Our New Flat!!

I just got back from our new flat and WOW!! We are pretty pumped at the moment with our new place. It's on the top story of an apartment building about 10mins away from where our current place is and is two stories. I think the whole living room area is about as big as our current flat. There are three rooms on the top floor along with a bathroom. Then on the first floor we have a large kitchen, living room, small dining area, pantry and a bathroom. Not to mention we have two balconies! It's pretty unbelievable to say the least, so much better than the flat we have right now. It's not brand new like our current flat but pretty close to. Oh yes and we have an elevator! How nice! I don't have any pictures right now but will take some soon and post them online so you can see. The only problem is that we don't have any living room furniture as in couch, table and chairs and a tv, internet etc. So we'll be waiting on that, not sure how long that will take but hopefully that will come soon. I need to sign off here and finish packing and head back over to the new place and unpack. Will write more later!

I Have a Job!

I'm pretty excited to tell everyone that I have a job! Yes I know playing for HC Slavia Praha is my job, but as you know from last year we also had a part time job working at a preschool. Well I won't be going back there this year because I'll now be working at Riverside International School. I'll be working part time, full days on Monday and Wednesday and then a half day on Tuesday. I'm not a hundred percent sure all my duties at the school, but at the moment I'll be helping out with a couple of classroom teachers, doing some pull out sessions with special needs students, and then on Wednesday afternoon teaching swimming lessons. This is all in their primary school, so I'll be working with kids aged 5-11. My first day is on Monday so I'll write more about it later as I can only imagine I'll have many stories to tell!

Kutna Hora

Jeni, Arielle and I took a little road trip last Saturday out to Kutna Hora, a town about an hour away from Prague. The reason for the trip was to see the Sedlec Ossuary or also know as the Bone Church. We had seen pictures and heard stories in the past on just how awesome it was, so figured it was a must see before we left, and we were not disappointed.

The Plague hit this area pretty bad and plots for graves started to increase in price, so the small All Saints chapel was pressed into becoming an ossuary. A large ossuary at that with the remains of around 40,000 people. Then in 1870 the Schwarzenberg purchased the ossuary and gave Frantisek Rint free rain to get creative with the bones. So this is now what it looks like...


Sedlec Ossuary


Graveyard around the church


Standing in front of the bone chandelier


A closer look


Schwartzenberg family crest, made of bones of course!


Jeni and I by some skulls

Next stop was St. Barbara's Cathedral, another super nice huge church. They started building it back in 1380 and then was finally completed at the end of the 19th century. There's also fresco's inside dating back from the 15th century. So pretty old if you ask me. So all in all it was a pretty great day of sight seeing and exploring the town of Kutna Hora finished with a Czech meal. Here are some more pictures...


In front of St. Barbara's Cathedral


Some random stone sculpture


Inside the sanctuary


Stained glass window


Sky view of the church


Overlooking Kutna Hora

The Zoo

On Friday Arielle, Jeni and I decided to spend the afternoon at the Prague Zoo. Chelsa was there last year and had mentioned it was a good time so we thought hey, why not? I went to the zoo with little knowledge of it whatsoever and upon entering it found out that it was ranked 7th world wide for zoo's. So not too bad! Our first mission was to find a map of the zoo and when we saw it we were slightly taken aback by the size of the zoo. I guess I now know why it's ranked 7th in the world. So for the next 3 and half hours we power walked through as much of it as we could.

It was pretty amazing as I haven't been to a zoo in about 8 years with the last one being the Calgary Zoo. I couldn't begin to tell you all the animals I saw or the all the strange looking birds that I saw. The highlights of the zoo for me were seeing the polar bears playing in the water, watching the tigers eat their lunch, looking at the African safari containing zebras and giraffes, and then finally staring at a gorilla for a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what the heck it was doing - throwing up it's food and then licking it up again. No joke, never seen anything quite like that before. I have no idea if he was sick, or if this is normal. So if you know anything about gorilla's please inform me as this was super strange. Here are some pics...


The polar bear


Some strange looking two hump camel, I rode the one hump camel back in Egypt.


Looking at the African safari in Prague.


Jeni and I hanging out on a lion, granted we never did see any at the zoo...only tigers...


The tiger


And finally the elephants and me.

Good News!

We just found out today that we'll be moving to a different flat! You're probably wondering, well aren't you in one already? Well yes we are but are in one with little space. We currently have our old flat (or apartment) from last year along with a new flat about a 10min drive away. This "new" flat is really nice, granted it's missing a kitchen, and only has a fridge. Hum...kind of a problem as it's not really livable at the moment. So we've all been bunking in our old flat with someone sleeping on the mat on the floor. Needless to say the living quarters have been tight and we're still all living out of our hockey bags/suitcases. So it would be really nice to unpack and get settled.

Well today our agent met with our owner and we were told that we have a new flat and we can move into it next week! So excited! I'm not sure what it looks like of course but was told it has two bathrooms, is two levels and has a garage. So looks promising. I'll of course post pictures and write more when we move in next week!

Karlstejn Castle

Two Fridays ago we actually had a day off so we decided to be tourists and head to Karlstejn Castle, about a 30min drive from Prague. It was an awesome drive out there, very pretty country side. The castle dates back to 1348 and housed the crown jewels for the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the IV. The castle then fell during the Hussite War and was restored back in the 19th century. It was pretty amazing as you can see from the pictures below. We took an hour long tour through it, which was really the only way to see inside the castle. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle so I only have pictures from the outside. Enjoy...


On the walk up to the Castle


The Castle


The side of the Castle overlooking the country side.


The tower


Me, the tourist

Pictures from Training Camp

Here are a couple pictures from training camp...

We were given Roliks (a Czech type of bread/bun thing, it's their staple over here) and a tomato after practice...as in eat the tomato like an apple...I was so hungry I actually did it.


Eva and I before our "warm up" of American football which was more like rugby/football kill anyone you see type of game.


Jeni looking fierce!


The Canadians after the football game.


After practice with Jaromir Jagr's Czech trainer.


A couple of the girls hanging out after going to the pub...our coach encouraged us to go out for a beer one night...only in Europe.


At the Chinese Restaurant where we snuck out for a meal

We Have a Phone!!!

Finally we have our Vonage phone installed! That means that you can call me any time on this Regina number...546-0740, just add a 306 if you're calling long distance. Please just remember that there is an 8 hour time difference from Regina to Prague right now. Feel free to call anytime and leave a message if I'm not home as I'll call you back as soon as I can!

Training Camp...

We just finished a week long training camp in Stakonice, a town about an hour away from Prague. It kind of reminded me of my younger years when I used to go away to camp in the summer. Unfortunately this wasn't the type of camp where I could call home and my parents would come and pick me up if I wanted them to...cause believe me I would have called!

Needless to say it was a long, trying week. We had an exhibition game last Saturday morning against a team from Berlin. This was the same team that beat us last year in a shootout in which case they went on to the European Cup finals. Unfortunately we didn't redeem ourselves and lost 3-2. But I have to say that we did out play them and had a great game. So right after our game we headed out to a small town where our owner lives, had a good meal (last one for a long time), and then proceeded on to Strakonice where we had practice that afternoon. I was pretty dead tied for practice that afternoon after just playing a game - still not quite in game shape. For the next 6 days we had two a day ice sessions along with "aerobics". I knew that I was in trouble when I heard that Petra (our aerobic lady) was coming along. She's the same lady that killed us back in Croatia.

Lucky for us our day started with about an hour of "aerobics" with Sargent Smiley (Petra). These aerobics sessions basically consisted of a ton of jumping and hopping, not really pertaining anything at all to hockey training. From there is was on the ice for an hour, lunch, a break which we always slept, back to more aerobics, finally an hour and half ice session at night and then last but not least supper. Speaking of supper the food was horrible to say the least. I have no problem with Czech food, most of it is really quite good, but the stuff we had at the dorms was more like prison grub or worse. So I bought some peanut butter and jelly and lived off of that and fruit for a week. I think I lost weight. On our second last night there we snuck out and went out for Chinese food...it was heaven!

The on ice sessions were the highlight of the camp. One day we had Jamoir Jagr's personal trainer come out and run a session too. He gave the team a huge motivation speech before hand and I caught probably about five words out of the whole thing...great speech! Then on Thursday night we had an exhibition game against a boys team who were about 15-16 years old. Pretty good game actually as all the kids were about my size or bigger and there were some decent hits in the game. Then Friday night we were finally able to go home, and I don't think I have ever been so excited to get back to my apartment in Prague!

New Look

Thought I would change the layout of my blog for this year. I'm not super computer savy and would love to make a header and add a couple of details but haven't really figured out how to do that yet, so this will have to do.

My Birthday in Prague

It was my birthday on Aug. 4th here in Prague. This is only the second year that I have celebrated my birthday away from home. Last year I was in San Diego surfing so that wasn't really a hardship. I was able to celebrate my birthday with my family before I left with an awesome supper at the Teyapenaki (sp?) Kitchen.

Basically I was super jet lagged that day as it was only our second day in Prague and the first full one. It was also our first day of practice on ice with the team. After practice I got a cute little gift bag from one of my teammates with some Czech wine/champagne and treats inside, along with a Czech hat which I claimed as my birthday hat and wore it all night. After practice we went out to a local restaurant by one of my teammates house to eat and celebrate. Because it was already 9pm the waitress only let us chose one menu item that we could have. So the consensus was chicken but I was able to have a bowl of soup as well (special treatment for the birthday girl of course, hehe). It was pretty funny to say the least. So all in all it was a pretty good birthday...different of course but very memorable as I was in a real Czech restaurant with the locals! Here are some pictures from the night...


Standing outside our rink with my Czech gift bag


Jeni and I enjoying our soup


Jeni, Chelsa and I - gotta love the birthday hat!

Made It!

It's funny how the more I fly the more I hate it. I'm not sure how many of you know that, but I really don't enjoy flying at all. You would think I would since I do it so often. Well nope, I actually hate it and definitely have high anxiety before I leave or while I'm on the airplane. But to go along with this, it seems that more recently I've had bad flights. I flew all the time in college for games and just there and back and I really don't remember having bad flights, I think they just started as I have moved to Europe. Case in point...on the way over to Frankfurt from Toronto I think we had turbulence for about three of the seven and half hours we were on the plane. Not earth shattering turbulence, but enough to make you feel it and shake your drink glass.

But with all that said. I did make it to Prague, actually all three of us made it there together...Chelsa, Arielle and I with all our bags, which is pretty amazing. We were greeted by our agent Michal, owner Mr. Kott, and team manager Mr. Nemec with roses in hand for us. It was pretty sweet. Great to see them of course. Jeni is a whole different story though. We went back to the aiport to pick her up at 11:40am which was when her flight was supposed to arrive, but she never came. To make a very long story short we found out that she wasn't arriving now until 8pm that night, so back home to sleep, eat and then back to the airport. Finally Jeni came in at 11pm with no luggage of course. I have had troubles and problems flying but after Jeni's story she wins for missing two flights first one due to a late plane and the second one due to a ticket agent telling her the wrong gate and then having to spent 12 hours in the Paris airport! She definitely beats me out for the worst story/flight experience.

From the airport we took off in Mr. Kott's nice Audi SUV and were off to see our new flat. We were told back in June that he had an extra flat downtown that could hold all of us and we should be moving in. Well nope that's not the case any more...but really why am I not surprised. It's a flat on the top floor about 6 I think and is being totally redone, just like the one we moved into last year. It's got one bedroom again, but is fairly large and is currently missing a kitchen counter and all the appliances minus a fridge. It's quite nice but is unfortunately about a 10 minute metro ride from our previous flat or about a 7 min drive. So not as convenient as we would like. But it's in a good area. So once again like last year we were given a bunch of money and were told to take it to buy all the stuff we needed for the kitchen and bedding and all that jazz. (Ikea here we come!) It's supposed to be finished within two weeks...so I really hope that happens as we leave on Saturday for Strakonice for a week long training camp and it would be perfect to come back to a finished apartment. But of course we've learned that things don't exactly happen fast around here, so I'll let you know how it goes and will post pictures when things are finished.

Leaving on a jet plane...

That's right tomorrow morning at 10am I fly out to Prague. Finally I'm leaving! I say that not because I'm eager to leave Regina and my family/friends but because I was originally set to leave on July 17th. But of course that never happened due to our Visa's taking longer than expected. Why you ask? Well I mentioned it a little bit before in a previous blog back in May. So to fill you in a little bit...Chelsa and I had to have our passports sent back to us here in Regina back in May as we were both traveling down to the States. As you know...they never came. So we had to get new passports with new passport numbers therefore having to start the whole Visa application process all over again. So Chelsa and were not able to leave on July 17th to go and work Jagr's hockey school and instead were told we would be leaving Aug. 1. That was a little bit disappointing as I really would have loved to work that school, but more time at home with the family is always a good thing! So we received our plane tickets the other day telling us we're leaving Aug. 2 and will get there Aug. 3. And if you were wondering I finally received my Visa just two days ago (you might be able to hear a sigh of relief coming from me)!

So that's it - I'm off, and will of course keep this blog going throughout the year as I really enjoy writing on it and I know for sure that my brother reads it! hehe.