My Work Here is Done

Today I'm once again stretching the idea of this blog to include something I want to share. We'll say it's about cultural differences and whatnot and call it square.

I'm a missionary, but I also have an auxiliary, personal mission. That mission is to spread my love of three things: American football, bagpipes, and country music. I just realized that as of this afternoon I've done all three things this week:

1. On Tuesday night I was able to share my enthusiasm for football with nine girls as we participated in a Bible study based on the show "Friday Night Lights." Because I missed the Super Bowl, I was way too emotionally invested in a football game that was scripted for drama. But I got the singular joy of watching one of my fellow teachers explaining to a group of rapt teenage girls the difference between the extra point and the two-point conversion after a touchdown.

2. In our first-year social studies class we talked briefly about icons of Scotland, one of which is the bagpipes. I was able to play for them a bit of "Scotland the Brave" and also of Dropkick Murphys' version of "Amazing Grace." (The firsties always think that haggis sounds disgusting, but I tell them that I've watched people make sausage here, and it's not that much different.)

3. Since Valentine's Day is on Sunday, I decided to play a "love song" for my second years. When I play a song with words in class, I provide the lyrics for students and they often have to fill in gaps. That way it's educational. The song that I chose for them to listen to is one of my personal favorites, "John Deere Green" by Joe Diffie, which is an intensely country song. I didn't realize how difficult it would be for them until we were actually in class and I watched their faces as they tried to fill in prepositions and articles.

So I've managed the trifecta this week. Even though I've achieved that, there is still more to do. There is more country music to listen to and an actual football to toss. And that's why I'm coming back to Slovakia for one more year of teaching.

So Close and Yet So Far

Last weekend was a three-day weekend at the end of our first semester. I've wanted to go to Kraków for a while, and it seemed like a good time to go. On Friday after school I and two of my friends left Tisovec for our first stop, which was Cieszyn, Poland. There are two American teachers at the school there, and they kindly allowed us to stay with them overnight. We left Tisovec around noon and our train got to Český Těšín in the Czech Republic shortly after 7. From there we walked into Poland. As we crossed the border, which is more or less the middle of the Olza River, we did the classic standing-in-two-countries-at-once thing. Our friends greeted us in Cieszyn with fajitas and real American brownies and a drink made with vodka and apple juice.

Here follows a brief digression about vodka. If you're going to be in Central Europe, especially in someplace like Poland that is renowned for its vodka, you should probably sample it--in moderation, of course, because nobody likes a drunk tourist. In fact, most of us really dislike drunk tourists, so don't be an idiot. Anyway, the apple juice and vodka concoction is properly made with a kind of vodka called Żubrówka, which I tend to call "buffalo vodka," because the English name is really bison grass vodka. Żubrówka is made using grass that bison (żubr) like to eat. I for one did not even know that there were bison running around Poland these days. True żubrówka is not available in the US, although the internet says you can get a version of it there.

On Saturday morning we left Cieszyn for Kraków, although we ended up leaving one of our number behind. M didn't feel well as we were getting ready, and decided not to try to sit on a bus for three hours. I felt bad leaving her with a mysterious malady, but there was really nothing we could do, so H and I went on. (M went home on Sunday afternoon, and feels better now.) Unfortunately, that meant going without the one of us who had actually been to Poland before, but we managed okay.

One of the challenges or obstacles in my mind was the difference between Slovak and Polish. Even though I don't know much Slovak, I am well able to say "I don't understand" and "I don't speak Slovak," and I feel secure in a way when I don't understand Slovak. But other languages are a different story. When I don't understand in another language, I can't always say that I don't understand, which is difficult. You'd think Polish would be closer to Slovak than it is, because it's in the same family, but you would, of course, be wrong. For example, tak means "so" in Slovak but "yes" in Polish. There are some things that are close, but just different enough to mess you up. Polish also uses some special characters that Slovak doesn't have. The Slovak ž is Polish ż, and there are some vowels with the little hooky thing,* which, according to Character Map, is an ogonek. I wasn't able to master the proper Polish pronunciation of "thank you," dziękuję. It's funny what a difference knowing one little phrase like "thank you" makes.

We got to Kraków around 12:30 and went to our hostel. It was pretty close to the train and bus stations. We actually stayed in a three-bed private room around the corner from the main hostel. It was much quieter than the main place was, and we enjoyed not having to share a room and being able to lock our stuff in safely. (Second sidebar: When we checked in, the helpful young man at the hostel gave us a map and told us some places to go. The map was one of the City Spy maps, which are aimed at young'uns and therefore have an irreverent view of their cities. In this particular map, my favorite piece of advice was, "If you happen to meet A LOT of ladies dressed up, [sic] as penguins then be nice. They are nuns, devoted to God & in no mood to put up with your shit!!" I'm thinking of adopting "Devoted to God and in no mood to put up with your shit" as my personal motto.)

After we'd dropped our things off, we went looking for sights. Just opposite the hostel was a park with the only remaining part of the city walls. The barbican, or barbakan in Polish, and St. Florian's Gate are all that's left of the walls. The Florian Gate, pictured at right, leads into the Old Town area of the city. Florianska, the street that begins at the gate, goes straight to the main square. The Cloth Hall, the basilica, and the town hall tower are all in the main square. Of course the Cloth Hall is being renovated and was covered in scaffolding. Inside there are souvenir and craft stalls, and apparently on the second floor there's something else, but we were there late enough in the afternoon that that was all closed. You can ascend the town hall tower to overlook the city, and I believe there's an exhibit inside there as well. I was most interested in St. Mary's Basilica, and gladly paid even the fee for photography inside. I think the most striking thing about the interior was the ceiling, which is a vibrant blue and decorated with stars. Part of me immediately thought of Grand Central when I looked at the ceiling.

When I was younger we had a book called The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly. It was probably the first time I'd ever heard of Kraków. The book is based on the legend that a city watch trumpeter was sounding the alarm that the city was about to be attacked by Tatars when he was shot in the throat, abruptly ending the tune. Every hour a trumpeter plays the hejnał from the taller tower of the basilica, once to each direction. Each time the hejnał ends with the "broken note." I wasn't able to get a video during the day, because I just missed it a few times, but the following two videos are of the hejnał on Saturday and Sunday nights, respectively. (I know the first one has a bit of nothing at the beginning, but when I tried to trim the video, the quality got even worse, if you can believe that worse quality is possible.) The two videos show that they are indeed real people playing and not just a recording.




When we left the basilica we continued toward the Wisła River, wandering into some of the many churches we passed. There are lots and lots of churches of all different sizes and styles in Kraków. The vast majority of them seem to be Catholic churches--we only passed one that I noticed was Protestant. For some reason, all of the churches still had their Christmas decorations up. There was also a large Christmas tree in a square near the Franciscan church. (We didn't get a chance to go in that church, which is too bad, because it has some stained glass windows designed by Stanisław Wyspiański that are supposed to be really cool.) This was a bit confusing, as we were there at the very end of January. Like I said, it just wasn't just one church that was a little behind, either; it was all of them. Are there any Polish people out there who can shed some light on this situation for me?

Let me tell you how much the Poles in Kraków love Jan Paweł II. The last pope lived in the city for about 16 years. There's a statue of him outside the cathedral (above), a bronze relief on the side of the basilica, they mentioned him during Mass, and there are multiple vending machines where you can buy a John Paul II medal. The first one I noticed was in the ticket office for the basilica; I saw it and thought immediately of the machines that press pennies back home. This was so much more, though. They were proper vending machines, where you insert 7 złoty and receive a hefty gold-colored coin with the pope's profile on one side and the papal seal on the other. I always really liked John Paul, and I still call him "the pope." I feel bad for Benedict, because that must be a tough act to follow. Anyhow, I admired John Paul, because he refused to be part of the oppression and genocide of Jews before and during World War II, and he also stood up to the Communist Party. The motto of the John Paul II Centre is Nie lękajcie się!--Do not be afraid! That motto also appears on the medals. I had a brief moment of doubt as to whether buying a medal with the pope on it was idolatrous at all, but I decided it couldn't be too bad, and bought one anyway.

On Sunday, as I mentioned earlier, we went to Mass at the cathedral. The cathedral is amusing from the outside because, as you can see in the picture, there are a variety of different styles existing together. And they're all kind of squished in together, too (that's the technical architectural term, "squished in"). When we arrived for Mass, a pair of young men wearing very official capes were waiting at the door. Their job was clearly to make sure that no tourists were sneaking in free under the guise of attending the service. They heard us talking, and as we went in one of them asked if we were there for worship, to which we both replied in the affirmative. He was incredulous, but let us in. It was not entirely dissimilar to church here in Tisovec: both places were cold, and I only understood some of what was going on. The cathedral had a bishop and a good organist and a male choir, though, the latter two of which we really enjoyed.

After Mass we walked around Wawel a bit, but didn't really check out any of the exhibits. The river was frozen but for a few patches, and we saw a crowd gathered at the side, so we wandered that way to see what was going on. A group of truly brave people were doing a walrus plunge kind of thing. Now yes, I did a penguin plunge in March 2006, but the air temperature was significantly warmer, and while there was snow on the ground, there was no actual ice in the water. I am nowhere near hardcore enough to jump into the Wisła in January.

We made our way to Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter, where we had lunch. Observe my true Polish pierogi. It's possible that my father might have disowned me had I not eaten pierogi while I was there.
Once we'd finished our lunch, we didn't really want to leave the cafe, because it was wicked cold outside. But leave we did, and continued on to the Remuh Synagogue. It's a small synagogue in the process of being renovated, but by entering it you also get into the cemetery. The inside of the wall around the cemetery is made up of tombstones that were destroyed during the war. We also visited the Tempel (Progressive) Synagogue, which is much larger and in a Moorish style. It was similar to the Spanish Synagogue in Prague, in that the style was completely incongruous with the area's natural decorative style. What's the word for an anachronism, but in space, rather than time? Because that's what those synagogues are.
Kraków is also blessed with a really nice mall. I was so close to buying a mortar and pestle there, among other things. Something that I've experienced fairly often in Europe is the feeling of being overwhelmed at malls. In Portugal I couldn't stand being in the malls for very long, and even Aupark in Bratislava can be too much for me. I was fully expecting to be overwhelmed by the Kraków Galeria, but was pleasantly surprised not to be. Say what you will about consumerism and capitalism, malls are really handy. And they had good ice cream.

Our last experience was to visit a bar mleczny. In English these places are called "milk bars." They're basically cafeterias left over from the Communist era where you order from a super-cheap menu. The guidebooks all say that you ought to visit a milk bar because real Polish people eat there, not just tourists. While we were eating dinner, an old guy came in and got four glasses of hot water, to which he added his own teabags. I got potato pancakes and gulas, and H got a pork steak with potatoes and beets. Each meal was about $5. It was by no means haute cuisine, but I enjoyed it. It was hot and filling and cheap and great.

The only thing we had to do on Monday was make it on the train at 7:35. We made that one and all our subsequent connections without a hitch and got back home by 5. I keep thinking that Kraków wasn't what I expected it to be like, but then again, I couldn't really say what I did expect it to be like.

*I may have described bacteria as "tiny little germ guys" to 3A1 this week. They were rather amused, and in fact quoted me back to myself shortly thereafter. In my defense, it's not as if I was explaining a completely new concept.

Lisbon Organ

I took this video for my dad at the cathedral in Lisbon.

Extra Fofos

"Is It Fish?"

A few weeks ago we were talking about our plans for the three-week winter break, and one of my colleagues said, out of nowhere, "Let's go to Portugal." I, of course, not having any other plans, said, "Sure," not really thinking that we'd actually go. After a few weeks we sat down and made our arrangements, and on the night of December 21st we flew out from Bratislava.

For those of you unaware, I spent three of my formative years living in southern Spain, in the area called Andalucia. I call these years "formative" because I really believe they had a lot of influence on how my life has progressed and what I'm like now. Without that time, I certainly wouldn't be living in Slovakia now. I will have to rhapsodize about my life-changing experience another time, because this post will be quite long enough without it. Anyhow, during that time I had the opportunity to travel to nearby countries, including Portugal. Because I was younger, many of my memories are vague impressions rather than concrete and clear recollections.

I’d been to all three of the countries we were going to visit, but it’d been a long time since then. I was excited to go back and see what was familiar and what was new. There were times I walked into places and thought, 'This is not at all what I remember...the beach should be right there, not way over there,' but then there were times when I definitely knew that I'd been there before.

This winter Europe has been experiencing atypical weather. There’s been snow in England, Scotland, and even Spain, and lots of rain in Italy and Portugal. The weather was one of the poor parts of the trip; everything would have looked much nicer had the sun been out, and indeed, on the days when it was, things were glorious. On the other hand, when we left Bratislava it was -7 C; when we landed in Alicante it was 13 C, so there was some improvement there.

Our first flight was from Bratislava into Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We spent the night in a hamburger joint eating patatas fritas, which were just as I remembered, and drinking coffee. In the morning we got on a high-speed train for Madrid. When they say high-speed, they mean it; the speedometer in our carriage showed 159 kph as the top speed. The ride was very smooth and comfortable.

Madrid is, of course, Spain's capital city. There is a square there called Puerta del Sol, and in the square is kilometer 0 for all of Spain's motorways. There's also a statue of a bear and a mulberry tree, which is the symbol of Madrid for some reason. On the other end of the square is a billboard for Tio Pepe sherry. It may be unfortunate that some of the things I most certainly remember from my childhood have to do with alcohol, but here's mi tio.
(My childhood is also the smell of cheaply tanned leather goods, and the color of the dirt in Andalucia, and the sound of seagulls.)

In Madrid we first bought our bus tickets to our next destination. I was able to make myself understood in Spanish rather well, an accomplishment that made me both relieved and pleased. Then we went to El Corte Inglés, the department store that was fancier than I recalled. We bought lunch from the grocery in the basement, and I was tempted to buy many things, like jamón serrano, kiwi syrup, and Cola Cao. That evening, we went out and walked around for a while, and ate an empanada and churros in a churro shop, and then had gelato.

For our second day we started off at the Museo del Prado, one of the great art museums of the world, which has Spain's best collection of classic art. The most renowned work in the Prado is the painting known as "Las Meninas" by Velázquez. It's a painting that I’ve seen replicas of since I was little, and I finally got to see it in person. The Prado also has works by many other famous Spanish painters, notably Goya and El Greco.

From there we visited the Plaza Mayor to check out their so-called Christmas market, which turned out to be mostly cheap toys and decorations, and elements for making belenes. During the Christmas season, Spaniards construct elaborate dioramas showing the events of the nativity. These are often displayed in shopping centers or stores; we saw a belén in the windows of the Corte Inglés in Sevilla. The market in Plaza Mayor had figures, pieces of fake sod, walls, all kinds of bits of things that might go into a belén.

We finished the day by visiting the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the modern art museum. The Reina Sofía is the home of Picasso’s "Guernica," a reaction to the bombing of the town of the same name during the Spanish Civil War. Visitors aren't allowed to photograph "Guernica" itself, but the picture here is a detail of one of Picasso's preliminary sketches for the painting. I much prefer this bull to how he ended up in the final product. This one looks so dopey. The museum has lots of other Picassos, and many other works relating to the Spanish Civil War; which led us to realize that we know very little about that particular event. We had baked sweet potatoes from a street vendor for dinner.

From Madrid we traveled on the night bus to northern Portugal, although this hadn't been the original plan. We arrived in Porto, also known as Oporto, quite early in the morning and found our pensão without too much difficulty. As it was early, we knew we wouldn’t be able to check in, but we at least wanted to drop off our bags before we wandered around in the rain some more. Unfortunately, we had to wake the landlady up in order to drop off our things. She was nice enough for having been woken up around 6:30 am.

Porto is on the River Douro (which is handy for puns: ouro is Portuguese for gold) and rises from its banks onto a hill. A funicular railroad ascends the hill, and we rode it to the top.

You can plan your trip to the last detail, but there will always be unexpected circumstances and events. Sometimes these are not pleasant, such as when you go to buy bus tickets and find out that the bus you’d intended to take was sold out and you have to try to contact your hostel and hope you aren’t charged for the night you’re not spending there (we weren’t). But sometimes these things are serendipitous and wonderful. We were wandering around Porto and came across a stretch of turreted wall. There was nothing that said, “Don’t go up these steps and walk on the wall,” so we did. The steps were grassy, and there were no rails or even cautionary signs. One tower looked out over the river, and the one at the opposite end of the wall looked over the city. The wall is part of the muralha Fernandina, built in the 14th century. I loved that wall. Just climbing up to the top of the wall made me so happy.The Iberian Peninsula is a good place for seafood, so we took advantage of that as much as possible, sometimes without meaning to. We were walking Porto and saw a nice-looking display of sandwiches in a window, so we went in and ordered by means of pointing, since we know very little Portuguese. B got what turned out to be a piece of cod, battered and fried, while I got what looked like it ought to be a sausage sandwich. When I pointed to it, the guy working there said, "Ah, croquettes." Now, where I come from, croquettes are small potato-y things, akin to tater tots. They are not some kind of unidentified fish paste formed into cylinders and then cooked. That was my lunch. Later, in Lisbon, I accidentally ate a (very small) sardine sandwich, and from that point on we found it necessary to question if our food contained any unexpected fish products.

Porto is best known for its production of the fortified wine called port. The area called Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto proper, is home to the wineries, where you can visit and taste their products. Since we arrived on Christmas Eve, the lodges all closed early, and none were open by the time we made it to Gaia. Luckily shops were still open, and we were able to sample a few different kinds of port. Port is a sweeter wine, which is perfect for someone like me, who doesn’t actually like wine. We bought a bottle of Croft branco (white) and one of Graham's ruby. B, bless her, let us get sweeter ones, because she knew I wouldn't drink them otherwise. On the way back to our room we also picked up a Christmas cake. Those things became our Christmas feast.

Christmas Day in your traditionally Catholic countries is pretty quiet if you don't know anyone. The vast majority of the shops and restaurants were closed, although a few cafes were open, and I went past an open Asian grocery store. I took a walk in the afternoon and saw quite a few buildings in various states of decrepitude, as well as many tiled buildings. The tripeiros, as the people of Porto are called, seem to favor blue. I certainly dug it.

On St. Stephen’s Day we had to wake up the landlady again to get out of the hotel and to our train. Our next stop was Lisbon (Lisboa in Portuguese). Once again, we got to our destination before our lodging was ready for us; in this case, no one was even at the hostel. Fortuitously, it was a nice day, so we got some breakfast--including delicious fresh orange juice for me--and sat by the river behind the metro/train station. The sun was shining over the Rio Tejo, old men were fishing, and there were still parties, or after-parties, as we were to learn, going on. We hadn’t been sitting there long when a young man walked up and asked if it was my first time in Lisbon. I said no, but he was not deterred, and struck up a conversation with us. His name, it turned out, was Francisco, “like San Francisco,” and he’d just come from an after-party. He told us a lot about cork, as he works for his family’s cork business and Portugal produces 70% of the world’s cork, and about Portuguese history, especially its exploration and colonization. He was quite amusing once I decided he wasn’t trying to scam us.

Once we got checked in to our hostel, we set out for some sightseeing that would let us enjoy the sun. Our hostel was rather conveniently situated a few minutes from Cais do Sodré, the last metro stop and the Lisbon terminus for the commuter railroad. Because it serves two networks, the station is well-appointed--it has a grocery store, which made grabbing quick meals easy. Before we left for the first time we went in the grocery and grabbed some things. As I was about to check out I looked over and saw a bag of what appeared to be small croissants. The label said "Extra Fofos." I quickly went from amused to intrigued and ended up buying the extra fofos. I didn't have a bag, and was not offered one, and could only think of the Slovak word for bag, so I carried my purchases with me. I ate most of them on the train, but that bag of extra fofos I carried with me the rest of the day, out in the open, into the castle and the church and the restaurant. I felt pretty foolish.

From Lisbon the commuter train goes west. We only went a few stops, to the area known as Belém. I'd definitely been to Belém before, as it's where the Discoveries Monument and the Torre de Belém are. The Discoveries Monument is exactly what it sounds like, a quite large monument to Portuguese explorers and especially Prince Henry the Navigator, who encouraged exploration. In front of the monument is a world map laid into the pavement, with the dates of Portugal's voyages to different parts of the world. Usually you can go to the top of the monument and look down on it, but it was closed the day we were there. On the front, Prince Henry holds a ship and looks out over the Tejo. I've got respect for Prince Henry, probably in part because I think "the Navigator" is a pretty cool byname, but also because he told his people to go out and look at the world and find out new things, and I appreciate that.

A few minutes' walk west of the Padrão do Descobrimentos is the Torre de Belém. The tower was built as part of Lisbon's defenses. Like the monument, the tower is built of white stone. At high tide, water surrounds it, or at least it used to, based on old pictures and the water line on the base of the tower. Because it was a fortress, the tower today is mostly empty except for a few cannons and information on its history. It has really nice views, though, and is a pretty, interesting building. I didn't go all the way into the highest part, because the tower was a bit crowded, and I have problems enough with spiral staircases without having to share a narrow step with someone trying to go the opposite way.
Still in Belém but off the riverfront are the presidential palace and its museum, and the Jerónimos Monastery, part of which now houses an archaelogical museum. I took the extra fofos to look around the church there, and was righteously indignant at the tourists who were touching tombs and things. We also saw a VW parade.

On Sunday we went to church at St. Andrew's, which turned out to be a Church of Scotland congregation with a bona fide Scot as the pastor. The small congregation was full of old Brits, who were very amusing to talk to. One woman, Scottish herself, has an aunt who lives in my hometown. How weird is that? We had tea and small sandwiches, including the sardine one, and cake. It was most enjoyable. After church we went to the Tile Museum. The decorative tiles are called azulejos, and the museum explained how they were made, and that they were brought into Portugal from Spain, mainly the formerly-Muslim-controlled south. The tile museum is in a former convent, so it's like two museums in one, because you can see the chapter house and the incredibly overgilded chapel of the convent as well as the tiles that you actually came to see.Later that evening we went to the Lisbon city museum to try to learn something about history. The theme of the museum seems to be "We were great, then there was a big earthquake in 1755 and things sucked for a while, but then it got better and it's been great since then." It was not terribly helpful or informative. I recommend you skip it. The castle has much better information, and is way, way cooler.

The next day we took the commuter line out to Cascais to visit the ocean. It was not the most ideal day to walk by the ocean, overcast and grey, but it was not raining, and I walked around in my sweatshirt comfortably all day. We walked from Cascais to Estoril and back, and saw a building called Forte da Cruz, which may or may not be where the Maltese ambassador to Portugal lives, but where I would definitely live. B took some Atlantic spray to the back. For some reason, the ocean in this part of Portugal (maybe in all parts, I don't know) is quite forceful. When waves hit cliffs or manmade structures they tend to throw up a lot of spray. It was really nice being by the ocean, even if it was tempestuous. And for dinner we ate at an Indian restaurant and had two kinds of paneer and it was so good.

On our last day in Lisbon we went up to the castle, because I can't not go to a castle or a cathedral. Apparently one of my New Year's resolutions should be to stop being such a huge, predictable dork and like something that's not medieval. But I'm in Europe, where they keep the medieval things! It would be harder to try to avoid the history than to embrace it and love it. So I will continue carrying on my usual way. We passed the Sé first, and went in there. The cathedral part was nice, though not especially remarkable; but toward the back there was a section that required an entrance fee. I paid the €2.50 without thinking twice, and went outside, where part of the cloister is being excavated. The oldest ruins are from Roman settlements, and continue through the Muslim period into the later Middle Ages. The cloister had a number of chapels, and bits of things that had been dug up were scattered around. It was very atmospheric and would have been quite peaceful but for the other tourists.

After we left the cathedral we carried on up the hill a ways to the castle. The Castelo São Jorge overlooks all of Lisbon, and can be seen from many points below. It displays a classic fortress profile, with crenellated walls and square towers. The museum there has a good overview of the history of Lisbon, from Roman times through the Middle Ages. The castle and the rest of the city were held by Muslims for a time during the 12th century, and in 1147 Christian forces under King Afonso Henriques besieged the castle and succeeded in taking it. Inside the castle you can look at the peacocks, whom I apparently chased around when I was younger, and climb the walls to the various towers. When I walked into one of the courtyards there I had a definite reaction of "Whoa. I've been here before," although I realized that I've been to many castles, and I could have been thinking of a different one. I've had a hard time deciding if I'd prefer to live in the Torre de Belém, Forte da Cruz, or Castelo São Jorge, and still haven't come up with my final choice.
On the Lisbon metro's green line there's a stop called Martim Moniz. We got off the train at this stop to take pictures of the art there. In this station there are little marble soldiers and crusaders on the walls, as well as some bishops and horses. Some of the soldiers appear to be peeking through the closing doors of a train. They're very cute, and, it turns out, rather morbid, because Martim Moniz was one of the heroes of the siege 0f 1147 who died by wedging himself in the door of the castle so the rest of King Afonso's army could get in.

For the record, Portugal has the coolest euros.

We took an overnight bus from Lisbon that was listed as arriving in Sevilla at 5:15 AM. 5:15, while early, seemed a manageable time. We were, therefore, a bit confounded when the bus backed in to the station in Sevilla about an hour early. The city buses weren't running, and clearly the hostel was not going to accept us, so we hung out in the bus station for a while. Sometime after 6 we got on a city bus and rode the route through once before I figured that the stop we needed to get off at didn't have its name on the side of the shelter, like all the others had. So we rode for a few more minutes before we got off and found our way to the hostel.

Back before the dawn of time, I lived about an hour and a half from Sevilla. Some of you might recognize the name better as the anglicized Seville, but I cringe every time I read or hear that. We didn't have very long, only a day, to see the city, but we hit the major sites. First we had some late breakfast of pastries, coffee, and hot chocolate before heading off to the cathedral. The catedral is one of the biggest in the world, and was built in part on the site of a former mosque. One of its main draws on the inside is the tomb of one Cristóbal Colón. Some people obviously claim that Columbus is not really in there, and that he's buried in the New World somewhere, but I choose to believe that he's really there, supported by the grateful kings of the Spanish kingdoms Castile, León, Navarre, and Aragon. And see, there's St. Christopher in the background, literally bearing Christ, just as Columbus thought he was bearing Christ to the New World.Part of the cathedral grounds is the courtyard of the orange trees, where I took a few moments to hug an orange tree.

The Alcázar was originally a Moorish palace, and is more or less right next to the cathedral. It is a great showcase of Andalucian Muslim architecture and decoration. In one section there's a nice manuscript, written in a beautiful chancery hand, and for some reason this manuscript is in a glass case that is itself behind a piece of plexiglass. In my haste to look at the manuscript, I totally failed to notice the first piece of plexiglass, and so succeeded in bouncing my forehead off of said plexiglass. I immediately looked around and said, "I can't believe I just did that!" To my relief, no guards came over and scolded me for trying to get too close to the history; but on the other hand, nobody asked if I was okay, either. Maybe the fact that I was laughing clued them in.

Next we went to the Plaza de Toros and took a brief tour of the bullring. Then we walked up to the Plaza de España. The sun had come out again by this time, and the plaza looked beautiful. It's arranged in a semicircle, and around the edge are little stalls representing different Spanish cities. Unfortunately about half of them were covered for renovation. Overall, though, it was like I remembered. As we walked around, I seemed to recall running with my brother through the covered walkway.

For dinner we found a place that had paella and fought with our shellfish. We emerged triumphant.

Our last stop before coming back to Slovakia was Milan. It turned out to be cheaper to fly from Sevilla to Milan and then Milan to Bratislava, so we did. We got to Milan in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, and, having found our "hostel" which was really a small hotel with a kind of scary elevator, we went out to get dinner from a grocery store. You should have seen all the cheese! It was wondrous. We got chips and water and cheese and salami and focaccia and salad and yogurt and champagne and chocolate, and retired to our room, where we, in the true style of my family, ate chips and watched TV. Shortly after 11 we wandered outside, trying to find somewhere where celebrations would be going down; we never found one central place, but at midnight drank champagne out of plastic cups and watched people shoot off fireworks in the streets.

On the first, more things were open than I'd expected. We went to the Duomo, a very large and pretty building of pink and gray marble. It's celebrating its 400th anniversary this year. B and I took turns waiting outside with our bags, and while I was inside, a Mass was finishing. While I walked around, they started to sing the tune Old Hundredth, which with words we call "Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow," and I started to cry a little, because it was like he was reminding me that no matter where I am, and no matter what language I'm speaking or not speaking or trying to speak, he's there, too, and he was there 400 years ago when they built this amazing building, and he'll be there when it falls down.

Then in the next square there were giant pink snails.
We walked around for a while after that, to La Scala, the famous opera house, and to the Castello Sforzesco, which I have the hardest time remembering how to spell and which wasn't that great. By that time, we couldn't be bothered to go in the museum, and really all it was was a glorified barracks. It had cool walls and towers, but was mostly boring.

We had panini for lunch, then began our trek back to the airport. This is the last picture I took on the trip, in a Milan metro station. Since you can't argue with a big sign, we did as it suggested.

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.