Prague, Bold Northerners, and Christmas Carols

Train riding. Dierks Bentley sings a song about this and, trust me, it's not nearly as glamorous, nostalgic, or romantic as he makes it out to be. But, it got the job done! And notice the bottle of Dr. Pepper. Amber knew it was going to be a loooong trip, so she brought some "comfort food".

Do you know who this is?? It's King Wenceslas....you know, "Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen..."! Imagine my surprise to find out that this was a real guy! And he was apparently really a good king. Way to go, King Wenc!

There was no snow, but it was brisk walking through Prague!

A view from one of the bridges. Of course, a photo doesNOT do this city justice.

At the Prague Castle, there is a changing of the guard every hour, which we got to see. It was pretty impressive. As we were leaving the castle, someone wanted to get a picture of a few of us standing next to one of the guards. A few were hesitant and said "Jess, you go do it...you're from the north." What?? Apparently, southerners (which pretty much qualifies EVERYONE I work with) think that we northerners are bold, blunt, and will do anything! Well, I didn't want to let them down, so I'll try to get ahold of that picture =)

Well, I am back from Prague and, in a word, it was: WONDERFUL! Seriously, it was great. We all survived the looooong train ride (we left our flat at 4:30 and arrived in Prague around 6 that night!) and thankfully made the connection we needed to make in Warsaw. Actually, one of the best parts of the trip was the scenery in the south of Poland and into Czech Republic. It was beautiful and it reminded me--now don't laugh--of the ride down to Athens, Ohio. Yes, I was riding a train through Europe and it reminded me of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It was beautiful to see, although I had hoped for a little snow. Oh well!
The week in Prague was great. We had a church service together on Sunday morning, then had the afternoon and evening free to explore. We got to see some of the sights, eat some American type food, then walked back over the Charles Bridge in the dark, seeing the river lit up. It was beautiful!

Throughout the week, we spent the days in meetings hearing from several different speakers, and it was great. It was refreshing, refocusing, and definitely encouraging. It was also awesome to hear about how God is working through ordinary people like us all over this region. I made some new friends and connected with some old friends. Then, at night, we were free to go out and eat (there are some WONDERFUL restaurants in Prague!) and hang out together. I loved getting to hang out with some of my friends from training and talk, laugh, and talk some more.

On Thursday morning we headed out of Prague and spent the night in Warsaw to take care of some VISA things at the embassy on Friday. So, technically, you could say I was in America for a few minutes on Friday! I broke into a little rendition of "God Bless the USA" in honor of the visit. In fact, now that I think about it, even though I was in an even more foreign country than Poland (to me at least), it felt more like America! There were Americans and english speakers EVERYWHERE. And I don't just mean the Americans I was with at the conference. At one point, we were in a bagel restaurant and literally everyone sitting around us was American. It was really weird. Then, on Thursday night, Amber, Patsy, and I went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Warsaw for dinner, which is about as American as you can get in Warsaw. I guess we were all needing a little slice of America this past week =)