Wednesday, May 4, 2011

50 Awesome Things

  1. A post inspired by Neil Pasricha’s “1000 Awesome Things” - http://1000awesomethings.com/ - a website that celebrates the little joys in life.

  1. All of the 4 złotych stores (and the über competitive 2.99 złotych stores) in town. People around the world can't resist a $1 bargain.
  2. The few precious days in April when Cieszyn’s magnolia trees are perfectly in bloom.
  3. Wonderfully chaotic and laughter-filled family Skype calls with my parents and sisters that make me feel like we're all sitting together at our dining room table.
  4. Drinking English Breakfast tea and watching Kate and Will’s wedding live with 50 of my 8th grade students.
  5. Eating cake first and dinner second when you visit a Polish home.
  6. Giving students a taste of their first cupcake or friends a taste of their first Mexican, Thai, English, American, or Indian meal.
  7. Greeting friends with 3 pecks on the cheek or a great big hug.
  8. Helping older people read tiny price tags at the grocery store.
  9. How anytime I come across a word I've never seen or heard before – in any language – English, Polish, Italian, German, etc. – I find myself automatically trying to sound it out using the Polish sound system, which, of course, only works if the word is actually a Polish one.
  10. How embarrasing photographs from my past are sometimes the best way to start an English Conversation class, like this Halloween photograph where I dressed up as the night sky (oh dear...).
  11. How thanks to Skype and the Internet I’ve gotten to be a part of so many important events that have happened to my sisters this spring (they're off to undergraduate and graduate school next fall). I got to talk to Claire the moment she found out she was accepted to graduate school and the moment Kate got her first (of many!) college acceptance letter.
  12. How my friend Kasia and I sometimes act like we have to think about whether or not to order a slice of cheesecake at our favorite cafe, as if we would ever seriously consider skipping our weekly slice of the most heavenly cake on earth.
  13. How my students still tell me that the best thing we could ever do in English conversation is go to the park across the street from the school.
  14. How our school secretary keeps trying to find me a nice Polish boy to marry so I’ll stay another year.
  15. How people, when I tell them there’s an “H” in my name, will put it anywhere except at the end (“Sahra” or “Sarha”) because Polish female names always end in “A.”
  16. How loving physical touch is so much a part of the culture here. Personal space is almost non-existent (which was startling at first but now I love it) and people are wonderfully affectionate with their friends and family.
  17. How it turns out that studying in London during college was unbelievably helpful because I was familiar with British English which is what my students are learning. Perhaps not so awesome is that now I find myself automatically typing "favourite" and "colour" and how I sometimes find myself saying ridiculous things like “do we need a trolley for our shopping” and “please form a queue” and then I wonder what type of strange alternate universe I’m living in.
  18. How in my teaching I've done things I never thought I would ever do - like sing and dance in front of a group of teenagers and teach people how to play baseball.
  19. How the greeting “cześć” (kind of like “Hi” in American English except it really is only spoken to people you know well) sounds so friendly and loving and you really feel like you’re embracing the person in a hug when you say it.
  20. How walking across the Czech-Polish border several times a week never fails to thrill.
  21. How when I was riding my bike in Chicago this summer, I couldn't stop myself from whipping my head around every time I heard someone speaking in English.
  22. How, every once in a while, a student will still say “Good morning!” to me at 3 p.m. and make me smile.
  23. Students who come to class early or stay late just to talk a few minutes more.
  24. Kids’ drawings in my preschool and kindergarten classes, like this drawing of a zoo that included the zoo animals we’d learned that day (parrot, monkey, lion, etc.) but also 3 dinosaurs.
  25. Knowing Poland’s "bathroom secret” - that the circle is the symbol on the women’s bathroom and the triangle is the symbol for the men’s - and getting to help people not "in the know" go into the right one. Although it's also hilarious when you find yourself face to face with a member of the opposite sex who ended up in the wrong bathroom and is just as shocked to find you there.
  26. Knowing that whenever anyone – even very fluent English speakers - is talking about a day of the week and they pause, it’s because they want to say “Thursday” but they can’t remember the word (similar to how, especially if I’m very tired, I still mix up the numbers 9 "dziewięć "and 10 "dziesięć").
  27. Long chats with friends over Skype where I finally have to hang up not because we’re done talking but because it’s way past my bedtime.
  28. My freezable lunch box that I bring with me everywhere and fill with little snacks and drinks that stay cold for hours (and it's a great way to save a little money when traveling).
  29. My freshman boys who, after I enforced a strict "for every minute you are late to class that's how many minutes you stay after the bell rings at the end of the lesson," now all arrive incredibly early to our lessons and with big grins on their faces ask if their early arrival means that they can leave 2 or 3 minutes before the bell rings.
  30. My Monday seniors who, when I ask them how they are at the beginning of our lesson, always reply in very melancholy tones that, “well, it’s Monday,” to which I reply that it is always Monday when I ask them this question because I only teach them on Mondays, and how this little ritual never fails to make us smile and I think makes early Monday mornings a little less painful.
  31. My students’ amazement (and sometimes applause) when they can’t remember a word in English and I’m able to translate it from Polish without consulting a dictionary.
  32. During both of my visits home (summer and Christmas), only having to wait about 24 hours before hearing someone speaking in Polish.
  33. People who post comments on my blog, send me e-mails after reading a post, or mention something I wrote on my blog in a conversation. Thanks for confirming that, yes, someone does actually read this blog. You are awesome!
  34. Polish diminutives - the form of a word that typically signifies either physical smallness, or, especially with Polish nicknames, affection. For example, a cat is “kot,” a kitten is a “kotek” (the suffix “ek” creates the diminutive form meaning "a tiny cat") and a tiny kitten is a “koteczek” (the double suffix signifies a “doubly tiny” cat). “Koteczek” is way cuter than saying “a tiny kitten.”
  35. The Polish food aisle I discovered in Park Ridge’s Jewel this summer that reassures me that there’s a little bit of Poland waiting for me in Chicago when I head back this June.
  36. Sitting and talking for hours with a Polish or Czech friend as if we’ve known each other our whole lives.
  37. Snail mail letters, especially from my grandma, my most loyal pen pal, and packages from friends and family with small surprises like Milky Ways, Peeps, and the fantastically trashy People magazine.
  38. Awesomely brave students who, when I ask for a volunteer in class, raise their hands and then, after I have picked them say, “What I am supposed to do?” because they actually have no idea what they volunteered to do.
  39. The English bookstore in Krakow.
  40. The online webcam of Cieszyn’s market square. http://www.cieszyn.pl/_kamera/index.php
  41. The Polish and Czech tradition of making lamb cakes for Easter, and this year getting to celebrate this tradition with Dominika, the 5th grader I’ve tutored for 2 years.
  42. The Polish tradition of giving flowers to say thanks to important people in your life.
  43. The smell of mulled wine and and spiced tea/spirits at Polish Christmas markets. (Although I wouldn’t recommend actually drinking any of these - I have yet to find someone who can stomach a full glass, but it does smell amazing.)
  44. Tiny regional European airports where you still walk out to the plane.

  45. Trail markers throughout Cieszyn for walk routes that include hilariously detailed (although, ironically, often terribly unhelpful) instructions like “continue walking uphill until you reach the house painted white and beige and then walk diagonally across the field in the southernly direction for about 600 meters.”
  46. When my buzzer rings and it’s a friend waiting to come up.
  47. When my buzzer rings and it’s someone from the post office “poczta” – or someone just saying they’re from the post office because that’s all you have to say to get free access to pretty much any building in Cieszyn.
  48. When students show up for tutoring and instead of pulling out a writing assignment or their English textbook they say, “Can we just talk today?” and I have an amazing opportunity to just talk with them and get to know them better.
  49. When students specifically say something (usually hilarious) in English, not Polish or Czech (and typically at a louder volume than normal) because they want me to hear and understand every single word.
  50. When a "walk" signal at a crosswalk in Cieszyn changes from red to green at the exact moment I reach it.

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Friday, April 1, 2011

Favorite Photographs

With exactly two months left in Poland, I’ve started to do a few of the “don’t leave Poland without...” items on my list and that includes carrying my camera with me everywhere and taking more photographs.

For some people, a camera is a wonderful way to capture an experience, a feeling, or a memory, and they love taking photographs. I don’t typically take photographs because – for me – I feel like the camera distances me from the experience. I find that I prefer to write about experiences rather than photograph them. I carry a notebook with me everywhere and often jot down things I want to remember. It's re-reading these quickly scribbled notes that keep memories alive for me.

But photographs do too and I know I don’t want to leave without taking a few more photographs. I’m often very self-conscious about whipping out my camera, especially because I like to photograph everyday scenes, people, and events. It’s the ordinary that feels especially precious to me in my last months here. But there’s nothing that makes you stick out like a sore thumb in a tiny town like Cieszyn quicker than whipping out a camera on, say, a public bus. (I whipped out my camera on the “L” train in Chicago this summer to take photographs to show my students, and I think my family wanted to pretend they didn’t know me for a few minutes. Because, after all, who takes photographs on the “L”? People are like that here too. “We thought that girl was normal but then she whipped out her camera at the supermarket...”) (I could digress into a significantly longer blog post here about the constant tension between my desire to blend in and my knowledge that in many ways I am – and always will be – an “other” but this is a post that’s supposed to be devoted to photographs and I’m going to stick to that plan.)

But I’ve decided that it’s worth feeling a little self-conscious because in the future I’ll want to have these photographs to look back at.

I’m not very good about posting photographs on this blog – because I never take any and therefore don’t have any to post! – but I finally have a few favorites to share with you from the past couple months.

On a walk through a park my friend Bożena and I discovered a cotton candy cart. This is my all-time favorite photograph of her – it captures her perfectly because she is such a joyful person.

The line outside Cieszyn’s best bakery at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Isn’t it fascinating that people around the world love feeding birds? And that you can find pigeons everywhere? I love watching children at the Cieszyn market square chase after pigeons and debate whether they should donate the roll their mother gave them to the birds or if their own stomach needs it more.

There’s a special atmosphere in Polish cemeteries that I can’t quite describe in words. The graves are lovingly maintained by family, friends, and strangers and always lit with dozens of candle lanterns. In Cieszyn, the Lutheran cemetery is on a hill about a half-mile from my apartment and from my bedroom windows I can see the candles flickering in the distance.

You know how when you think of Poland in the winter you picture a place that’s cold and gray and snowy and dreary? Well, that’s often exactly how it is! And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I finally have a few preschool and kindergarten photographs to share with you. The school agreed to let me photograph the children whose parents signed the photography release form and I’ve tried to grab a few photographs here and there either right before or right after our lessons. I’m not going to share their names, but I’m happy to share a few of their angelic faces.

The biggest news in my kindergarten class is that they are losing their teeth left and right. I love how in this photograph you see N.’s new gaping hole in her mouth thanks to the tooth she yanked the day before. The kids also love showing me their newest toy or new favorite book every week and one week N. had gone to a 3D showing of a movie that afternoon and she wore her 3D classes all day.

Here are some of my wonderful 3 year olds. H., the little blonde boy I’m next to in the second photograph, fell in love with balloons over Christmas and now draws balloons every opportunity he gets and loves to talk to me (in Polish) about balloons. We do a little craft project every lesson and it only takes H. about 2 minutes to decide to ditch the project I’ve thought of and start drawing balloons. It makes me smile just to think about it. Here’s one of his masterpieces. (All the other kids were drawing the animals we had learned that week.)

One of my favorite lessons this spring was helping my high school seniors become more conscious of the “uhhhs” and “urrrms” and “hmmms” that are scattered throughout their speech because they're docked points for this on their English exit exam. (And I have nothing but sympathy and first-hand understanding of this challenge when speaking a second language. I’m constantly saying “hmmm” when I speak Polish because I need time to think of what to say!) To raise their awareness, we did an activity where they answered questions with a partner and if their partner heard them say any filler words (“uhhh,” etc.) they got to blow their party horn. We had a blast and it was a silly, non-threatening way to help students become more conscious of this common foreign language challenge.

The school Olympics this year were wonderful. For the Olympics, every homeroom has a theme, and one of my 8th grade classes dressed up as butchers and pigs and served cold cuts and sausages to the teachers. Every class I teach has a special place in my heart, and something about this picture captures my love for this particular class and their unique personality. Oh, and in Polish, pigs say "Kwik! Kwik!"

For the Olympics, one of the teachers brought her almost-2-years-old daughter. She stayed near her mom because, well, 300 teenagers are a little loud and a little intimidating when you’re that short. But she got more and more comfortable as the day went on and that was in part because the students were just so kind and gentle with her and it was really beautiful to watch.

There’s a little street called the “Venice Street” in Cieszyn that I walk along to get to some of my classes in the Czech Republic. It’s a simple little road but I love the stream and it’s always so peaceful and quiet.



When I walk home at night from the Czech Republic I walk through town because the side streets aren’t well-lit. This is a photograph of what I call “kantor way” – kantors are currency exchange offices and when you cross the Polish-Czech border you have half a dozen kantors to choose from if you need to change money. “Kantor way” is a fun reminder that I signed up to teach in Poland but ended up getting two countries for the price of one.

Bless their hearts, my students are terrible at following oral directions. I can’t judge them because when I was their age I never bothered to read directions. Although the majority of my lessons are speaking focused, every once in a while I like to have a listening lesson. In my most recent listening lesson, the students had to re-build a mini-golf course that I had designed by listening to my instructions. In the last 10 minutes of class they got to play the course with a plastic mini-golf set I bought at TESCO. It’s amazing how well kids will listen when they know that they’ll eventually get to hit a little orange plastic golf ball. Only 3 or 4 of my students had ever played mini-golf before and it was pretty hilarious watching everyone play mini-golf with a teeny-tiny golf set designed for 3 and 4 year olds (especially because I teach some very, very tall boys).


Here’s a picture of the main street in Cieszyn. This photograph captures three “favorites.” First, the two men are old friends greeting each other – and you can’t go anywhere in Cieszyn without running into a familiar face. Second, you can see the little balloon stand that appears in the spring (and from which I must buy a balloon before I leave). Third, there’s a man people-watching from his window – and I love how people here stand in their open windows and people-watch. I think I might return to Cieszyn when I retire, buy an apartment on the main street, and spend my afternoons people-watching like him.

The Planty is a path and park that surrounds the city of Krakow. It’s one of my favorite spots in all of Poland. I love walking this path.

Here are two of my Wednesday evening students. They’re moms of two students I teach at LOTE/GTE. I realized this week I didn’t have a photograph with them and definitely wanted one. I especially love the second photograph because we always laugh a lot in our lessons. Sometimes people here look very solemn in photographs. It’s one reason I’ve stopped taking a lot of “posed” photographs because people often look so grim even if they were smiling moments before. Americans “say cheese” and know that if someone whips out a camera you’re supposed to smile. It’s fun how Poland and the Czech Republic have challenged my American assumptions about photographs. After all, if you really think about it, it is a little weird that we all smile and “say cheese” just because someone told us to. There are a couple pretty funny photographs of me with students or friends where I am literally the only person smiling. No one would have any trouble identifying me as the American in these photographs even though people always tell me I look very Polish.

This is an apartment building I pass every day on my way to school. There’s a blue bench outside the building and people are always sitting there, visiting, talking, reading, or just resting. Sometimes someone will lean out one of the windows and chat with the people sitting below on the bench. (I’m hoping to get a picture of people on the bench and in the windows before I leave.) This is one of my absolute favorite photographs and I can’t explain why except to say that for me it truly captures life here.

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Saturday, March 12, 2011

Colin Firth and a Chat about the Weather

You know the expression, “Smile, and the world smiles with you?” A better expression for this week in Cieszyn is, “Cough, and the world coughs with you.” Everyone’s sick. You walk down the halls at school and you hear coughing fits behind doors at every turn. My apartment building sounds like a hospital ward for people with upper respiratory infections. Thanks to the paper-thin walls, you can hear your neighbor two floors above you coughing. It’s oddly comforting to live in a building filled with illness. There’s a wonderful sense of solidarity. We’re all in this together.

Luckily I haven’t missed any school but my main extracurricular activity this week was lying on my couch (and coughing). (At school, there was the hilarious discovery that my students can’t understand me when I’m sick. With all the coughing my voice dropped about half an octave in pitch and all of a sudden my students were having a difficult time understanding my pronunciation. Kind of fascinating!)

During my couch-ridden evenings I’ve caught up a little on “popular culture.” A couple weeks ago I finally saw “The King’s Speech” (and thoroughly enjoyed it) and this week I’ve read a few fascinating articles about stuttering, learned more about King George VI, and watched a few interviews with the cast and crew of the film. And this post was inspired by something Colin Firth said in one of the interviews I watched.

Have you read Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time?” It’s a wonderful book and not, in my opinion, only for kids. “A Wrinkle in Time” is, in one sense, a beautiful reflection on the power of language and the intricacies, challenges, and joys of communication. There’s a character in the book named Mrs. Who and she speaks primarily in quotations because she “finds it difficult to work out words of her own” (28-29). Mrs. Who is always quoting – and sometimes I feel like Mrs. Who because I also like to quote, to borrow words and phrases first spoken by others. I love writing and talking but sometimes I can’t satisfactorily explain an experience, a feeling, or a thought in my own words. And for me, sometimes borrowing is helpful.

Today I’m borrowing from Colin Firth. I’ve often found it difficult to describe the experience of living in a country where you’re not fluent in the language. People are always asking me “how’s your Polish?” I think that question speaks to the importance of language in our lives and perhaps an unconscious understanding that language isn’t only practical (“I’d like five tomatoes, please”) but also (and I'd say more importantly) a form of personal expression, the way we tell the world who we are.

What’s most difficult, I’d argue, about learning a new language is not the grammar or the declensions or the pronunciation of 4 consonants in a row – it’s that you must first focus on acquiring “survival language” and survival language is practical, not emotional. You quickly learn the harsh reality that language as a form of personal expression is frequently out of your grasp as a beginner and even intermediate speaker.

Here’s what Colin Firth said in an interview with James Lipton. He’s comparing the experience of stuttering to the experience of speaking in a language you don’t know well:

“Anyone who’s tried to speak another language will find – if you’re limited in that language – that you end up saying what you can rather than what you really want to say. And you start to circumnavigate the real thing. So who then are you in relation to the world?”

What Colin Firth does in this quotation is link language with personal identity. Craig Storti, author of “The Art of Crossing Cultures,” also does this eloquently in his book when he writes: “Language is not simply how people speak; it is who they are” (101). He continues: “On a deeper level, if you can’t communicate your ideas and opinions to people, how can they know who you are? Language is the primary means of self-expression; when we don’t have language the self does not get expressed. When the self can no longer be expressed, does it still exist?”

There’s a conversation I had a few weeks ago that sometimes replays in my mind. It was a Friday and I’d left school only to remember that I’d forgotten my umbrella in the teachers’ room. Another teacher saw me return to get my umbrella and asked me if it was raining. I said, “No, it’s not raining now.” And then I stopped. I wanted to say, “Well, it’s not raining YET” and comment on the fact that whereas Chicago has two seasons (winter and construction), it often feels like Cieszyn has only one: the year-long rainy season. But it was Friday afternoon and my brain was a little tired and I couldn’t find the right vocabulary to express this playful thought (because nowadays I quite enjoy the rain). I could only say, “No, it’s not raining now. Have a good weekend,” and go on my way.

Perhaps Firth’s and Storti’s words help shed a little light on why I sometimes find myself thinking back on this 10-second “conversation.” The “umbrella incident" was, fundamentally, a successful exchange in Polish. Someone asked a question, I understood it, and I responded appropriately. But it’s also an example of a language interaction stripped of any emotional or personal quality. I could express the facts (“it’s not raining”) but I couldn’t express myself (my desire to playfully comment on Cieszyn’s rainy weather). And therefore, for me, the interaction was sterile and feels, to this day, unfinished. When I think back on this tiny 10-second conversation, it was my inability to say what I wanted that sticks with me.

The list of “things unsaid” at the end of a typical day here are sometimes numerous. Like Colin Firth wisely observed, I often find myself saying what I can rather than what I really want to say. It’s not that I have the vocabulary but I’m afraid to speak. One beautiful lesson I’ve learned from studying Polish is “not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” I’m a beginner trying to master a very complex grammar system and if I only opened my mouth when I felt confident every word was declined correctly, I’d never speak. But this willingness to make mistakes can’t solve the fact that I don’t have the extensive vocabulary I need to express my every thought or feeling. There also isn’t an easy “quick fix” solution. I continue to learn new words, new grammar points, and new expressions every week and I rejoice in every new acquisition, every new word I suddenly understand. Learning a new language requires time, patience, a sense of humor, diligence, and most importantly, self-compassion.

So, what’s it like to live in a country where you don’t speak the language? Sometimes it’s marvelous and exciting. I’m always learning and it’s wonderful how immediately I get to apply my new knowledge. I remember my first week in Poland when I only knew five words ("hello," "goodbye," "yes," "no," and "thank you") and it's amazing to realize how much I have learned since then. But sometimes I still wish I could say more than, “No, it’s not raining” when a colleague inquires about the weather.

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