Smells like Christmas

Usually the convent is really quiet and I don't see many people, I just hear them walking.

It merits explanation that it seems to me that Slovak people have a really complicated relationship to their footwear. They seem to feel strongly that it is really bad for one's feet to wear the same pair of shoes all day. Further, and this I can understand, it is much cleaner if you wear slippers rather than walking around the house in your shoes that have been outside. In school, the kids all wear slippers, and some of the teachers do. Normally I don't because I'm really not used to it and I wear very comfortable shoes to begin with, but in the convent and apartment I wear slippers because it's what one does. It is also can be kind of important to have 2 pairs of slippers, one for inside and one for outside, though this area can get a bit grey.

So the sound I usually hear is the sound of slippers shuffling around.

But last night was different. When I went downstairs for my evening food (which was absolutely amazing by the way: sauteed red peppers, onions, tomatoes and tvaroch + Slovak bread, which is also really great and has no real American equivalent. Tvaroch is a highly mysterious thing to me, and it's closest American equivalent is farmer's cheese, but it's not farmer's cheese), there were a lot of voices, and it was kind of loud.

So after I ate, I brought my dishes into the kitchen, and there was everyone, baking cookies! It appears that there were 2 or 3 groups of rolling dough and cutting out the little heart shapes, putting the cutouts onto trays, and putting egg yolks on them. Then others were carrying trays to and from the oven, and setting the baked cookies in trays and layers with paper. Quite similar, in fact, to the process of making medovniki in Uniontown.

The sisters were making the cookies to benefit a mission on some island either in Africa or the Caribbean, and they'll be selling them for 12Sk over the next few weeks. I'm thinking the taste was maybe nutmeg or clove, it wasn't cinnamon. The cookies were like medovniki, but they weren't. Evidently, they're what Christmas here smells like.

Kružok Question

1. Do you want to be famous?
2. What would you want to be famous for?
3. What would be good about being famous?

The answers I was getting from the students mostly were along the lines of "Johnny Depp!" and "to have a big house and nice car!" so I asked them if it was possible to be famous but not rich, with the (obvious) example of Mother Teresa. Some of their other answers were "to have a lot of friends" and "to have people like me", so we talked about how this was possible without having a lot of money. I'm so absolutely fascinated by their answers to all of my open-ended questions, because they could be anything, and sometimes they really suprise me.

"Open the box Miss Teacher!"

1. Have I said yet how much more I can come closer to understanding why my mother was so tired when she got home from work? And how I can come closer to understanding why the last thing she would have wanted to do when she got home every evening would have been to cook dinner? I'm teaching 10 45-minute periods in 3 days and it's definitely enough.
2. Every day, I tend to be horrified of how I may have acted as a student. On the other hand, I also realize a) how normal I was, and b) how this is yet more proof that people everywhere are more alike than they are different (thus rendering war, for example, a very bad thing).
3. For example: students, if you pass notes, I will see you, even if my back is turned. Why? Either a) I have eyes in the back of my head, b) I wasn't born yesterday, or c) both.
   
4. It is highly annoying to have chalk all over me. It makes the students giggle, as if they have never seen such a thing, and I need to wash my hands after every class because it's just annoying.

Incidentally, there are sinks in every classroom and in the teacher's room, not in the bathrooms. The students wash the chalkboards themselves between classes. They may talk the entire class, but at least they are disciplined enough to wash the chalkboard after I'm done using it.

One of my main teaching tools this week was an empty box. The students didn't necessarily know it was empty, although one class thought that it was and kept yelling for me to open the box. This was not bad, because at least they were speaking to me 1) in English and 2) imperatively, regardless of whether or not they knew it. However, the line of questioning was something like this:

• What is this?
• What's in the box? (one of the more interesting answers: ambition, from a 9th grader)
  
• What's outside of the box?
• What's not in the box?
• What would you put in the box?
• To whom would you give the box? (One answer was Axl Rose.)
• How would you wrap the box?
• What color is the box?
• Where would you send the box?

The goal was to encourage thinking outside the box. Alas, a highly funny moment happened with some 7th graders and the last question. One girl said, "under the table" so I put the box under the desk, at which point the bell rang. I got my things and left the classroom, and then realized I had forgotten my box. When I went back into the classroom, they were all laughing hysterically, and so was I. I'm learning that kids are much smarter than we give them credit for.

I'm also learning that being a language teacher requires a great deal of animation. Luckily, it seems my personality is conducive to this sort of behavior. ;) The rule of the week has been that "I don't know"/"Neviem" is not an answer. When someone says it, I've been writing it on the board and Xing it out to the max.

Kružok Question

For those students so inclined, after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I have an extra 45 minutes of after school English conversation practice, which also includes the encouragement of creative thinking. I prepare one question that we discuss for the entire time -- usually it takes a while to understand the question, and then a while to formulate an answer, etc. But they've told me it's good for them, so I'm happy and feel it's time very well spent.

I thought it would be cool to post these on the blog and then if you're so inclined, please leave a comment (if you are subscribed to the blog via e-mail, click through to the blog) with your answer.

So:

You have €1,000,000 that you must give away. How will you do it?

Jadranská torta

My delicious preemptively-celebrated Birthday Cake!

So. Cake layer, cacao goodness though not overwhelming. Filling layer, buttercream and crushed hazelnuts, fresh from a tree in Sobrance. Top layer, gelatinous gelatin giving a smooth texture. Super yummy.

Music: A od Prešova

(If you are subscribed to this blog via e-mail, you may need to click through to the website to get everything from this post.)

I really love this waltz:
(and here's a link to the sheet music)
There's another song at the end of the track, which nicely complements the first part.

I'd heard it before, but last week, last Sunday, the family of the convent's superior stopped by the convent en route from a folklore festival in the Czech Republic on their way back to their village near Prešov, and they played this song along with dancing and other songs. Excellent.

Music: Attention, please.

(re: video -- A rather insipid version, but the only one I could find.
The train station tone is much more utilitarian, sans the superfluous instrumentation and Czech.)

When they make an announcement in the train station, the signal that there is an announcement is the first few notes of the song "Jedna ruža, dve ruže." I mentioned this to Petra, who laughed and then we sang a bit of it together. Now that I look it up, I wonder why we only learned the first two verses of the song in Slovak class...? ;) On the other hand, I'll be thinking of this song whenever I'm in the train station.

Weekend

I had an excellent weekend with Petra's family -- great company, great food, great company. It turns out that last Friday, 8 September, is my (and Petra's mom's and grandmother's, and half of the parish's and a good amount of the entire country's) name day. So we had a nice day and went to church Friday evening. Saturday we made this really excellent cake, and then today preemptively celebrated my forthcoming birthday.

Also today, we went to a country house in Hungary that used to be owned by the Károlyi family -- they were somehow closely connected to Ferenc II Rákóczi, but I am largely ignorant of the history of the Hungarian aristocracy -- they also were owners of extensive vinyards and connected to the Hollóháza Porcelain company. This house is in Füzérradvány (try to pronounce that), which is really very close to the border. In fact, it would be very possible to go there via bicycle from Petra's house, that's how close it is. The house is beautiful, with some unusual architectural details that really make it unique. There were two really cool things in the house -- reliefs of phoenixes in the backs of the fireplaces, and really nice built-in bathtubs.
Of course, the house had undergone many changes over the years, and one notable euphemism being when the house was "put under government management" and made into a hospital or sanatorium or something, and all of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque-era furniture the family had collected was lost. There remains beautiful columns. We were guided through the place by a really well-meaning docent who spoke like no English and no Slovak, only Hungarian. This meant that Petra and I were completely unable to ask any questions, and there was a lot of lost in translation going on. But it was fun to listen to Hungarian, which has such an interesting sound and yet is also totally incomprehensible to me.

It was rather strange seeing such a strictly Italian country house so rather out-of-context, but maybe in some ways the diverse Austro-Hungarian Empire was like a precursor to today's cultural pluralities and globalization.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me... Here are some other pictures.

¡¡¡I almost forgot the most adventurous part of the afternoon!!! The grounds of the country house were used as hunting grounds by the family, who used the house mainly as a hunting lodge. We had some trouble finding the way in (all of the signs are in Hungarian, most not translated) and so we walked in towards the house through a park that is related to the house but isn't part of it. The house was fenced in, and we were walking along the outer perimeter -- so we could see the house but couldn't get to it. It really didn't matter because it was a nice day, and they were pleasant woods. Anyway, at one point as we were walking, Petra spotted a grenade, intero as they say in Italian. Alas, these sorts of things are around, but wow. Who knows how it got there, or how long it had been there, which doesn't diminish its potential danger.

I was concerned because I didn't have my passport with me, but it wasn't even a problem because now Slovakia, Hungary, et. al. are Schengen countries now, and we entered Hungary by turning off the road onto a short gravel section that was paved once we entered Hungary -- they used EU funds to pave the road (previously a path for bicycles and local foot traffic) -- and once again I heard the phrase, "Welcome to Slovakia." No guards or control whatsoever. Evidently this region of Hungary is autonomous, and they have spent a lot of time and money developing a tourist infrastructure, because it's the only part of Hungary that is mountainous, so people like to visit it.

On the way back to Slovakia, where I was going to get the train in Michaľany, we stopped to see if we could get into the Greek Catholic church in the village. An old lady who lives across the street was out, and Petra's mom got out of the car to go talk to her. It turns out she spoke the local Zemplen dialect perfectly, which is good because otherwise there would have been major communication issues. It's so amazing, from their houses they can see what is now Slovakia, but really only the older people can communicate in either the dialect or Hungarian. It turns out that these ladies knew someone from Petra's village because she grew up there and then married someone from Petra's village -- and Petra and her parents knew the lady but had never heard her speak Hungarian -- because no one else in the village does!

There's one train a day that goes directly to Prešov. It starts in Čierna nad Tisou (cf. 1968) and goes as far as Prešov, via Košice. As far as Košice, I was with a friend of Petra's family who I'd met years ago in Rome, and we had a pleasant time chatting on the way about a lot of things. Quite excellently, she said to me, "You're at home here with us" which is very, very true. Also excellently, she extolled the virtues of we Rusyns, though stopped short of self-identifying as one.

Originally, I was going to go straight to Ružomberok, but I had to come back to Prešov to take care of something. The weather is getting colder and it's going to be rainy (last weekend it was so hot and humid, this weekend it's the opposite). I had wanted to go walking in the hills around Ružomberok and thought I'd be able to tomorrow because it's a holiday and we have off -- and obviously normally I wouldn't be able to, but this is just as well.

The Use of Church Slavonic vs. Slovak/English

I really want to write about this, but I'm still thinking about it.

First Reflections on Teaching

That I am teaching is slightly extreme. While I definitely consider what I do vis-á-vis museums to be highly educational, it is passive education -- objects, text, and context are an intermediary between me and the learner. This active teaching is something I'm learning how to do the way sometimes parents throw their kids into a swimming pool in order to teach them how to swim. At this point, I have a ton more empathy for teachers and I understand more why my mom was always so tired when she got home from work!

A lot of the system is quite foreign to me, and/or everything is highly mormal and I have been completely unaware of the behind-the-scenes aspects of education, specifically regarding the vast amouts of highly bureaucratic paperwork that are involved. For example, after every class it is necessary to write down in a book called the trieda kniha (classroom book) the objective for the lesson, plus note who is absent and initial it. This needs to be written in Slovak because it is a semi-legal document, and so I get help with it. This particular book stays in the classroom, as do all of the students throughout the day. Instead of having their own classroom like in America, every teacher has a desk in one room with all of the other teachers. I like this system, because it generally cuts down on hallway idiocy between class periods.

The really nice thing is that all of my classes are split, which means that I only have half of one class at a time, and there are two classes per grade -- A and B. So for example when I teach, I have only half of group A, which is only 11 or 12 kids. At the same time, the other group is also learning English, or depending on the grade, maybe German. Thank God I'm only teaching half a group at a time, because otherwise it would be beyond bedlam.

Because it was the first time that I was teaching them, I started every class by trying to explain to them how important it was for them to stop me if they didn't understand or if they needed me to repeat something. When they ask me if I speak Slovak, the official answer is no, but it has to be obvious that I understand it because if they give an answer in Slovak, often my answer is, "yes, but in English, please!" They're usually able to do it, and I can usually tell by the blank stares and frustration when they're not getting it. It's amazing how easy it is to tune out Slovak and only be thinking and speaking in English, and when I'm walking in the halls or something, usually there are greetings of "hello!" or "bye bye!" and I answer in English only.

I'm trying to encourage them to help each other, but this is a double-edged sword because it usually means that one or two of the students are translating everything for the rest of the class. I'd prefer for these students to begin to arrive at the point where they are thinking in English, but at the same time I kind of need them to do this so that I know they understand, and I definitely want them to help each other -- it goes without saying I'm trying really hard to positively reinforce as much as possible, especially with the students who I think may want to be a handful. I'm trying to explain to them that I'm not really teaching them, I'm there because I already speak English and they will learn from each other if only they would listen to each other. But this is 1. hard to explain in Enligh and even harder to understand, and 2. a somewhat radical concept and definitely not a way that they are used to learning. I haven't gotten to the language-is-a-creative-act point yet, but it's definitely on the horizon -- I know they aren't used to learning this way -- and we're still at the highly pragmatic language-is-a-tool-for-communication point.

The youngest students I have are in the 6th class, and they are mostly still quite cute, although I had one section that was rather difficult because it was painfully obvious they were trying to 'test' me. Usually this means that they ask me to go to the bathroom, which is a non-question because they have 45-minute periods with 10 or 15 minutes in between, which is of course more than enough time to go -- and as I reread this sentence, I hate how 'grownup' I sound. But it's the truth!

Almost every class had someone who is, shall we say, silent but deadly -- usually someone who sat in the last row and was either pretending to not pay attention or who seemed not into talking, but then who came through at the right moment with the right answer perfectly, to my suprise and to the suprise of some of their classmates. I'm happy when this sort of thing happens. ...it also turns out that with some of the kids, they are paying attention even when I don't think they are.

Since the groups are split in half, they're spread out all over the room, and I ask them to move forward from the back of the room if they're sitting towards the back. At times this elicits whines, but they are really very respectful. When I walk into the classroom and when I leave, they stand (which kind of amazes me). And so, when I ask them a question, they try to answer, because they won't say no to me because I'm the teacher (this definitely amazes me). The respect is there, and of course it has to be mutual, and it is.

This week, all we did was introductions. But I put them in pairs or trios and they introduced each other, very simply: This is my friend ______. S/he lives in ______. His/Her hobbies are ______. Then after that -- and trust me, communicating that they would introduce each other was really amazingly difficult -- I asked them individually about their brothers and sisters and asked if they are older than them or younger than them. This introduced older/younger and oldest/youngest without them even knowing it. For some of the older kids, this went very quickly and we moved on to other things, but for the 6th class, it took all 45 minutes of the period.