English camp in Romania

Wow, I can't believe it's been a year since I last wrote about camp.
At the end of June, my friend Katka who was leading an intern team in Romania wrote me if I wanted to come for their last camp. I've always wanted to discover Romania because I'd heard great things about it and so when I got invited to do a camp there, it didn't take much deciding...and it was a good decision.

So we set off with two other girls from Czech, Lucka and Lauree and picked up one more guy, David, in Budapest, since he came from Croatia where he's living for half a year now. He looked very familiar to me and soon we found out that we did a camp together in 04. Funny how some of our ways just cross randomly.

We drove almost all the way across Romania to Galaţi, where we met with Katka's team and the youth we were going to do the camp with. They gave us a quick culture-sensitive course and off we went, another seven hours of driving to the campsite. First cultural note: Romanians are very optimistic, especially on the roads. They see 100km/h where there is 50km/h and three lanes where there are two. Alright then.

I was basically only in charge of games and sports and had no big responsibilities outside of that so I could just enjoy the free time activities like playing Dutch blitz, coming up with skits to introduce the Mexican-American night or playing soccer in pouring rain. Second cultural note: Romanians are super-competitive and they'll play sports in any kind of conditions! I like that.

Wow, I'm still amazed and thankful for all the leaders. I don't think I've ever seen so many diverse people from so many cultures click together like that. It gives me a great hope that when people come together with a heart to serve, it will work no matter if they knew each other or not. The atmosphere was just very friendly from the very beginning and stayed smooth all throughout. Third cultural note: Romanians are generally very humble and they will share their best with you.

It was such a great experience to do what I've been doing in my country somewhere like Romania. The students were all so open and friendly, I feel like I have sixty new friends there.

It's always encouraging to see what ministries are going on in different parts of the world. Thanks Romania, I hope our paths haven't crossed for the last time.

Praying for you guys in Galaţi that you can continue the work that was hopefully started at this camp.


on the way back, we stopped in Budapest...wandered around till morning

Experiential weekend

Yes! Finally! This was our second try to organize an event that would last longer than a few hours and it was one of those events to help us get connected with the students on a more personal level. Our first attempt wasn't met with too much interest and hence had to be cancelled, so we were a little nervous if it'd happen again.

This time again we had to put a lot of effort into getting at least six students to come but we weren't going to give up easily and it was well worth it. The weekend was organized and led by an experienced instructor of experiential pedagogy. To save you from having to google it, it basically means learning through experience, whether it's positive or negative. I'd heard of it a lot before, so I was quite curious to see what it is in practice myself.

We managed to do a ton of really fun and novel activities. We built our own ropes course, walked blindfolded through the woods at night, built a walking "Mayan statue" and many others.

All of us survived and when the end of the weekend neared, none of us wanted to leave.

- it's been a while...

...and I don't really have a reason why! I just kept putting it off until I got to a stage where I thought it'd be awkward to just put up a new post without any explanation,..because I didn't have one.

So an apology to those who have been wanting to know what was going on with me and instead got discouraged by my passivity.

And the price goes to...

Thank you to all who have participated! Next time you need to try harder, because the best dresser in our competition is...Eliška Bačíková! Congratulations, the t-shirt is on the way.

With the current conversion rate, the total cost in dollars is about 58,75. Not bad at all!

- dre$$ for le$$

Ok, I decided to start a contest. The purpose is pretty clear from the title, to dress for as little money as possible and have some fun with it! Why? Because some of us (including me) are wearing way too much money that I'm pretty sure could be invested in a much better way!

Why should you participate?

1.) to show everyone that you have a good taste and can dress up without spending a fortune (anyone can dress nice paying hundreds of dollars)

2.) to find that you can save a lot of money which you can use for something more useful (like giving it to the ones who can't buy clothes)

3.) to get a chance to win this awesome t-shirt (which I'll ship anywhere in the world: )

Just take a picture of yourself with at least three pieces of clothing (not counting shoes, accesorries, socks and underwear) that you normally wear this time of a year! and send it to me together with the prices of each of the items.

The contest will last till December 21, which is the National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day and whoever will be dressed with a lowest budget, wins! Please feel free to send this to anyone who you think could be our potential winner!

Good luck!

P.S.The pictures of contestants will be displayed in a window at the bottom of this page.

Starting again in the pretty season...

There have already been three events that we, as the ZLIN'S well, organized this new school year.

I still try to convince myself the warm days (and nights) aren't gone for good but everything around is changing so fast. The leaves began to change colours a while ago and you can see them fliterring in the cold wind on their way from the branches to the ground.

The first discussion night was on the temporary Israel with a jewish guy who lives here in the Czech. He was a real performer and you could tell he was enjoying every minute of it.

This past week we had here a group of five from Fairbanks, Alaska. They gave lectures on the life and hunt in that part of the world and we all had a really great time with them. It was very encouraging hearing about their ministry and lives back home. We sure hope it was not the last time we co-operated. Miss you guys already!

Our goal for this year is to get more personal with the students. Last year went great, much over our expectations. We just realized the connection was made rather between the students and the organization rather than the students and us as people. For the purpose of transitioning between the lectures and personal relationship, we hope a movie club could serve us well. We've been trying to start the clubs for a while but now it finally seems like the paperwork is coming to an end.

As the basic setting of Windows, I recognize only 16 basic colors. I was going to try to describe how pretty the landscape is this time of a year, but I think your imagination will have to do this time!

- Viva la Vida

• Oh yeah, for those of you who know, I have to say no more.
• For the rest of you, Viva la Vida is the name of a new Coldplay album which they're touring with right now and they made a stop in Prague.
• In the middle of it, they released like a trillion of paper butterflies of different colours and shone them through with color lights or what. Whatever they did, it looked like nothing I've seen before...