Coyans in the Czech Republic

Non-lugagge Update

So in other not-baggage news, here is our update. We arrived in Ceske Budejovice Thursday at about noon, rather exhausted from 25 hours of travelling. I was veering a bit on the roads, but really that is not so different from the Czech drivers here. I would have had Krista help drive, but she had only one hour sleep in 48 hours, and was mumbling some nonsense about snack foods and such...
We arrived at the OM Villa and was met by Pavel and Drahus Zoul, the director of OM CZ and his wife. They took us to Globus, which is a sort of Mega-WalMart, but with czech rules. For example, Krista wanted to buy makeup and was "assisted" by an angry czech woman, who had to unlock the makeup case to retrieve its valuable contents for her, to prevent Krista from shoplifting. We had lunch with them (some cafeteria-style czech gulas with knedliky) and then went shopping for some essentials like a toothbrush, underwear, socks, deodorant, etc.
Follwing this, we returned to the OM base and met some of the other members, and then went to dinner in Mexican/Italian restaurant. Our hosts had pizza, while I had Fajitas (actually quite good - but a little different) and Krista has chips and tortillas (pronounced tor- till - uzz - they did not understand when she asked for "tor-tee-uz"), Actually it didn't really matter how you pronounce it, since they never brought her any tortillas or tor-till-uhhhhhssss. Then we had a nice walk through the city, and came home and slept for 12 hours.
Today (Friday), besides the luggage adventure, Pavel took us around the city to show us several neighborhoods. We looked at some houses for rent, and met with one real estate agent who took us in a few houses. Priced range from about $400 for a small aprtment in a communist era highrise, to about $725 for a newly constructed 4-bedroom house. I was pleasantly surprised to see some of these houses - especially for the relatively small price swing to go from a small apartment to a (relatively) spacious house. Pavel thought that $725 was pretty expensive for a monthly rent, but to inhabitants of the central coast of California, it was a nice surprise for us. (You should see what $1000/month will get you - but we do not want to live at that kind of level, as it can be detrimental if people perceive us as "rich americans").
Tonight we had a dinner get-together with most of the staff of OM Czech Republic, and had a nice talk with the personnel director. The staff here is rather small, consisting of 9 staff members.
So far our first impressions of the Czech Republic have been pretty good, considering our lack of sleep and lack of luggage. Stay tuned for tomorrows update (which should be posted by noon Saturday) for what happens with the Czech Customs Police....

AND KEEP PRAYING FOR US PLEASE :)