Thanksgiving

You have no idea how much I'm thankful for this year.

First and forever and always I am thankful for my family and my friends. I hope they already know that, but I'm just throwing it out there.

One of the things that I am most thankful for is the magic of Skype. It truly is magic, and wonderful and amazing. Without it I would be very sad/poor, because I would either not get to talk to people at home, or have to buy many, many international phone cards.

I am thankful that I have been safe and secure all this year, especially here in Slovakia. I've never felt in any danger...although I have been slightly menaced by the čuvačy.* If you see a big white dog in a field in Slovakia, DO NOT mess with it or its sheep.

I am indeed thankful for my school and my coworkers and my students. Of course, without them none of this would be possible. I feel very lucky that I teach at one of the best schools in the country, and that we have such a nice facility. The other teachers are all easy to work with, which is wonderful. And the majority of my students are lovely, amusing people.

Since I teach a class that's about life and institutions in English-speaking countries (realia), I was able to impart the time-honored tradition of the hand turkey on most of the first years. I made an example turkey and wrote on the back one thing I am thankful for, which is the school. The kids all traced and cut out their hands, some of them with a great deal of concentration, then decorated them and wrote something they were thankful for. The first class who did it had a lot of "I am thankful for my family and friends," so in the subsequent classes I said, "Mine says I am thankful for this school, but yours can say anything, like 'I am thankful for Kofola and karate and puppies,'" and I began to get more varied responses. Some of the students wrote that they were thankful for 1A or 1B, one wrote that she was thankful for 3A, and my favorite said something like "I am thankful for my family and friends and chili pizza and my home and my school and gummi bears."

Happy Thanksgiving!

*That plural form is purely conjecture. One is a čuvač, but I'm not entirely sure what more than one should be.