Thursday, April 7, 2011
Completely Unrelated to Anything....
I have found the best blog ever. Trashy TV+Great Books= Slaughterhouse 90210. Whoever made this blog is my soulmate.
A Thought About 15-year-olds and the Czech Education System
So I know I said my next post would be about my traveling seminar, and I will get to that.
But first: this morning, I was over at Mikulandska, the school where I volunteer as an English teacher twice a week. Normally, I work with a beginning English class on Tuesdays and a more advanced class on Wendesdays. This week however, my friend Maarja, who also volunteers at the school, wasn't able to make her normal Thrusday class so I volunteered to cover it for her. This class is much more advanced than the other classes, and also made up mostly of 15 year olds, who are on the older end of the spectrum of kids that we work with. Today's topic for the class was 'hobbies' and each kid had to do a 1 minute presentation in English on their favorite hobbies. I really enjoyed listening to them, partly because the level of their English was amazing, and partly because they sounded so much like American kids. They listed all of the typical pastimes: listening to music, shopping, traveling, reading, etc. For a little while, it felt just like I was back in the USA.
The class that I was in today was much more rowdy than the normal classes that I teach. Hanka, the English teacher at Mikulandska, explained to me that this is because they are taking their leaving certificates in less than a month and don't care as much about school. In the Czech Republic, you take your leaving exams at 16 and then choose whether or not you will continue on to high school. Apparently, it is not as common for kids to keep going to school, and especially in the more rural areas, many of them choose not to continue. Hanka told me that all of the students in this class would be going on to high school, which is good. I have such a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that you can choose whether or not to end your education at such a young age. I know that in the US you can technically drop out of high school when you are 16 as well, but I think it is a lot less common. I feel like the typical point for many American students to choose not to continue on in school is after high school when they are deciding whether or not to go to college. I can't imaging making the choice when you are just 16 years old... it just seems so young to me!
On anothe note, we are having a fashion show with my beginner class next week so they can practice their clothing vocabularly. Anyone have any good suggestions for American songs that are relatively clean but still upbeat enough for a fashion show? I am trying to avoid having curse words pop up in the middle of the song!
But first: this morning, I was over at Mikulandska, the school where I volunteer as an English teacher twice a week. Normally, I work with a beginning English class on Tuesdays and a more advanced class on Wendesdays. This week however, my friend Maarja, who also volunteers at the school, wasn't able to make her normal Thrusday class so I volunteered to cover it for her. This class is much more advanced than the other classes, and also made up mostly of 15 year olds, who are on the older end of the spectrum of kids that we work with. Today's topic for the class was 'hobbies' and each kid had to do a 1 minute presentation in English on their favorite hobbies. I really enjoyed listening to them, partly because the level of their English was amazing, and partly because they sounded so much like American kids. They listed all of the typical pastimes: listening to music, shopping, traveling, reading, etc. For a little while, it felt just like I was back in the USA.
The class that I was in today was much more rowdy than the normal classes that I teach. Hanka, the English teacher at Mikulandska, explained to me that this is because they are taking their leaving certificates in less than a month and don't care as much about school. In the Czech Republic, you take your leaving exams at 16 and then choose whether or not you will continue on to high school. Apparently, it is not as common for kids to keep going to school, and especially in the more rural areas, many of them choose not to continue. Hanka told me that all of the students in this class would be going on to high school, which is good. I have such a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that you can choose whether or not to end your education at such a young age. I know that in the US you can technically drop out of high school when you are 16 as well, but I think it is a lot less common. I feel like the typical point for many American students to choose not to continue on in school is after high school when they are deciding whether or not to go to college. I can't imaging making the choice when you are just 16 years old... it just seems so young to me!
On anothe note, we are having a fashion show with my beginner class next week so they can practice their clothing vocabularly. Anyone have any good suggestions for American songs that are relatively clean but still upbeat enough for a fashion show? I am trying to avoid having curse words pop up in the middle of the song!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Attempting to Play Catch-Up
So it turns out that I am kind of a failure at this whole blogging thing... but I am going to try and make up for some of that now. I guess I should go back to where I left off, although quite a lot has happened since. First up, my trip to Serbia and Bosnia from March 17-20th:
For those of you who don't know, last fall turned me into a big of a Balkan dork, as it were. I took one class on Balkan Politics and became completely hooked on the region. Therefore, visiting the Balkans was at the top of my list for my semester in Central Europe. Luckily, I found some like-minded and equally adventurous friends who were willing and eagre to make the trek with me, so off we went to make all of my dreams come true!
We started our journey by flying from Prague to Belgrade after classes on the 17th, with an unnecessarily long layover in Munich on the way. I have never been so overwhelmed as when I passed through the gates in the Belgrade airport and was completely surrounded by taxi drivers yelling in broken English attempting to get our fare. Luckily, we found a taxi stand with someone behind it who looked mildly official, and she helped us to procure a cab to our hostel at a reasonable rate. Unfortunately, our cabby didn't speak any English, so we had to just trust that he was in fact taking us to our hostel in Belgrade. Note to self: never ever book a flight to a strange country that gets in at 11pm. Things look much scarrier at this time of night. Thankfully, we made it to our hostel in one piece, and our hostel, which turned out to be extra rooms in someone's apartment, was actually amazing.
The next morning, we headed out to explore Belgrade. I am not sure what I was expected after studying the history of the country and life under Milosevic, but my expectations were definitely wrong. The city itself is absolutely beautiful. The people are so nice and friendly, and everything is so modern.
Despite that, we could still see the remnants of the war that had occured not too long ago. There were still some bombed out buildings and other reminders all over the city.
Becca had family friends that are currently living in Belgrade, and they were gracious enough to invite us over for dinner that night. We hopped on public transportation out to Nove Beograd, or the outskirts of the city that were errected during communist times. The block flats and shanty towns made me feel just like I was back in Prague. We had a delicious dinner of vegetable lasagna, salad and wine prepared by Becca's friends Holly and Ruth. Talking to them about life in Belgrade was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The family had been living there during the NATO bombings and under Milosevic, and hearing their insights was really really interseting. After dinner, they gave us a ride to their cafe, where we had some delicious Serbian vodka, tirimisu and coffee while waiting for it to be late enough for us to catch our overnight bus to Sarajevo.
It would be a lie if we said that we weren't at least a little bit nervous about the prospect of taking an overnight bus through the Serbian countryside and over the border into Bosnia. We were reassured by Ruth that the bus would be quite safe, and she was definitely right.
The bus itself was just like any American Megabus, and after 7 restless but uneventful hours, we disembarked in the outskirts of Sarajevo at the early hour of 6am. Unfortunately, we decided to wait until 8am, when the ticket was supposed to open, to buy our tickets back to Belgrade for that night. Here, we had our first lesson in the workings of Sarajevo. Namely, the ticket window didn't actually open until closer to 9:30, and the man spoke 0 words of English. Despite our best attempts at charades, after 20 minutes we were forced to rely on google translate in order to purchase our tickets.
Tickets safely procured, we then headed into Sarajevo proper to explore. Our first stop was the Latin Bridge, which is the place where Franz Ferdinand was assasinated and WWI effectively began. That was pretty awesome. We then ducked into a cafe, where we had our first taste of Bosnian coffee:
We explored Old Town Sarajevo for a while, which was really beautiful. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty steadily for the entire day, and we were not quite prepared clothes wise. We explored the modern end of Sarajevo for a while where we saw many many buildings that had been razed by bombs and other buildings still riddled with bullett holes. The remnants of the 1995 war were definitely plentiful. Unfortunately, the rain ended up getting the best of us, and at about 3pm we headed out to the bus station to catch an earlier bus back to Belgrade. This ended up being an awesome idea, because we got to see some of the beautiful Bosnian countryside by daylight.
When we got back to Belgrade, we promptly checked into our new hostel (props to CiCi for finding the closest hostel to the bus station!) and passed out. The next morning, it was still drizzling in Belgrade but we decided to try and see a few more of the sights before we had to fly back to Prague. We go to see the state house where Milosevic was outsted during a massive public protest, which was pretty much the best thing ever.
We also attempted to get some lunch, which was quite the experience in and of itself. After wandering around in the rain for about 1/2 an hour looking for a restaurant that was reccomended by the hostel, we finally found it only to discover it was closed. We ducked into the nearest pub we could find and attempted to order food there for lunch. No shebang. No matter what we pointed at on the menu, the answer was simply 'ne' or no. Thwarted, we finished our beers and headed for the closest place we cound find that we knew would have food: McDonalds. After our lunch, we hopped on a bus out to the airport and headed back to Prague.
Next up: an epic post about our 10 day traveling seminar to Krakow, Brno, Mikulov and Vienna!
For those of you who don't know, last fall turned me into a big of a Balkan dork, as it were. I took one class on Balkan Politics and became completely hooked on the region. Therefore, visiting the Balkans was at the top of my list for my semester in Central Europe. Luckily, I found some like-minded and equally adventurous friends who were willing and eagre to make the trek with me, so off we went to make all of my dreams come true!
We started our journey by flying from Prague to Belgrade after classes on the 17th, with an unnecessarily long layover in Munich on the way. I have never been so overwhelmed as when I passed through the gates in the Belgrade airport and was completely surrounded by taxi drivers yelling in broken English attempting to get our fare. Luckily, we found a taxi stand with someone behind it who looked mildly official, and she helped us to procure a cab to our hostel at a reasonable rate. Unfortunately, our cabby didn't speak any English, so we had to just trust that he was in fact taking us to our hostel in Belgrade. Note to self: never ever book a flight to a strange country that gets in at 11pm. Things look much scarrier at this time of night. Thankfully, we made it to our hostel in one piece, and our hostel, which turned out to be extra rooms in someone's apartment, was actually amazing.
 |
| St. Patricks Day in Belgrade: Baileys and Socialist Monopoly |
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| Becca and I at lunch in the Bohemian Quarter |
Despite that, we could still see the remnants of the war that had occured not too long ago. There were still some bombed out buildings and other reminders all over the city.
 |
| One of the many buildings that bears the scars of the war |
Becca had family friends that are currently living in Belgrade, and they were gracious enough to invite us over for dinner that night. We hopped on public transportation out to Nove Beograd, or the outskirts of the city that were errected during communist times. The block flats and shanty towns made me feel just like I was back in Prague. We had a delicious dinner of vegetable lasagna, salad and wine prepared by Becca's friends Holly and Ruth. Talking to them about life in Belgrade was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The family had been living there during the NATO bombings and under Milosevic, and hearing their insights was really really interseting. After dinner, they gave us a ride to their cafe, where we had some delicious Serbian vodka, tirimisu and coffee while waiting for it to be late enough for us to catch our overnight bus to Sarajevo.
It would be a lie if we said that we weren't at least a little bit nervous about the prospect of taking an overnight bus through the Serbian countryside and over the border into Bosnia. We were reassured by Ruth that the bus would be quite safe, and she was definitely right.
 |
| In the bus station, I encountered my first Turkish toilet. Needless to say, I was perplexed. |
Tickets safely procured, we then headed into Sarajevo proper to explore. Our first stop was the Latin Bridge, which is the place where Franz Ferdinand was assasinated and WWI effectively began. That was pretty awesome. We then ducked into a cafe, where we had our first taste of Bosnian coffee:
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| Heaven in a cup. |
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| View of the hills surrounding Sarajevo from the bus |
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| Me geeking out in front of the state house in Serbia! |
Next up: an epic post about our 10 day traveling seminar to Krakow, Brno, Mikulov and Vienna!
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