Thank You!

Okay, so it's been a long time... but I wanted to say one more THANK YOU to all of you who have been following this blog or who have supported me throughout this year.

I am back from Slovakia and have taken a job, through AmeriCorps, with Any Baby Can of Austin teaching and tutoring ESL, adult basic education (which includes mathematics!) and Spanish literacy. I have been able to apply many of the skills I learned in Slovakia to my work here. It has been fun so far and I am really enjoying Texas, although my mind is never too far from Lucenec.

If you would like to continue receiving updates on my work or have any other questions or comments about Slovakia, please send me an email or comment below and I will try my best to respond quickly!



Thanks!

English Camp!

So, last week started the end of my volunteer service... or at least, the last big chunk of it. At the end of June, we began hosting a series of English language camps, baseball camps, women's camp, VBS camps and Roma camps in a handful of towns around the area. We started in Cinobana with an English camp and had a ton of fun. A small group of 5 young volunteers came to teach English during the last week of school and lead a program full of song, sport, story and craft in the afternoons. We had a blast doing it and great weather for the week. It was a fun and relaxing way to start off and get into the mood for camp!



This week, a much larger, more diversely-aged group has arrived for the English women's and baseball camps in Lucenec. These three camps are happening simultaneously and on a bigger scale than in Cinobana. Since the school year is officially done, this camp is truly a summer camp, rather than required schooling. There are a little over 100 children signed up for camp and we are almost halfway through the two-week camp.

On Saturday I will be leaving for a Roma camp in nearby Jelsava and then following that camp with one more English camp in Velky Krtis and finally we will top the year off with an overnight English/VBS camp in Rackova Dolina, the beautiful retreat center that we visited in February.

More info on the rest of camps when they come!

This is an "American Smile"

There are many things that I have learned while living in Slovakia - I have seen and experienced new languages, new churches, new beliefs, new infrastructure, new culture, new racism, new landscapes, new history, a new continent and just about new everything - much of which I was not expecting.

With that in mind, many people in Slovakia have expectations about what people from the USA are like. For example, "all Americans wear flip-flops and drink Coca-Cola". I will give you $50 if you can find a picture of me anywhere drinking Coke and wearing flip-flops. That is just one example and there are many stereotypes that I have heard over the year. Some hold truth. Others I have never even imagined. Some are funny and others are offensive.

It is interesting to see what other cultures learn about my country and what they are expected to "know" about us. Hopefully I have broken some of the less-than-flattering stereotypes about U.S. citizens, but there is one where I fall straight into the expectation. I have an "American smile". Yes - it is big, it is happy and it is genuine. Sorry for being a happy person. But you know what, I would rather have an American smile than a Slovak smile where I'm not allowed to show my teeth.

Memories of Ukraine

So, over the weekend, I had the chance to visit Kosice for the World Hockey Ice Championships and then head to Western Ukraine with my fellow YAGM's for a visit. I don't know if I have ever had such a jam-packed, adventurous and fun weekend! That said, it would probably take just as long to describe the weekend as it did to live it, so instead, I leave you with a list of our weekend activities.

Every line comes with a story. If you want an explanation for a line, email me or comment below.

Saturday:
530 wake up call.
900 arrival in Kosice
Sweatpants are great for riding the morning bus.
Sweatpants are not acceptable to wear in public in Central Europe.
May Day parade plus tree ribbons
Bake funfetti cake
Long conversation about communism and socialism in the kitchen.
(F – A – S – T) English
Amanda gets pulled up on stage – free scarf and t-shirt!
Wait for lunch almost 2 hrs. Leave.
---Street food!
Hockey game, USA vs Austria:
---new friends,
---Austrian cheering section,
---skoda hats, mini cars, usa flags,
---5-1 win!
Roma concert
Frozen vegetables on the menu in a Jewish restaurant
Cake eating and advent wreath birthday candles
“don´t touch my pink gorilla”

Sunday:
145am wake up call
White mercedes.
Get in mercedes with Slovak friend of a friend of a friend + his mom.
Get lost in Hungary - run into police
Cross border no. 1 to leave Hungary
Cross border no. 2 to enter Ukraine
---Liz accidentally passes as Laura to cross EU borders
Endless stories about Ukrainian police
Cows going home.
Meet Sonja plus cats on the roof
Meet Charlie, the blind dog.
Meet outdoor toilet
Rusyn language.
Breakfast egg fest
Family came to visit in 1945.
---Borders go up. Cannot go home. Well, now we live in Ukraine.
2 hr church service. Liz cannot stay awake
---US girls the only ones without long skirts and scarves covering their heads.
Market - ruska zmrzlina, vodka, belts
Lunch: sunflower sugar
Hens and goats
“Hike” plus 4 leaf clovers
Walk around town
---witness fight,
---biker convention,
---peace corps volunteers
Castle.
---Views. Torture dungeons.
---Museum closed, but we paid anyway. 2 headed sheep?
To the pastors house
Wonderful dinner, daughter lives in Seattle.. what?!
Talk in Ukrainian/Rusyn. Understand?
Power goes out.
Power back on.
Power back off.
Can’t flush toilet, whoops!
Power back on.
Toilet flushed.
BED.

Monday:
700am wake up call Slovak time (8am Ukrainian time)
Breakfast - eggs, dessert and pirohys.
Liz and Viera have the same b-day!
---Serious wishes for the future.
Gave our host gift of alcohol and she didn’t know what it was.
---“Maybe we can put it in tea”
Mini Cyrillic lesson.
Market round 2. birthday chocolate, 10 boxes of cigarettes, and apples.
Back wheel driven up onto platform to force more gas in the car.
Cross border no. 3 leave Ukraine
Paying for gas from the car via phone at the border.
Non-stop duty free oreos
Mad rush to the bridge.
Border agent calls a friend and lets them in front of us.
Cross border no. 4 enter EU. : 4,5hrs
Osama bin laden has been killed.
Liz learns to braid hair
Climbing on WWII tanks from Russia and Germany.
To Kosic - Laura gets a bus.
To Lucenec.
---home by 915.
---5 missed calls. whoops. phone in trunk.
---White Mercedes no longer white.
---facebook told host fam about my b-day.
------champagne, flowers and perfume follow.
------more serious wishes for the future.

Happy Easter....?

2 hour church services on Good Friday and Sunday? Check. Resurrection plays? Check. Easter lunch complete with full lamb sacrificed for the 13 people staying at our house? Check. Hidden chocolate eggs for the smallest kids? Check.

But there is one more Easter tradition that Slovaks (men particularly) enjoy partaking in. See below.



Apparently, the traditional getting doused with buckets of water, thrown into a river or whipped with willow branches is so that women will be pretty and healthy for the rest of the year. Don't ask me how or why, but that is what they claim! "Oblievačka" is the word used to describe this tradition and translates into English as " A water sprinkling". hmmm, the better choice (I would think) is the verb that accompanies this noun, oblievať. Oblievať translates into the English word "souse". I had never heard that word and had to look it up:
1. to plunge into water or other liquid; immerse.
2. to drench, as with water.
3. to dash or pour, as water.

Now, that sounds a little more accurate! Once said sousing has occurred, women are expected to pay their sousers in terms of chocolate eggs, money or vodka (age dependent). Where is the connection to Easter? Not. a. clue.

Luckily, I don't live with a family that clings to such traditions quite as strictly. I got a cup full of water that ended up half on me and half in my closet. Thanks Karol! ("host dad")

Hope you all had great Easters and that nobody got thrown into a river!

Resurrection Eggs

These little eggs have made my week! We had some visitors from Texas visit the center last week and these "Resurrection Eggs" were one of the gifts that they brought for the children.


Since we were, as usual, scrambling to find something for the kids the day before our meeting - these eggs came to mind and we set out to work. Each egg contains a small object that relates to the Easter story and comes with a Bible verse and short summary or explanation of what happened. With a friend (and native-Slovak speaker), we set out to translating all the stories and finding and marking all the verses in a Slovak Bible.

With the help of my friend and anyone else who dared walk past my desk of scattered papers, Bibles, dictionaries and eggs - I got all 12 eggs and stories written out in Slovak just in time for a nap and a bus ride to the village. Twice I was able to use these eggs to successfully keep large groups of young children relatively engaged! Hooray!

Spring has Arrived!

Wow - I can't believe almost a month has passed since my last post (sorry!). It's true what they say about Spring moving faster and busier than Fall. Even though today is the first official day of Spring, I still feel as though I am already packed with things to do... English classes and tutoring galore, more activities in the teahouse and the community center, visitors, seminars, and more! Today is a beautiful day here in LC (though still not warm) with the sun shining for the first time in a long while.

I had a great weekend with the chance to meet up with both other volunteers in Slovakia because Laura came to visit central Slovakia! We had a great time showing her around, sharing stories and getting ready for our next adventure - running a half marathon in Prague two weeks from now. Look for an update about that in the coming month!



So, I stole this picture off the internet, but I don't carry my camera around with me too often, so here's an idea of what, hopefully, LC will look like this Spring! :)

Retreat Frenzy - Round 2

This post will be a bit shorter since I have been catching up on computer work all morning and am ready for a break! :)

We just finished up a week long conference in Berlin (hence the loads of computer work needing to be done) with an organization called Roma Gadje Dialogue Through Service. Together, we were a group of almost 30 people, Roma and Gadje (non-Roma), serving in Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands. We got to hear some great speakers about Roma history and current issues, participate in many discussions, and enjoy some wonderful time sharing stories, laughter, and - of course - great food.

The fact that our conference was in Berlin almost made the atmosphere very interesting. We had the chance to visit the Berlin Wall, the Parliament, the Museum of German History, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. What an interesting city!

Photo: Laura, a fellow YAGM, walking through the Jewish Memorial in Berlin

Retreat Frenzy - Round 1

We just got back this afternoon from nearly a week straight of conferences. Last Monday, Amanda (another YAGM living close by) and I departed on a 5 hour journey to Račkova Dolina, a small Holden-esque building up in the High Tatra mountains, where we spent the week among 21 young-adult volunteers serving in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Between all of us, there were people from the USA, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and France and even more languages spoken. We had the opportunity to share and compare experiences, living situations, new vocabulary words, joys and challenges. It was a great opportunity to meet new people and see some of Slovakia’s finer countryside. I left conference number one feeling oh-so-happy and refreshed (albeit a bit tired because it can be hard to find time to sleep when spending time among such interesting people!).

Amanda and I then headed straight to Banska Bystrica for conference number 2 – The National Baptist Youth Gathering: Prvá Láska. There was no lack of Slovak music, Slovak speakers, Slovak food, and, well… Slovak youth. There were over 400 people in attendance and endless activities available to entertain the masses for the weekend. My main attraction, outside the program, was a huge volleyball tournament. I entered the tournament with my team from Lučenec, and we had a blast. There were teams representing cities from Bratislava to Košice and all over the country. My dreams of sleeping early were broken when the tournament started at 10pm on the first night (Our last game ended around 2am). We played 6 hard-fought sets of games and ended up beating Revuca in a tie-breaker game and went home with 2 bags of candy and a pretty fancy trophy. My week was certainly filled to the brim, but very fun and a nice break from the day to day activities in Lučenec.



Enjoy a few pictures of the beautiful country-side as seen around Račkova Dolina!

Sneh

I haven't shared any pictures of Lucenec in a while, so enjoy.

For about one week in mid-January, the temperature rose to a warm 40 degrees (F), then winter decided to come back. With a vengeance.


"My bench" again. In the city park.


Don't think this guy is going anywhere for a while...


This man made (I'm assuming due to it's 90 degree corners) lake is frozen over with a thick layer of snow on top. I walked a few steps on the lake after kick-testing a small section, then decided not to put too much faith in the ice and left only two footprints in the snow :)

What's in a Name?

During our introductory Slovak language course in Bratislava, I introduced myself as Liz but our teacher proceeded to call me Liza so that my name could change correctly with Slovak grammar. (See – all women’s names end in vowels and then they change with different situations. I.E. This is Liza. Do you know Lizu? Are you with Lizou? This is a card from Lizy.) Thus, when I got to my placement, I introduced myself saying I could be called Liz or Liza.

When you know someone better or want to use a more affectionate version of a name (kind of like saying Billy instead of Bill) you can add a ka or a čka to the end of a girl’s name. After getting to know me, some of my coworkers started to use a more familiar version of my name by calling me Lizička. That quickly turned into Lyžička, which is Slovak for “Little Spoon”. A few weeks later, at volleyball, a guy on my team called me Lizatka, which literally means “Lollipops”.

The newest addition to my name collection comes from my 1 and a half year old host sister, Halina. She is quickly picking up new words, both in Slovak and English. Some of her favorite words include daj! (give!), Monte (the brand of her favorite pudding), iced tea (which surprisingly is a "Slovak" word), and now bye and okay thanks to me. However, she doesn’t always use these words in their correct sense and apparently Halina thinks my name is “Bye”. Every time I come home, she comes running around the corner screaming Bye Bye Bye!

So what’s in a name? Well – here - affection, humor, and even a little misunderstanding, but as I’m crossing the street, wandering through the community center or even sitting in my room – the call of my name always brings a smile to my face, whether I’m a Liz, a Liza, a little spoon, a lollipop or even a goodbye.

2011!

Happy New Year (only a week or so late) from Slovakia!

I got to spend New Years Eve with my friends Jordon and Mal (a fellow PLU grad!), who are living in Germany right now. We had a wonderful week of relaxing, watching movies, cooking, and Wii-ing :)

Upon my return to Slovakia, I went to my first English Camp, a winter camp in Tuhár (a village not too far away). It was great to get a little experience with the camp atmosphere, since we will be hosting English camps during the entire month of July here in Lučenec!

This week, I started back with my (almost) normal schedule and have been preparing for English classes like crazy in an attempt to be ahead of the game and really well prepared this time around. I feel really good about classes and am excited to see everyone's progress as the year goes on.


Here is a picture of the first thing I did in 2011 - at about 12:30am after watching fireworks from a bridge crossing the Rhine River in Cologne, Germany. It's going to be a good year!