Thankful List: November 2011

• The roses on the path to work,
• The sky is blue,
• My first walnut-gathering experience,
• Playing Uno and having family time with the Higgins,
• Bus zones 1 and 2 don't exist in Bratislava anymore,
• CLASS core values and community atmosphere,
• Weekends,
• Ed helping with the intensive course preparation,
• The speakers at work, so I can laminate while listening to music,
• It's not really too cold at all,
• The bathtub is unclogged,
• Experienced the inside of a thermos exploding and nobody was hurt,
• I can't shake the feeling that I love being here,
• 500g of lemons for 44 cents,
• 1 Kilo of oranges for 79 cents,
• My confidence is in someone bigger than me,
• Almost everything is finally ready for the first day of the intensive course,
• The testimony of that man from Iraq and his brother, and the girl from Tunisia,
• The yummy cakes from Maria,
• Another cozy CityLight gathering,
• Good news from Cathy,
• I wasn't late on Monday morning when I really thought I would be,
• Lived through intensive course day 1,
• Lived through intensive course day 2,
• The kids in the intensive course are nice to me,
• The Slovak lesson from the kids this morning,
• Ticket restaurants,
• The sky's been blue lately,
• Found 2 euros in my dirty laundry!
• I think I actually like riding the bus,
• 19:45 on Thursdays,
• A student introducing me to Brejky,
• Our cleaning lady because she has work and she's happy to be doing it- and she shared her optimistic perspective with us,
• The tea and key chain from Tim and Lucy,
• Friday night with Heather and Erik,
• The weekend,
• Payday,
• My phone somehow can make calls even though my minutes have expired,
• O2 doesn't charge for incoming calls,
• That little boy didn't choke and die on Sunday night,
• I managed to teach 4 lessons without a formally written plan,
• I heard my Začiatočnici class laugh,
• Another day of blue sky,
• My house plants are blooming and growing,
• Tiny tea boxes,
• Shtoor date with Heather,
• Soft, warm Camp Wonderland hoodie,
• Bed linens can air dry, even when it's cold and wet outside,
• A productive "day off",
• All prepped for most of my busiest week, with time left to relax the weekend before,
• Clearance sales at the Second Hand stores,
• Brother Andrew's story,
• Lenka going to Ghana and the financial support people are giving her,
• Leftovers from Sunday's lunch to eat all week,
• The lesson I thought would be too short ran overtime,
• The new group of intensive course kids are nice to me,
• The things I thought would make my stomach hurt more actually didn't,
• The students being so cheerful on Tuesday morning,
• Being able to go home and not think about work,
• Chatting with Laura for a bit,
• 1 kilo of mandarins for 59 cents,
• The tvaroh a čučoriedka chocolate bar from Hela and Edina,
• The chocolates from Zuzka and Mirko,
• It's my birthday and I'm still not homesick,
• Today wasn't AS cold,
• All Andrew's prepositions of place and time lesson plans and materials,
• I live in Slovakia,
• Next week should be an easier work load,
• Google images,
• Skyping with family,
• Thanksgiving weekend and all the food and friends,
• There was enough food at the City Light Thanksgiving service,
• Marek and Oto helping with the kids,
• Slovak lessons (with lots of laughter) from my new friends from Jelka,
• Thanksgiving came and went and I'm still not homesick,
• Louis is IN medical school (and not applying anymore),
• The intensive course is getting easier for me,
• My chapped finger didn't bleed today,
• They who seek the Lord will not be in want of any good thing (Psalm 34),
• A blue sky on Monday,
• A boring lesson felt like it went by quickly (for me anyway),
• The nice soaps from Heather,
• The very fancy chocolates from Erik, 
• Black currant with lemon tea,
• Tea bags that last for two or three cups,
• The worker at Terno putting out fresh rolls from the oven right as I was going to select mine for lunch,
• The pretty mirror from Nic from Bali,
• Tomorrow is Wednesday,
• Dusan's family gets to come for Christmas,
• My first pumpkin pies from scratch were good,
• Getting to soon borrow Ed and Libuš's poffertje pan,
• One sweet student in my level 3 class who loves English class (in contrast with her classmates who don't),
• Another fun and heartwarming Mierne Pokročili lesson,
• My internal Slovak keyboard,
• The washing machine is fixed,
• Little containers of tiny tomatoes for 55 cents each,
• I finally remembered to buy Band aids, 
• The convenient features on the new imhd website

November...

Today is Thursday, 17 November, the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, when Czechoslovakia broke from Communism. I'll probably seek to better inform myself about the event...later... Last night one of my students told me about her memory of it..being at school and people running in shouting about a revolution, but of course she thought it couldn't be true. But it was true, and the next day she was standing in the square, shaking her keys with masses of others.

I'm watching the 19:00 news as I write this. I understand about 2% of the words, but with the images I can gather maybe 30% of the general idea. Right now it says, "Pozor na smog! česi varujú, Slováci zatiel' nie." Something about smog and the Czech people being warned but not the Slovak people? (Thanks Google translate) But I wonder if their word for fog  is our word for smog.  Because this isn't really smog season, but the fog has been really remarkable! Last night it was so thick I could almost feel it touching my eyeballs. It was like walking through a cloud.

There was another story on the news about delinquents doing jogy (yoga) and art...
And I think maybe a rhinoceros escaped from the zoo in Prague because they kept flipping between footage of rhinos, and footage of police officers in yellow vests.
But my favorite so far was when they were talking about their paneláki (boxes of flats). They showed some older ones and some newer ones, and some that look really worn out with cracks in the sides. And the lady reporting from the street outside the flats looked so BORED. I couldn't help but laugh during her report. I imagined her to be saying, "People have been living in these things for a long time, but we're starting to realize that they're actually really old and ugly-looking. To care for this problem, the facades are going to be refinished and painted with bright colors and geometric designs." (..because that's what they seem to do when they refinish buildings here..)

Well, it seems my life must be getting pretty hum-drum if all I can think of to write about is what's on the news. All I do lately is go to work, hang out with friends, read books.. normal things, you know?

Oh! I just thought of something interesting!  This week I got a ride to work from my housemate's stepdad, Vladko. We don't share a common language yet, but it was really nice of him to offer me a ride as we were both leaving our housing area. I'm guessing he was offering me a ride from the hand motions... So I got in the car and expected he would just take me up the street to the bus stop, but we got to the bus stop and he didn't stop to let me out there, so I had to assume he would drive me all the way to work or hopefully somewhere nearby. It's funny because there weren't many moments of silence as we were in the car together, but I can't tell you what we were talking about. Mostly he was saying things and I was thinking really hard about what he could be saying, and repeating what I thought were the "key words" to practice my pronunciation, or at least feel like I was contributing something. When there was some silence, I constructed what was probably my most complex sentence yet, "Vite kde je moj školu?" There's no doubt in my mind that the sentence contains some grammatical errors, but I was trying to ask, "Do you know where my school is?" I think he understood because he said, "Nie" (meaning, "no"). So I had to "give directions" in Slovak, but actually I can't do that at all, and he had already turned off the main road and was driving in some area that I'm not familiar with. So I gave him some street names and tried to keep track of which way we came from in case I needed to backtrack by foot. But soon enough we came to a place I recognized and I was able to gesture out my idea of a logical path with the use of some spare words, and he eventually let me off immediately behind the building where I work. Whew!

Thankful List:: October 2011

• I haven't walked through a spider's web in a long time,
• The sun shines everyday (whether I can see it or not),
• The sky has been blue for at least 3 days in a row,
• I don't feel ill at all,
• Peanut butter from Ed,
• I've been spoiled with visitors,
• I have my residence card,
• I can communicate that "I don't understand" in Slovak,
• Lucia going to the insurance office with me,
• I probably have some of the most pleasant language students ever,
• Headphone jacks in the school computers,
• I didn't start crying at the foreign police when I wanted to,
• Erik walking with me to TESCO and the bus stop at night,
• Conversation lessons and materials from Andrew,
• Seeing old women with purple hair,
• Petr and Maria who randomly introduced themselves to me and brightened my morning,
• The package from home,
• The elderly man who gave me bits of directions to the post office in German,
• Being able to communicate with the ladies at the post office,
• It's cloudy but I still feel happy,
• My students not wanting their lessons to be over sometimes,
• Conversation lessons with the International Women's Club,
• Feeling a warm connection with the Mierne Pokročilý class,
• Joshua is here,
• Being able to walk across the boarder to Hungary without a passport,
• Not working at the Skydome during homecoming weekend,
• Opwekking liedjes on Youtube,
• New socks,
• The package from home (I guess I'm double thankful for that :) ),
• The "cowboy" who signed each postcard,
• Dusan playing the piano for City Light,
• "Free days" with Heather and Erik,
• Girl-chats with Heather,
• Cookies from Heather,
• Whatever God decides is best for me actually IS the best for me,
• 2 avocados for 1.99 euro,
• Warm brown bread from TESCO,
• Inexpensive toothpaste,
• TESCO in Ruzinov,
• A newly discovered, more efficient route to Heather's house,
• A no-show lesson,
• A long weekend coming up,
• The book, God's Smuggler from Joshua,
• All Heather's old food,
• Getting my insurance card with little trouble,
• The early morning conversation lesson rescheduled to the evening,
• Chocolate zucchini cake,
• Helpful feedback after being observed,
• Skype dates set-up (and carried through with),
• Money from private lessons,
• The Maze of Terror lesson plan,
• Michael Swan's Practical English Usage,
• The Twix bar from Andrew,
• Being able to borrow the creative games and things that Edina makes for kid's courses,
• Libuš and Ed's collection of English books,
• 3 pens that work really well for 99 cents,
• A great pumpkin for 4 euro,
• Paprika for 25 cents,
• Self Check-out at TESCO that I can use to get rid of pennies and break large bills without feeling like I'm inconveniencing anyone,
• Some of the most beautiful, vibrant maple leaves I've ever seen are falling in "my own" backyard,
• The sun is showing today and I even felt its warmth on my face,
• No trick-or-treaters and hardly any other reminders that it's Halloween,
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary for pressing leaves
• A productive but relaxing day off,
• All the wonderful pumpkin products,
• Food and train tickets are inexpensive here