Back to Earth!

Wow! It's good to finally have internet again! I feel like I've had no connection to the outside world. I've spent the last two weeks living off a Blackberry, which got EDGE service at the camp. This meant I could check my gmail every once in a while, although it took 10 minutes to load (if it loaded at all). Anyway, I'm excited to tell you all about the first camp, but first I have to tell you about my journey from camp to Vienna!

Camp ended perfectly, with everyone thoroughly overwhelmed with emotions about leaving the people they had gotten to know so closely the past couple weeks. There were tears, laughs, and hugs to say goodbye to each other. Every single one of the students made a huge impact on us, and we're all so excited to see how much they grew as people during their time at MBM. When it finally came time to say goodbye, I was wondering to myself, when, during these past few weeks, these students changed from shy people into a close-knit group of friends that have experienced so much together. It really made me happy.

On our bus from Velké Meziřiči to Brno was great. Although most of the students went to Prague, we had Frank, Johnny and Igor to accompany us to Brno. I fell asleep right away because I was absolutely exhausted, and when we arrived to Brno, we had 20 minutes to get from one bus station to the other. Remember how I'm always running to catch a bus, train, plane, boat, etc etc? Well this time, I didn't have to! But I almost did. It was me, Harrison and the 6 girls each with luggage and tired from camp. And getting from one bus station to the next was about as fun as trying to drag a stubborn bull to the market (bad analogy, but I'm tired so give me a break). We ended up arriving to the other bus station a few minutes before our bus departed, and I was convinced that we were going to have to run for it.

Our bus from Brno to Vienna (Wien) was a wonderful ride through the countryside. I once again fell asleep but luckily this bus had nice air conditioning and comfortable seats. When we arrived in Vienna, I had to navigate the subways and dig through my backpack for the hostel information. We were staying at a hostel right off the subway line, and so we began to search for the line, which was luckily right around the corner. We went to the subway and I found our stop. Everything is now in Euros, which means I'm going to be absolutely devastated when I go to purchase items that are American prices (2 euro waters, 4 euro sandwiches, etc) but really in Euros which means that It's not a $2 bottle of water but $2.50 and so on and so on. It doesn't help that Vienna is one of the most expensive cities in Europe (we just found out) but I'm pretty sure that tomorrow will be an awesome day full of fun.

When we arrived to our hostel, we checked in and found out that actually when we made the reservation we only made it for four people for two nights. That means that four of us are in deep trouble! It actually wasn't me who booked this but I paid for it to make it easier for everyone, and our preparation for this trip wasn't quite spectacular. We went out for Ana's birthday the night before, and we were rushing to go to the Green Day concert in Prague afterwards (which was a spectacular show!), so I can easily see how this confusion happened. Luckily the hostel has room for everyone tonight for a decent price (15 euro per person), but four of us have to move out tomorrow because they don't have enough beds for everyone for two nights. Luckily, I'm staying with Jolin, Ekta and Aysegul at the hostel and Ana, Tete, Harrison and Lessya are going to find another hostel or hotel to live in tomorrow. I know we won't have this problem in Budapest (because I had double and triple checked everything before hand), but knowing my luck, we'll probably get lost or something finding the place.

When everything was settled with the hostel, we dropped our stuff off and made our way into the city center. It was already 8 PM by the time we left, and when we arrived, we walked around a bit and found a really nice Asian place to eat. The funniest part about dinner was that there were Chinese people working in the restaurant, and it was easier for me to speak Chinese with them than to try and order in English or German (the language spoken in Austria). After dinner, we walked along the Danube River (the longest in Europe) and called it a night. We've all been internet starved and so we headed back to the hostel to catch up on our lives at home.

I'm extremely tired right now, so I apologize if this post doesn't make sense or is a little messy. I'm heading to bed. Tomorrow we're waking up early to go sight seeing. Be prepared for when I return to Velké Meziřiči for the second camp, I'll have a post scheduled for every single day I'm away. Good night!

Cooking Up Some Culture

Well, of course today was another adventure on the other side of the world.

We started the day off by meeting in Holesovice Nadrazi (Holesovice Station) and began our day's work in the park nearby. Today we came up with all the night activities for the camp. Among my favorites are:

• International Dance Night: Music from each country is played and each nation has a chance to show traditional dances. I'll be playing hip-hop and rock music (songs they already know), but I will not be preparing any dances.
• Capture the Flag: Run & Directed by me, this night game will give them a chance to paint their faces and their flag and play a crazy game of capture the flag.
• Amazing Race: A game, led by Ekta and I, which has the students do a number of tasks, with only one team winning the title of Amazing Race Champions.
• Talent Show
• Mr. & Miss MBM: A slightly modified version of Mr. Mullen or Mr. Fordham--a chance for some camp participants to show off their stuff and compete for the title of Mr. & Miss MBM

The park was the perfect place to get our creative juices flowing, and we ended up finishing early. Jenny stopped by in the afternoon to check up and see how we were progressing. She also had some gifts for us--our money for our monthly passes and some money for food. In total it was about 1350 CZK for me, which is about $65. Perfect!

After we finished, we went to the bus station to book our bus tickets for our trip in between the camps. It's official, we're going to Vienna and Budapest. Our bus tickets are as follows:

• Brno--Vienna: July 13, 2010 <15:15 departure -- 18:00 arrival>
• Vienna--Budapest: July 15, 2010 <19:00 departure -- 21:50 arrival>
• Budapest--Brno: July 18, 2010 <9:15 departure -- 14:30 arrival>

This means we have Tuesday and Wednesday night in Vienna and Thursday, Friday and Saturday night in Budapest. I'm really excited to go. Especially because we'll have had such a crazy schedule during camp, it'll be a great break to see Eastern Europe and explore places outside of Prague. I'm still working on seeing Turkey after the camp ends, but so far I've already got my first week planned out. I'm going to Berlin with Lessya and Ana because both of them have friends in Berlin right now. We'll stay there for a few days (3 max) and come back to Prague. We'll be in Prague for one night, and head to Krakow, Poland for another 3 day trip. The middle of this trip will be dedicated to seeing Auschwitz Concentration Camp.  After the trip to Poland, I'm not sure what to do. Tickets to Turkey are about $300 round trip, which is much more than I expected. We'll see what my budget allows. I'm still surprised that all three of my bus tickets to Brno-Vienna-Budapest-Brno cost less than my ridiculously priced haircut the other day. The girls nicely pointed that out to me.

After buying tickets, I had to go to Tesco with Harrison, Lessya and Aysegul to buy the last of our Global Village ingredients. I found tortillas, cheese, and some chili/salsa to put in my burritos. The beans have been cooking for 3 hours now, and of course I didn't listen to my mom when she told me to make sure they were covered with water because they'll expand and absorb the water...so halfway through cooking the beans, I checked the pot, to find almost no water and the beans about to overflow out of the pot. I did some rearranging and now the beans should be OK. They still have a few more hours to cook.

For having never really cooked that much in my life, living over here has been a real challenge for Chef Regis. I think it's funny how all of us living here at Jenny's (Lessya, Ekta, and Aysegul) have never really cooked in our lives. We're all preparing "traditional" dishes from our countries...all for the very first time. I've never made beans and its funny that we're using Czech students as guinea pigs for our experiments in the kitchen. Aysegul is making a cous cous dish, with pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and spring onions. I've tried a small plate and it is quite good. Ekta is attempting to make curry (she get's mad when I say attempting) and Lessya is going to make beef empanadas --a la Kazakh. We're all laughing at our attempts at cooking.

Speaking of cooking abilities, I was quite shocked today when we were at the grocery store and I was looking for things to cook for dinner. I knew at the apartment we didn't have much in terms of groceries, but I decided to suck it up and just make something. If anything, we had eggs, potatoes, onions, garlic, and a few other things, so I could make a concoction of sorts. While perusing the meats section, I didn't feel like beef, chicken or pork, but I did find some tasty little morsels of rabbit. So I bought it, having no idea what to do with it. When I got home, I Googled "how to cook rabbit" and found some pretty funny stuff, but there was a link on the first page led me to the answer, "Excellent rabbit seasonings include parsley, rosemary, sage, bay leaf, lemon-grass, coriander, and basil." Hrmm...I know Jenny has spices and I just found out that Ekta has a bunch of spices in her bag, so...what the heck. I cut it up in thin pieces, rubbed some spices on it, threw it in some olive oil and BAM! it was done. I boiled a few potatoes to go on the side, and the result was a delicious feast that not only surprised myself but my tastebuds as well. Here's a picture:

It was delicious. I got to even torment vegetarian Ekta, asking her to guess what "innocent" animal I was eating today. She was only slightly amused. As for tomorrow, after the Global Village and Meet & Greet, we'll be going out around Prague. This weekend there are a bunch of free concerts going on around Prague (United Islands), so we're going to try and catch a few and enjoy the night free of work. Sunday, Ana, Tete, Zhou Lin, Harrison and I plan to go to mass and then finish all the projects and work we didn't get done the past few days. Until next time, take care!