inquiring minds want to know.

So, its been brought to my attention that I have acquired a small czech readership. Actually, mostly just Petr and his friends. (Ahoj!)

Anyhow, i have been requested to post something about whats weird to foreigners in the czech republic. This is harder than it sounds. Maybe I've been travelling too long, but things here seem more or less normal to me. Still, when a fellow fulbrighter posted this article on facebook, I knew it absolutely made the cut. I repost the entire AP story below, for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

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Czech towns deploy cardboard police in miniskirts

PRAGUE – Authorities say that life-sized cardboards of female police officers in miniskirts placed alongside roads have managed to slow down speeding drivers in several central Czech towns.
The mayor of the town of Mrakotin, Miroslav Pozar, said Thursday drivers, including him, automatically slow down when they see such officers.

Pozar dismissed allegations this was because the drivers want to look at the officer's legs, rather than her uniform.

In nearby Myslotin, a local radio recently provided a hat and an anorak to help such officer get warm, but they were stolen in a day.

Others made it away with the cardboard officer itself.

 

This is enough was always true.


We just haven't seen it.

-Rumi

Victory! (of a sort)

An importaint and exciting discovery has just been made. A breakthrough, if you will, in the European Home Sciences.

It turns out that there is hope for the large, formless masses known in these parts as "pillows". Although they are unweildly, lack the necessarry fluffiness and are in all other ways generally inferior to their American counterparts, help is on the way.

To my American compatriots in the Czech Republic and beyond I send this message: Do not despair! Simply take the "pillow" in question firmly in hand and force the entire object into a standard US pillow case. The "pillow", confused and disoriented by its newly restricted surroundings, can thus be made to take on a shape and density more closely resembling an actual pillow. (Fair warning: it will still be a bit lumpy and look rather odd).

We'll bring you more updates on this exciting story as they arrive.

Thanksgiving news roundup

Oh gosh. So much to write about. So much happens in a single day that there is no way I can sum up all that has been going on since last I wrote. My family came to visit me, and it was really really wonderful to see them. The usual family squabbles of course ensued, and ordering at a restaurant became a 30 minute minimum ordeal, still I was rushing off after school to spend every possible minute with them. As I get older, I realize that I am an extremely family oriented person. I am so lucky that they were able to make the trip out, to take time off of work and school and have me drag them around the Czech Republic (and occasionally Poland) and show them where I live and work.

Having them in town was also good becuase it reminded me that my czech isn't entirely hopeless. I often have only native speakers to compare myself to, and I don't use czech as often as I had thought I would, and so I feel like I am not learning. Guiding my family around, interpreting menus and directing taxis and trying to teach them some czech, reminded me that, at least for day-to-day interactions,  my czech is surprisingly sufficient. So yay for that! This week I am learning comparatives ...and reviewing weather.

Mostly because of the intense amounts of snow. Which I am loving. People here are surprised when I mention how beautiful the snow is. "Don't they have snow where you come from?" they ask. Well, yes we do. But it doesn't stay white and pretty for very long. Although once the temperature drops below zero I'm sure I'll be a bit less chipper about it.

Ah, we also had a thanksgiving assembly yesterday. The other english teachers worked super hard to help prepare, mostly because events like this aren't usually held at czech schools and so figuring out the logistics of exactly how to do it took a little while. In the end, it came off well. One of my fourth year classes performed a little play about the first thanksgiving (complete with pilgrims, indians and a paper mayflower) and there was also a powerpoint and a poem. I showed the Addams Family summer camp skit about Thanksgiving, partly because its hilarious and partly because I can't bear to teach them the same whitewashed, "the pilgrims and indians were best friends forever" myth that we usually feed to little kids. They are high schoolers, and language abilities aside they should learn something worthwhile from me about the world and about America. Addams family values was the obvious vehicle for this.... Anyway, they certainly enjoyed the inversion of the authority figures being roasted over a spit.

I also found the best possible outlet for a new czech word while on my way to the post office. An elderly woman was coming out of the grocery store with her little rolling bag, and the steps seemed super icy. Fortunately, the word of the day was "may I?" so I asked her, "Muže me?" She said yes, so I easily lifted the bag down the short steps and went back up to help her down as well. It was an easy thing for me to do, took no more than a few seconds out of my day and I did it without a second thought because somehow all old people remind me of my grandparents and so I want to help them, but if I hadn't known how to offer in czech I might have been too nervous to do it. What if she thinks I'm stealing her stuff? But, at the bottom, she litterally grabbed my hand and thanked me over and over (in czech), letting me know how troublesome those few steps would have been for her on her own. Needless to say, I felt warm and fuzzy for the rest of the day. Using czech successfully and helping people? thats a gold star day for sure.

Welcome to Frydek-Mistek!

I've seen so many amazing things in my life, sometimes I worry that I'll never be able to appreciate them all properly. Who thought I would get to do these things in my life? To eat pasta in Rome and email friends in Seoul. Even the ordinary day to day of my life as a teacher is made more exciting by the fact that I live abroad. I'm not just grocery shopping, I'm grocery shopping in Czech. All this can be rather exhausting, but in the end the challenge adds spice to my life. So, I'm going to try to be better about recording it all, so that later when I look back on it I'll have another chance to appriciate just how fantastic it's all been.

So, to begin, life in Frydek-Mistek.

yep, this is where I live. well, not on this nice hilltop or exactly on the train tracks, but you get a sense of the scenery.

pictured here is my desk at work (well, one of them. more on that later...) and below is my "commute".

In the morning, on my way to the IT School, I cross the river into Mistek. Walking across the bridge, seeing the mountains in the distance, I catch myself smiling even though its 8am and not an hour for civilized people to be awake. We'll see if my spirits remain high through the horrible cold and snow of winter here, but for now I'm grateful for the amazing scenery. I mean, look at this.

That would be the castle park (although a few benches in front of the old manor is probably a more accurate description) where I used to sit with my burcak and books when the afternoons were warmer.


 So, this is my town. For the moment.

 

We've got impressive old churches and unsightly communist housing blocs.

 

 


We've also got South Park graffiti....

   and sweet old ladies (whose only desire is to feed me cake and booze)

and just about everything in between.

more on the bounty of the only Czech city to have a hyphen in its name in my next post. look forward to it. ^^