"Chala!"

Today, I’d like to share a couple stories from my everyday life.

Racing the lights:

I race with a lot of lights here. My commute to school is between 3 and 8 minutes, depending on when I arrive at the crosswalk in front of my apartment. You know that when 17-year-old “cool kid” boys wait for the “walk signal” at the crosswalk that it’s a serious “no-no” to cross against the light. I rarely run to make the light, but I’ve seen people of all ages - children, parents with strollers (sometimes I fear for the lives of their babies), and older people with walkers - run from half a block away to cross the street when the little red man turns green. Otherwise, you’re trapped on this side of the street for 5 more minutes.

I also race the hallway lights in my apartment building. To save electricity, the building is always dark unless you turn the lights on when you enter. Then you have 30 seconds to run up the windy staircase to your apartment before the building is pitch black again. You’re in trouble if the lights are already on when you open the front door to the building. Even if you hit the switch again, the light timer doesn’t reset and you don’t get 1 minute instead of 30 seconds if you hit the switch twice (I’ve tried). Sometimes I stand at the entrance and wait for the lights to go out so I can press the switch again for a full 30 seconds and run!

I also love when visitors leave my apartment because, of course, you also have to turn the lights on before you go down the staircase. However, all of the 5 switches outside of my apartment are labeled as lights, but 4 of them are doorbells for different apartments including my own and only one is for the lights! I probably need to send an apology letter to my neighbors for the number of times people have rung their doorbells instead of turning on the lights.

Silesian dialect:

Numerous people living in southern Poland on the Polish-Czech border speak the distinctive Polish Cieszyn Silesian dialect. Here on the border, the Polish language is strongly influenced by Czech and German. People here rarely say “tak” for “yes;” they say “no” (pronounced exactly like “no” in English but with a very short vowel). Especially with my younger students, I have to pay close attention to their facial expressions and body language when they say “no.” Sometimes they respond in Polish (where “no” = “yes”) and sometimes they respond in English (where “no” = “no”).

The dialect is especially challenging when I’m trying to say words I haven’t learned in my Polish lessons but that I’ve read somewhere. For example, I wanted to ask for challah at the bakery down the street. I looked up the word “challah” in my Polish-English dictionary and page 31 said the word for “challah” in Polish is “chala” (pronounced “how-ah”). But when I asked for “chala” at the bakery, they laughed and laughed! I did eventually leave with the correct bread, but I was bewildered by their confusion. When I told one of my Polish teachers what I had said, she told me that “chala” in our dialect translates to “that’s rubbish!” In Silesia, if you would like challah, you must ask for “chalka” (pronounced “how-kah”). Ah, the difference of a single letter! My students loved hearing this story, and the women at the bakery still smile when I ask for “chalka.”

Grocery shopping:

I am blessed to have Colleen, my fellow ELCA missionary, to eat dinner with every night. Needless to say, our first trips to the grocery store at the beginning of the year were overwhelming. Sometimes, when we’re tired and running to the store to pick up something quick for dinner, Colleen jokes that “we can’t buy that, there aren’t any pictures!” We’ve fallen in love with food labels that have pictures of the mystery food inside the jar, or pictures that show us how to make a sauce. In Cieszyn, English is not the 2^nd language, nor the 3^rd, nor the 4^th. After Polish, people speak Czech, German, and Russian. Sometimes when I tell someone I do not speak Polish, they’ll at least try Czech or German before realizing I am not fluent in any of the four languages commonly heard on the streets of Cieszyn. Food labels at the grocery store prove how rare English is here. The majority of food labels do not have English but typically include translations into the following languages (other than Polish): Czech, German, Russian, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian. When they include more, they move on to Scandinavian languages: Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. Cooking is a great, practical way to learn Polish!

It’s also fascinating to discover what foods you cannot buy here. You can’t buy chocolate chips, brown sugar, vanilla, peanut butter, or ranch dressing. You can’t buy turkey, so for Thanksgiving on Thursday we ate chicken. Sweet potatoes are very rare, and pumpkins for carving are too. For Halloween, we carved red peppers instead.

School:

Of course, I’ll devote dozens of blog entries to my students and my experiences teaching them, but today I’ll share with you a couple of phrases I hear at school.

“Good morning!” – In Polish, “dzien dobry” (it’s difficult to describe how this phrase is pronounced, but it’s close to “gin dough-bree”) is a greeting appropriate in the morning, afternoon, and early evening (late at night they switch to “dobry wieczor”). I love when students greet me when they see me in the hallways at school or out and about in Cieszyn. However, they have a difficult time remembering that “good morning” is not an “all day” greeting like “dzien dobry.” Students frequently say “good morning” to me at 3 or 4 p.m., and sometimes I say “good morning” back and then laugh at myself when I realize my mistake. I’ve talked with all of my students about greetings, and most of them now remember to say “good afternoon,” but it never fails that at least once a day someone will say “good morning” to me only a couple hours before dinner.

“Is it a test?” – There’s no English conversation curriculum or textbook at my school; teachers are responsible for designing their own units and lesson plans. Especially with my youngest students, sometimes calling it an “English conversation” class is a bit of an overstatement because of their limited knowledge of English. However, I’ve found that students retain more knowledge from week to week and also participate more frequently in my class if I provide them with handouts that, for example, list new vocabulary for the day or list instructions they might have difficulty understanding if they only hear them. I give my students handouts probably every other week. However, there’s a practice in Polish schools where teachers are allowed to give “pop quizzes” on their last three lessons. These quizzes are administered, without warning (hence the “pop”), at the beginning of class. The quiz is sometimes written, sometimes oral. Students, especially 7^th and 8^th graders, are terrified of pop quizzes. Every day, when I pass out handouts to my students, someone anxiously asks me “is this a test?” and I have to reassure them that it isn’t.

Oral pop quizzes typically consist of three questions. At the beginning of every lesson, I write the objectives for our class on the board. Typically I have two, maybe three, objectives. When I have three objectives, students anxiously ask me “is this a test?” because they are afraid that it’s an oral exam. Poor kids. I terrify them without trying. I never give them tests, pop or planned! There’s no English conversation curriculum, but I’m not allowed to give exams or quizzes, and that’s okay with me! I always try to reassure the students. Maybe next semester they’ll accept handouts without looks of terror on their faces.

“Miss Sarah, what must we do?” – At the beginning of the year, I asked the students to call me by my last name, but it’s very difficult for them (especially the younger students) to pronounce. However “Sara” (without the “h” at the end and pronounced a little differently - “S-ahh-r-ahh” with a rolled “r” too) is a popular name in Poland. A very intelligent 11-year-old named Tomasz in one of my classes asks me this question – “Miss Sarah, what must we do?” – at least once every lesson, usually after I’ve very, very carefully described a task, assignment, or activity. Tomasz typically understands what to do, but the 11 and 12-year-olds I teach need a lot of encouragement, reinforcement, and repetition. They are very eager to learn, and I am always trying to create better and better lessons for them. I can’t help but love the simplicity and truth of Tomek’s question. In a new country, new culture, and new job, I too am always asking, “what must I do?”