First Day at IBTS

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Friday January 21, 2005
Nancy--
This is 1:44 p.m. here in Prague (Praha) and we have been here since 5:30 p.m. two days ago. Our trip on British Air (BA) was really very nice. We now know why everyone says BA is a wonderful airline. The plane itself was comfortable with excellent service and good food. Our luggage was handled well and arrived WITH us and in good condition. We certainly hope to be repeat users of BA in future travels. We had rested more than normal in the last few days before flying so we weren’t exhausted. Despite that we found we were too sleepy to stay awake during our long wait at Heathrow Airport. We put our arms through the straps on our backpack straps and fell asleep for short naps. Bill slept almost the whole flight from London to Prague. As soon as we could see land after crossing the English Channel, we could see that the snow covered mountains. We had been expecting cold and snowy weather from the reports on the Internet. About 25 miles or so from Prague all the snow stopped. We arrived here to mild temperatures and only a light dusting of snow from the previous evening. Our heavy winter coats seemed a little much! For the past two days we have not put our coats back on. I wore my white boiled wool jacket on Thursday when we were outside in the morning and again when we walked off campus to Mlyn (The Mill) a nice restaurant just a few yards down the street. The Mlyn is located in an old mill with waterwheel still attached to the mill. I hope to add a picture of this at some point in the future.

I don’t know if we can send a picture of our new Home Sweet Home or not. Bill hasn’t made any pictures of our room and he is not here to ask. He is downtown or on his way downtown with Lauren and Heidi. Laurie is an America and Heidi is an Australian. Heidi’s daughter is a student here and she is visiting her for a week or two. The three of them are going on a ‘learn how to use the bus/subway/tram system” and how to get to a local store that sells almost anything you might need. I am definitely NOT a shopper so I graciously allowed Bill-the-adventurer to go on this trip of exploration. He will take me with him and teach me the system when I have a reason to go. This time he has plenty of good companions and will enjoy a little time of fun with them.

Bill ---
Lauren, Heidi and I made the trek to the big Tesco store in downtown Prague. The store is a large department store that covers four or five stories of a large building. Lauren was our experienced guide, showing us the ropes of going downtown from Jeneralka. This involves riding a bus from Jeneralka two stops to Dejvicka. Dejvicka is a major hub for local end of the line for six buses, all of which make stops at Jeneralka, and a major streetcar line that passes Dejvicka.

The sun was shining through broken clouds when we left IBTS and I was quite surprised to see a full blown snow flurry outside the bus as we neared the Dejvicka stop. At first I thought it was hail but discovered after departing the bus that it was balls of snow. Each of us had one hour tickets, meaning that we could travel on any bus, subway or tram for one hour after having it stamped as we boarded the bus.

We got off the subway at the Musket stop. This is in the heart of downtown Prague, very close to the famous Wenceslas Square where huge crowds of protesters gathered during the Velvet Revolution that lead to the fall of Communism here. The large Tesco store is a short walk from the station. The store was quite crowded with shoppers, perhaps because it was a Friday afternoon and everyone was getting ready for the weekend ... or perhaps it is always a crowded store. My primary reason for the trip, other than learning how to get there, was to buy some groceries. The store is well stocked and I found the items on my list, such as frozen vegetables, peanut butter, jelly, and tea.

The public transportation system here, like almost all of Europe, is excellent and inexpensive with shorts waits. It is so much easier to get around here than in American cities. Perhaps some day we will develop good public transportation ... but I doubt it will be in my lifetime.

Nancy--
This morning, Friday, I put on a boiled wool sweater which Gladys Lambert helped me stretch back into shape after I managed to shrink it and slipped on my red polar tech vest that Joanne Pye gave me at Thanksgiving. It was enough for walking from our building to the library. Since you probably know how cold natured I am, you must realize that the weather here is not living up to its normal reputation so far this winter. Everyone is amazed since last winter was one of the hardest on record with snow several feet deep at this time. Since this campus is all up and down hills and stairs, we are delighted that it is not icy underfoot. My good hiking boots have not arrived yet in the mail so I hope any and all snow waits until I have some way to be sure footed. I can’t imagine getting from here to the library with just my new dressy boots or with my tie up shoes. I might make it on a sled but then I would have to stay there until it all melted. Yes, the hill is rather steep!

We have very nice quarters. We have a multipurpose large room with a desk where I am working, a TV (with BBC news and something like CNN) and the Hallmark Channel in English and a couch in this half of the room. Then there is a most comfortable bed with a small light table/chest beside it next to the windows. The dining table and chairs are on the other side of the bed. Then there is a kitchenette on the other wall with a refrigerator, sink and stove plus plenty of good kitchen cabinet room. The dishes, cups, glasses, silverware and cooking utensils are all supplied as well as dish drainers, etc. The other wall has a very nice storage area. It has hanging spaces for coats, dresses, suits, etc. and drawers for whatever plus nice cabinets with shelves. I have opened all boxes and suitcases and have organized and put away all our belongings. Our summer things are being stored in one of the suitcases. One of the boxes now is filled with duplicates of things like Kleenex, Listerine, sample sizes of toothpaste, soaps, etc. for short trips. That is under the footspace on the desk. The desk is large enough neither of our feet is ever going to go back that far. There is a trundle like drawer under the bed and all our extra medical supplies-Band-Aids, etc. and the extras on BP meds etc. are in that drawer. Our BIG box of books hasn’t arrived yet either but the 10 or so we carried with us are on the window ledge waiting for us to have time to use them. Our bathroom is equipped for handicapped persons. So it is very comfortable and convenient. We love the shower! It is the sort we plan to build for ourselves if we ever have problems walking. It has a nice seat you can put down to sit on and has no ledge around it. The floor is flat so you could push a wheelchair in and transfer to the seat. The shower itself is hand held and is low enough to use if you are seated. The toilet itself is a tall one for someone who has problems with standing back up after using the toilet. Both of us can swing our feet off the floor when we are seated. There are metal supports you can swing down from the wall to help you push yourself back up if you need the help or you can put them down to hold a towel just outside the shower. This is a far cry from the slit-in-the-floor-toilet we had in our last overseas apartment. Maybe the BEST thing about the bathroom is the towel warmer on the wall. It is just like the ones in New Zealand. We can turn them high enough to dry anything we wash out by hand. If we wash socks, etc. at bedtime they are totally dry by the time we get up in the morning. That will make it easy to keep things clean and dry. We have not checked out the laundry room for outer clothing yet. Someone told me the machines come from all over Central Europe and all the operating instructions are in the languages of the countries where they were manufactured. She said she never figured out how to do a wash when she lived here for 6 months last year. She is back for a few weeks just now. Said sometimes it took over 24 and once as much as 36 hours for her to do a single wash. I HOPE she is just mentally challenged by instructions and that I will be more successful. I learned how to operate a Chinese washing machine without any trouble how hard can a Czech machine be? (Hope those are not famous last words!)

We have toured the library (amazing and beautiful and WELL organized). The library staff is really welcoming and very friendly. They are excited that we are here and we are excited to be needed and warmly welcomed! We have already been able to sign up for the hours when we will cover the circulation desk(and everything else that goes on). In fact, we will be the only two staff members in the library during some of these hours. There is a library conference at which I will be a presenter which starts this Sunday evening. The rest of next week the library staff, Bill and I will be quite busy with the conference. We will cover the library from 10 a.m. till 1:00 p.m. on Saturday the 30th and then Bill and I will do the evening hours for the staff on the 31st of January. We hope to learn enough about the circulation system by then to do that well. We already have the key to the library so we can lock and unlock it and we have the security codes to arm the motion detectors and disarm them since we can come and go at will in the library. We will be SO CAREFUL with these keys and those security measures. We feel privileged and honored to be trusted.

I spent 3 1/2 hours yesterday with a graduate student named David who is from Hungary. He is studying in the seminary by working in the library to secure his financial aid. It was his task yesterday to teach me the data entry needed to work on the retrospective conversion project. That will be one of our major tasks during our six months here. David is an able teacher with all the patience needed to explain a complex task and make it into an easy one. He demonstrated several kinds of books with various problems to me. Then he stepped out of that role and became the observer. He let me do the entry for enough books that I felt confident in my ability. He was about the best teacher I have ever had for a complex, multi-step task. I went back this morning to see if I had it memorized. He had thought of another two kinds of possible problem books and had them ready to show me when I arrived. He did that and then left me alone to see if I could manage the task without him beside me. Of course, he was still in the library in case I had a problem. I worked for a short time and then taught Bill what I had learned yesterday. He had stayed for only part of the lesson since he went to buy groceries yesterday. I demonstrated for Bill and then observed him. I think he almost has it all memorized now too. I didn’t show him how to do multi-volume sets of books since that is pretty hard and only comes up once in a long while. When he gets stuck on a set, I will teach him that part too. I think both of us are ready to hit the work! They have thousands of volumes that are not yet on the Internet site since they have not had data entry done. That makes it hard for the off campus students to do their work. They can’t see if the material is owned by the library if the book is not on the Internet. I have a personal desire and goal to finish all that work before I go back home. They laughed when I told them that but I have confidence! I can remember the work I have done like this in the past. Six months seems plenty of time to do it! Here I have no other distractions. No house to clean, no responsibilities in the community, very little in the way of outside distractions. Whenever they have a free computer, I am ready to attack this job and get it done once and for all. They have 4 administrative licenses and there is one free almost every hour of the day. The librarians didn’t know I was a cataloger. So, they hope I can help them with some of the cataloging tasks they have facing them. I think that will be fun. They are glad to learn Bill has a lot of experience in management of a serials collection, bindery experience, etc. The serials collection has passed through many hands and the current manager wants to make sense of the various past systems and decide on the best way to proceed in the future. They even want to weed the reference collection. I am itching to help with that(some of you know I was practically entitled “Queen of the Weeders” in my old job) but am not sure it will be something anyone has authority to do in the near future. They are currently without a head librarian and they certainly won’t want a volunteer to establish collection development policy! Especially one who has little or no idea of the curriculum and its needs. That would be a nightmare wouldn’t it? Let’s hope someone with the authority turns up before we leave. If not, maybe there will be another day/another visit/other work.

The sun, which is not supposed to shine until Spring, is shining brightly just now. I want to go for a walk in the woods. But I don’t want to venture off on my own since I have the only key to our room and Bill will return sometime needing to get back in. Maybe I should take a nap and hope he gets back in time to walk before we eat supper. Supper today will be whatever one of us cooks. We didn’t eat anything Wed. evening since we had eaten on the plane. We ate a soup and pancake (delicious!!) meal at the Mlyn restaurant last night. Tonight I want to stay in and eat something in our room. Then for the weekend we have our breakfast in the dining hall but then are on our own for lunch and supper. The lunches here are tasty and nutritious. I managed to figure out which one was the vegetarian meal today. Someone else had ordered my lunch yesterday and it came with what I think was a veal cutlet. I will do my best to avoid meat as always. Breakfast is fruit, yogurt, cereal, juice, cold meats and cheeses, tea, coffee, chocolate and plenty of kinds of bread and honey or jelly. I don’t have any problem with filling up for breakfast. We will let you know if we lose weight or gain.

A prayer service of 15 minutes duration is held at 9:00a.m. in the seminary chapel. Yesterday we learned about a special new program of love that the seminary is involved with. A woman is living and working here now who was formerly a worker in Bangkok, Thailand. She worked for 15 years with prostitutes there helping them to get free from the slavery they were sold into. She came here with no idea of doing the same here. But the human traffic in young girls and women here in Prague tore at her heart. She and others prayed for over a year and have worked now for I believe almost a year in a direct ministry to young women on the street. They meet them, offer them unconditional love regardless of the women’s decisions about their lifestyle. When possible, they help them to learn other skills, encourage them to feel God’s love for them and help them to get free from this terrible work. Most of these women are from Romania and are here trying to provide enough money for support for their own families in that country. They are mostly gypsy women. This presentation of their work was very moving. Today we had time to reflect on various scriptures from throughout the Bible which talk about our need to control our tongues and use them for the Praise of God not for harming humans. That gave me plenty to think about as I suppose it would anyone. We will learn a lot and grow a lot from these morning times with the community here.

Each day the entire community stops at 10:30 for coffee, tea, cookies and time to talk with each other. I attended yesterday but forgot and worked right through it today. I will have to learn what ‘take a break’ means. I never did that at all in my work-a-day world. Maybe it is time to learn that human relationships are even more important then finishing a retroconversion job for a library.

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