does Czech have it out for me?

i swear that sometimes i am living in the 1983 stephen king horror film christine (i just spoke my husband’s love langauge). the movie’s plot is about a haunted car that… well… kills people. everybody actually. replace that car with the country i live in.

okay, maybe i am being a little dramatic but there are times here when my soul feels like it’s dying and that czech republic has it out for me! is that a fair enough correlation? let me tell you a little story.

i love pumpkins. the taste, the look, the smell, the texture, the crafts, the artificial scents that spawn from pumpkins… everything about pumpkins is my love language. last year, during the hardest season of my life here in czech, i searched high and low for pumpkins to cook, to craft and to enjoy. i found 2 pumpkins the size of softballs. they were sweet and everything, but i couldn’t help but want more. i did what i could with what i had to work with.

in march of this year, several  new missionaries came on the field to join our Cesky Tesin clan and it was a privilege to be able to help inform them of the things that they wouldn’t be able to get here, mostly to cook but also to decorate. i loved helping prepare them in a way that i hadn’t been prepared when i first came here! one of those things that i warned them about was that czech wasn’t very big on pumpkins. they didn’t sell them, cook with them, carve them… nothing. they would be oh-so-lucky to find one bigger than a softball!

enter: christine czech republic

well, october rolls around and guess who suddenly is carrying LOADS of pumpkins. like america sized bins of pumpkins. pumpkins with curvy stems. big ones. little ones. orange ones. red ones. wonky ones. round ones. along with even- yes even- CARVING INSTRUCTIONS! how dare this place? what an idiot i must’ve looked like to the others! first off, it was amazing that i literally felt bitterness towards a place. i was bitter that czech provided this for all these new missionaries but when i was in my lonesome, horrible and lonely year last year, czech couldn’t squeeze out one ounce of a happy pumpkin for me. why would it? it hates me!

do you see what i mean? most people blame this on the western culture that keeps revealing it’s face in these parts of eastern europe, but i know the true reason. it’s me.

is it just in my mind? i don’t know. you should ask all of the people who have driven christine… maybe they could tell us the answer.

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