Still Working...

I haven’t talked much about the school that I work at in a long time. Well, yes, I still work there two days a week and usually every day is an adventure with something new happening. Since I’ve been back from the Christmas break the kids for the most part have been pretty good. It probably helps that for awhile we were down to about 6 kids a day compared to on average 16, as the school was hit with the chicken pox. Although, I have broken up a couple of fights, seen some great football kicks to the shins and an amazing hit to the head involving a toy tractor.

I did experience my first peeing of the pants the other day. Jonash, my favourite three year old terror was motioning to the bath room and saying something in Czech. I got out of him the word pee and was like “yes go ahead the bathrooms right there”. Well nope that wasn’t the problem, he of course peed his pants. So I proceeded to help him change out of the wet pants and underwear and into a clean pair of tights. Yes, I did say tights. It is normal here for little boys to wear tights in the winter for extra warmth. Kind of strange to me, yes, but in the end it does make sense. I then sent Jonash on his way and scrubbed my hands for the next 10mins. I am well on my way to motherhood.

Below is a picture of Jonas and his twin brother, Tobias. He wanted to wear the birthday hat the other day for some strange reason even though it wasn’t his birthday and proceeded to sing happy birthday in English for the rest of the morning...one of his cuter moments. The picture was taken on my cell phone so it’s a little blurry.



I have to confess that I messed up the other day at school as well. There were about 17 kids at the school and for the most part it’s my job to get them ready to go outside to play. Then on Friday’s we go out and play for awhile then take the local bus to the next town to go for pony rides. Well, it was pure chaos as usually with me zipping up coats, putting on boots, scarves and what not. Then asking them in my amazing Czech, where are you mitts, and everything else that they lost along the way from the boot room to the back entrance. Well poor Alesek slipped through the cracks that day and I didn’t check him before he went out the door to make sure he had everything on him. He ended up wearing his indoor sandals out to the pony rides. Good thing it was only about -5C so he survived. When I came back I just washed up those little sandals and nobody would ever know! I had to take a picture with my camera phone. He’s the kid second from the left with the bird toque (that deserves a picture in itself). You can see his one little sandal foot sticking out.

A Sad Reality

Many people have asked me in the past as to how many fans we get out to our games. I would like to tell you that we get about 2000 out per game - you know pack the house. But let's be serious here, that's not even close to what really happens. We get probably on average 50 fans. Yep that's all, but it seems like more actually. There is this crew of guys, sometimes girls, of about ten or so. They come to every home game wearing Slavia hockey jerseys and a huge drum in tow. They are usually singing Slavia songs and chanting names and whatever else. Before the game they can be found in the restaurant drinking pivo (beer). The first time I saw these guys I thought...wow...they are really crazy/stupid for coming out to our games. They must be really die hard Slavia fans, or just here for the cheap beer in our rink’s restaurant.

Well truth be told, I'm almost positive they get paid for being there. How sad I know, but it's not uncommon in the professional world of women's sports in the Czech Republic. Our friend, Erin, is the head coach of the Sparta Praha women's basketball team and have about 5-10 crazy fans as well, who in fact are paid. I wasn't sure if this was true of our fans at Slavia, but have come believe that this could be the fact. After the game this past weekend I saw our manager, Mr. Nemec, with a bunch of money outside our locker room and our super fans around him. I was going outside for my cool down after the game, so I didn't exactly stick around to see what was going to happen next but could only speculate. That only left me to guess the inevitable.


Some of our crazy fans that even came to Berlin to watch us play


The drums

Prague in the Fall

I realize that it is February and no longer fall, more like getting close to spring, but I do have some great pictures of Prague that I took back in the fall that I thought people might want to see. Finally you'll get to see pictures of Prague and understand why I love this city so much!


Wallenstein Palace, Prague Castle in the background


Sitting by the pond at Wallenstein gardens


Stalactite Grotto - a crazy wall made up out of who knows what with hidden faces and animals in it


From Prague Castle overlooking the city


Cool picture


Front of Prague Castle


St. Vitus Cathedral - a gothic church inside the castle grounds

Champions!

Back in December I had mentioned in my blog that we had won the European Hockey league that we play in (EWHL). Like I said before it came down to the games on our road trip to Slovenia and Italy as to whether or not we would win the league. But we still had one more game left this past weekend against Bolzano. Because we had already clinched the league the game was fairly meaningless except for the fact that if we won, then we would have an undeafted season. So yes we did win 3-0, and I therefore participated in my first undefeated season of any team that I have ever played on. It was great to be part of that as it was the first year my team has played in that league. Granted it was fairly anticlimatic as there are no playoffs in our league, just whatever team has the best record wins the league. Pretty crazy. So after the game we received our little gold medals and a fairly large trophy. Unfortunately we were not able to celebrate the win and the undefeated season as we had a Czech league game the next day. The celebration will have to be saved for when the season is over. Here are a couple pictures from the weekend...


The Canadians


Team Picture

Mělnik

This past weekend I actually had off from hockey. So that meant that I had some time to explore the beautiful little town of Mělnik. It's a town of about 19,000 that is situated 30km north of Prague. I have actually been their before but only for a couple of birthday parties limiting my site seeing to the inside of a restaurant. So this time I was able to explore the town mainly know for it's location and vineyards. It's situated on top of a hill overlooking the country side and the Valtava River. Along the slopes of the hill are a number of vineyards. Sara and I had a great time exploring the sights of the Namesti Miru, the Renaissance chateau, as well as the church of SS Peter and Paul. Here are some pics of the day.


The Musuem


Namesti Miru


How old do you think this arc way is?


Church of SS Peter and Paul and part of the Chateau


Courtyard of the Chateau (you couldn't takes pictures inside, too bad as it was really beautiful)


Overlooking the Bohemain country side and Vltava River

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

These past few days in Prague have actually been sunny. Minus today that is as it has been raining on and off all day. Kind of put a damper on my plans to go and explore the beautiful town of Karlov Vary, but that’s okay as there’ll be more opportunities for that. So in honour of the sun shine we’ve been having, and hopefully more nice weather to come, I thought I would put up some pictures of my neighbourhood that were taken in the fall. Hopefully you can get a glimpse of the area I live in. Here they are...


View from my window


Looking down the street


Looking down the other side


Jaselska - my street


Cute little street parallel to mine


Dejvice, major street a block from my house


And finally Cafe Corso, one of my favorite coffee shops in my neighbourhood

Starbucks is here!

Much to my delight, today while I was shopping I received a text message from Chelsa telling me that she was in Starbucks. Ah what? I had heard that there might be one opening up some time in February but didn't realize that it was actually true. I guess it just opened three days ago. Well I stopped shopping right then and there and took the next tram to Starbucks to meet Chelsa! You might be thinking why would that be so exciting when there are a ton of cute little cafe shops lining the streets of Prague where coffee is about half the price. Well yes I do love going to my local cafe shops and have acquired the taste of strong European coffee, more like espresso, but there is nothing better than a Mocha Frappuccino or Carmel Macchiato. Maybe it's just the reminder of home...something North American, but I must say it sure made my day!