The new normal

This week has been a bit of a blur! It was my first week at work, so that's been a bit of an adjustment, but we're getting in the swing of things.

I won't spend much time talking about work, but I did want to show a picture of lunch at the Canteen. It's dumplings (which look a whole lot like bread, but are very thick and heavy), a chunk of turkey and a red sauce that was very tomato-y. It comes with unlimited soup, salad and main dish, all for $2.50. If I don't start bringing my lunch, I'm sure to gain the freshman 15 all over again...

Lunch! They actually tried to give me
5 dumplings and 3 scoops of sauce,
but I stopped them at 3 and 1. 

On Wednesday I traveled to Kraków, Poland, which was my first trip to Poland. Kraków was incredibly beautiful with nice people and cheap food / drinks. I guess it's a huge stag party destination from the UK. On a Thursday night we saw 4 different sets of drunken bachelors. I didn't have a lot of time to explore, but we did make it to dinner in the main square one night and I snapped some photos.

This beautiful building is apparently a coin museum

Main square

Tons of outdoor seating since the weather is getting nicer

I'm not Catholic, but pretty sure this is a pope :)

This church has 100's of candles lit outside

The airport was literally in a garage (and I'm pretty
sure I almost got arrested by the Polish police
who thought I was taking a picture of them when I was
trying to get the garage doors! Yikes. 

While I was gone, Don and the kids tried out some brick oven pizza at a different restaurant not far from our house. 

Holden napping at dinner

Burke finishing it up!

Brick oven

When I got home on Friday the weather was beautiful so we walked to another restaurant near our house. This one had a great selection of Czech dishes, but also all sorts of other things, like quesadillas and BBQ ribs. They also had a kids corner, which we're finding is pretty common and so convenient. A glass of wine was just under $1!

Playing in the kids corner

BBQ ribs, cold sauerkraut salad, baked potato

Burke had Halušky (she's addicted)

Grilled chicken with a blue cheese sauce. So good!!

This weekend was jam packed! We got up early Saturday morning and hit up the Farmers' Market for breakfast (this time I remembered to take some pictures!). We had crepes (nutella for the kids, ham & cheese for us - it was probably the best breakfast I've ever had...). We also snacked on some quiche and banana bread before buying the best blue cheese ever. Seriously. I'm probably going to have dreams about it - it's that good.

Very excited to take a bus

Arriving at the Farmers' Market

Crepe face

View of the Farmers' Market

From the Farmers' Market we hopped a bus to the school's annual Easter Egg Hunt, which was at a park a few kilometers away (see how I'm so European now?!?). It was a really fun event with teachers hidden throughout the woods handing out candy. After the hunt there was a really nice BBQ with sausage, hamburgers, juice and of course, beer.

Cooleys on a bench waiting for the bus

And, they're off! Running through the
woods looking for bunnies / candy

Found some!

Burke wouldn't go anywhere near
anyone in a costume, but here's Holden :)

Don spotted a store with American flags, so we stopped in after the hunt and found (you won't believe this) Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Sauce. All is right in the world again. Stuff there is super expensive, but it was nice to buy some familiar brands like Kraft Mac & Cheese and Hershey's Syrup. 

After a packed morning / afternoon, everyone was exhausted, so we "had" to take an afternoon nap, but got up in time to head to Old Town and check out the Easter Markets. It was so cool! Very similar to the Christmas Markets that we saw during our house hunting trip last December. Lots of vendors selling all sorts of crafts and great food at great prices.

Easter Markets in Old Town

The kids and their buddy Jake

Hot wine!

A neat, brightly colored bridge in the square

Some Cooleys on the bridge (look closely!)

The girls

All the trees were decorated

Grilled cheese... literally! They actually put pieces of cheese
on the grill.

They both wanted "blue" ice cream

First cone ever!

Hugging it out in front of some horses

This is even better than the metro...

Next time we are definitely going disco dancing

Today we woke up early to go to church at the International Church of Prague: http://www.icprague.cz/. We decided to drive there because it would take about 45 minutes and a bunch of metro / bus connections to get there. Holy moly. That was an adventure. At one point we turned onto the tram line instead of the road and almost drove into a ditch before throwing it into reverse and evading certain death. 

The service was really nice, but quite different than what we're used to. Probably the biggest adjustment was that the kids stay in the service for the first 30 - 45 minutes before being dismissed to Sunday school for the next hour. If you know our kids, then you can imagine how that went. Pretty much a disaster. On the bright side, since the service they've been talking about the fact that Jesus is in their hearts non-stop, so apparently they got something out of it (even though Don and I couldn't hear a thing while they were with us :)

After church we went with some new friends from church to a really cool restaurant. It was downstairs in what looked a lot like a cave and had hieroglyphs on the wall. The food was sooooo good. But, the kids were exhausted and started acting up, so we came home and "had" to take another nap. Rough life. 

The stairs down to the restaurant

Burke below an elephant

Overall, a great week! Our air shipment is estimated to arrive in about a week, so maybe you'll even see us in some different clothes in a future blog :)

A family photo at the Easter Egg Hunt.