Accompaniment is Relationships

Today I’d like to tell you about 6 people. I have lots of wonderful people in my life here, and what I love is that every week I have my “kid time,” my “young people time,” and time with “older and wiser grown-ups.”

(All photographs published here with permission.)

Dominika: Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I walk across the border to the Czech Republic and meet with Dominika, a spirited and intelligent 10 year old. Next year she’ll attend 5th grade in America, and for one hour twice a week we read, write, spell, and review math vocabulary together (she’s a math whiz, but only knows the names of concepts in Czech, not English). Our lessons are very playful. We’ll dance to a Hannah Montana song to celebrate four A+ math worksheets, and we have a “put-on-all-your-winter-gear-quickly” race at the conclusion of our lessons. Sometimes she wears barrettes with strands of hot pink, blue, and purple hair. Last month, she received a magnetic necklace as a gift and after one lesson we spent 10 minutes descending three flights of stairs, testing for “magnetism” every step of the way. Here she’s showing her “karate strength” by lifting her 55-pound American math textbook above her head. If she’s having a bad day, I get her to laugh by doing a terrible impression of her kitten Roxy getting squashed by her math book (it’s awful, I know, but she loves it).

Bozena and Rafal: I met them on the Internet. Well, no, but the Internet is involved. When we arrived in August and discovered we didn’t have Internet in our apartments, Colleen and I called one of Cieszyn’s Internet companies and they sent Rafal to help. Rafal is a year younger than me, and he’s engaged to Bozena who’s studying English education at university. One day when Rafal needed to fix our satellite, Bozena accompanied him, and now they’re great friends. Their kindness is unparalleled. I remember going with them to the grocery store in September (when I felt quite overwhelmed), and they enthusiastically showed me the best brands, the best deals, and their favorite foods. They chastise me if I have a problem but don’t ask for their help. When I visit them, they feed me tons of food. I’m friends with their small furry pets (a hamster and rabbit). We go to McDonald’s and eat McFlurries, and we went mushroom picking in the fall. Rafal is hilariously funny, and when Bozena calls and says, “What are you doing,” I know the hidden question is “Can I kidnap you for 10 hours? We’ll have a fun adventure!” I love having them over for “dinner parties” and surprising them with American or international dishes they’ve never tasted before – tacos, risotto, chocolate chip cookies. We listen to music and watch YouTube videos. They keep me young. :)

Kasia: She’s a local doctor and my language teacher, personal trainer, fellow tea lover, and the person who always greets me with a hug. We meet for 2-3 hours every Tuesday at one of our two favorite cafes in Cieszyn. We spend an hour or two talking in English and then an hour with my “Perfect Polish in 4 Weeks” (ha, ha) textbook. She’d probably meet with me for 6 hours if I didn’t have to teach in the evenings. She gives me a healthy dose of advanced English conversation every week. She introduced me to my favorite Polish cheesecake and told me where to buy jeans. We exchange granola recipes. I now work out at her gym and she personally showed me all the machines when I first joined. I know I could call her and rely on her in a crisis. Her generosity with her time is an amazing gift. Her wisdom about the world, curiosity, compassion, sense of humor, patience, and desire to seek out friendships with all types of people inspire me.

Ada and Danuta: They are members of my church (or perhaps I should say that I am a member of their church), and I teach their grandsons at school. I teach them for one hour on Mondays, and when I ask them about their weekends, they always say that they “learned a lot of English” (in Polish the verb “to learn” is identical to the verb “to study”). They are perfect students, always doing their homework and always arriving early to our lessons. They explain the mysteries of church services to me. (For example, I learned from them that all the “baptisms” I thought I’d witnessed this year were not baptisms but one-year-old child blessing ceremonies.) I baked them brownies for their birthdays and they brought me their special brew of coffee. We share photographs of our families and travels. Their desire to learn a new language is wonderful. A lot of our lesson involves everyone speaking slowly and clearly in either Polish or English, with lots of hand gestures, smiling, Polish-English dictionary consulting, and drawing. Our lessons are proof that when people have a desire to communicate, they find a way. They’re pictured here (Ada next to me on my right and Danuta next to me on my left) in a photograph from the Christmas party I hosted for my Cieszyn adult English students in December.