November 20, 2006
Everyday life
I have been settling into life more and more here. I am pretty much in a routine, and sometimes I even forget that I am in another country! But as crazy as that is, it is only 3 more weeks and my life will change again. Just when you think you are getting use to things, life has to go and throw you a curve ball again. Oh well, at least the good part of this curve ball is that I will again get to be close to the family and friends I love.
So really, I have not told you all very much about my what I call "normal" day to day life (as normal as it can be in another country). That would be teaching! Every week I only teach Monday through Thursday, but the times I teach change every week. Some days I start at 7:55 and get done at 12:30 or 1:30, and some days I don't start until 9 and get done at 2:15. I teach 19 lessons a week and my official title is "English Teacher". So basically, if you think back to your own High School days, i am like the foreign language teacher. I usually teach about 5, 45 minute periods a day, and about 19 lessons total a week. Even though I teach English, which you may think is a pretty easy job, I have to teach and accommodate for many different levels of students. Each lesson is a different age level and English level, and sometimes it can be hard to remember where one group left off and just how much a group knows, even in my 5th week of teaching. None the less, the teachers are still very excited to simply have a native speaker here at their school, and are always very eager to have me come and teach lessons in their classes. The kids love it too, but mostly because I am a real live person from the United States. I guess they don't get many of those around here. Gee, if I knew I was going to be such a rock star I would have come here sooner... ha ha, no just kidding.
Let me tell you, I have learned more about the English language in the last 5 weeks trying to teach it to non-native speakers then I ever have in my life. I was never an English nerd or anything, but I have always been at least somewhat good at the subject. Well, when my teachers are like, ok, can you teach the present perfect tense and the present continuous tense I was like, what?? I have no idea what that is myself, how am I suppose to teach it to other people! I managed to teach myself (although I swear I must have learned about this somewhere along the way in my English classes) just what thes things were, but I must say, that I think English language learners know much more about grammar then native English speakers. Also, everyday I wonder a little more, why is English such a ridiculous language?? I was trying to teach my kids about the verbs make and take, easy right? No, way confusing... see because you can like make some tea, but then you also have to make up your mind, or make sure... these kinds of phrases for my kids, way confusing! And take, you can take medicine, or you can take care. Crazy language.
Some other culture things that you may be interested in-
1) The students switch classes like in many of our High Schools, but for each new class they are in, when the teacher comes in the room they must stand up. The students must stand until the teacher says good morning or good afternoon and tells them they may sit down. In the younger grades, when you say good morning to the students they must say 'good morning teacher' back to you before they can sit down. It is also very similar when the class is over. Students may not leave the room until the teacher says the lesson is finished and the teacher opens the door.
2) Students never wear their outside shoes once they have gone to their lockers. All students have a pair of inside shoes or slippers that they wear while they are in school. This is also the tradition in many homes here in Europe and in the Czech Republic. When you visit someone else's house it is very rude not to take your shoes off at the door and either bring your own slippers or inside shoes or ask the family to use a pair of theirs.
3) I am trying so hard, but it is so funny when I try to pronounce the students' Czech names and they have no idea that I am calling on them. I think they understand, and I am trying to be sensitive, but I must say it's pretty funny when I call on one of them and they have no idea that it is actually them I want to answer!
4) Lunch is the biggest meal of the day here, students go to the cafeteria (or Canteen as they call it), for big meals. Most people then have a light dinner later in the evening.
Although it has been hard teaching High Schoolers, and I would not prefer to do it the rest of my life, it has been a good experience here as my students can take me out to experience the culture and things like that. I have now been to many of their floor ball games (a game similar to gym hockey that is popular here), concerts, and out for pizza (and beer with the older ones) numerous times. One of my very favorite things about getting to be in another country is just getting to know the people. If i didn't have to teach, I would probably just do that all day long!
Posted by Amber Ruppert at 10:16 AM | Comments (2)
November 11, 2006
Auschwitz
Again, things have been getting busy here so it has been hard to write, not that I need to give any excuses, but before I go on with any other stories about Europe I must tell you about my experiences at Auschwitz. I am copying and pasting this blog from word where I am writing it now, to my blog entry page, so if those crazy little marks come back, that’s why... I will try to fix them where I can.
So two weekends ago Jennifer and I traveled to Krakow, Poland. We had a long weekend because it was the Czech national founding day, so we decided to take the overnight train on Wed night so we could take in 4 full days of the sights and sounds of Krakow. Well, did we ever! So we arrive at about 6 am and get off the train to try and find our way to the hostel. Seeing that Krakow is not very awake and moving at 6 am, we soon found that it was impossible to find a taxi, so next option, the tram. So we go to the tram stop where we are suppose to buy tickets from this little machine thing. Well, we are so kindly greeted by a drunk Polish man who had somehow just spilled this HUGE bottle of alcohol all over the sidewalk in front of him. He was yelling at me in Polish, but he was far enough away that I figured things would be fine. I was wrong. This dude decided to pick up a piece of broken glass from his bottle and chuck it at my feet. Don't worry mom, he just kind of skidded it across the sidewalk, but at this point I said screw the tram tickets and ran the other way. We eventually found a taxi about an hour later, but needless to say, not a warm welcome to Poland.
Thursday we spent most of the day seeing the sights of downtown Krakow. We met up with Jen's cousin (Jen’s relatives are Polish) who studied at the university in Krakow, and he took us on a tour of everything we wanted to see. Krakow is such a quaint little eastern European town, I loved it! It's really hard to explain just how cute it is, so hopefully when I get back I can show you all the pictures!
Friday was Auschwitz day. Auschwitz is about an hour away from Krakow, and we booked a tour through our hostel that was very reasonable priced and in English. We saw both parts of Auschwitz, both Auschwitz 1, where many of the prisoners worked and died in the gas chambers and Auschwitz 2, Birkenau, which was the main camp where the prisoners rode the train in and their destiny's were decided with a point of the finger. I think that some excerpts from my journal describe the day best-
"Today we went to Auschwitz. I have always wanted to go, which I felt weird about, but really I do think that it is an experience everyone should have. I was upset at the fact that I felt like Auschwitz has become a tourist attraction, but again, I think it is an experience everyone should have.
Just walking through the front gate was erie. Reading "Arbeit Macht Frei," work makes you free, which was a total lie to anyone who passed through those gates made me sick. Walking through exhibition after exhibition hall staring at all the personal belongings- shoes, glasses, suitcases- of thousands, even millions of people who were killed made my stomach turn even more. It wasn't until the display with the shoes that I honestly stopped to let it all soak in. For every one of those shoes, an innocent person died. I went through many feelings today, first of sadness that so many innocent people had to die, then of pure anger. Angry because I could not believe how Hitler and his forces could possibly carry out the extermination of so many people, angry that he had become a prominent leader at all. I know how he became the leader he did, but still I was angry. But then my feelings turned to that of hope, hope that people would come here and remember the people who had innocently died, realize that, and not let history repeat itself again.
The most moving parts for me were the building where they had starvation and standing cells, the death wall, and the crematorium. The death wall was very moving. Just realizing that thousands of people were shot in the back of the head there was a feeling of total horror. The basement where the cells were located was damp and had a certain odor that again, can not be described with words. It was so hard to think that so many people were forced to starve to death there.
The crematorium was, well, an experience like no other, for lack of better words. Walking in I imagined what it might be like to be a prisoner going in thinking that you were going to take a shower. The building was partly underground and it felt damp, dark, and musty as you walked in. You could see a few patches of light in the ceiling, where either the cans of gas were dropped in or the smoke from burning bodies would come out. Standing there in that room was a feeling that you can not describe with words. Knowing that so many people died there, and that I was standing in that same place was overwhelming and sickening. I wanted to run out of the building as fast as I could and throw up, which I seriously almost did. I can not and could not believe what happened at this place…”
Posted by Amber Ruppert at 03:47 AM | Comments (1)
November 02, 2006
Weekend excursions
So not last weekend, but the weekend before that, Jennifer and I had our first big weekend in Havirov. It was so cool because so many of the people we had met within the first week wanted us to either come to their house or wanted to take us out and spend time with us. They knew we were eager to learn not only about the people, but the culture too.
So our first excursion of the weekend was on Friday night when Andrea, one of Jennifer's teachers, and some others took us out to the nearby town of Ostrava. In Ostrava there is a huge street with over 80 pubs on it, and they wanted to take us to experience it I guess. So for those of you who live in Ames, it is like Welch ave times 50. I guess another big difference is that the pubs are in way cooler and more historic buildings, which makes the experience better I think. Anyway, we had a few drinks there and I tried the local beer in the town, Ostravice. I decided that I really have to be careful when I drink Czech beer because it has way more alcohol in it then any beer in the states. I came to find out that Ostravice has 16% alcohol... these Czech's sure do love their beer! And why shouldn't they, I think their beer tastes pretty good too, ha ha.
On Saturday we were invited to go to one of my teacher's houses for some traditional Czech cuisine. Irene (pronounced I-ray-na) my teacher, cooked us the state dish of the Czech, called cabbage, dumplings, and pork in English, called vepro knedlo zelo (slang term for it) in Czech. It was so delicious! You mix the pork and the cabbage type sauce together and put it on top of the dumplings. It was great, although it did give me a little gas (hey, you know me). We also met her daughter Jane (ya-na) who was 8 and was very eager to show off all her toys and recorder playing skills. I must say it was precious. It was there that Irene also talked to us about Czech singers and we learned about the latest craze in the Czech Republic, Czech super star. Yeah, you guessed it, it's pretty much American Idol, Czech style. She let us borrow and listen to the first seasons winner, Aneta, who they argue has been the best of any of the winners. Maybe Aneta and Kelly Clarkson should be friends.
The finish our big weekend, Lucie, our flat mate invited Jen and I to go hiking with her and some of her coleagues. So we took the train with everyone and when we got there realized we were climbing a mountain, yeah, a 1,328 meter mountain name Lysa Hora. I think translated it means the little horror, no, just joking I made that up. Eh, I was up for a challenge, and i really had no choice by that point. It wasn't too bad of climb, and there was a pub at the top of the mountain where i had some traditional Czech pancakes and traditional Czech soup. We also met a Czech woman on the mountain who made it her goal to memorize alphabetically the states of the United States. When she found out that we were Americans she was very eager to recite them for us. I also talked for like an hour with one of Lucie's colleagues all about a famous Czech cola, Kofala. He boasted that it was better than Coke-a-Cola because it was made with 'herbs'. He let me try some, and really folks, I have no what kind of 'herbs' this stuff is made with, but it tastes to me like there are illigeal drugs in it. In fact I am having a Kofala craving right now...
Posted by Amber Ruppert at 07:07 AM | Comments (5)