Stephen Cuffey

But not my birthday. It was the birthday of a fellow Biology teacher at our school and a frequent member of both English clubs we have associated ourselves with. And so for a present we took a big group picture with an inside joke apparent in it, I do not have it but when I get it I will put it up on the blog and try to explain it to you, although it will doubtlessly lose all of it's humor that way. At least you will be able to see another picture of Ben and me with some students. That is what the pictures from the language classroom are from, preparations for this picture. We then had the school English club over to our flat (apartment) for a couple reasons. First, we had so much food the usual pub would probably not let us in, and second the Czech-Germany Olympic hockey game was played that night and so there would probably be no room for a birthday party anyways. So either way, it turned out to be a very fun afternoon that turned into a fun evening that turned into a fun night before everyone finally left. So success. Ok, that is all for now. More to come later.

From left: Jiri, Lucie, Vlada (hidden), Honza, and Vasek. For Pavla's party. 

Jiri, Vlada, Lucie, Honza, all students of our school. 

Jiri, Vlada, Lucie, and Honza at the party for Pavla's birthday in our flat. 

Celebrating Pavla's (seated in middle) birthday in our flat, with students of the school English club (in this picture is Ondrej on left and Jiri on right).

Martin in the language classroom. 

Vasek in the language classroom. 

Lucie and Jiri in the language classroom. 

A picture of me in the English Kabinet just last week. 

The pictures below are from a few different events. There are pics of Ben and I with some Czechs bowling. This was English club one week ago. The students reserved a time at the bowling alley for Wednesday after school, the usual time for English club. We walked on over to the alley, containing, in my best estimate, two of the four bowling lanes in this town, roughly 50%. And the other two aren't good American style bowling, but bowling with a much smaller ball and a different kind of pins. We had a very good time, this English club focused more on fun than on intense speaking and so was a welcome break for all of us.
Also I have pictures below from this past weekend. Last Sunday was the birthday of Laura, an ESI teacher and friend out in Ostrava, a town on the complete Eastern side of the country. So a group of us caught a train from Prague to Ostrava on Friday night. Laura had no clue we were coming and so was pleasantly (I hope!) surprised when we met them at a random tram stop. In fact we were supposed to meet at a pizza place, but we had missed the stop, so had to backtrack on the tram route and happened to hop onto the tram in which they were arriving. Saturday Zach, Ben and I took the 45 minute train ride to the CZ-Poland border and stepped over the border. Now I can say I have been to Poland even though we didn't spend any more than 2 hours there. But I've got the stamp on my passport and that's all that matters! Right? And that night we went to a ballet and out to a bar to celebrate Laura's birthday. Sunday we hopped on the train heading back west and arrived in Prague mid-afternoon. And it was back to school on Monday. Did you get to visit a different country last weekend?