Thought

Was directed here by another blogger. Interesting because I clearly remember the youngest female faculty member on staff one year telling me she was handed a notepad in order to take minutes at a faculty meeting by the male chair at the time, no discussion, no vote on who would do it each week, it was just assumed that she would do it. Not an obvious thing, but one of many things that create a much larger problem. The biggest problem was that I didn't recognize it as a problem until she explained it to me, and pointed out there was no reason for her to be chosen over the other male and older staff. The men never took minutes. And there it is in a small study done recently, academic women feel more responsible for administrative duties, and have less time to focus in their fields and less time to advance careers and create & nurture families.

Interesting little tidbit on Czech Maternity and Parental Leave Benefits. Key facts, Parents can both be paid to take a leave of absence from work to care for a newborn & it is the employer's responsibility to give them job stability when they return. Women are paid for 3 years to take care of a child full time instead of work outside of the home, however children may be enrolled in nursery school 5 days per week. Parental benefits are provided for parents regardless of income.

Why I can't read the news

This morning Chad updated me on 2 key events in the news he felt were benign enough to mention to me at 6 A. M. Our neighbors know that "I cannot listen to the news in the #@% morning!" I have problems with the news, and while I feel it is important to try to keep up with what is going on in the world for many extremely important reasons, I cannot read the mainstream news. It's very important to understand your fellow man, where your politics/votes are going, and how to treat the current environment so we can sustain a livable earth for many generations to come. However, reading the daily news does none of those things for me. Instead I get depressed, and angry. I start to dislike the people around me. Thoreau said all news is gossip. I don't actively avoid the news, I just don't seek it out & somehow things seep in & the world keeps turning. I'm not an activist. I'm not good at it. I'm good at making my art. I hope to be a good mother. These are very important things for me to share. If I do my best at them the world will benefit, and things will change. Chad doesn't agree with my point of view on this. That's okay, but here is why it's better for him to read the news and not me right now:
At 6 A. M. Chad announced this bit about a successful Mars landing, and you know what my first thought was? "Go Team Alpha Wolf Squadron, " Why? Because we watched Shrek 3 last night, see below

Donkey: Alright people, let's do this thing. Go Team Dynamite!
Pinocchio: But I thought we agreed we'd go by the name Team Super-cool.
Gingerbread Man: As I recall, it was Team Awesome.
Wolf: I voted for Team Alpha Wolf Squadron.
Donkey: Alright, alright, alright. From henceforth, we're all to be known as Team Alpha Super Awesome Cool Dynamite Wolf Squadron.

and while I love scientists, admire the heck out of astronauts, and feel Nasa should be supported my brain says what? Our country's financial sheet, unemployment rate, real estate, dollar are all at ridiculous levels, and the war? Our environment? It struck me that only a Donkey, a wooden puppet, a wolf, and a gingerbread man would solve all of those problems by exploring Mars at a rate of 2 gazillion dollars a day. Successful landing? Sweet, now there will be a resort for the last two remaining people living on Earth after it's environmental apocalypse. Enter visions of two really attractive people stranded in bomb shelters trying to seek each other out for a romantic kiss while dodging radioactive living dead and driving Mad Max like vehicles. Maybe I should avoid movies as well as the news. I didn't share this with Chad, lest the neighbors be sleeping.

At 6:01 A. M. Chad announced this tidbit about Bush supporting the largest marine conservation project in history, and do you want to know what my first thought was? A picture of George Bush's fat face grinning during a farewell speech while he holds up the last living plankton found in his sanctuary in a snow globe, commemorating his environmental record. Hopefully it will be a bullet proof snow globe, because a lot of people are angry with him. I'm not the violent sort, but that weird kid in my science class in high school who used to brag about all of the illegal weapons and explosive material he had under his bed is seems more interesting as the years go by. I don't think I ever got his number, because he scared me, but if I did see him today I might ask him to coffee with his militia friends. Probably decaf.

I Almost Forgot...

You can't just have mango. It must be Mango-Tango when you live with us.

This just in...another trophy for Mother of the Year over here. I cleaned under our beds this morning. In the process of doing so I found the letter q part of our alphabet puzzle. Locating this has sent me into fits, you can't say the animal alphabet without q for quail! As I was dusting it off, and smiling with Virgo like satisfaction, Thank you MOM, I noticed Thomas was smacking his lips.
"What do you have in your mouth?"
Thomas crunches, swallows, and blinks inquisitively.
"No, Thomas, really, what are you eating?"
Silence. I look for crumbs around his mouth and teeth and find light orange. Hmmmm. What could he have found under our bed that color? I desperately look around for possible old snack plates we've overlooked in the last day or so. Nothing. I realize the futility of my line of questioning. Then...
"A Fishy, Mommy."
I ask in a very high pitched yet quiet and nice tone, "Where did you find the fishy?"
"On the bed."
Yuck, oh yuck, I think, an old fish cracker not on the bed under it, prepositions kid. When was the last time we ate fish crackers near the bed? Oh no, yuck, just yuck. How many dust bunnies did I just sweep up? Ew. Then he moves across the room and picks up a brand new bag of goldfish crackers, courtesy of his Nana, left by the computer on a bed we use as a desk, by an insanely sleep deprived and hungry pregnant woman living in our flat.

Where did this child come from?

Today was a wonderful day. The weather is still cold gray, people are still burning coal, and we still had a great day. Thomas woke up asking to go to Hawaii. I explained that we would have to make a long trip on an airplane that wouldn't put us in Hawaii until tomorrow, even though I would love to be in Hawaii today. He replied, "We just need to find our fly-boat, Mommy (courtesy the Wonder Pets)." Instead, we boarded a bus to Novy Bor for bread, milk, and produce. The big thing about Novy Bor is our routine. He's used to getting strolled a couple of km's, stopping at the bakery for a treat, multiple trips to food stores, then a trip to the park or the cafe with a "Pooh House" (that would be a Winnie the Pooh plastic playhouse, Chad's reaction to that request the first time he heard it was hilarious). When our trips don't follow that routine, Thomas is highly bothered. Today, he never requested a trip to the park or bakery across town, even after Mommy had to drag him back and forth across a km of highway to find a restroom for the tiniest pregnant bladder EVER. He never complained, even when the 1st place was closed. We walked to a different grocery store and he was totally fine riding in the cart the entire time. Then we walked back to the bus stop. He hugged me and asked for kissies 3 times on the walk. We saw a worm, several beetles, and a whole snail party. Thomas found a huge stick. When we got back to Senov we played at our local library with all sorts of new toys. Then we came home and made nachos, "That's MA-CHIOS, Mommy." I laid a vitamin next to his plate, and told him he could have it when he finished eating. 2 seconds later it was gone, and I asked "Where did the vitamin go?"
"It's in Tommy's pipe, Mommy."
"Your what, giggle? (panic, could he have shoved it in the bathroom drain in 2 seconds?)"
"IN MY PIPE, RIGHT HERE (pointing to chest). We have pipes in our mouths and bodies, Mommy."
Of course, why didn't I know that?

Changes

A friend just informed Chad & I that we talk about money too much, particularly not having enough. He said we need to focus on what we do have, and maybe more will come our way. Noted. He's probably right. I read The Secret, I know.

Seems the only thing I can do between 3 A.M. and 5 A.M. is either agonize over advice like this & its implications, worry about being a mother, or read. I'm completely unable to get my fingers to do anything detailed or creative & clumsy housework at that hour creates ridiculous amounts of noise in our silent apartment building, Domov Mladeze. My reading is limited to the laptop-THANK YOU INTERNET- because I fly through books, but the internet has an endless amount of good writers contributing on a daily basis, and I'm ever so grateful. One of these writers contributed to a column asking people to write about things they were they were denying themselves. I read it last night and while a looming recession was mentioned as a reason to start eliminating excess from our lives, the contributers mainly focused on eliminating things from their diets. There were a few abstract surprises, but overall I was disappointed.

Our experience in a rather economically depressed area has forced us to eliminate a lot from our daily lives. I miss the freedom our vehicles provided. I miss milk that won't last 3 years on a shelf. I miss showers that cover my entire body in a steamy rainstorm. I miss so many THINGS, but it feels good to know we don't need everything we thought we needed before this experience. We've heard a lot of news regarding the rising costs of everything in the states such as gas & food, and the dropping of wages and investments like real-estate. People warn us that we will be surprised at what we'll return to in a month.

This isn't a highly visited site, but I think it would be really neat and maybe inspiring to list something you are denying yourself in the spirit of economy, environmental or social empathy, or just because...

It's quick and easy to comment anonymously, that way you don't have to log on.

Lucky Girls

Yesterday was another beautiful day in Kamenicky Senov, the sun was shining, birds were singing, people were tending their gardens in their underwear, and there wasn't much coal smoke in the air. I was feeling a little emotional, and it's hard to tell whether it was due to the fact that I'm just a girl (translation: pregnant raging hormones). We've recently been the recipients of some major generosity. Our families have send wonderful care packages, Chad's mother's partner received a lung transplant, the people who furnished our flat & provided us with a substantial amount of cookware including a microwave told us to leave it in place for the school, and as always our friends in Kamenice have kept us playing. Yesterday was also a baby shower my mom was going to have to attend alone, and I had been invited and obviously the commute was out. Some things are just brutal to go to alone; weddings, funerals, workplace parties, and baby showers. I was sad for my mom since her friends were all busy, but Annie joined her & I got all choked up. Again. I can't wait to give her a big hug.

Bedtime

"Thomas, are you finished with your milk?" Hidden question insinuated here, "Can we brush teeth and read stories NOW?"
"Do you see the milk right here, Mommy?" he points to the milk in his cup and turns to me, "There's still this much milk in here, Mommy. When there's milk in Tommy's cup, it's not all done, Mommy."

Springtime

For real, sun & shorts are here.

Little Slugger

This is probably the only time in our lives when I will be able to post the contents of Thomas's underwear drawer on the internet without irreparably damaging our relationship. He's never really shown much interest in this drawer since he's not to keen on dressing himself. There's interest and skill, but really he doesn't care when I present him with choices of what to wear-something the parenting books says helps toddlers develop a sense of their own power, decision making abilities, and freedom. I think this is less of a power issue & more of a "I'm a boy & I just don't care very much, unless I feel like wearing blue today, Mother, you just don't understand," issue. Sometimes he likes putting his own pants on & sometimes he likes dancing naked. Well, doesn't everyone? So imagine my surprise when I opened his drawer this morning and found these things in his underwear drawer. His friend Madelaine came over yesterday afternoon, and I remember them opening the drawer, but didn't really see what was going on and kind of warned them to stay out of the drawers since fingers could get pinched. They recognized them as pretty much off limits and moved on. I believe he stashed all of his prized possessions-of the moment-in there since you just can't have your girlfriend playing with your favorite pirate eye patch or blue mitten.

Brilliant

"Tommy want a swimming circle." Thinks for a moment, then decides to elaborate since I obviously don't understand the gravity of his situation. "Tommy needs a swimming circle to put WATER IN and go SWIMMING IN."

Eh? I Can't Here Ya!

I posted pictures of Peter Rath leaving Kamenicky Senov with his wheelbarrow on Monday. We haven't heard any details about his long walk yet, but when we do I will post. Recently, we were with a friend who tactfully reminded us to keep our voices down while walking through the small villages here, and recounted the experience of hearing two young loud American girls riled up about something in his flat across a highway & thought they were awful. WELL, he had a point, I was being loud & Chad has a strong voice, BUT we were excited. Why you ask? I haven't recounted much about getting our visas in the blog. We had a lot of expensive difficulty obtaining visas for Thomas and I, in time to remain legal. Our friends here politely listened, but did little more than nod since the Statue of Liberty no longer holds a torch. Flipping the bird to all foreigners takes so much effort. BUT when faced with another US citizen we were excited to relate all of the work we went through to remain here as a family, & warn him about the new rules regarding US citizens who plan to visit Europe for more than 90 days within a 6 month period.

Prior to the end of December US passport holders could visit non-Schengen parts of Europe for 90 days without a visa, cross a border, get a dated stamp from border control, return to the original non-Schengen site, and continue a visa free stay using this method of travel indefinitely. These travelers are not allowed to work or use state resources, etc. Thomas & I were traveling outside of the Czech Republic enough to stay legally without a passport, but in December it joined the Schengen Area. We read misleading information in the Prague Post, and had no regular access to the internet, but looked it up when we had an opportunity and misunderstood the rules. In January the Schengen website updated it's information to clearly explain the new rules. We were going to be illegal in 3 months, if we couldn't obtain a visa. Chad started calling around & was overwhelmed with conflicting information from all sources, and even made a trip to Prague to listen to the state department explain the new rules incorrectly, and answer questions with misleading information. He worked on this around the clock, when he should have been making artwork. We made several overnight trips to Prague in order to obtain, certify, and translate documents. Only some of these expensive documents were eventually used in our application. We finally made a trip to the Czech consulate in Vienna (we had to apply for visas at a consulate outside of the country & heard Vienna was the speediest). Peter Rath generously put us up in a hotel in Vienna and spent the evening with us at the drop of a hat. The next morning the consulate almost denied us the application because my insurance card was paper, not official plastic & was obtained over the internet. After spending $500 on the policy, dragging a toddler through Prague overnight travel, we weren't leaving without at least applying. Chad was really nice. It worked. We were allowed to apply, and told to bring new proof of insurance when the visas were ready. Then we were told we had the wrong documents translated. Chad was nice again. We took the train back to Prague & Chad stayed to have the appropriate document translated and expedited to Vienna. Thomas and I took another train back to Kamenicky Senov alone at night.

Fast Forward to March, we were running out of time & heard nothing from the embassy. Chad made more phone calls. Luckily someone important cared and knew someone else important that could make calls on our behalf. The next day the foreign police visited the school, asking for Thomas and I. We were at the baby center that day, in the next town over. I still don't know what they were checking on. I would like to think they were verifying our residence in a school owned building, not preparing to deport us or question us in a closet. We then received word that our visas were ready, just bring proof that we were insured until the end of June. Why would I buy a policy for the entire month of June, when I have a plane ticket flying us out of here in the middle of June? Why would I need a visa for the middle to end of June? There was a clerical error. Chad notified the consulate & you know what they did? Cancelled our application, and started a new one. Our application that took 3 months to process (only because someone lit a fire under someone else) was in the process of being cancelled. Thomas and I had 3 legal days left to obtain visas. Chad immediately contacted the consulate & the insurance company, late on a Friday afternoon. We called a friend who rushed over & took our documents to fax. We sweated that weekend.

Monday we were informed that it was okay, the cancellation letter had been retrieved and we could find out if our visas were ready after 3 PM that afternoon. Chad started calling at 3PM, and at 3:30PM he reached someone who said we could pick up our visas the next morning before the consulate IN VIENNA closed at 10:30AM, and we were reminded that our stay would expire on Wednesday (meaning after that we would have to apply and receive visas for Austria in order to pick up our visas for the Czech Rebublic, but we wouldn't be legal in the Czech Republic so the consulate probably wouldn't let us apply anyhow). We managed to gather together every possible document we could imagine needing, clothes, snacks, dvd player, and child and board a 4PM bus to Novy Bor, where we caught a 5PM train to Prague. We landed in Prague by 8:30PM on foot, stood in line forever to get 5AM train tickets (it's a 5 hour train ride to Vienna). We then secured a hotel room, searched for groceries to feed our child on the train ride the next morning, and then found a restaurant. We made it back to the hotel around midnight. We kicked ourselves for getting a room for 3.5 hours of sleep & tried to sleep.

The next morning we were delighted (as delighted as one gets on little sleep in the middle of travel) that our tickets were 700Kc cheaper than the first time we purchased train tickets to Vienna. The conductor told us we didn't have seats indicated on the tickets, but he had a perfect private car for women and children. We had a room we could try to sleep in. Thomas and Chad slept wonderfully. We got off the train, and ran to the metro. We got on the wrong car, "thank you kind and misinformed stranger," hit construction, finally reached our stop, and ran (through a huge park filled with toys, poor Thomas)to the embassy. We got there at 10:26AM. There was no one at our window. Chad got loud. Other people made comments. We were loud Americans & a woman appeared at the window. She looked at me. She looked back at the clock. I continued trying to catch my breath & sent fireballs out of my eyes in the nicest possible way. She took our passports, and we had to wait. 15 or so loooooong minutes later we had visas.

We were legal. We took our sweet patient boy to the park for an hour, returned to the train station, boarded the train and remembered to breathe as it took off. BUT we were informed we were in the wrong class and had to move. Ooops, we didn't pay for first class, and didn't know there was a difference but they had a problem filling all those empty seats with just US so we were escorted to similar seats in another car. Just as Thomas was drifting off to sleep we were told we didn't have seats on this train, and would have to pay. WHAT? 500Kc please. WHAT? Chad tried to figure it out & maybe he had run out of patience, but he held back pretty well & paid. Later we were informed by a bemused business man, that we were on a speedy train & that we weren't being cheated, this was normal, but the ticket agent in Prague screwed up & should have charged us when Chad requested the specific train we were on. ARGH. We arrived in Prague and took a bus back to Senov, even though I had resolved to never ever ride one on that journey after the Christmas vomit express with my parents. The next train back wasn't leaving for several hours & we were exhausted. So we took a bus through a blizzard back to Novy Bor. 2 hours later we exited the bus in Novy Bor and waited 30 minutes in the windy cold snow to board the SAME bus with the SAME driver to drive us back to Senov. It was at this point in the story our friend told me to pipe down.

All my life I've been told to speak up, and if Chad hadn't spoken up for us at the embassy we might not be here right now. I was embarrassed on Sunday, but on Tuesday we visited some friends from London (they are Czech natives). We didn't know where they were staying in Senov. We were told to follow a road toward a town, and look for a yellow building & a garden around the side. And you know how we found them? I heard LOUD English being spoken. A voice that drifted down an alley across a road in-between houses full of supposed annoyed Czechs beckoned us to our friends. We had a lovely time feeding & petting baby rabbits & playing out the end of a lovely afternoon. We will miss them and I will miss their loud English.