Charles Bridge with hot air balloon in distance
Our trip actually had two purposes: to make member care visits with the families living in Prague and to attend the business portion of the European Affinity Global Leadership Team (AGLT). Don't feel too badly though that we were only home two nights between trips because I chose to go to Prague 2 days early in order to go with the AGLT ladies on a "Polish Pottery Run" to Boleslawic, Poland where they manufacture the beautiful, distinctive Polish pottery that I'm so fond of. While I was in Poland with the ladies, Glenn met with several of the families by himself, and then when I returned, we met with the rest of the families together.
It's a 3 hour drive from Prague so we left early in the morning to be able to shop all day until the stores closed at 5 pm. I counted 12 stores we visited, so by dinnertime we were hungry, weary and broke but happy! We found the cutest little log cabin restaurant that looked like it was plucked straight from the north Georgia mountains near Ellijay, complete with yard art and country artifacts!!
I had one of the best Polish dishes I've ever tasted at this little place!
And this is what I bought with my birthday and Christmas money that I've been saving for the past year. Well, it's not all for me ... the casserole dish on the far left was bought for a friend of mine. :-)
From Prague, we went back to BP for another two nights before heading to Malaga, Spain for a cluster meeting where we provided member care visits with all our personnel.
During the meeting time, I sat next to one of the ladies with a 32 ounce QuikTrip cup! It was a real shocker to see that! Made me feel like I was back in Georgia. Sure made me wish I could have one of their Coke Zero fountain drinks with crushed ice. Ahhhh! The things we miss!
First on the list, a bottle of fountain water!
At the start of the meeting to get everyone relaxed and familiar with one another, we began with a scavenger hunt. The purpose was to get us working as a team, to help us learn our way around the little town, and to learn about the Spanish culture by needing to ask questions of locals in order to locate the specific scavenged items.
Hmmm, where is the statue?
Another thing we had to find and photograph was a statue that was made depicting one of Picasso's paintings which meant that we had to stop locals to ask them what it was of and where it might be. Turns out there were a lot of British tourists in town who didn't know it and where it was and not a lot of Spaniards who spoke enough English to direct us, but we finally found it!
Picasso's Women Running on the Beach
We found out that Pablo Picasso is from Malaga and the town honored their citizen by having a statue made from his picture of Women Running on the Beach. Actually, we learned a lot about Spain through the scavenger hunt!
We also found that our little group is not very competitive and decided we'd rather stop and have a couple of drinks (Coke, of course) than win.
And this is the view out the back of the cafe' where we stopped for some refreshment. The weather and temperature was ideal for walking about town but a little cool for swimming.
The best part of the meeting though was getting to know our personnel better through the member care visits. Always a favorite with us!
Our return flight left Malaga at 6:45 AM so we had to wake up at the early hour of 4:30 AM. We had a 4-hour lay-over in Paris which meant we were there over the lunch hour, hence, how we came to find these funny signs! I've heard of French fries, the skinny little strips of deep fat fried potatoes, but I never knew that those deep fried fat wedges of potatoes are called American potatoes. Maybe this is France's way of retaliating?
And I loved this sign!!! On the menu board the chocolate chip cookie had a little sign taped to it that read (in French), "This recipe is a victim of it's own success", which is a cute way of saying that there are no chocolate chip cookies available.
Next trip? Antolya, Turkey. :-)
P.S. All photos used with permission
1 comment:
I'm a former m from Germany and a big fan of member care's work. Thanks for all you do. So glad I found your blog and your story.
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