Chicago Connection

Danny and I have both remarked about how this past four months have been some of the best times of our lives. We have had more quality time together here as a family than perhaps any other time I can remember in the past few years – excluding of course the last three weeks for finals where I was not sure if I still had a husband. Danny has had to study a lot, but living so close to the classrooms, (down the hall and one flight of stairs) has been great for our family. He has been able to come home for breakfast, lunch and is usually home by four or five. He took fewer credits this semester so we could spend more time exploring and traveling and it has been well worth it.

We have met fabulous people and have had great experiences. Here are some of our friends we are saying goodbye to…

Above is Peter, Denek, and Merek. We leave with sad hearts knowing we will miss the friends we have made, but we are looking forward to the next adventure life will bring. Speaking of that adventure we are saying goodbye and packing like mad, getting ready for our first destination: Disneyland Paris! We figured we (being a Disney family) can’t be all the way around the world and not check out another Disney castle. Here is our itinerary:

April 24^th Fly Prague to Paris
April 24^th Disneyland Paris – Stay at the Vienna International Dream Castle
April 25^th Check in Paris Hotel -Explore Paris
April 26th Explore Paris
April 27^th Fly to London check in Hilton at Airport
April 28^th Fly London to Maliga Spain
May 3^rd Bus and Boat ride to Morocco
May 5^th Fly Maliga Spain to London
May 5^th Spend day touring London
May 6^th London to LAX and home to USA!

Here we go…….

So it finally happened. Danny took his last final and …the snow melted!! The next day our jackets came off and the entire city was sporting t-shirts! Seriously, Prague just turned so beautiful, what a great place. It’s so funny because all the locals kept saying “this is the longest winter in 40 years,” but the ex-pats tell us locals say that every winter and it’s always this long and this cold.

After Danny’s last final we took the bus into Prague, got off the train and Danny said; “This is amazing, I don’t feel guilty for being here, for the first time I don’t feel like I should be studying or something.” It was a great day. Most of the students took off to travel right after their finals but we decided to stay a few days to explore the city, and are so glad we did because the weather is a perfect 70 degrees! Enjoy the photos. -A

The roof tops of Prague are something to see before you die. It is so romantic and looks like something out of a movie. Now that spring is here the city has come alive and it really feels magical. We are having a blast and wishing you were all here to share this with us!

Hi all,

I took my last final today!! Andrea and Connor made me a big sign and put it on the door for when I came home. It feels really nice to have another semester behind me.

Last Saturday we took a little study break and played touch football. I was very impressive and we had a blast! Threw lots of TDs as I ended up quarterbacking for both teams. Here is a photo of Connor crying when he had to take a break and let the big boys play for a while, poor guy!

Tonight we are having a big farewell dinner in Prague. It should be a nice send off. Now we just have to figure out how to get all our stuff back to the states without losing it in our travels! We are giving away stuff like crazy and lightening the load.

Morning…
We had a fabulous Easter. We awoke early in the morning to “the Easter bunny
came!” Then Connor hunted for eggs. The day before he was full of questions,
“Mom, is there a Czech and an American Easter bunny? How does the bunny get
through the door? Is their lots of Easter bunnies etc.” So when Connor found
the Easter candy in the closet the day before Easter we decided that the Czech Easter bunny is different from the American bunny. Here you have to layout the candy and eggs and then he comes and hides them all. It worked great! Oh yah, and because Czechs don’t do Easter baskets, neither does the Czech Easter bunny, so that was a new one for us. Connor did however get to find lots of Kinder-Surprise Eggs, his favorite thing in the whole world. They are chocolate eggs with toys inside for kids to build, almost like little lego sets. We could not find food coloring here, so we found out that purple Triaminic cough medicine dyes eggs (don’t eat the eggs). Mostly we colored the eggs with markers and crayons.

Church…
Church was great. I love our meetings. If I have not mentioned it before, the
whole service is in Czech and then they translate it into English for us through headsets. The Czech people in our ward are so kind.
Communicating is difficult, but sign language goes far. Just knowing a few
words really helps break down barriers. There is an American couple in our ward
who is working in Prague and they sang a duet for Easter. When they got up
everyone just assumed they would sing in English but they sang the whole song
in Czech. Everyone was so moved, I don’t think there was a dry eye. I’m sure it
must have been very difficult to learn all three verses of this song (Czech is
really hard to learn), but it was so beautiful. Danny was the closing spea
and he did such a good job. This was his first time giving a talk using a
translator (which can be kind of tricky) but I thought his talk was wonderful
and perfect for Easter.

Great Friends… We have made friends with a group of ex-pats here in our ward that have made us feel so welcome. We get together for play dates with the kids and get together often for dinner.
Easter…. The Glenns one of the invited the Americans in the ward over for Easter dinner, it was the best!

I’m not a huge meat person, but when you have not had an American meal for 90
days a grilled hamburger is really, really good. They staged an
egg hunt in the back yard for the kids. We all had a blast!

In attendance at Easter Dinner:
The Glenns: Rich and Holly, kids - Anna and Ellie- The Glenns are in Prague working for the US Embassy. They have been wonderful, always setting up playgroups on Fridays so Connor has someone to play with and opening their house to us at any time. They have given us so much, but most of all friendship and we are so grateful!

The Wickers: Nathan and Morgan, kids - Martin and Veronica, -The Martins are an Expat family here on assignment with a US company building a factory outside of Prague. The Wickers just had a new baby, and are a really fun family to get to know. They have all kinds of fun stories to tell. Nathan has a story about getting kidnapped in Mexico that made me decide Danny will never work in Mexico, hence the reason I now want him to start learning Chinese.

The Hmciriks: Cory and Rachelle, kids - Juliana, Joseph and one on the way – The Hmciriks came here about four years ago after BYU. Corey has been working with a corporate real estate company, and he is heading back to the states to start his MBA at Chicago in the fall. I remember one rainy night Cory was in America interviewing for MBA school and Danny was studying all night long so Rachelle and I hung out and took the kids to McDonalds. I had so much fun, and remember thinking how much I had in common with Rachelle. We talked about everything and because instant friends. We hope to see them in Chicago.

The Marchants- Christian and Jenny, kids - Emma, and new baby - The Marchants are usually at the American parties (most likely hosting them ) but missed Easter dinner because they just flew back to the states to have their new baby.)
Congratulations Marchants! The Marchants have been in Prague for about six months and work for the US embassy.

We have made friendships here that will last a lifetime, we will miss you!

Boy, things have been nuts here for the last week. Lots of stuff going on as I get ready for finals. We did our big Disney presentation and it went really well. Andrea came and watched and she said that she was proud of me, so that is the most important thing! We also turned in the 20 page paper to go along with it—-We got an “A” on it!!!! ( Well, we don’t actually know yet, but like I am going to post any other grade on the blog after all the help everybody gave me!) Sadly, a park visitor just died on Mission Space a day after we talked about DisneyWorld being such a great vacation resort.

On another note, there is this really good Chinese restaurant here in our little town that makes really good food. The Chinese T-Birds say that it rivals the best restaurants they have ever eaten at. The owner has a 5-year-old boy and they invited Connor to come play the other day. They had a great time and then invited us back to the restaurant to have dinner. They are our new best friends now!

Well, we are going to see if the Easter Bunny can find us here in Celokovice. I am speaking in Church on Sunday and am very excited to speak on such a special day.

Love to all,
Danny

PS..another new blog under this one

Connor had a Primary activity today and it was my day off (really I was not feeling well,) so Danny took Connor into Prague to meet up at the church and they had a great day.

The kids put together scripture power bags, made pizzas, learned the apostles’ names and had a fun time. Danny enjoyed watching the Czech and English kids play, mingle, and communicate together. I take Connor to a Czech play group while Danny is in school, so I get to see this more than Danny does.

In primary Connor is learning how to sing “follow the prophet” in Czech. One Sunday Connor was getting frustrated and said, “I don’t want to sing in Czech any more,” so one of the teachers came over and was sitting by him to try and help him along and encourage him to sing. The teacher told him, “let’s keep practicing, then you can sing it for your dad and he will be so proud of you”. Connor thought about it for a while, then agreed and started singing again. Soon after he stopped singing and turned to the teacher and said, “well it doesn’t matter if I sing it to my Dad because he does not understand Czech either.”

The Czech and English teachers started laughing, they thought it was pretty funny. They also told me this one. One of the first Sundays that we got there it was Juliana’s birthday (one of Connor’s friends). In primary they were trying to guess who’s birthday it was here is what happened:

Teacher: Someones birthday was last week, can we guess who’s it was? This person has long brown hair.
Connor: (Hand up in air) I know!
Teacher: You do?? Already?
Connor: Yes, Jesus!

I guess with all the snow around here Connor thought it was Christmas time, again!!

Love you all-Andrea

A million thanks to Rachel and Aaron, Devin, and Mom for your help with my project. You guys all gave me different ‘creatives’ (that’s ad speak for the stuff you sent me) that will work perfectly for our project. My group is amazed at all of the good stuff we have to work with! Rachel and Aaron really went above and beyond scanning over 30 different things for me! Mom showed off her high-tech prowess and devotion to her favorite son by finding ads, scanning them, e-mailing them, and then skyping me to make sure I got them. And Devin, on th eve of becoming a new father, scored me a perfect promotional piece. Now I call that blog power, and a great family! Thanks guys.

Andrea and Connor jumped a train early this morning on their way to Salsberg, where the Sound of Music was filmed. I am pretty sure they have snow covered hills awaiting them instead of grass covered hills, but hopefully Andrea will sing a little anyway!

Hi guys,

I’m working on a major marketing project and my group has decided on Disney. Does anybody have any Disney magazine ads or even a picture of a billboard you could e-mail me? (I realize this might take a scan or a quick picture…) I really need one and they don’t seem to do a lot of print advertising in the Czech Republic! Fallbrook may not have a whole lot to offer either…

Thanks!

This is Danny, writing what Andrea tells me to!

This was a solid weekend of knocking out some homework, with the right amount of play time added. As very few people will be interested in my progress with Economic Value Added and my research about Telecom regulation in the European Union, I will focus on the lighter sides of the weekend! Saturday we took the train to the subway to get to a big mall in Cerny Most. If you drive, it would only take about 10 mintues, but there really isn’t a direct public transportation solution. Anyway, we took Connor to see The Pink Panther with Steve Martin (Steve was in the movie, he didn’t come with us) because it was the only movie playing that was suitable for a five-year old. Slapstick humor, Connor loved it. The theaters are really nice and most of the movies are played in English with Czech subtitles. By the way, popcorn does not have melted butter on it, but kind of a powdery butter stuff.

After the movie, we went over to IKEA and checked Connor into the play area while we went upstairs and I had swedish meatballs, Andrea the Salmon. Gotta love those meatballs! We really should have been doing this more often as it is a free babysitter and we get a little break/date! While we were checking Connor back out, I heard a mother speaking to her daughter and Spanish so I asked them where they were from. They are from Mexico City and the husband is in Medical school at Charles University. They spoke perfect English as well, so Andrea is going to meet up with Claudia this week to let the kids play. It is just cool how many neat people we have met and there seems to be an instant connection when you have kids and are living in another country.

Sunday morning I did some more homework and then we went on a walk down by the river. (They were broadcasting delayed General Conference at Church, so we decided to catch it online instead of going into Prague.) The river is flooding its banks and a lot of the houses that border the river are under water. It was seriously the thing to do in town, as there were about 250 other people walking down to check it out. People were taking pictures of other people sandbagging their homes. That is one thing about the Czechs, they don’t seem very willing to jump in and lend a hand when they don’t have to. (i.e. The subway full of people who watched me have my pocket picked without saying a word.)

Then tonight we were invited to dinner with 4 people living here in the CMC from India. They are really nice and dinner was terrific. I’m not sure how to explain this, but the relation is brother and sister and then another brother and his sister. We wish we would have gotten to know them sooner as Joseph gave Andrea seasons 1 -10 of Friends and invited Connor to come back and watch Muppets and Tom and Jerry. Joseph is a fan of cartoons from the seventies. Three of them work at DHL in Prague and have just finished MBAs. It is quite possible that we have made more friends living in Prague for 4 monhs then 4 years of living in Utah! Now, back to the grind; finals are just 3 weeks away!