My Refuge & Strength

Right now, it’s about 12 AM here in Malenovice, Czech Republic, but according to my computer it’s almost 3 PM in California. That is one of the many things that has been blowing my mind as of late.

So… The journey began with stress - and lots of it. “Shoot, I need to get this together and pack that and, wow, I totally almost forgot that.” “Paula, she’s bringing four pieces of luggage?!” “We still have twenty minutes, Tom.” But somehow, we made it to the bus station in one piece - checkpoint number one.

The bus ride down to LAX didn’t feel very long - probably because I slept for a portion of the first half and had Annie and Eli to talk to for the second half. But once we got there, we had to wait for what felt like hours. Well, it was hours: two… But it felt more like four. Airports can do that do you, I suppose. We “chillaxed” (one of the words we’ve taught the Czech people here) for the first hour and then began the long and strenuous process of loading. America is the worst when it comes to that, let me tell you! So, we departed from LA at around four (Cali time), leaving checkpoint number two!

Over the course of the next ten hours, I watched two in-flight movies (you can choose your own now! I haven’t been on a plane in a long time…); Toy Story 2 & some indie movie called Ondine (not that that’s really important or anything), colored in coloring books (and was asked my age), made up stories to go along with articles in some Asian newspaper we found, attempted to sleep (and failed), and attempted to figure out what the heck we’ll be doing for our classes (and failed again).

Before we landed in London, we got to see the city from the air - once we cleared past all the fog, of course - and it was absolutely spectacular. We could see cars driving on the opposite side of the road, trains chugging along, ferries crossing over really mucky-looking rivers, neighborhoods full of houses with really incredible architecture, parks, colleges (or universities, as they say), the big sky wheel - or ferris wheel - that my dad and I watched a special on. All these really amazing things. I couldn’t believe I was really in London, in England, in Europe!

The about five minutes we spent actually in London (checkpoint number three!) was pretty rushed, to say the least. When we got off our plane, we realized that our next plane would be leaving really, really soon, so we scrambled to get from one side and an enourmous, gorgeous, and extremely humid airport to the other. But the people (or the ones that worked in the airport at least) were so dang charming with their accents and phrases like “cheers” and bloody hell”. I guess Harry Potter wasn’t lying to me. Thankfully the security was a breeze. We all took off our shoes and then realized that we didn’t have to and I was like, “Dang! America sucks!”

Once we got to checkpoint five, the Prague airport, we found that our luggage had not arrived with us. The transfer from plane one to plane two was too quick for all our bags to make it. So we had to endure the first night without pajamas or toothpaste… what’s one more day, right?

Our Czech teammates, Kuba, Bob, and Carla met us at the airport and drove us all the way to Malenovice: where the training is being held. And once we got to the hotel, we crashed.

So now that I can do that math, I’d say we stayed up for about 30 plus hours. The longest day ever.