Czech Republic, day three, Friday, First Day of English Camp

So the main reason we came to the Czech Republic was to assist the long term missionaries in an English Camp they have once or twice a year as an outreach to non-Christian Czechs. Czechs desire to learn English for a variety of reasons, some do it as a hobby, some for career advancement, classes etc. But it is a great outreach tool because it reaches to such a wide demographic. We drove an hour north to a fairly rural area, passed some cows, and got to the camp with  out issue.

Pictures out the window on the way there.

The dinner hall

My self and Leefish with two girls at the Camp

Mrs. B came over separately with her husband and taught
the most advanced group

Mrs. L

Mr. B (second from left) and Mr. L lead music in the evenings.

We sang several songs, and got some audience interaction;

Blowing up balloons for the game

Ty, Mrs. Lee, and Leefish

The game was to pop the other persons balloon with your
foot, without getting your own balloon popped.

We also played 'Do you love your neighbor', you could tell
which Czechs didn't have very good English because they
would just say "No".

That is all that happened on Friday, Saturday was much more eventful, I can't wait to tell you about it!

All the Best,

The Tall One

Time Well Spent?

In our ‘new’, smaller space, we were able to spend a lot more time TOGETHER. Like, ALL our time together. There was no yard, lots of people living around us, rain most day and only 3 rooms- well, there was a door on the loo!
What did we do you may wonder? How did we not damage each other? We spent hours each day writing and memorizing scripture, we decided to write our own in depth study of Revelation and then memorize the entire book of Phillipians. We also, of course, have read “How To Make Brothers and Sisters Best Friends” and so we had continual bliss. BWAHHAAHHH! (I will not translate that as hysterical laughter or frantic weeping! You decide!)

Honestly, there were moments, when I questioned the sanity of this whole thing. I mean really, there are not families as large as ours here. The wonderful folks at church were very surprised the ‘whole mob’ came. J When we go to a coffee shop and ask for a table for 6, they look at us like we are crazy- really. BUT, those doubting moments are few and far between and have usually come after spending more than 24 hours in the same room with 4 other people!

And, please don’t think I am complaining about the rain. We love the rain- it reminds of our dear, dear friends north of Seattle. We still miss you.

So what DID we do really?

We honestly did have some great scriptural discussions after our morning studies and we ARE attempting to memorize some scriptures.
We are all reading something. We have colored pencils and paper, so drawing is a favored activity.
The Older and The Tall One both have ukuleles…Don’t ask! (That is another post)
We have done laundry.

We have played the favorite games (see previous post) and have added few new games.Here’s the ‘low down’ on them:
Yahtzee Hands Down- modifies the dice game to be played with cards…please note this game can take a long time to play.

In a Pickle- which the Older loves. You play your noun cards in order of smallest to largest. Sounds easy, but some of the nouns are tricky, like love and hope and some can have multiple meanings, like log. So you have to make a case for your order. It requires some creative thinking.

And PIG- thanks the recommendation T! Essie LOVES it!

We had sock fights- yep, seems to be a family tradition on our vacations. When the big boys were little and we traveled with Traveler, I found nothing makes little boys happier than throwing things- ie socks- at each other. We haven’t broken very many things over the years. – hee

This place does have a massive flat screen TV. The techie people here with me figured out how to play movies, from our computers on it. And we watched movies. Not more than one a day, but an hour and half of ‘down time’ has been nice!

And when the rain stops, we dash outside and walk!One day we stopped at a cute little coffee shop, had a spot of tea, and looked around.

Essie wanted to get her friends each one a stamp set and tablet, so they could write letters in code. : )

Puzzles anyone?

When I was growing up, wintertime puzzles were kind of a tradition.
The card table with the puzzle on it was in the living room and as people would drop by they would frequently stop a minute and place a piece or two.

I think it was secret ploy by my dad (Hi Poppy!) to slow my high school friends down long enough to have a conversation. It worked; I think my high school friends loved my parents. We certainly hung out at our house enough- great memories.

So, since it is wintertime here…. We started a puzzle - a ridiculously difficult, really large puzzle. It has been like a magnet, drawing us together at the table, fostering interesting conversations and together time.

TADA- Here it is

Care to share some of your simple family traditions?

Games galore..

So, we have settled in to our ‘home away from home’ and as our Traveler goes off to labor for the day, we have some down time to rest, read, write, play games and hang out- it has been wonderful. I can’t wait to share some more of our ‘out and about’ adventures, but first we wanted to share some really awesome games we have discovered!

Essie and Beej love Monopoly Deal. This game brings the board game down to a modified card game. Trade, deal and make monopolies to win this fun game.

Uno and Skip-bo are tried and true favorites at our house….

 

And several years ago someone got Quarx for his birthday. It is a fun little game… you simply count the spheres. Sounds easy, but speed is a factor and so not surprisingly accuracy sometimes suffers. This game incorporates math skill as you have to also lay down the number cards to add up to the number of spheres. It does a great job reinforcing adding some bigger numbers for the little people.

But our hands down favorite is Bananagrams.

Recommended by a dear friend (Hi Katie) we purchased it just before we left… we have played it over and over. If you don’t have it yet, definitely put it on your list!!

This word-based game has you competing against each other to use all of your letter tiles to make your own, unique scrabbleish/crossword puzzle. As you use all your tile, everyone ‘peels’ a tile from the ‘bunch’ until there are not enough tile for everyone to choose another.

The first person to then use all his/her tile makes everyone else ‘bananas’ because they win!

 

This was The Tall One's winning hand!

Please tell us which games your family enjoys...