Here is very brief documentation of this year's Patty-Ellenwood-Hash vacation to Corsica and Germany! I don't have much time because we leave for JV Kids camp tomorrow morning, but I couldn't leave without leaving at least something for my faithful blog-watchers!

For now we'll leave it at just pictures, and you can make up your own stories to them! Eventually I'll tell you about them myself, with even more pictures! (We took about 1400 pictures on this vacation with our camera...I took about 90% of them, so there's lots to choose from!)

I also had a great time taking more artsy pics, so once I get back I'll hopefully post some of my favorites up. For now, enjoy!



























































































































































































































































Till next week! We're off to Croatia for camp!

Plus...a new banner up top next week too!

On July 20th 1990, I finally saw the light of this world! Seventeen years later, I'm still seeing lots of light, and feeling lots of heat! My birthday this year was very hot, just as it was last year, and very unlike the day of my birth, which was quite cold!

Anyway, this year, I really wanted to go see the new Harry Potter movie, in English, not in Czech. Mom found out that it was playing in English at a theater in Brno, so we decided to drive there! The theater ended up being right by the place where I got my guitar last year (on my birthday!) was! So that was cool. On the ride there I made everyone listen to Switchfoot...hehe =)

The movie (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) was really amazing. It's for sure one of my favorite movies now, and not just because it's Harry Potter. They did an amazing job making it still faithful to the books, but unlike the previous ones a well-flowing movie with a great message. If you haven't gotten a chance to see it yet I highly recommend it! We couldn't stop talking about how great it was on our drive back home!

For dinner we went to a mexican restaurant in Frydek-Mistek called La Bodega. After wonderful food, it was time for presents! Actually, only two presents were here at that time, the rest were still in the States! But I would have been very content even if those were my only gifts! So , thank you Caleb very much for the Lord of the Rings 50th Anniversary Edition books! Thank you mom, dad, grandma and bapa for my very awesome Toshiba laptop!!! It'll be a great help this next year in school, besides being useful for many other things! =)














And then some other thank-yous! Thank you Schroeders for the iTunes credit, I've already almost used it all up! =) Thank you Auntie Kristi and the rest of the Patty family for the cookies and the check! Thank you Grandpa and Nana for the check and wonderful card! Thank you Becca for the LOTR figure, the pencils and the awesome painting thingy! Thank you Claire for the Tolkien book and the two Spider-man comic books! =) Thank you dear mum for the paints and Lord of the Rings figures!!

It's been a great year being 16, and I'm really looking forward to all the adventures and troubles that come with being 17! Thanks to all my friends for being there for me when I needed you. I'm privileged to know you all. Thanks to my family for being such a great family! And thanks to God for always pulling me through the hard times and helping me learn from my mistakes.

Wednesday morning, Mark Krupa, Jacob Barr and I set off at 7 in the morning to Bratislava. Mark had to renew his visa there, and the embassy was only open from 9 to 11. We thought we'd get there no problem...we were wrong. We got stuck in a traffic jam before Bratislava and didn't get to the embassy until 11:40. Oh well! So we decided to continue the rest of our plan anyway, and come back the next morning and get the visa.

Jacob, being the funny person he is, decided to pretend he was chinese and ask for directions to the bus station in...you guessed it...chinese. Mark agreed to be his translator. So Jacob stopped this middle-aged woman, started quoting the chinese rap songs he knew, and Mark translated! I stood off to the side laughing my head off. I cannot keep a straight face when those two come up with something like that. =) Luckily she spoke great English and was headed to the bus station herself, so she took us there, asking Mark questions along the way. Eventually, she figured out that they were joking around with her, and thought it was quite amusing! She turned to Jacob and with a smile on her face said: "You're full of crap, you know that?" Jacob replied with a great big smile: "I'm so full of it my eyes are brown!" =) It was really funny.

So we got our bus tickets, walked around Bratislava a little bit, and then got on our bus to...yes, Vienna!!!

After an hour we arrived, and did many things that day. We went to Starbucks (YESSSSS), Burger King...you know, the important places in Vienna! =) We also went to the Hapsburg summer palace Schonbrunn, and walked in the AMAZING gardens all around there. It was the hottest day in Vienna in a hundred years according to some people, so Jacob and Mark decided to cool off in the river! I watched our belongings and listened to the audiobook of the Two Towers!

From 10 to 12 we hung out in Starbucks, and then decided to head back to the river. Wandering around a little bit, we found a pretty nice kid play area/water park, and decided to set up camp there! We weren't going to pay 15 Euro for 4 hours of sleep! Except, we didn't have anything with us, except for maybe an extra shirt! There was this mound in the center of the area with a windmill on the top, so i lied down while the other two went hedgehog hunting (not hunting, don't worry, just capturing!). And guess what?! The sprinklers turned on! So our stuff got soaked even though I got out of there with everything pretty quickly. We tried sleeping on benches, but the bugs were biting too much so we needed to find another temporary home. This was around 2:30 in the morning, and we had been walking all day, so we were pretty tired!

After about 30 minutes of walking, I noticed an interesting place...McDonald's! It was closed of course, but one thing wasn't....... The outside play area! =) So we took up residency and slept for about 4 blissful hours!!! It was one of my best ideas ever.

In the morning we missed our 6:30 bus so we had to wait for the next one at 8, got to Bratislava, got the visa, and drove back home! It was quite the experience!

well, the reason that i've taken so long to write about English Camp is...I'm lazy. Well, not entirely, it's also because it's so hard to write about such a surreal experience!! But i will attempt to capture as much of it as I can for your pleasure - or at least pull out the interesting parts!

I could write for hours and hours about what we did and how things went...but i won't, because who would want to do that??? Both write it and read it I mean. So. The basic outline of things was...

• Team from Illinois, first time doing English Camp. I was a little worried but for the first time they did great!
• Me, Caleb, Boza. Leading evening music. Much fun. Me - guitar, vocals, leading it all. Caleb - bass, looking hot. Boza - drums!!! He did awesome.
• English classes - different than other years, so it took a while to get used to, but fun. I led evening discussions in our group for the first time, that was an...interesting experience! =)

And now for some stories!!!














One thing we (team - CZ and USA) decided to do one day was a 24 hour continuous prayer time. To tell you the truth I was pretty skeptical about it...and I didn't want to sign up for an hour of prayer in the prayer room. It seemed like it would just drag on...that there's only so much you can pray about! But i felt that God really wanted me to join in on that...so i checked the sign-up sheet...and it was full. All the 24 hours of the day had been taken by someone. So, i glanced over the sheet...and Patrick's name caught my eye. Patrick, Patrick, Patrick... We've been going to school together for the past two years, and he's been a great friend to me especially lately. So I asked him if I could join him from 3-4 in the morning, and he said sure!

So we got up at about 2:30, made some coffee, and headed to the prayer room. And then it just started to roll! We took turns praying...and it's hard to explain but I knew that God was guiding our prayers and really keeping us focused on our task. I decided not to look at the time on my phone so I wouldn't be thinking: "Aaah...still a half hour to go...." or something of the sort. So I held out...but after quite a while I gave in, and glanced at my phone. I only looked at the minutes - 40. So 20 minutes to go. Before I knew it, someone came into the room to take her shift. So we packed it up, headed back to our rooms, and on the way looked closer at the time. It was already 5 in the morning! The person from 4-5 hadn't woken up, and we had prayed for 2 hours continuously. That was a shocker, but I really felt blessed by it; it was really strange, but great! I will for sure never forget that experience.


Our big hike day came, and we decided to hike (or walk) over to the dam called Sance. It took about 2 hours to get there, and it was great talking to people along the way. Once we had reached our destination we pulled out our food and talked some more. I could feel the wind starting to pick up, and so I took Lily (who had joined us at the request of Caleb) to a better place to hide her from the wind. Then the rain started to come...so our whole group went to wait until it subsided. It didn't.

I have never seen so much rain EVER here. Croatia two years ago rivals it, but it's definitely the winner here in my book. Maybe it just seemed like more since we were OUTSIDE and hiking back to the hotel. To make a long story short, I will skip a bit. We arrived at the hotel an hour and a half later soaked to the bone. If someone didn't see the rain, they would have thought we all jumped into the river together! It was really funny. =) But we got all dried up and ready for dinner and luckily no one drowned during our little adventure!

Overall it was an amazing camp. The Czech team did an awesome job leading the camp and creating relationships with the students. Evening program was great, Mark did a good job with the talks, and i learned a lot from leading music! Right now it looks like next year we'll be gone during English Camp in the States, which is kind of sad... But it'll just make me even more excited to serve in two years again!