Food Pictures

Tradtional slovak meal of meat (chicken and sausages) and potatoes.
Hungarian dish of fried cheese, potatoes(like tator tots) and rice
My other favorite, hot chocolate, so thick you have to eat it with a spoon.

Kind of like a melted candy bar. Yum, yum!

Food

Food

Such an interesting and yummy topic. And when you live overseas, it is even more interesting as the simplest things, such as grocery shopping, cooking and going out to eat become adventures.
Grocery Shopping
Grocery shopping is great fun for many reasons. First, you have to pay to get a grocery cart. The carts are all locked together and you have to pay 5 or 10 crowns to unlock one. You get your money back when you return your cart. Not a bad idea really as no one leaves their cart in the parking lot. You also have to bring your own shopping bags to most places, otherwise you have to buy bags. Sure cuts down on waste. And shopping by pictures is always fun. Sometimes you guess… and sometimes your wrong. (We washed our clothes with fabric softener for several weeks before figuring out it wasn’t soap.) I am very used to pricing things to find the better deal, and as Cosco/Sam’s Club knows, bigger is cheaper. Well, not true here. I have slowly been figuring out that the big jar of jam is more expensive per gram than the little jar. I believe this is because it is more convenient to go shopping more frequently. Carrying your groceries home and small refrigerators/freezers cut down on the amount you buy. I like shopping more frequently as we can always get fresh produce, although remind me again of that when there is snow on the ground.
My favorite grocery store story… so, all three of us went shopping as we were stocking up for the week. We got in line and the checker was an older man who seemed fairly jovial. He was saying things in Slovak so I just kept smiling at him. We had gotten two different cans of beans and the first one he scanned just fine. However, the second would not scan for some reason. He tried several times before he looked up at me and asked me something in Slovak. I gave him an unsure smile and said “Ne rezumium,” – I don’t understand. He looked at me, repeated himself and I just shrugged and shook my head. He started shaking his head and mumbling under his breath “Ne rezumium, ne rezumium.” I can only imagine that he asked me something simple and he thought I didn’t understand his question. “Dumb girl, doesn’t understand, ‘How much are these beans?’ Young people these days. What are they teaching them in school.” As a last resort, he took back the other can of beans and scanned it again, mumbling the entire time.

School Lunches
So, at Oster, my school in San Jose, I never ate at the school cafeteria. The food was greasy, micro-waved and barely food like. Here, employers are required to provide discounted lunches for their employees. So, I can eat in my school cafeteria for less than a dollar a day. And, WoW, is it good food. Every lunch starts with soup, made fresh that day. There are always four choices for lunch. One is a meat dish, (usually chicken or pork) in some kind of a sauce with either rice, pasta or potatoes. The other is a vegetarian choice. This is my favorite as the vegetarians in the States would cringe. Sometime it is really good, like the broccoli soufflé. My favorite vegetarian are what I would call the kid friendly dishes. They include: noodles with chocolate sauce, bread squares with vanilla pudding and dumplings filled with jam. What a meal those are! The third choice is a vegetable plate, which is just a strange assortment of minced veggies such as peppers and carrots. The fourth is a fruit plate, which is actually a plastic bag with four or five pieces of fruit in it. The best part about cafeteria eating is that the menu is posted each day and you stamp your meal ticket with the choice you want. And, seeing that I don’t read Slovak, I try to read what little I can, and then just guess at what I’m getting. Sometimes I will ask a student to translate and get such wonderful translations such as “sliced with kakoa.” Huh? Maybe not tomorrow. Sliced with kakoa is noodles with chocolate, which I passed on. Overall though, I am thoroughly pleased with cafeteria food. And it is all served on china with real silverware, no Styrofoam trays and plastic sporks here.

Restaurants
Restaurants are also great fun. The menus, at least in old town, are often in several languages, or they have an English version. The English versions are funny , as they often don’t make sense. There is no waiting to be seated, just find a table you like and have a seat. The wait staff will come when they are ready, and often it takes a while, so plan plenty of time. Water does not come with the meal and when you order they will ask if you want it with gas or without. All of the water is mineral… umm, umm. I am learning to like it. The food is delicious, if a bit heavy. The national Slovak dish is Brynzova Hylushci, which is little potato dumplings (like small gnocchi) with a sheep cheese sauce, sprinkled with bacon. It is very delicious. After your meal, you can sit and visit for as long as you want, as your waiter will not bring the check until you ask, “Uchet, prosim.” Check, please.

Zmrzlina Prosim!
My favorite Slovak food is zmrzlina. Yes that is right, five consonants in a row, two of them z’s. It is a mouthful to say, but a good word to learn. Ice cream. Ice cream is a treat to be eaten at all times of the day, morning, noon and night. There are little shops on every corner and people walk around with ice creams cones everywhere you go. The ice cream is lighter and much cheaper. For less than a dollar you can get three little scoops. The cookies and another one I can’t pronounce, but is a kind of chocolate, are my favorite right now.
Well, with all this talk about food, I am getting hungry. I think maybe a dish of zmrzlina and maybe a cup of chaj are in order….

Mt 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Vienna
Last weekend, we had Friday off for Mary’s Ascension into Heaven (officially called Our Lady of Sorrows Day). So, we decided to make the most of it and take a trip to Vienna. Vienna is only an hour away by train and costs less than $10. Quite a bargain. We took a fellow American, Heather, along with us. We spent time at the Belvedere Palace roaming through the beautiful gardens. They were very well kept (and free) and seemed to be a popular place for the locals to go running. We headed into the downtown/tourist area after a lunch of crackers and cheese. We had a city guide of Vienna, but not much else to go on. We found our way to St. Stephens Cathedral, a truly magnificent masterpiece of a church. The façade is just amazing. It is still a working church with services held on the weekends. Under the church is a series of catacombs. We could not resist taking the tour offered. It was well worth the $4. At the beginning of the tour, you see the catacombs that have been renovated. The cardinals and bishops are still buried there, some as recently as two years ago. We then saw the room with the caskets of the family who commissioned and built the church. Friedrich Babenberg rebuilt the church after it was gutted by fire in the 14th century. Friedrich commissioned and rebuilt the church by the time he was 25, which was when he died. He married at 14 and his wife was 11! Wow! It is amazing what you can do at a young age. The internal organs of the Hapsbug family (royal family) are kept here in copper urns, while their hearts and bodies are kept in two separate locations. Farther along in the catacombs, we saw the mass graves. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms of bones, some from the Plague. The catacombs were forbidden to be used after 30 years because of sanitation and smell issues.
After our tour, we walked around the town more, going into churches and walking around gardens. We did some shopping at H & M (for those of you not familiar with this store, it is a European clothing shop – a great find!). It is a place that we plan to become much more acquainted with this coming year. We counted at least three, maybe four of them. We had a true Vienna dinner of Weiner Schnitzel and potato salad. Very yummy. And what would a trip to Vienna be like without a stop at a coffee shop. Ours was made in the rain and the dark. We took the train the wrong way, got yelled at and flipped off by a “lady” on the bus and finally found a true Vienna coffee shop, with a wonderfully helpful waiter. The coffee and pastries were delicious and a great ending to our trip.

Interesting Fact # 3

Hair dye. I have never been somewhere where hair dye is so popular, at least among the women. All women, from teenage girls to business women to grandmas. It is not unusual in the least to see a classy lady in a nice pantsuit with red (and I mean red) hair. Yesterday, I went to the notary and the office had three ladies working in it. All of them had their hair dyed different shades of red. One was a true red, one a more coppery red and one a kind of orangey red. I have seen grandmas with purple, teachers with blue and everyone with red. Hmmm…. maybe the next time I am at Tesco I should check out the hair dyes…. blue… red… pink… purple…no, blue, definately blue.

Interesting Fact # 4

Movie theaters have assigned seating. When you go to the movies, they assign you a seat, so there is no reason to get their early to get a good seat. Although I did notice that as soon as the movie started, people got up and moved to the better seats that had not been purchased.


School
So, while our school started three weeks ago, we have only been teaching for the past two weeks. I see my 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders each twice a week and my 5th graders 3 times a week. Each group is broken up into two groups (2nd grade A and 2nd grade B), so I have a total of 18 classes a week. I was told right away that the 5th graders are a handful and that they can be a challenge. So, I decided to go in with guns blazing. I gave them a two page Student Interest Survery on day one to complete. I tried my best to make it at a fifth grade level so that it would be difficult for them and they would know that I meant business. And it worked! They really struggled with it and it took them all of the 45 minute period to complete (and many did not finish). But, I have not had problems with them and they are quickly becoming my favorite class. Their English is fairly good and we can communicate very well, although not always easily.

My challenging class is going to be my 3rd graders. I already had to send one boy to the principal for being disruptive in my class. They act like they have no idea what I am saying and like they can’t speak English at all. I know that it is difficult, but if we struggle together, we can communicate. However, they would rather pretend and speak in Slovak, since I can’t understand them. It is frustrating at times, but hopefully, sending one child to the principal will help the rest realize that while I may not know what they are saying, I still can understand their body language and get the gist of what they are saying. Please pray that I will continue to have patience with them, and that I will be able to come up with creative and fun ways to teach them.

Narnia's needs
On the topic of school, I would like to share with you a need that our school has. The English department’s job is to help all of the students become fluent in English so that they can attend a bilingual Gymnazium (high school). So, starting in first grade (their first year in school), they take five hours of English a week – three hours of English grammer from a Slovak teacher and two hours of English conversation from a native speaker (me!). By the fifth grade, their English is good enough that I can talk at a normal pace and use some pretty sophisticated language. They continue to take English throughout middle school (5th to either 8th or 9th grades). One of the best ways to learn a language is through reading. My favorite poster about reading is one that states the top ten ways to become a better reader: read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read! And for the students at Narnia, one of the best ways to perfect their English is to read books in English. The problem is that there are no English bookstores and very few bookstores with any English books. I was hoping to find English books in our school (since it has such a good English program). However, they have very few books, and the few they have are old and very random. Narnia would love to have more books for their students to enjoy. If you have any used (or new!) books that need a good home, we would love to have them. Please send me an email or post a comment if you are interested and would like the school address. Thank you.

PS. We teachers would love to relax with a good movie now and then, so if you have any videos or DVD's sitting around collecting dust, we would love to add there to our flat for not only us, but all the teachers in Central Europe. Thanks again for all of your support.

Philemon 1:4-7 "I always thank my God when I mention you in my prayer, because I hear about the love you have for all God's people and the faith you have in the Lord Jesus. I pray that the faith you share may make you understand every blessing we have in Christ. I have great joy and comfort, my friends, because the love you have shown to God's people (ME!) has refreshed them." Thank you for refreshing me and keeping me in your prayers.

My flat

Welcome to our flat. Let me give you a tour...

Enteryway

Looking down the hallway to our little flat. Our laundry basket of shoes, since you never wear outside shoes in the house.
Bathroom

Our little bathroom.

Our combination laundry room/bathroom

Dining Room

The right side with the bookcase and piano.

The left side with the piano and the Olivia pictures and the door to the enteryway.

Living Room

The living room is opporsite the dining room. After mutliple attempts to upload the living room pictures I am calling it quits. Maybe another time...
Kitchen

Our kitchen "hutch" and our teeny, tiny oven.

Out little kitchen with our circle sink and our electric teapot.

We actually have a normal size fridge (many people have dorm size fridges).

Our extra table for preping and sitting on.
Balcony

Our little tiny balcony that looks out onto the playground.

The little playground for our building.
Spare Room Our spare bedroom which doubles as Becky's and my closet. We love to have company. (Hint, hint, hint.)
Bedroom When you first walk in our room you can see Beckys bed on the left and Karins on the right. You can just see the corner of my purple comforter on the far right.

Karin's bed and my bed are right by the window, which looks out onto the little playground.

My little corner of the world.

My School!

Welcome to CS Lewis Bilingual High School and Narnia Elementary School

This is the enterance to my school. I live about a 20 minute walk, or a 15 minute bus ride/walk from my school.

Welcome!

My desk with the flowers my principal gave me for my birthday

The front of my classroom.

If you are standing in the middle of the room, facing front, and slowly turn right, this is what you will see...This is the door to my classroom, the sink and my closet/storage area.

The backcorner of my classroom, the bulletion boards and our brand new rug!

The back table for small group work and our wonderful rug!

Our wall of windows that look out onto the entrance of the school.

The teacher's desk at the front of the room. Not that I will sit there...

Becky, Jenni, Daniel (the manager - headmaster) and Karin at the top of Devin Castle. The background is the hills of Vienna

Jayne, my head English teacher, waiting to go down the bobsled.
So fun, but so dangerous! One wrong turn and you go flying off the track and down the hill.

Budapest or Bust!

Budapest

This weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to Budapest by train for a retreat with the team from Hungary. Budapest is only a two and a half hour train ride from Bratislava. It felt like a huge city compared to Bratislava. We got into the city in the early afternoon and immediately had to go shopping for food for our BBQ on Saturday. Shopping in Europe is quite an adventure. First, you must take your own bags as the stores charge for bags. Food is another adventure, as at this point we are shopping almost entirely by what the food looks like- as we can’t read the labels for almost anything. For example, we were planning on having hamburgers for our BBQ, so we bought ground beef to make hamburgers. Or so we thought. In fact, we had bought ground pork (aka sausage). Oh, well! We make porkburgers (actual HAMburgers), which were quite delicious. And of course the best part, you have to lug all your groceries back on the bus. So much fun!

We were able to see some of the sights of Budapest, the best was Castle Hill at night all lit up. We walked all around, looking at the grounds, flowers and statues. Then we walked down the hill and across a beautifully lit up bridge. We had a great time!

Interesting Fact #2

Most people in Bratislava live in flats. Many of them are in huge buildings, 10 to 12 stories tall, and 10 to 20 flats across. You have to have a key to get in or out of the building and out of your individual flat. So, when I leave my flat in the morning, I have to get out my key and unlock the front door. Then, of course, I have to lock it. After a walk down the stairs, I have to again get out my key and unlock the front door. It is quite an interesting system. So, it is very possible to get locked out of your flat, but locked in your building. Definitely not the best place to plan a quick get away!

School Update

I am teaching at CS Lewis schools, specifically the elementary school and middle school named the School of Narnia. We have been treated very well by everyone there. On our first school day, our school manager arranged for us to go check in at the police station (required to get our Visas), get cell phones, and get our bus passes. Slavka (the av is pronounced –ow as in cow), who works in the building our school is housed in, was kind enough to take us and treated us royally. She spent most of the day with us and we have found a wonderful friend in her.

I am teaching 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade English conversation. I will have each grade two times a week for 45 minutes, except for the 5^th graders, which I will have 3 times a week. I will work in conjunction with a Slovak teacher who will be teaching English grammar. The head English teacher for Narnia is a wonderful woman named Jayne, who hails from England. Believe it or not, I sometimes have a harder time understanding her than the Slovaks, as she has such a thick accent and speaks very fast. She is incredibly bubbly and energetic. Working with her is going to be an adventure everyday and will never ever get boring. Jayne and I share a classroom, which is quite spacious. It is definitely not as well stocked or furnished as classrooms in the states, but has all the necessities. I am learning to be resourceful and creative!

Thank you so much for all of your comments. I appreciate them all as they make me smile and encourage me when I need it most. Please keep your comments coming. Thank you also for all of your emails. I am going to try my best to respond to all of them, but please be patient as it may take me a while.

Please keep me in your prayers as I will officially start teaching kids next week. I am excited, but also nervous as I realized today that my second graders really don’t speak any English. What a challenge they will be! I would also appreciate your prayers that I don’t get discouraged with my slow acquisition of the Slovak language. While I am learning, it is a slow process and it can be discouraging. Thank you so much for all of your prayers so far. I have had a very smooth transition and know it is due to all the prayers of the faithful.

Col 4:2-6Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us(me), too, that God may open a door for our(my) message, so that we(I) may proclaim the mystery of Christ…Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Budapest Visit

Barbeque-ing in Budapest

Sam Kellum (who lives in Budapest with his wife and 4 kids) and I BBQing the poultry dogs and porkburgers on the "base."

Owen, 20 months, with his huge poultry dog and bun. There is no such thing as hotdog buns, so we made do with little(or not so little) rolls. His brother Calvin, 3, is in the background.

The teachers we visited in Budapest teach at a school that specializes in aviation, and they live on what is affectionately called the base. They have a hanger in the front yard, plus five or six helicopots and airplanes. They have an engine in the front hall. Very cool!

The Budapest Castle at Night. The grounds are beautiful at night.