Leah had told us before we left for Czech that Strakonice had "the best camp food" of all the Czech English Camps, that we'd be eating ostrich eggs instead of chicken eggs, and that dumplings would be flowing.  Normally, Josh would have said, "I'll be the judge of that," but we took her at her word that the food we were eating was good, typical Czech food. 

While the soup, potatoes, dumplings and kraut we had were good & typical, the chicken and roasts were good & typical, there was this one type of "meat" that seemed strange from the start.  Not that were were upset or complaining, in all honesty we found the whole thing very funny and entertaining!  :)!

They were using what we loving called Mystery Meat in a majority of the dishes.  Leah was unsure what it was actually called but we guessed it was bologna-esque "meat," though it sometimes had bones and sections of fat in it.  She also thought/confirmed that the meat was very untypical for this camp.

Mystery meat in our first dinner at camp.  The "gravy" is actually called UHO in Czech, which translates to Universal Brown Sauce.  They served the UHO in a variety of forms, some light, some dark, but no two the same.

Mystery meat with a Chinese-esque sauce, pasta noodles, and white cheese.

Mystery meat thinly sliced for breakfast sandwiches.

Mystery meat hidden inside a pepper.

Mystery meat ground up with pasta.  This meal was the breaking point for me, it was very hard to swallow.

While we were incredibly thankful for the hard work the cafeteria ladies put into making these meals, by the end of the week I would find myself consciously trying to not think about the meat I was eating and just eat it.  Again, we didn't complain outloud there, we were able to manage, take smaller portions, ask for only dumplings, or go hungry.

It helped that breakfast was the best meal of the day, with a really delicious bread, cereal & yogurt, and sometimes meat & cheese.  Sometimes the meat was the mystery meat, but other times it was a really good ham with a nice smoked cheese.  (Though once they incorporated the mystery meat into a paste like butter and served it for breakfast.)  Nicely too, for a treat, one of the camp kids would take his motorcycle into town and bring back dozens of donuts to sell during breakfast.  (Our kids LOVED this guy!)  The camp did serve hot dogs for breakfast, though, that I thought were good...

And once the camp served these delicious donuts for dinner, the boys were seriously bummed they only got 3 of these.  (Though, truth be told in the middle of the night Miriam threw up these donuts all over herself, her bed and the room.  Not fun.)

As Leah foretold us, we were served an ostrich egg casserole.  It had tomatoes on top, fish on the bottom, & creamy mashed potatoes on the side.  Everyone liked this meal and it was actually Max's favorite meal, and that is saying something!

A farm, literally 30 feet right outside the camp's backdoor, supplied the ostrich eggs.  It was so close that one of the camp rules was you couldn't touch the ostriches or go inside their pen.  The flimsy fence was the only thing that protected you from the ostriches.  The students at camp loved to get a rise out of the birds and I think Josh may even have a video of their attack stance, I'll look, ;)!

While the food wasn't necessarily spectacular, it was food, and we were very grateful for it!  (Even though both Josh and I thought we lost an easy 5 lbs while at camp.)  Our three kids ate it, especially Zeke who generally went back for seconds (he would even figure out Czech sayings so he could get just what he wanted from the cafeteria ladies).  But as you could guess, it was Max who was quoted as saying, "When can we eat good food again?" 

Yes, very fitting coming from Max.  :)!

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The majority of the Czechs we met love being outside, biking & hiking and simply enjoying the outdoors, their gardens and their countrysides.  It is only perfect then that English Camp sets aside one day as Hike Day.  For the Strakonice camp, the Hike is a 6km hike straight up to a lookout point and then a 6km hike back down to a Rope Course.

The hike started at 9:30am and the way up was simply beautiful.

The rolling countryside turned into woods and we were hiking straight up a hill.  Some of the students were trying to do the entire hike walking backwards but when some got to this steep section they switched to face forward.  By this point everyone hiking kept asking "How much further?" (or maybe it was just me?  :)!) but it seemed to keep going and going. 

Now, at the end of the hike there is a lookout tower and at the lookout tower there is ice cream for sale.  Max simply couldn't wait any longer for ice cream so at this, the steepest point of the hike, he took off running.  I then took off running after him, thinking he'd get ahead of the whole hike and not know where to go.  I chased him and we ran straight uphill forever!  Well, maybe for just a kilometer, but it was going up and it seemed like forever!

By the time we finally reached the end of our 6km hike, we were at the lookout tower where it went from beautiful and sunny to rain in a heartbeat.  We ate our sack lunch & ice cream (which had mystery meat in the sandwich) and then we started the hike down.  1.5km down the hill we came to a little village, where we ran into Jozef who kindly offered Miriam (and I) a ride back to camp.  Miriam had been a super trooper hiking 7.5 km thus far but you could tell she was exhausted, not complaining but absolutely exhausted from working so hard.  (She was a zombie once she sat down in Jozef's car.)  At this point too, we drove with Jozef to go and rescue some camp hikers who missed a turn along the hike and ended up over 2 villages away from where they were suppossed to be.  Yikes!  Thank God for cellphones!  Our boys and Josh continued on down the hill with the rest of the students and then participated in the ropes couse.

The Rope Course was put on by what is normally a weekend/week long Adventure Camp based out of Prague.  The guy who runs the camp, David, also incorporates deep theological discussions into his camp.  When the hike & rope course were all over, around 5pm, David held an optional theological discussion time (in Czech only) at Benesova Hora.  All but 1 of my students went and they all said it was a great time and David really approached topics very intelligently and thought provokingly.  His talk also lead into some amazing discussions for us which was so great!

The more I learned about the Czech culture through the students at camp, the more perfect it is that they have this kind of day during English Camp.  When we had stopped in Leah's city, on a Saturday, it was like a ghost town.  Everyone leaves their cities and go to the countryside on the weekends to be outside doing something, anything.  I think Hike Day refreshed us as much as it did the students!

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With a whole LOAD of thanks to Leah laying out a lesson plan outline, I was able to teach an English Class of high school students at English Camp.  Students were divided into English classes based on skill level. My class was considered an entry level English class with most kids having "only" 6 years of previous English classes (I know, 6 years!). Leah taught the other entry level class and Josh was in an advanced class.

Leah's Class meeting outside on a beautiful day.  Notice Zeke right in there participating! He did an amazing job both at participating and being a great example!  Praise God!  One day of class all the kids interviewed Zeke (in English) by asking lots of questions about his family.  At one point someone asked Zeke to describe each person in his family and he said his dad was "open minded," his mom was "thoughtful," his brother was "creative," and his sister was "crazy and funny."  Leah said it was SUPER sweet!  On the flip side, there was another day when the class was talking about dating/marriage and one of the girls started talking about her boyfriend /kissing at which point Zeke says to Leah, "I don't think my mom would want me to listen to this," and he asked to leave.  Awwww!!!

Josh's Class meeting outside on a beautiful day.  It was taught by a great bible college guy from the Cherry Hills Team who went by the nickname Ragu (which is based off his last name).  They had an advanced class and after the first day they realized they need harder class work.  Josh's internet connection & iPad came in great handy at teaching some lessons with harder vocabulary.  Josh had great conversations with some of the guys about deep philosophical topics and it was a simply perfect fit for Josh.  They also had lots of fun too when they wrote a short film and Josh filmed / edited their shorts.  They're great & if I can upload them from Josh's computer to YouTube I will!

In my class I had Zuzka as my translator, an amazing young woman from Moravia who came out specifically to translate.  She was an amazing support for me both in teaching class and in praying for our students.  Then there was Ondra, a great young guy from a local city who was there to translate and to love & pray for our students.  Aaron was a high school kid from the Cherry Hills Team and I want to say this was his 6th or 7th English camp?  The other 6 in our class were high school kids from local Czech cities, one of which was sweet Bara who attends the school year long English club that Leah leads in Strakonice.  For 4 of the students, Honza, David, Jana & Mirka, this was their first English Camp and for Klara, this was her second camp.

One of the perks for a Czech student to coming to a JV English Camp is that they get to speak English with Americans 24 hrs a day.  They get to learn more about American traditions, culture and slangs, but also learn English in a very creative setting.  (Though the one downside is that in school they are taught British English, not American English and yes, there is a difference.)  Even still, each English class went about teaching English in very creative ways so that camp was not exactly like "school" and we played a lot of games, acting, relay races, etc in class.

For example, this was a relay game we played to work on English vocab of body parts.  Aaron and I were the guinea pigs and the students had to race to put all the body part names on us.

Or the day we did food we had blindfold taste tests like you see Jana and Bara doing.  I brought along A&W Root Beer from the US for this game that thankfully did not explode in our suitcase!  They do not have Root Beer at all in Czech so it was new for our students!  :)!

This is Honza and David doing an activity where they created their own menus using a US Steak-n-Shake menu for an example.  (Thank you Steak-n-Shake for giving me tons of your take out menus!!) 

All the activities we did were for the students to practice both speaking conversational English and writing conversational English.  For example, dressing up and acting out a traditional American wedding...

Or in Josh's class (like I mentioned) when they wrote and filmed their own movies in costume...

Overall, with the 3 hours of English Class plus the extra Discussion Time at night, we got to know all our students really well.  I am probably fairly biased when I say I had the BEST class!  They all contributed so much in class and in discussion time.  I appreciate watching people really think through deep topics, it's a beautiful thing.

Admittedly, I have not spent much time with high school kids.  Outside of the 3 awesome and only high school kids in our church, the only other high schoolers I've dealt with has been in less than desireable circumstances.  But my students were amazing and I love each of them so much!  I am incredibly thankful for Facebook so that we can continue to keep in touch!

The class minus Aaron & Zuzka.  Bottom row Klara, Ondra, Bara, Honza, Jana & Mirka with David & me on top.

The tough girls.  Nice muscles, girls!

The silly guys. (Minus Aaron, who was spending 5 hours filling up 1750 water balloons.)

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Everything was said twice at English camp.  Everything was said once in Czech and once in English, from announcements at breakfast to the Evening Program.  It is an English Camp but because the high school kids at the camp had varying levels of English experience having both languages constantly spoken eased the skill level differences.  And I must say, all of the translators did an amazing job! 

Starting Sunday morning until Friday night, so for 6 straight days, a typical day at English camp looked like this:

7:30    JV / Staff Devotion, Worship, Prayer, & Info
8:30    All Camp Breakfast
9:15    All Camp Video & Announcements
9:20    English Class
12:30  All Camp Lunch with Free Time after
3:30    All Camp Sports
6:15    Dinner
7:30    All Camp Evening Program
9ish     Discussion Groups
10:30  Maybe Evening Activity

The Strakonice English Camp is the largest of the 21ish JV Czech Summer English Camps with 105ish people total, again, the majority being the high school kids.  The high school kids who sign up for these English camps know that the camp is sponsored by Josiah Venture and that during the evening programs they will hear Bible stories.  My guess is that more than half of the students who attend the camps are not Christians.

Thanks to Leah, our mornings would start with a hot pot, french press, and (thanks to Dexter) a bag of fresh roasted & ground Brazilian Roast Coffee from Capanna Coffee.  Then we would leave a note for our sleeping kids & go to a morning time of devotions, worship, prayer and info for our day ahead.  This was always a refreshing time, even during the one morning they gave us off from meeting, ;)!

The JV Team / Staff was made up of an assortment of people.  First, there was a full time JV missionary, Leah!  Then, there were JV Summer Interns who had committed to spend 3-7 months in Czech running summer camps, we had 4 from the states and 3 from Czech at our camp.  Then, there was a church team, our camp's church team was from Cherry Hills Community Church in Denver.  They brought with them a team of 4 adult leaders and 8ish high school students (not to forget 4 cutie little kids).  I love the fact that JV purposefully has American teenagers reaching out to Czech teenagers in their summer camps.  It is a brilliant and effective setup!  Then, there is a group of Czech nationals, some are translators, some are kids who go to the school year English camps, some are seasoned Christians and some are young in their faith but they all have a heart for the lost.

By 8:30 we would go back to wake the Three from our room and take them to breakfast. 

At 9:15 the whole camp would meet and they would watch a 5 minute music video that told a story.  The theme of the camp this year was "Redeem."  Each video, story, question, and the camp theme song revolved around redemption.  The stories they shared in the evenings tied into these morning videos as well.

Immediately after the video the students were dismissed to their English Classes.  The camp was divided into 10 classes of 10 people each.  Each class had an American teacher, Czech translator, American teenager and maybe an additional Czech Christian or translator.  Zeke went to the English class taught by Leah, Josh assisted in a class taught by a leader from the Cherry Hills team named Ragu, I taught an English class that Max would sometimes come to, and yep, Miriam played with a babysitter & the other missionary family kids during English class.  English class would start with a journal time where they would answer questions about the video and then it a a full blown English class that lasted 3 hours long, right up until lunch.

At 12:30 was Lunch followed by Free Time.  Most days the little kids would play in the creek while the students would go swimming or play soccer or board games.  One day they had separate VIP Girl's Time and Man Hour.  The girls sat and did nails and massages while the guys beat the snot out of each other playing this incredibly violent game called Viking Football.  Every single guy who played this game had scratches and bruises and stains and cuts and aches.  Josh ended up knocking a guy out and in return got a HUGE gash on his shoulder along with many other wounds.  Every single guy LOVED playing the game.

By 3:30 it was group Sports Time, which the older little kids would participate in as well.  The entire camp was divided into (I think) 8 teams complete with team names and team dances.  During Sports Time they would compete at a variety of games, most were goofy like dodgeball with finger darts or more sportslike with basketball shoot offs.  The last full day of camp is always Water Day.  Every "sport" is a water sport from Duck, Duck, Goose with water to Freeze Tag with water, to the concluding ultimate water balloon fight with near 1,750 water balloons.

At 6:15 most people were starving for dinner and by 7:30 it was time for the Evening Program.  The Evening Program always started with songs with hand gestures led by Leah and Janu (sp) one of the Czech Summer Interns!  Whoo hoo!  That was a fun time!  As the last song we would do the camp theme song and dance, "Never Going Back to OK."  (At this time Josh would put our kids down to bed and be back in time for the story.)  As a transition into the story there was a great skit organized by Eva, another Czech Summer Intern.  Then the speaker would come up and share a story from the Bible about redemption.  Based on the theme for this year, the Bible stories were tied together through the family tree of Jesus; stories about Rahab, Judah, Ruth, David, Jesus himself, and the last night was a series of many testimonies of redemption and I got to be one of those testimonies.

Near 9ish, whenever the Evening Program would end, we would break down into our English classes for Discussion Time.  During Discussion Time we would go over questions about the story told that night.  This was one of my favorite times of our day!  The 15-16 year old kids in my class had amazing and genuine questions, most were incredibly deep and thought provoking.  My Czech kids were really chewing on some heavy duty topics, and never stopped asking questions to find their answers.

Around 10:30 the discussion would wrap up and games would be played, more talking would be had, but sooner than later, I was heading to our room to check my students' journals, get my lesson ready for the next day of class, and get myself ready for the new day that was now quickly approaching.  Phew!

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At 9:30 am, our first few moments in the Czech Republic were quite the blur since our bodies thought it was 2:30AM Iowa time.  Leah met us at the airport with a super large blue bag filled with water, snacks & 3 car seats (yes, in Czech all three kids had to have a car seat).  It was amazing to see my sister!  It had been two years too long!  Josh drove us the one and a half hours to Strakonice (while I dozed off for a few minutes*) so we could pick up Leah's camp luggage and have lunch at her favorite restaurant.

After a brief stop in Leah's apartment (and after I accidentally took a short little nap for a few minutes*) we headed to lunch where the kids snarfed down pizza.  It was there we learned all about the fact that you can't have any alcohol in your system while driving in Czech, not even 0.0000001.  If you get pulled over and have even 0.01, they take you to the hospital where you have to take an official test.  Crazy, but at the same time seems safer.

We went back to Leah's apartment where I fell asleep again for a few minutes*...

...then we drove the 20 minutes to the Strakonice English Camp at Chata Benesova Hora.  It was Saturday, July 3, and camp registration started at 3pm with dinner served at 6pm and the first camp meeting at 7pm.  As soon as we got there at 5 we started being introduced to all of Leah's friends.  This was really cool to be meeting people in 3D we had only heard about for so long.  It was also great to see again the Czech friends we had met 2 years ago.  In Czech a lot of people have the same name but they can also can then have a fun nickname to help distinguish them from the next person; one Martin would be called M. J. and the next Martin would be called Mister.  I was incredibly thankful for name tags!  :)! 

*Now you may be wondering about my super power of not needing sleep and the fact that I feel asleep 3 times since landing but even this ended up being a huge blessing for me!

The Strakonice English Camp had 10 classes of 10 people.  The way it worked out, Leah divided Josh and I into different classes; Josh was in a class lead by Ragu and I was going to lead my own class.  What that meant for our first night was it was ok for Josh to go to bed with the kids but I had to stay up late and have my first introduction meeting with my class kids.  By that point, except for the 3 snip-its of sleep, I had been awake for over 30 hours and had to stay up another 3.  See?!  Blessing my super powers seemed to have failed but in reality they were giving me that extra push to maintain through to the end.  Phew!

Speaking of bed...

For the 8 days of camp our family of 5 called a 10' x 12' room home.  Josh and I had two twin beds pushed together, the boys had bunk beds, and Miriam had a chair that folded out into a bed.  The beds were basically 4" thick cushions on plywood, each coming with a large pillow and small sized douvet covered quilt.  Thankfully, our room had its own bathroom, that although the toilet was broken for the first night, it was a huge blessing that it all worked for the rest of the week.

Even with states of being trashed to being clean, living in this small room with our whole family worked out surprisingly well AFTER we got rules laid out and got things organized.  The rules came AFTER the first day when our three kids invited an additional 4 little kids into our room and all of them were all jumping on our beds with sandy shoes, raiding our snack & candy stash, and being careless with Josh's electronics.  Sigh... live & learn... :)!

Our room, emptied, and right before we said goodbye to Chata Benesova Hora...

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