Youth Group Olympics

In honor of the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics Jeremy and I planned our own Olympic games for the youth retreat this past weekend, and man did we have fun. Five "countries" participated in six events (speed skate: short and long track, curling, ski jumping, pairs figure skating and ice hockey)and points were awarded accouring to place after each event. Each team put forth a strong effort in hopes of winning the gold.



It is amazing to think back on all the youth retreats we have been apart of since coming to Policka. I can still remember the first one and not really knowing what we would be able to do since our czech was so limited at the time. However, each retreat we were able to communicate more and more, and for me this retreat was the best. My partner was Filip, who doesn't speak or understand English, but I wasn't nervous, even though my Czech is less than par. We were able to come up with an idea for our country,a rutine for pairs figure skating, and talk about the other events only because Filip was more than willing to understand my broken Czech, and patient enough to repeat himself.

This might have been the last youth retreat for Jeremy and I and also Pastor Jan, but it's not the end of what we have planned for the youth group. Jeremy has three camping trips in the works and we wil continue to meet with the youth every Friday until the end of the school year.

Cross Country Skiing

I ment to post this a week ago but haven't gotten to it until now. The week has been busy, but also the Olympics has been on so it had sucked up any extra time I've had :)

It seems that our Czech friends have a different sport that they do during ever season. In the spring people start to run and hike again, summer is a time for cycling, and in the fall people go on walks to gather mushrooms and get their final sunny walks and bike rides in before the long winter. Swimming is something people do all year round since there is an indoor pool. And in the winter people ski. There are very few people that I know who don't ski cross country or downhill (or both). But this makes sense since all kids learn to ski at school (that is if their parents do not teach them earlier). At around age 13 the Policka schools take their students on "lyzak" or ski course for a week. This was surprising to me last year because I could never see my class of 215 students being taken a week long trip to the mountains to learn how to ski, however class sizes are a lot smaller here due to the way the school system is set up (only 30 kids).

I really enjoy that families are active together year round. It is important for children to see their parents hiking and skiing, and their grandparents biking and picking mushrooms, because it instills a lifesyle into them. Growing up my family was rather active. My brother and I would play football and baseball out in our yard with our parents, go for bike rides and walks and cross country ski in the winter. And those are the things that I remember. Sure, I also have good memories of sitting in the car on the way to vacation and spending time camping and on the beach, but since my parents were active when I was younger I do believe it is why I enjoy biking, hiking, swimming and skiing. One of my stongest memories from childhood was when my family went night skiing. It was a cold night, without wind, and a full moon lit the sky. We put on our headlamps and skied around the field behind our house. Everything was crisp and sparkled in the moonlight.

So when out friend Hana asked me if I wanted to go cross country skiing with her I was really excited. She was hesitant to ask, since she was unsure if I had ever skied before, but after learning that I use to ski when I was younger her worry became that I would be too fast for her! (go figure) I assured her that I wasn't very fast and that I hadn't been on cross country skies since I was 15 so she had nothing to worry about. We ended up skiing for about 3 hours all around Policka, and had a great time.

Jeremy wasn't able to go with Hana and I since he had been invited to go "motorskiing" with our other friends, Honza and Lukas. For the pictures and videos that I saw, I know they had a good time. They also took Jeremy on his first cross country skiing adventure!

Reflection

To be honest, teaching English can be horrible. The monotony of planning lessons that are always 'interesting' and 'effective', the patience that I must put forth while sitting through an hour of poorly pronounced diphthongs and non-conjugated verbs, the frustratingly slow pace of speech that I must maintain--so slow, that I often forget my train of thought--and the feeling that my 'teaching' might be thoroughly useless, all congeal to produce some very awful days.

Luckily, like all things in life, there is another side of the coin that is usually a little more optimistic; like the fact that by teaching 'language' I can actually communicate with students. Unlike other common subjects that are taught, the foundational base of teaching a language is for communication: the exchange of experiences and stories through spoken words that are generated only through mouth, tongue, and larynx. In a weird way, language is studying people: the culture, the history and even the biology; one must be a student of all three to really 'grasp' a language or speak it 'fluently' (a word that is often thrown around by Czech speakers of English who have never spoken to native speakers. How can you be fluent if you've never met someone whose whole culture, history and art are tied up in the language, and you've only learned it through a textbook? You can't.) Anyways, I don't feel like I'm actually giving any 'knowledge' to my students when they come into my classes. of course, I might help them with some grammatical points or pronunciation, but I'm actually not giving them piles of information to upload into their active memories; to the contrary, I'm just teaching them how to tell stories, how to express feelings, how to recall the past; in effect, all I'm doing is helping them....talk.

At this level, my job can be like a treasure. The first day of the year always brings in new faces with frightened, intimidated eyes. They probably all feel like they will get bowled over by waves of rocks that hit the ground with "Th's" and "V's" (as opposed to "W's")and phrasal verbs. They are reluctant to speak, so the whole class as a group builds barriers around each other, not because of a sense of animosity, but because no one wants to sound like a 'fool'. Often times, the conversation in my 'conversational English class' feels more like an interview: the students don't interact with one another, instead, they just wait for me to lob another question, as if I'm shooting from a mortar cannon and they're waiting for the next round to obliterate them along with their partner: "Maria, would you mind telling me what your favorite sports is?" (Blank stare ensues...)After a few months, the scariness of me (the fact that I speak differently than their English-as-second-language friends) wears off, we begin to come together as a group. Inevitably, a class that starts with 12 students in September, dwindles to about 5 or 6 by March; however, the five that come, are here for year. And with them, the fun really begins to start...

We get to express some of our own opinions in class. We speak quickly, excitedly and, sometimes, incorrectly. I learn about their daily routine and I'm curious to see what they do on the weekend. I find out that one of my students flies gliders around the Highlands of Policka; I hear that another one was once one of the Czech Republics most skilled Morse Code readers; I'm told the sad history of families torn up and destroyed under a ruthless Communist regime. I learn about spouses, children, adventures from their youth, and cross-country skiing competitions. I'm surprised at their interest in me; I'm bombarded with questions: "Do you like the Czech Republic?" "Is it really true that Americans...?" "Who do you think will win the Olympic gold in hockey?" "What will you do when you return back to the United states" "Would you and Jamie want to come over for dinner on Friday?" "My brother has a hockey game on Wednesday, do you want to come?" "Hey, do you like Policka beer?" And on, and on. How lovely it is!

Towards the end of the year, I begin to realize that the motivation behind five who come isn't just to improve their English, but because they actually enjoy the group and view it as a time to socialize with new-found friends.

The young man I used to see at the grocery store who has the movements of a sloth, is actually named Roman. He lives with his parents in an apartment, is fond of American cars and wants to work with computers. The women I used to see pushing her newly-born child in a stroller, is actually Maria. She enjoys reading detective novels and boasts about the fact that she has blond hair. the old woman who hobbled about Policka lugging plastic shopping bags is actually Jarmila. She has three grandchildren, is a master at baking vanilla rolls, is Catholic and personally knew some friends who died at Auschwitz. In reality, I could view each class as just another step in our long introduction to each other. And when I think of it this way, I'm content.

Freak shows

Have you ever had the feeling that your country/home is so extreme in some way to be considered unique? Or, have you ever had the feeling that the world is staring at you with their jaw dropped, voice aghast at the 'freaks' residing across the ocean? I have. It happened last night.

In between flossing and brushing my teeth, I happened to catch a glimpse of an extremely obese man lying in bed, whining. He needed surgery, or his life would be over; his organs were slowly being crushed under the massive rolls and flaps of fat that had accumulated over seven years of being sedentary and eating unhealthily.

I'm not going to lie; the spot for the upcoming 'documentary' caught my eye, so I hurriedly sat on the couch and waited. The show opened with a picture of America, distorted as if there was a looking glass on the screen running back and forth over the map of America, making some states look bigger. In the background, I heard a thunderous sound like that of a bullfrog, only a few octaves lower. It then cut to a shot of the American flag fluttering gently in a soft breeze, all the while, panning onto the sidewalk giving us a flattering glimpse of obese thighs, butts and stomachs, but never heads; they never show the faces.

Next was the narrator:

"This is America: The fattest nation on earth and home to the world's most obese man."

Ahh, makes me feel good to be a "Yank"!

For the next hour and half I was witness to video clips: hospitals, American flags, fast food, fat people, stomach by-pass of a 1,000 pound person. The cycle continued, although sometimes a little varied: fast-food shot, fat teenager, baby eating a hamburger, 1,000 pound man trying to walk, 800 pound teenager, crying mothers, hospitals. Oh yeah, and the American Flag.

I always wondered where foreigners got crazy stereotypes about the lifestyles of most Americans; impressions usually swing in between the idea that were all INCREDIBLY rich, or were all INCREDIBLY obese. I think I now know why. The show last night was shown on basic Czech television at 9:00 o'clock at night. This means that it was a 'hot' slot and I'm sure it garnered a few million viewers. It was chalk full of statistics, generalizations about the way Americans eat and live, pictures to back up the theories and a whole lot of jiggling guts and legs. For the uninformed viewer, the idea that all of America struggles to get out of bed due to fat tumors hanging off the back of hamstrings would not be a difficult conclusion to make.

My stomach was rolling in the thought that this is what we as a nation have come to represent to the world: gluttony and consumerism gone completely wrong.

An undercurrent throughout the whole broadcast was the documentarian's probing of feelings from the 'skinny' side of the USA. He found that while many average/healthy Americans were shocked and dismayed at the fact that the obesity issue can have such extreme cases (like that of a 1,000 pound man); the over-all reaction was one of pity and remorse for those who suffer in such situations. It was pretty obvious, to the documentarian, that the acquiescence of main-stream, non-obese American culture into apathetically accepting the lifestyle (lack of physical activity; pure ignorance as to healthy eating; a dependence on fast food; pie-in-the-sky surgeries) of their unhealthy neighbors and family members was just as crazy and warped as the fact that there is a 1,000 pound person on this earth. This was best illustrated by the fact that it was the man's own family who kept feeding him FIVE cheeseburgers a day even past the point of immobility, and that NOBODY in the surrounding town spoke out about his lifestyle in the hope of SAVING HIS LIFE, not insulting him as a 'fat' person.

This issue is one that I've been struggling with since I've been here in the Czech Republic. Living here has forced me to view American living with fresh eyes from an outside perspective. While I know that the truth of the matter is that NOT all Americans are obese and that there are some of us who really do struggle with weight for both emotional and genetic reasons, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that our American, fast-paced life style oils the engine upon which this obesity epidemic turns. As long as we continue to live in a cycle that treats time and career as more important than family; that chooses self-aggrandizement over communal responsibility; that lets town centers die; splits itself at the seams over pointless cultural battles over 'right' and 'left'; ignores the fact that our eyes have blinded by blinking fast food and box-chain signs beckoning us to buy more garbage; and that judges the worth of humans not on the fact that are people, but in how much they can consume, then we will always be stuck in an American Nightmare.

My point is to not make all of you reading this feel bad. I am speaking because I'm saddened by the fact that this is who 'we' as Americans have become to the rest of the world. I guess for many of you, what I'm writing will be hard to understand because you've never had the chance to see our culture and our nation from the outside. But I have, and these are reflections that I've been dealing with. To say that I don't like the American style of living would be about accurate. I look forward to being home for the people, but I could do without the constant bombardment of chemically-concocted food, 20 gallon 'fizzinators' and commercialism gone wild. (When I can't even watch a football game anymore without having to sit through 2 minutes of advertisements EVERY 3O SECONDS, it has gotten a little out of hand)

Oh, not to mention the fact that we can't even fathom how to fix our 'Health Care Crisis' until we take seriously the call to live and eat responsibility in our individual lives. But, that is for another conversation.