Blogs from Czech Republic, Europe - page 287

The phrase, “If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes” is one you hear often in various places around the US. However in none of my experiences is it more true than here in Prague. As we returned last night at 9:15 from the library, a heavy snow was falling with the promise of quite a lot on the ground. When I woke up and gazed out the window, there was less snow at 6:30 than there had been when we went to bed. That was because it was raining. When we went to breakfast I noticed it was snowing. After breakfast there was a mix of rain and snow falling. Soon that turned to rain and now at eleven it is cloudy, but no rain nor snow is coming down. However, just wait five ... read more

Mirka is the cataloger for the library in which we are working. She is really a nice young woman. She is highly competent in her job and very patient with teaching the more complex parts of the software to us. It was quite simple to learn to do the basic data entry but very quickly I found that there were many more complex procedures required to enter books in series, multi-volume sets, etc. She and I sat down on Monday after the conference was over and both of us had more free time. She cleared up those glitches I had stumbled over the previous week when I had gone ahead with data entry in my free moments during the conference. I had set aside a pile the books I found perplexing. Then to make things even, ... read more

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