The week at a glance...and a volunteering nightmare!

Hello everyone, so I am going to do a quick update, because honestly, other than the volunteering escapade, the week went by without a hitch. It went by really quick in fact, but that is probably because I have been looking forward to tomorrow since Molly arrives! Anyway, I had class on Monday and Tuesday like usual, but the good news is that I have officially been accepted into both of those classes! I was still on the waiting list for them at the beginning of the week, but now I have all the classes that I wanted. So thank you for your prayers!! Tuesday night, I went to home group again, but I met up beforehand with a girl that I had met on Sunday at church who said she wanted to go. So I offered to kind of "go" with her. Even though we really just met outside of the apartment. I actually had a really good time there. I have gotten to know one of the members whose name is Gabriella, or Gabby. She is about 30 I would say, and her past is chalked full of spiritual battles and turmoil. She used to be into the occult before Christ redeemed her. She is Czech but speaks pretty good English. It was just really cool, because we were talking about one of the boys she is working with who is exhibiting very destructive behavior, and when I was offering her some encouragement, she (and this is unheard of for Czech people) asked if she could give me a hug! I was like, "of course, you never have to ask for a hug!" And a few other things happened, but long story short I really felt like we bonded. It was a great experience.

Wednesday I didn't have class because we only meet every other week, so I had the morning off, but I was planning on going to my first volunteering assignment that afternoon. I met up with two other girls who were going to the same place I was, and we left around 3 pm. We knew it was going to be a bit of a commute to the orphan house where we were going, so we left about an hour before we needed to. It ended up being about a 50 minute commute, and we were just barely within the town limits of Prague when we reached our destination. However, we were about an hour early. So we wasted some time around walking around the town, and then headed back to the bus stop where we were supposed to meet with the girl who would take us to the house. We were told that we would be working one-on one with one of the kids, helping them with their English assignments from school, and helping them to use English in conversation. However, I quickly found out that this was not accurate. What actually happened in a nutshell was that I ended up working with about 2-6 kids, as they were in and out the whole time. Also, the caretakers for the children had been informed that we would speak fluent Czech, so no one in the whole house spoke English. In addition, instead of the 1 hour commitment that they had told us, we ended up being there for two and half hours. The entire thing lasted about 6 hours from start to finish. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and I don't think that I will be returning. We had one week to decide whether or not to sign the contract, and I don't think that I will be committing my time to this during the semester. I had really wanted volunteering to work out, but I just don't think I can handle that on top of everything else that I have on my plate being in Prague. Hopefully, they will be able to find someone to take my place without too much work.

Today I have spent most of the day preparing for Molly's arrival tomorrow. I just finished planning our one night trip to Karlovy Vary, one the most famous spa towns in the Czech Republic. The whole trip, accommodations and travel, cost only about $26 dollars a person. Not bad at all! I am going to take Molly to a ton of popular tourist sites that I haven't even been to yet, so I am sure that the next post will be stuffed full of information! So get excited!