Buttermageddon 2017

It is truly a desperate hour. It's disappearing off of shelves faster than it can be replaced. Prices are skyrocketing. People are panicking. Well, mildly complaining anyway. It's nowhere to be found at a reasonable rate. What is it? It's butter. Golden, delicious butter. 

There is a nation wide butter shortage here in Czech Republic. Head to your local Billa and prepare to be disappointed. Enter your local Albert and be downcast. You'll be greeted with an empty shelf and a sign that reads: 

As a civilized society, what are we expected to do? Use margarine? Why don't we just go back to living in caves and communicating in grunts and gestures. 

Luckily the Czech spirit has yet to be crushed, choosing to channel their outrage in memes: 

("Cerstve Maslo" means fresh butter.)

The next few weeks here will be taxing on all of us. I feel confident in our ability to persevere though. Buttermageddon 2017 will not keep us from living our lives. 

In times of crisis, heroes rise. This time, they'll be butter flavored. 


Next Week: A local legend or two!

Groceries and Culture

I remember going to the grocery store shortly after we arrived here in 2012. It was a necessary evil but I’m not sure going to the grocery store in a new country with a major case of jetlag is the best idea. We spent approximately two hours perusing the aisles and maybe bought two bags worth of stuff. Thankfully, this time around was much smoother.

I have found that going to the grocery store is one of the best ways to learn about a new culture. One can quickly come to a pretty accurate conclusion about the do’s and don’ts of a new country and what is most important to the people of that country, (regarding food anyway) within minutes of entering a grocery store. Here are some of the interesting things I have learned while grocery shopping in CZ.

Even the small shops have a decent selection
of fruits and vegetables. Mushrooms are a staple in this country.

In CZ and much of Europe it is commonplace to grab a shopping basket on the way into the grocery store. These can be found in some grocery stores in the U.S. as well but in my experience they are rarely used. I wouldn’t say that grabbing a basket is required here, but the majority of people seem to follow this unspoken rule. Having said that, depending on what part of town you might find yourself in the rules seem to change. For example, in one part of town if I choose not to grab a basket because I only need to pick up an item or two, I may be followed around the store by a security guard the whole time, while in other stores, basket or not, no one seems to care. Rule of thumb: when in doubt, look around and copy the locals. Speaking of security, I’m sure there are security guards in many grocery stores around the U.S. but I never really noticed them. Here there are security guards posted in just about every store, because they don’t have security cameras everywhere.

Now, on shopping trips where it is necessary to buy a bit more I can always use a cart instead of a basket. However, any store that offers a shopping cart, whether it’s the larger chain or the smaller local grocery, you will be required to insert a coin into the shopping cart, which will release the chain that binds all the carts together before your are able to actually use the cart. This system seems to work rather well in preventing people from either stealing carts or leaving them all over the parking lot.

Grocery store across from David's school

Buying in bulk is not really a thing here. I’m sure some people do it but I would venture to guess it would be mostly expats. The only bulk buys I’ve seen from locals are water, boxed milk, and beer. In fact, you can actually buy toilet paper by the roll in most stores. For us, buying large quantities isn’t practical anyway for a few reasons. The first issue being that refrigerators in Europe are half the size of those in the U.S. It can sometimes be challenging to fit even a week’s worth of items into our little fridge. Secondly, even if we could fit a large amount of items into the fridge we would be seriously challenged to actually get them home. Our choices of grocery stores require either a ten-minute walk one-way or hopping on a bus for about 15 minutes one way. In other words, there is only so much we can carry at once. Lastly, items tend to spoil here much quicker than in the U.S., which means planning meals for more than a few days at a time really isn’t possible.

Small shops often owned by Vietnamese immigrants

Some of the major differences in grocery shopping here vs. the U.S. occur during checkout. I have found that in the U.S. checkout workers often ask personal questions, comment on something you’ve bought, interact with children in line, or in general make some kind of small talk even if they don’t know you. Perfect strangers may strike up a conversation while waiting in a long line in the U.S. This is quite unlikely in CZ. Small talk is not really even a thing here and store checkout is as speedy as possible. In fact, it should be a new Olympic Event, keeping up with the scanned items that are flung your way as you try to place them in an organized manner in your bags. Oh yes, baggers don’t exist here either. You are required to bag your own items and you can either bring your own personal bags with you to do so, or you can purchase bags at checkout because they won’t be free.

Side note: I’ve decided to try one new thing every time I go to the store even if I don’t know what it is. This is a fun way to explore new food options!

What's The Point?

"There are a few of us here." 

That phrase gave me goosebumps today. It was a moment that I think will stick with me for a while. A student approached me and asked me if I have ever heard of a local Christian organization in town. We talked for a bit and I asked her if she was a believer. 

"Yes. There are a few of us here." 

What an uplifting statement. When I wrote the last blog I mentioned that I would be talking about why we're here. This is why. We're here to offer hope to anyone who wants to find it in Christ. We celebrate with those who have already found it. And for those who aren't interested, we're here for them as well, to be a blessing to them any way we can. 

I am excited for what we're doing here. From the day to day ridiculousness to the harsh reality of the anti-trafficking movement, I can't wait to share more stories with you. 

Next week: Grocery store shenanigans!

Lines

You know how when you're little and you're in elementary school and you have to walk in lines everywhere? Somehow that sticks with you and you instinctively know how to stand behind a person and wait your turn. That didn't catch on here. 

When we were in Vienna, we walked into the embassy for our appointment. The room had one small window to receive applicants. On the floor by the window was a large box made of black and yellow caution tape, denoting where the applicant  would stand while being attended to. 

There was one woman at the window. To the far right of that window was a section of tables that had one man sitting there playing with his phone. I lined up behind the woman. I stood there for a minute or two. Tonya had gone to sit at the tables to wait. I perceived that the man who was sitting there was looking at me. Tonya said, "I think he may be next in line." She was correct. Although not in line, he was next in line. So I sat down to wait, figuring this was the custom of how to wait in line. 

As I sat there, just outside of the box on the floor, another person came in. It was actually two people, a younger woman and an older woman. They sat down beside us. I began to think we were on the right track. Then they got up to get in line. "Oh we're actually next," I said, or something like that. They had a look on their faces like, "Well, you weren't in line." What was happening? Mercifully, the guy at the counter had something wrong with his paperwork so he was called to the back. I quickly got up and leapt into the caution square on the floor. My place in line was secured. 

Later that day we found a large assembly of food trucks that had gathered in museum quarter. We found something that looked good and we headed to get in line. There was no line. There was a group of people that were seven wide and four deep. The worker kept saying, "Once you have ordered please move to this side." He was gesturing to the left side of the food truck. Everyone nodded and continued to order and not move at all. He probably made the same announcement twelve times. Then he would have trays of food and call out the order and no one would step forward to get it. Who had ordered it? Of the 489,000 people standing in what can only be described as a misshapen horde of madness, no one moved. I began to wonder if they even knew why they were standing there. Perhaps hunger had won. Perhaps it was a famine flash mob. No one moved. 

Then the time came to head home to Prague. As we tried to enter the subway train, people moved so slowly that we nearly did not get on in time. Perhaps they were survivors of the food truck Hunger Games from earlier, because they just stood there when the door opened. We had to literally push people on the train to get on it before it left us. Don't know why we had to, considering the train was nearly empty. The door opens and people enter the train. That's usually how it works. This time, it was the door opens and nothing happens. 

Then there was the bus. Oh the bus. They are very large, bright yellow buses that have only one door for passengers to enter that is in the middle of the bus. Another door opens to the right of the passenger door to load luggage. Once again, we have the bus attendant pleading with the group to place the luggage on one side and then move to the other. Once again, no one moved. We all just stood there in this international bottleneck, moving precisely nowhere.

Once we were on the bus we drove pretty uninterrupted to the town of Brno. We stopped to unload and reload passengers. A lady at the back of the bus got off and then back on and then off again. I guess she was confused with where we were. There were two stops on this trip: Brno and then Prague. They look nothing alike. 

Finally, we were pulled over by police just outside of Prague because there was a wreck that blocked the highway. We were in a fairly large parking lot with a McDonald's. We went in to get a drink, but all I could see was another line...

Above: The police and our bus. Also a guy we called Italian Ryan Gosling. 

Next week: What exactly are we even doing here? 

Visa Update

Sometimes, things just work out. 

To get our visa, we had to visit a Czech Embassy in another country. We had been working with this company that arranges these things and they sent us to Vienna. Believe it or not, this was less complicated than going to D.C. to get it done. 

We submitted the papers and everything went smoothly! We will be receiving the visa in the standard wait time. What a wonderful blessing that was today! We'll take that win. Thanks very much to everyone that prayed for us. 

Below is a picture of the Czech Embassy in Vienna.

Now the ride home, on the other hand, was a bit of a mess...

More on that next week in a blog entitled, "No one knows how to stand in line here."

Love and Basketball

You guys ever see that movie called Sophie's Choice? Well it's about a woman who has to make an impossible choice between two things she loves dearly. That's where we were at the end of January. (Apologies to Omar Epps, for stealing the title to his year 2000 classic of the same name.)

The last basketball season we had was nothing short of a dream season. We very nearly were conference champions and even won a playoff game in the state playoffs. There was certainly more to it than that, but I've delved into that in other formats. 

So we were faced with this decision: how do you know when to leave something you love to go do something you love? 

It sounds like a win-win doesn't it? Stay and do what you love or leave and do what you love. It's not as simple as that though. Since we began living this way, it seems like there is always someone or something that we are leaving behind. We're always stepping in and out of people's stories. I feel like I should get a tattoo of a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and write the phrase "my life" under it. (Probably on my lower back, you know, some place special and classy.)

So how did we make this choice? Well, as you can see from the last post, once we began to look into it, the choice got made pretty quickly. Basically, we decided to put our "yes" on the table. This is a term our pastor uses often, meaning that we would be open to staying or going. We talked, we prayed, we sought the council of friends and family, and this is where we ended up. 

It was the right choice, for sure. But I will always miss basketball and the sense of family it provided for us. I am glad that it will be in good hands this season. Makes the choice a little less Sophie's, and a little more bearable. 

Next time: The first weeks in Prague!

Reboot, Part Two

With our sites firmly set on London, we began contacting GCI members there to see what our next steps would be. As we made our connections, Prague came up several times in various conversations. What's that old saying? Twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern? We began to see a pattern forming. It may be best to number the events. All of following events happened within about two weeks of each other. 

1. Our contact to find out about getting visas for London was currently living in Prague. 
2. He had a lead on an anti-trafficking effort out of a church in Prague.
3. The church mentioned above was the same one we attended while were living in the city. 
4. The same week, I was contacted by Arabska, the school I worked at in Prague. 
5. She mentioned that there was a job available there for an English teacher. I was intrigued.
6. Tonya was contacted by a student that she had done one on one English lessons with while we were there. This student had not contacted her for months.
7. We reached out to our former regional director about jobs there. She again mentioned the Arabska job and also directed us to the same anti-trafficking that GCI had recommended. 

At this point, we were just kind of stunned. I never thought we'd live in Prague again.  But as we began to pray for guidance, it became clear that Prague was where we were going. 

Now the only thing left for us to do was begin to end again. Ending another tour at Grace meant ending our basketball career again. That was going to hurt. 

Next time: Love and Basketball