My first Club Beyond Service Project definitely convinced me I want more!! While the awfully long bus certainly left something to be desired, even it was not all that horrible with the great people on board. Here you can see Ryan, Stephanie and Mark "enjoying" the ride. That is NOT 5 O' Clock shadow on Ryan and Mark has the ability to sleep anywhere, anytime.
We did all kinds of work in the Czech Republic from teaching English, playing with preschoolers and tearing out bushes, to running a carnival for about 2000 schoolkids!
This little girl was at the preschool, the kids were so cute and I had no idea I would need so many games to fill 1 and 1/2 hours of playtime! We did ring around the rosy, parachute play with balls and duck, duck, goose. The kids showed us a version of duck duck goose they play with a little stick. In the Czech Republic, during Easter, the boy goes around with a braided switch and hits the girl. If the girl likes him she gives him a sweet treat, like chocolate or candy, if the girl doesn't like him she throws cold water on him!! The kids would carry the switch around and lightly hit another kid, then chase them around. Also, they gave us cake and tea while they played a little chick game where the teacher is the momma hen and has to hunt for her little chicks:)
The second photo is at a castle we visited, Stephanee and Casey are "confessing" to Paul, the most awesome sound guy in the whole world!!
After the preschool we spent some time on ESL classes with 15 year olds. It is actually quite difficult to get teenagers to talk, no matter what country they are from. We had an interesting time with one of our translators who spoke better Germany than English so I had to translate English to German so she could translate it to Czech! Bethany, Casey, Stephanee and Erika did an awesome job even though it was well outside their comfort zone.
On one day we did a short version of our normal "club" night, the picture on the left is Chris, Caleb and Will demonstrating the proper stance for Hunter, Bear, Ninja. On our last day we were mostly outside and in the church that sponsored us. In the right picture Bethany and Casey are carrying away sticks from the bush from hell we pulled out of the ground. The pic on the bottom is Pam and Erin's group with Catherine, Jillian, Ari and Sierra working their tails off at the Carnival.
All in all the trip was amazing, exhausting, rewarding and fulfilling at the same time. I will do another post of just some more pictures later, but you can tell from these that we had a blast!
