Staff Survival

The past few days have been hectic, but overall pretty awesome.  Tuesday I didn't make it out to the school, only part way before realizing the bus out the the school doesn't run very regularly in the middle of the day and heading back to the city.  I wandered more, stumbled upon a few restaurants I'd like to try and yet another beer garden.  Overall, Tuesday was just relaxing.

Wednesday I ran more errands (they are wrapping up, I promise!) and met with the school's consultant for my visa.  While meeting with her, I met one of the other new teachers at the school, a guy named Will from New Hampshire who is a few years older and has been teaching for several years (just not here in Prague).  After getting our visa paperwork handled, we headed to Riegrovy Sady to the beer garden for the views and a beer.  I tried a dark beer called Kozol which I actually really enjoyed.  After a beer, Will and I had dinner before splitting off to head home and prepare for Thursday/Friday: Staff Survival for school staff.

The entire school staff met up at 9:30 at Hlavni Nadrazi, the main train station in Prague.  After some quick introductions and way too many names, we headed to our train to Zdice, a small town about an hour south west of Prague.  Once there, we put our sleeping bags and mats in the car that would meet us part way up the trail and we headed off on a roughly 4 mile hike.  The hike was steeper than most of us were expecting, and while most people had backpacks... I'm absurd and forgot to pack one so I had a tiny duffle with a cross body strap (not at all ideal for a hike).  Still, the scenery was beautiful and it was a really warm, nice morning.  After 4 miles, we took a break to do "team building."  This consisted of breaking the 30 or so people into 4 groups of 7-8 and sending us to do various tasks (a ropes course, a few games, and charades of literally translated Czech and English sayings (It's raining cats and dogs is an example of and English one and we had to act out one to the Czechs on our team that, when translated literally was, "Stags fighting in a rut").  It was fun and my co-teacher (that I'll teach with all day everyday) and both of my bosses were in my group... so far I think I'll really like everyone.

Next, we headed off for lunch.  It was around 2PM by now, and while it was probably only a bit over a mile to the tiny village and restaurant, it felt like ages.  For lunch, I had plain grilled chicken and plain boiled potatoes.  Safe for me to eat, but SO bland.  Still, it was good food and filling, so that was good. After lunch, we hiked another 1/2 mile or so and then played more games/did more team building.  This time it was things like navigating through strings put up almost like a spider web without touching the string, and building a tent as a team while everyone was blind folded.  These were fun, but everyone was a bit sleepy from lunch so it wasn't as wild as the earlier games were.  After these games, we were each told to run to right if we liked red and to the left if we preferred yellow.  It turns out there are multiple paths up to the castle... one is safe for cars... a smooth trail that is rolling hills, flat and easy.  The other, is a steep 3 mile hike up a rocky path that is narrow and not so well established.  Naturally, I went to the yellow side and naturally, we were assigned the steep path.

The hike was WAY harder than I anticipated.  Remember, I am still lugging a duffle bag, not even a backpack (which is now also holding 2 liters of water that we each had to carry a bottle of) and I'm not in the best shape.  Still, the path was gorgeous and we definitely got the better views by hiking straight up and over the hill to Tocnik Castle (or the ruins of Tocnik Castle) where we'd be staying the night.  The castle is old, but not incredibly so for a castle.  It was built in 1300s when King Wenceslas IV (King Vaclav IV to the Czechs) decided to build it above his main castle (Zebrak) as a more strategic location.

Once to the castle, we unloaded the mats/sleeping bags and then explored.  I hate to reference Game of Thrones (again... I know... I am such a nerd) but the old castle made me imagine some of the castles from the books.  There is just so much history there and it was incredible to see.  After some exploring we lit a campfire, cooked dinner, and sat around talking, singing, drinking beer/wine, and getting to know each other.  There are lots of new, young teachers and there are a few of us that seem to get along quite well, including another new kindergarten teacher, Jena, who is Scottish.

When it finally got to be 1 or so, Jena and I decided to head to sleep.  We picked a nice open area, and since it was open air camping (no tent) we just spread our mats and bags and laid under the stars.  The sky is SO clear and I saw multiple shooting stars... it was just surreal to be sleeping in the walls of a medieval castle with no roof with a crystal clear sky above.  After some "get to know you" talking and laughing, Jana and I finally drifted off to sleep.  I was cold, but sleeping decently, until around 3:15AM when the rain started.  It took me a minute to wake up enough to register what what happening, and that I may need to move... then I had to get on my tennis shoes, grab my duffel, sleeping bag and mat, and make a mad dash for the covered/indoor part of the castle (away from leaks and hopefully without bats and spiders).  Keep in mind that it's pitch black and I don't really know where I'm going.  By the time I found a dry place, I was soaked, as was my sleeping bag.  I had a change of clothes and dried my mat off, but it was a cold rest of the night.

Anyway, once morning finally rolled around, we had breakfast and then loaded up the van with sleeping bags and mats and headed back to a different (closer) town to a train station back to Prague.  The hike was supposed to be 1.5-2 miles and we gave ourselves well over an hour to get there.... turns out the train station was more like 5 miles.  We realized this about 30 minutes before our train departed so one of the ladies who drove supplies up came in her car to pick us up, 8 at a time, to try to ferry all 30 of us to the train station before the train left.  Miraculously, we made it.

It was an awesome trip and a fabulous bonding experience, but my day didn't stop when we got back to Prague.  As soon as we arrived in the city I had to head out to a far metro stop (next to last stop on the outskirts of the city) to pick up a document for my visa.  Then, I met with a friend of a friend of a friend who is only in town for another week but who offered so show me a few cute places.  She pointed out several places that I can't wait to try and we ended up having desserts at a little place called Cafe Lourve (wrong country, I know).

I've been relaxing since then, but in about 20 minutes I'm off to a show that one of the teachers is playing at an expats cafe.  This weekend should be full of more fun adventures- I already have been making plans!  I'll keep everyone posted.

For photos of the camping adventure you can see the facebook album by copying and pasting this link into your address bar (or just visiting my most recent album on facebook): http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3602145648536.2134286.1120410094&type=1&l=e4e5f2c52e