Christmas Time is Here

This year I have two Christmas songs to share. First off, some of my second-year students love to sing, so I asked them to sing some Christmas songs to make a video greeting for one of their former teachers. They sang "Jingle Bells" in English and then in Czech; here's the latter, since I'm assuming that most of you know how it sounds in the former. And they're all staring off in one direction because they're reading the words from the chalkboard.

Then a few weeks ago we sang songs at Bible study, and the kids then taught us "Silent Night" in Slovak. We only got one verse, but it's more than I knew before.

Tichá noc, sväta noc,
Všetko spí, všetko sní,
Sám len svätý bdie dôverný Pán,
Stráži dietátko nebeský dar
Sladký Ježiško spí, sní
Nebesky tíško spí, sní

I must also add that like all of my students love any iteration of "Last Christmas." Any class I played that for started singing.

Sometime quite soon I will be heading off for my Christmas adventure of epic proportions. I'm not entirely prepared right this second, but I am quite excited. Of course you should all be looking forward to the next update, which will appear here early in 2010. From all of us in Tisovec, veselé vianoce a šťastný novy rok!

Stužková Professional Stylie

I know I complained about the omnipresent and annoying photographers at stužková, but they did have good cameras and they did get some good pictures of us and the kids. One of the girls (whom I don't even teach--you rock, Katka D!) provided me with some of those pictures; and while it might violate some copyright laws and will probably cause an international incident*, here are two photographs showing the američany and some of our students in their regional dress. I include the last one because of its sheer cuteness.


*Dear boss...
Whenever one of us does something even remotely ill-advised, we often pretend we're writing to our program supervisor informing him of what's happened. (This itself is a holdover from university, when we used to pretend our actions would make it into the campus police blotter.) The imaginary e-mails usually begin "Dear boss, we regret to inform you..." although one of my favorites was "Dear boss, the bail is two thousand euros."

You Know You Live in a Small Town When...

Yesterday I went into my usual potraviny,* which is a block north of my building. I gathered my groceries, stood in line, and had my things rung up. 99% of the time I use cash and foodstamps at the store, but yesterday I didn't have enough of either, so I planned to use my (Slovak) debit card. But when I tried to hand it to the cashier, she said, "Nefunguje"--the card reader wasn't working. Just now, as I'm writing this, I realized that my first stroke of luck was that I actually understood what the problem was to begin with. As usual, I couldn't quite find the words to express what I wanted to say, which was something along the lines of, "Well, I haven't got enough money to pay for it without the card, so I guess you'd better put it all back." Instead I stood there, gaping a bit helplessly, as I tried to think in English and Slovak at the same time. After a minute, the woman simply said, "Zajtra" (tomorrow), and wrote down my name and how much I owed. I thanked her sincerely and left with my purchases. This afternoon I have to go by and pay the €7.91 that I owe.

So you know you live in a small town when 1. you're able to buy something on credit, which I thought went out with the 20th century, and 2. you realize that number 1 is possible because you know it would be really easy to track you down if you didn't pay up. Even so, it's nice to live in a world where people will trust you, even if only for a little while. "I'll pay you tomorrow" just wouldn't fly at Albertson's.

*A small grocery store. Bigger than a New York bodega, but smaller than an IGA or Kroger.