Blogs from Czech Republic, Europe - page 288

The International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) is located in Jeneralka. Now a part of Prague, Jeneralka is almost like a small isolated village. Indeed until recently it has been considered a separate village. The word, Jeneralka, means ‘woman general’. I have read there are four theories on how the village got its name. To me the theory that makes the most sense is that here, long ago, there was ‘famous’ women’s battles here. I must admit that I am totally ignorant of this history. Perhaps with some research I can find information on these battles. We attended the worship service this morning. Again it was an international service. An American woman led the singing and prayers, a young woman from England read the New Testament scripture, an American pastor read the Old Testament scripture and the ... read more

Nancy writes -- I did my best to comply with the good advice I had received from my friend who is from Spain and who is an interpreter at the Outreach Clinic where I volunteer at home. I put on my rouge and lipstick, curled my eyelashes (to look as ‘beautiful’ as possible). I put on my knee high stockings and my wool knee high socks, I wore my black tights (to keep from freezing in the -10C degree cold). I slipped on my black leather almost knee high boots (to look fashionable). But I balked at wearing any of my long black skirts or any of my ‘fancy’ spaghetti strap tops or silk blouses. I put on my white turtle neck sweater and gray wool slacks and hoped my new red boiled wool jacket would ... read more

More snow that fell during the night and colder temperatures greeted us this morning. As I do not have a thermometer I have to guess at the temperature. My guess this morning was that it was in the low to mid 20’s as I walked to the library to begin work for the day. I was glad the walk is not very far as my ears were quite cold by the time I reached the library. I had a new adventure here today in that I used the telephone for an outside call to find pricing information for performances at the Czech State Opera. My first problem was finding the telephone number. Thank goodness for the Internet and good web sites. I found the homepage of the Czech State Opera is opera.cz and that once at ... read more

At 11:45 pm on Jan. 2nd, Jason and I boarded a bus for Prague! After about a six hour ride, we got off the bus in a dark bus station and I thought I knew the way to the hostel. Of course, the map in my head looked nothing like the real thing, so we got lost. We ended up walking for about an hour and then hopping a tram without paying (following the advice of a local). Finally, we got to our hostel, "Hostel Elf" and was told that our room wouldn't be ready until 11am. So, from around 7am, we sat our exhausted bodies in the lobby and tried to sleep. At the precise moment that my booty touched the worn out leather of the couch, the hostel owner decided it was Czech Pop ... read more

It was much lighter this morning when we woke than other mornings. It became apparent why when we peeked out our venition blinds and saw that about half an inch of snow had fallen during the night. I knew no wind had blown during the night as the snow lay on and outlined every branch of every tree within sight from our window. We are in room F009. The “F” stands for building F and 009 is our room on the ground floor. The 100’s are on what we in the States call the 2nd floor, the 200’s are on the third floor and the top or 4th floor is where the rooms with numbers in the 300’s are located. The Sunday worship service at IBTS begins at 10:45 and the word “international truely applies here. ... read more