Part of this world
Last night the fourth year class put on a celebrity themed “coffeehouse”, an event at which usually shy and quiet students were scantily clad and gallivanting around pretending to be Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, and some Slovak stars too. The Americans were asked to prepare something for this event, but as usual we found out a good 48 hours before hand and were not entirely sure what the performance entailed.
We ended up re-writing the words to “Part of this world” from the “Little Mermaid” and prefacing it with the CHEESYIEST skit about why we like T-town. We also made an AWESOME slideshow with the lyrics and pertinent pictures, which I will put up as soon as I figure out how. Part of me is reluctant to show this to you, I realize that I am insane and should probably be locked up.
Vocab:
ako sa povie?—how do you say
ovce- sheep Brynza, haluski, gulas— slovak food
Kofola- pop from Central Europe
Potok- stream
“Rocks”- refers to hradova and the mine that surround town
Part of This World
Look at this place,
Isn’t it neat?
I get around on just my two feet.
Wouldn’t you think it’s the town, the town that has everything?
Look at this View!
Treasures untold, How many wonders can one valley hold?
Lookin’ around you’d think “sure, it’s got everything!”
We’ve got Kofola and gulas a plenty,
We’ve got brynza and halusky galore!
Want potravinies? We’ve got twenty!
Yeah T-Town, B’ that’s not all,
It’s got MOOOOOORE!
You can be where the ovce are,
You can see you can see ‘em grazing,
Strolling around on those—ako sa povie?—Hills!
Taking the bus you don’t go too fast,
But there’s no rush and no reason to le-ave,
Strolling along down those—ako sa povie?—Streets!
Down where they bike, Down where they hike,
Down where they play all day on the courts
Not getting tan,
But glad that I am,
Part of this world!
What did I give to be able to live next to this potok?
What did I pay to spend my days looking at rocks?
People might say, “let’s get away, Let’s head to Praha for the weekend,
See new faces, go new places, ready to leeeaaavvveeee!”
But we want to be where the two streets are,
In our small town where we can’t get lo-ost
When does a town become—ako sa povie—HOME!
We’re here to stay
Laugh, learn and play And give our hearts to friends in this place.
At EGT
Glad I can be
Part of this world!!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
"I don't know what they call it there, probaly just Thursday"
Today is Thanksgiving. With the exception of the little shin-dig the staff at EGT is throwing (remember, it’s a “bilingual” school so they try to recognize American-ness), and the hand-turkeys or Indian headdresses we made with some of the classes, there isn’t much going on in Tisovec in the way of Thanksgiving festivities. Big John was right on when he said in a recent voicemail, “I don’t know what they call it there, probably just Thursday.”
While I may not be able to recline around a stacked table with family and friends, take “nog-shots” (Danny—Alex told me you’ve already cracked into a carton) or bake 13 pies (remember last year Chris? Let’s DO this!...) I can still tally up my blessings. I am Thankful for:
My family (distance makes the heart grow fonder—as if I was not already convinced my people are legit!), my friends (especially the ones I haven’t seen in forever but we’re still like this *crossing pointer and middle fingers*), Fulbright (for giving me THE MOST AMAZING opportunity this year), Tisovec (the following song will expound upon this…),The teachers and staff at EGT (who have taken me on bike rides, taught me Slovak, and danced up a storm with me at Stuskavas), The students at EGT (as I helped one student curl another student’s hair last night (she was going to be Amy Winehouse in the coffeehouse/talent show thing) the girl I was working with randomly turned to me and said, “I just realized I love my school.”) Having “people” all over Slovakia and the Czech Republic and knowing that no matter how far away from the US I am, I am surrounded by people who love me and will take care of me when I need it (sometimes TOO much!)The 6 other Americans here (the most motley crew!), The AWESOME huge windows in my apartment, My electric hot water kettle, , Internet—I think that one’s pretty self-explanatory, Being able to mosey down the middle of wide streets, My first cutey little apartment, Time for pleasure free-reading, Time for sleeping, new nicknames (this year I have been dubbed "the hurricane" and "Whitka" (my Slovak nickname from the other Americans) Gah, Just EVERYTHING!!!!
Monday, November 23, 2009
If you want to get informed...
After being positively grilled by members of my host family and other Czechs a few weekends ago about the current state of the American healthcare system, governmental conspiracy theories about 911, and the economic stipulations of maternity leave, I’m feeling like a pretty lame and un-informed US citizen, let alone global citizen.
I must be honest and say this is not new territory for me—even throughout the last presidential election—a time I should have been eating the latest headlines and news articles for breakfast—I tend to steer clear of breaking headlines and the 6:00 news. I have had a few surges of effort to get informed, but they usually fizzle out after a little while, and my focus and attention returns more to my immediate surroundings, or those that affect me the most.
How hypocritical of me! Here I am ranting about the importance of remembering history and “where we came from,” but I don’t even know where we’re at right now! And where do you start—every current event has scads of back-story, so by the time I get up to speed on one situation I’ll be behind, and clueless about everything else.
In accordance with a past coaches wisdom though, if you want to get informed, get informed; and in accordance with wisdom from Big John, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And, in accordance with some other famous person’s wisdom, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (or something like that…)
Therefore, on the first leg of my journey back to T-town (Tisovec), a seven hour train ride, I decided to take yet another set of first steps towards informed-ness by saturating my brain with the contents of the November 14th issues of “the Economist” and USA Today.
By taking my time and chipping through the articles “one bite at a time” at a leisurely pace I learned: Brazil is pretty much kicking ass and taking names in world economy right now (predicted in 2003—but they bes’ not get cocky…), music piracy is on the decline because of smarty and tactical spending on advertising within the industry, flora from our guts might be the flavor-of-the-week scapegoat for obesity (read the article, the conclusion is pretty funny in that dry, witty “Economist” way), Tortillas in Wisconsin made all kinds of people violently ill—and it ain’t the first time—, GM might be on their way to paying back governmental loans, but are nowhere near out of the dark, and Sarah Palin is on another publicity tour for her new book, saying more things on Oprah and the like that you just know Saturday Night Live is storing up in their lampoon artillery supply.
For a while it felt good—with each page turned I was acquiring new or at least updated and pertinent information, I could practically feel myself getting informed. Yet while many of the articles were about specific places or organizations (which I can conceptualize), most of them also included giant statistics, percentages, or some kind of number that my brain just wasn’t quite sure how to handle.
Take tortillas for example. I’ve read “Fast-food Nation” and “Omnivore’s Dilemma”—heck, I even took a class in college called “Against the grain: social justice in food activism.” I know the generally processed nature of US food (and really the global food supply of at least first world countries…) is less than desirable. But this article illustrated a concrete example of the vast chains and virtually untraceable webs of production and distribution of our food, and the complete oblivion we have as to where what we stuff in our maws comes from or how it is produced. It also proved the often reckless sanitary or safety measures those “food” producers take, all intrinsically bound up in the macrocosmic issue of hunger, by way of state-subsidized meals for children, and how both federal and state government try to confront it. That’s a mouthful, ain’t it?
I started to get stressed out and think about all the far reaching implications of that one instance. Tortillas and school children today, meat or peanut butter for the masses tomorrow, and in the end all these examples are just metonymies for the complete removal we have from our most basic necessities to live, and how systemized our lives have become.
I also read articles predominantly about fiscal mergers, divorces and content. My brother Chris constantly urges me to take a few economic courses (macro and micro AT LEAST) just so I know how this part of the world works. I think he’s right, because while I have a reasonable level of common sense and “street smarts,” I really really suck at numbers. I have always been bad at conceptualizing huge sums—I can’t walk into a sporting area and guesstimate the thousands of people it is capable of accommodating, and if we’re talking money by the time we get into distinguishing between millions and billions I loose track of the nuances.
Maybe it’s because I have a hard time locating myself or what role I play/how I fit into these huge matrices of cost, population, and the like. I mean, that’s probably why I’m residing in a town that is smaller than most Universities in the US, and my current occupation is heavily dependant on person-to-person interaction and could best be summed up as a ‘professional communicator.’
Ok, we get it, there’s a lot of information out there. It is hard to sift through all the crap to find the really important stuff, and when you don’t speak economic/ political jargon you might as well be reading a foreign language. But is that really an excuse? Should I just cop-out and say “It’s hard so I just won’t do it” (did that with a math class in college, got a D…). No, I don’t think avoidance is the answer anymore. I’m spending a lot of time and energy learning Slovak, so the least I can do is absorb some new terminology and concepts as well. Maybe I just need to pace myself, sort of monitor my current-event intake at first so I don’t spontaneously combust because of how small it all makes me feel.
I must be honest and say this is not new territory for me—even throughout the last presidential election—a time I should have been eating the latest headlines and news articles for breakfast—I tend to steer clear of breaking headlines and the 6:00 news. I have had a few surges of effort to get informed, but they usually fizzle out after a little while, and my focus and attention returns more to my immediate surroundings, or those that affect me the most.
How hypocritical of me! Here I am ranting about the importance of remembering history and “where we came from,” but I don’t even know where we’re at right now! And where do you start—every current event has scads of back-story, so by the time I get up to speed on one situation I’ll be behind, and clueless about everything else.
In accordance with a past coaches wisdom though, if you want to get informed, get informed; and in accordance with wisdom from Big John, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And, in accordance with some other famous person’s wisdom, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (or something like that…)
Therefore, on the first leg of my journey back to T-town (Tisovec), a seven hour train ride, I decided to take yet another set of first steps towards informed-ness by saturating my brain with the contents of the November 14th issues of “the Economist” and USA Today.
By taking my time and chipping through the articles “one bite at a time” at a leisurely pace I learned: Brazil is pretty much kicking ass and taking names in world economy right now (predicted in 2003—but they bes’ not get cocky…), music piracy is on the decline because of smarty and tactical spending on advertising within the industry, flora from our guts might be the flavor-of-the-week scapegoat for obesity (read the article, the conclusion is pretty funny in that dry, witty “Economist” way), Tortillas in Wisconsin made all kinds of people violently ill—and it ain’t the first time—, GM might be on their way to paying back governmental loans, but are nowhere near out of the dark, and Sarah Palin is on another publicity tour for her new book, saying more things on Oprah and the like that you just know Saturday Night Live is storing up in their lampoon artillery supply.
For a while it felt good—with each page turned I was acquiring new or at least updated and pertinent information, I could practically feel myself getting informed. Yet while many of the articles were about specific places or organizations (which I can conceptualize), most of them also included giant statistics, percentages, or some kind of number that my brain just wasn’t quite sure how to handle.
Take tortillas for example. I’ve read “Fast-food Nation” and “Omnivore’s Dilemma”—heck, I even took a class in college called “Against the grain: social justice in food activism.” I know the generally processed nature of US food (and really the global food supply of at least first world countries…) is less than desirable. But this article illustrated a concrete example of the vast chains and virtually untraceable webs of production and distribution of our food, and the complete oblivion we have as to where what we stuff in our maws comes from or how it is produced. It also proved the often reckless sanitary or safety measures those “food” producers take, all intrinsically bound up in the macrocosmic issue of hunger, by way of state-subsidized meals for children, and how both federal and state government try to confront it. That’s a mouthful, ain’t it?
I started to get stressed out and think about all the far reaching implications of that one instance. Tortillas and school children today, meat or peanut butter for the masses tomorrow, and in the end all these examples are just metonymies for the complete removal we have from our most basic necessities to live, and how systemized our lives have become.
I also read articles predominantly about fiscal mergers, divorces and content. My brother Chris constantly urges me to take a few economic courses (macro and micro AT LEAST) just so I know how this part of the world works. I think he’s right, because while I have a reasonable level of common sense and “street smarts,” I really really suck at numbers. I have always been bad at conceptualizing huge sums—I can’t walk into a sporting area and guesstimate the thousands of people it is capable of accommodating, and if we’re talking money by the time we get into distinguishing between millions and billions I loose track of the nuances.
Maybe it’s because I have a hard time locating myself or what role I play/how I fit into these huge matrices of cost, population, and the like. I mean, that’s probably why I’m residing in a town that is smaller than most Universities in the US, and my current occupation is heavily dependant on person-to-person interaction and could best be summed up as a ‘professional communicator.’
Ok, we get it, there’s a lot of information out there. It is hard to sift through all the crap to find the really important stuff, and when you don’t speak economic/ political jargon you might as well be reading a foreign language. But is that really an excuse? Should I just cop-out and say “It’s hard so I just won’t do it” (did that with a math class in college, got a D…). No, I don’t think avoidance is the answer anymore. I’m spending a lot of time and energy learning Slovak, so the least I can do is absorb some new terminology and concepts as well. Maybe I just need to pace myself, sort of monitor my current-event intake at first so I don’t spontaneously combust because of how small it all makes me feel.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Home is where the [host] family is
Home is where the [Host] Family is
Freshman year of college I anxiously prepared myself for my first return home at Thanksgiving break. I expected everything to feel so different—that my four-month sojourn from the CO would somehow be enough to yield my home turf virtually unrecognizable, or in the least that it would feel really weird and detached. With the exception of a few new Super Targets and parking lots though, everything was pretty much as I’d left it. It seemed like I’d cruised down I70 just days before, and standing in my bedroom or crawling into my bed at night did not feel like invading a stranger’s space.
I’ve already written about how my arrival in Slovakia was first through Prague, where I experienced a similarly non-miraculous and therefore all the more comforting homecoming. Granted I’d only spent four months living in the city, it was apparently enough to create a sense of belonging.
Now I’m almost four months in to my residency in Tisovec. Living in a small town—especially one in such a scenically beautiful area—has been amazing, and usually whenever I return from an overnight journey I get that giddy feeling in my stomach you get when you go “home.” But I will admit I was recently starting to get itchy and feel a little trapped and stir-crazy in this one-horse town. The incessant rain and gray skies a few weeks ago, coupled with the 3:30 p.m. dusk and pitch blackness shortly after 4:00 was really starting to get to me.
While I initially planned to visit Prague November 17th for ‘research’ purposes, my visit served as an overall recharge sesh. And I know that the complete rejuvenation I feel after that long weekend comes from more than being able to amble down more than two streets, to actually see strangers, and be able to enter establishments later than 6:00 p.m.
That was my first visit back to Prague since I landed here in August. Honestly I didn’t think I’d make it back this soon, but all the research I’ve been doing about November 17th convinced me that Prague was the place to be—plus I’d get to hang out with my awesome host family. A fellow American and teacher at EGT, Megan, accompanied me. She was going to meet up with her friend from home and more or less sight-see (this was her first visit to the city) while I delved into November 17th festivities and did my own thang.
When we arrived “home,” my pleasantly effusive host mother Jana answered the door. As usual she was bubbling over with mirth, smiles, and enthusiasm. After I kicked off my shoes in the familiar stairwell, curled up on the familiar couch in the kitchen, and got acquainted with a now talking, splashing, and personality-filled two year-old host-nephew who was only a baby on my first stay in the city, I really felt like I had arrived ‘home.’
Over the course of the weekend we ambled around the cobble-stoned city while I showed Megan all my old haunts, we explored the Jewish quarter, went to a climbing gym with two of my host siblings, and saw the opening night of an art exhibition another one of my host siblings helped curate/organize.
We also spent a lot of time just at home though—the latest we stayed out was 11:30 after consuming only two beers, and that was for celebratory-look-how-awesome-your-exhibition-opening-went purposes. It didn’t bother me because I’ve seen the city before and I was jonzen for home-time around people (I live alone…) in a house that really feels lived in. As Megan and I sat talking on the kitchen couch our second night around 8:00 though, I realized that on her maiden voyage to the capital city Prague—a city for movers-and-shakers (especially for those from a small town who are starved of moving and shaking)—she was spending her precious time sitting on a couch, listening to me ramble on about my family and the CO. I immediately apologized and asked if she wanted to go out whereupon she replied, “this is a beautiful city, but the inside of this house is more beautiful.” I was secretly really glad she said that, because that’s exactly what I was thinking, just more poetic and quotably expressed.
Now I should clarify—as far as host families go, I pretty much won the lottery. You’d be hard pressed to find a more interesting, welcoming family; and, just like the Medved brood, there are a million of them (six kids, two parents, and now three grandchildren!). Their house emanates the best vibes ever, and as I said before feels so incredibly lived-in. Now that both Megan and I are living on our own (or are at least removed from a familial setting), we both crave the happy chaos of a lot of people living in one place. Thanks to Prague and especially my host family, we were both able to satiate that craving for the time being.
Freshman year of college I anxiously prepared myself for my first return home at Thanksgiving break. I expected everything to feel so different—that my four-month sojourn from the CO would somehow be enough to yield my home turf virtually unrecognizable, or in the least that it would feel really weird and detached. With the exception of a few new Super Targets and parking lots though, everything was pretty much as I’d left it. It seemed like I’d cruised down I70 just days before, and standing in my bedroom or crawling into my bed at night did not feel like invading a stranger’s space.
I’ve already written about how my arrival in Slovakia was first through Prague, where I experienced a similarly non-miraculous and therefore all the more comforting homecoming. Granted I’d only spent four months living in the city, it was apparently enough to create a sense of belonging.
Now I’m almost four months in to my residency in Tisovec. Living in a small town—especially one in such a scenically beautiful area—has been amazing, and usually whenever I return from an overnight journey I get that giddy feeling in my stomach you get when you go “home.” But I will admit I was recently starting to get itchy and feel a little trapped and stir-crazy in this one-horse town. The incessant rain and gray skies a few weeks ago, coupled with the 3:30 p.m. dusk and pitch blackness shortly after 4:00 was really starting to get to me.
While I initially planned to visit Prague November 17th for ‘research’ purposes, my visit served as an overall recharge sesh. And I know that the complete rejuvenation I feel after that long weekend comes from more than being able to amble down more than two streets, to actually see strangers, and be able to enter establishments later than 6:00 p.m.
That was my first visit back to Prague since I landed here in August. Honestly I didn’t think I’d make it back this soon, but all the research I’ve been doing about November 17th convinced me that Prague was the place to be—plus I’d get to hang out with my awesome host family. A fellow American and teacher at EGT, Megan, accompanied me. She was going to meet up with her friend from home and more or less sight-see (this was her first visit to the city) while I delved into November 17th festivities and did my own thang.
When we arrived “home,” my pleasantly effusive host mother Jana answered the door. As usual she was bubbling over with mirth, smiles, and enthusiasm. After I kicked off my shoes in the familiar stairwell, curled up on the familiar couch in the kitchen, and got acquainted with a now talking, splashing, and personality-filled two year-old host-nephew who was only a baby on my first stay in the city, I really felt like I had arrived ‘home.’
Over the course of the weekend we ambled around the cobble-stoned city while I showed Megan all my old haunts, we explored the Jewish quarter, went to a climbing gym with two of my host siblings, and saw the opening night of an art exhibition another one of my host siblings helped curate/organize.
We also spent a lot of time just at home though—the latest we stayed out was 11:30 after consuming only two beers, and that was for celebratory-look-how-awesome-your-exhibition-opening-went purposes. It didn’t bother me because I’ve seen the city before and I was jonzen for home-time around people (I live alone…) in a house that really feels lived in. As Megan and I sat talking on the kitchen couch our second night around 8:00 though, I realized that on her maiden voyage to the capital city Prague—a city for movers-and-shakers (especially for those from a small town who are starved of moving and shaking)—she was spending her precious time sitting on a couch, listening to me ramble on about my family and the CO. I immediately apologized and asked if she wanted to go out whereupon she replied, “this is a beautiful city, but the inside of this house is more beautiful.” I was secretly really glad she said that, because that’s exactly what I was thinking, just more poetic and quotably expressed.
Now I should clarify—as far as host families go, I pretty much won the lottery. You’d be hard pressed to find a more interesting, welcoming family; and, just like the Medved brood, there are a million of them (six kids, two parents, and now three grandchildren!). Their house emanates the best vibes ever, and as I said before feels so incredibly lived-in. Now that both Megan and I are living on our own (or are at least removed from a familial setting), we both crave the happy chaos of a lot of people living in one place. Thanks to Prague and especially my host family, we were both able to satiate that craving for the time being.
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