Brno Orientation

I am currently in the Moravian city Brno for my teaching orientation. I have now officially met all the English Teaching Assistants (ETA - my official job title). I will meet the research Fulbrighters during our second orientation in September. All the teachers seem very intelligent and nice - everyone is excited to be here and to meet each other!

Today's orientation consisted mainly of icebreakers, as well as discussions about what makes a good teacher and classroom environment. However, we did go over some interesting cultural norms! These cultureal points were actually some things I have already encountered during my stay here. For example, it is totally acceptable for men and small children to urinate in the street. I happened to see this last night when I was walking home from dinner. Two men were happily urinating on the side of a building! On the other side of the block there is a club named The Moulin Rouge and as you may be able to discern from the title of the club, prostitution is also legal here. Additionally, the age of consent is 15, in contrast to the age of 18 in the United States.

Another norm is wearing slippers in schools and as a guest in homes. Apparently this means wearing nice slippers, not the kind that are in the shape of a dog or make your feet look like dinosaur feet. The reasoning behind this is that when you enter the school and it is raining or snowing, a person would change out of their wet clothing and keep the hallways clean and clear of slipping hazards.

I also learned about the three main types of high schools in the Czech Republic. There are gymnasium schools (most like a typical US high school), technical schools, and vocational schools. Attending gymnasium schools are very competitive and some have specialties similar to magnet programs. The technical schools are for people who have a career path. Usually students at these schools travel distances and/or live in dorms while attending these schools. I am teaching at a math, science, and engineering technical school, which manly has male students. Many students will live in a dorm-like situation and may go home on the weekends. From what I can tell, out of the ETAs I am living in the largest city (Plzen) and I am the third closest to Prague. Most ETAs are teaching at gymnasium schools in small towns about 10,000 people or less and Plzen's population is about 180,000. Whether this is a blessing or a curse I have yet to decide.

To revert back to my current living situation and location, I am staying in a nice hotel with a roommate who went to Pomona College (also in the same consortium as Pitzer College). She is awesome! Our hotel is about a five-minute walk from Masaryk University, where our orientation takes place. After orientation all of the ETAs met up with a few English literature students and took a tour of the city. This included climbing 200 steps to the top of a baroque church. There was a great lookout at the top! Then we went to a restaurant named Beer Monkey. In Czech the word for Monkey and the verb to be drunk sound similar, so this bar's name was a joke. This concluded a long day!

The next few days will also be long and filled with orientation and adjusting to my new home in Plzen. Initially, I will not have internet in my apartment, so bear with me! Hopefully, I will get out another post soon!

Czeching Out Prague

Ahoj!

I have spent the last two days exploring Prague. On Saturday, I was picked up at the airport by a shuttle service and brought to my hostel where I ran into three graduates of Claremont McKenna College (CMC). CMC is in the Claremont Consortium with Pitzer College, and I happen to have class last semester with one of the guys. Ironically, we all had ordered a four-person room and were roommates at the hostel! It is a small world! I spent most of Saturday sleeping and resting. Later I grabbed a bite to eat at the cafe in the hostel before meeting another Fulbrighter, Adam. It was great meeting another Fulbrighter, walking around the city, and swapping travel stories. We ate fancy chocolate cake at the restaurant where Franz Kafka wrote many of his stories! The restaurant has a pad of paper and pencil at each table in case another author visits and comes up with his or her greatest idea. This afternoon I will meet the rest of the Fulbrighters and our adviser at the train station, and then we will travel together to Brno for our orientation.

I have definitely been spoiled by the vegetarian and diverse restaurants in Prague. Hopefully, I will continue to have good-food-luck!

In addition to eating, I explored many sights that I have and have not seen before. I went to a graffiti wall dedicated to John Lennon, and walked across the Charles Bridge and along the Vltava River, Wenceslas Square, and Old Town Square.

I also began to research my 17th century Bohemian relatives, Hendel Bassevi and Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg. In the "Shalom from Israel" post, I wrote about my last experience in Prague and there is a photo of me at my great grandmother's grave in the Old Jewish Cemetery. I have many questions regarding how this relative and her husband became wealthy, famous, and noble. My first day of research was unsuccessful, but today I was able to locate the archives and get the contact information for a historian and a bookkeeper for the Jewish archives. Hopefully, they will show me the original family coat of arms, and some of the Jewish artifacts that the Bassevis donated to Prague Synagogues. Most of the documentation on my family is in Czech and German (I guess I need to start learning Czech!), but I now know that such artifacts exist and the location of my great grandfather's grave. The most amazing part of this exploration was that when I walked into the Jewish library and asked for help they knew about the Bassevis and where to find books and information about them. I asked my helper how she knew about them and if anyone else had inquired about them before, and she replied that they were famous! I feel pretty cool about being related to someone famous, even if they are really only read about in history textbooks!

Time to Go!

Wow! I have not had enough time in the last 24 days to update my blog about Japan and now I am leaving for the Czech Republic. After coming home from Japan I spent four days visiting family in LA, ten days packing and hanging out in Seattle, and then ten days visiting friends in NY, DC, and Boston. This has probably been the most I have ever traveled in a summer. The number of trains, planes, automobiles, buses, and ferries I rode and will ride this year is amassing to a large carbon footprint, which I feel guilty about.

I am feeling fairly neutral about starting this new adventure, but I know that as soon as I touch down in Prague I will be full of adrenaline and excitement! While I love traveling and exploring, this numbness is something I often feel before leaving. It is bitter-sweet to be leaving all my friends and family, and the comforts of home and the English language. On the other hand, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live in and explore Europe! I know that the road is always a little bumpy when you get to a new place (especially ones with cobblestone), but the friends I will make and the experiences I will have will be priceless!

I will be spending 2.5 days in Prague to catch up from jet-lag and explore. Then I will have a three day orientation in Brno. Finally, I will arrive in Plzen, where I will be living and teaching on a Fulbright Fellowship. Plzen is southwest of Prague and is famous for inventing the Pilsner beer! The primary purpose of this trip is to teach English to 15 to 20-year-olds at a science, engineering, and technology school. In my free time I hope to research and study my 17th century relatives who lived in Prague. I also plan to learn Czech when I get there, which is a Slavic language and supposedly more difficult than Japanese! Hopefully, I will also find time to travel around the country and region. I will of course keep you apprised of my travels, adventures, accommodations, etc.

**Disclaimer: This blog is not representative of the Fulbright Program**

Sumo Tournament!

On July 22nd, we made an impromptu trip from our hostel in Kyoto to the Aichi Prefecture Gymnasium in Nagoya. This was the second to last day of the July Sumo Tournament! This meant that the fights were very important and would decide who fought whom in the final matches. Due to the fact that all the tickets for the tournament were sold-out online, we left our hostel around 5:30 AM in order to get tickets from the box office. We went with a young Canadian couple we met in Kyoto. After arriving at the gym we waited in a long line to find out that the box office did not accept credit cards. Thus, we gathered up all the cash and coins in our pockets to pay for our tickets. Then we set out for breakfast. Unfortunately, the gym is located in an area with very little food and were told by people on the street that it would be better to eat in the gym. We were a bit unlucky when it came to food that day because there was very little that the gym offered. Those in the group who ate and ordered meat ended up not eating what they ordered because it was disgusting. Later I purchased rice crackers and peanuts and Rmax bought a Japanese version of Pringles, which we shared.

Around 8:30 AM we entered the empty stadium and snuck down to the floor with an elevated sumo stage. Two-thirds the stadium's seats were staggered rows of cushions and the other third were stacked folding stadium seats (like the kind at baseball stadiums). On the ground floor there were rows of cushions for audience members and then a row of nicer cushions where the judges sat and the sumo wrestler's who were next up to fight sat. All of these rows made a square around the elevated, clay wrestling stage. (Side note: The sumo wrestlers who were more prestigious sat on fancier cushions that someone would have carried out for them.) We were lucky to get on the floor and be able to walk around the sumo stage because moments later guards came out and shooed away other early-explorers.

The first sumo matches began around 10:30, which meant that we had a long time to sit and wait in a florescent lit, in-door stadium. The first few rounds matches were with untitled and less-known sumo wrestlers. There were maybe 20 or 30 matches with different people in each round. They were very fast bouts, lasting 10 to 45 seconds. It was unlike boxing or other sports where maybe you have three bouts before it ends. Here if you knock your opponent to the ground, out of the ring, or on the ground and outside the ring, they are finished for the entire match. This means that those 10 to 45 seconds are their big moment! For some reason this felt unfair to Rmax and me. Even in rock-paper-scissors games as a child it is the best two out of three that wins. It also seemed unfair that the wrestlers were not paired by weight or height. Sometimes there would be a very large man with a smaller-large man (all the wrestlers were large in some way!). When we saw a smaller man beat a larger man we cheered and got excited!

Sumo wrestlers are not just fat men! They train hard and have a lot of muscle under their fat. And some are just muscular! Well actually... some may just be fat... A typical sumo's day consists of waking up and working out, eating, sleeping, working out, eating, and sleeping. After eating a huge hearty stew with meat, beans, tofu, veggies, noodles, etc., the sumo wrestlers sleep so that they do not burn their food-calories.

Around 2:30 the matches started to pick up and the better sumos came out. At this time, the stadium began to get crowded and more interested in the matches. We also saw more sumo techniques. However, with those cool techniques came injuries. More big men fell off the stage - almost onto the judges who were seated below the stage. We saw a man fall and and he must have broken his leg because several men carried him out of the stadium before putting him on an extra-large stretcher. As these bouts became more intense, so did the sumo's introduction. There were parades of all the wrestlers around the stage before matches would begin and they dressed in embroidered aprons. Even the judges and referees began dressing in fancier garb. The more prestigious wrestlers took more time to begin their bout by throwing salt on the floor and by loudly slapping themselves. Sometimes it took 10 minutes of stretching, salt throwing, and slapping before the 10 second bout would even begin.

By 5PM we were all getting wrestles and decided that we would skip the last six bouts of the day to go back to Kyoto. We must have seen at least 100 bouts! Once in Kyoto, Rmax and I gathered up our belongings and left for Osaka to stay at a capsule hostel (yes, that means that I slept in a three-foot by six-foot by three-foot room for a night).

Below are some sumo photos:

Kyoto's Couples Massage

After Tokyo, Rmax and I spent four days exploring Kyoto and its surrounding cities. Kyoto was the the capital of Japan before Tokyo. It is a very old place with lots of temples and shrines. Most of our time in Kyoto consisted of visiting about five temples, a rock garden, a bamboo forest, and a traditional Geisha neighborhood (Geon). I also meet up with a friend from high school who was studying abroad in Kyoto. Meeting someone from home in Japan was very cool! Kyoto is a lot smaller and quieter than Tokyo, and it is about a three hour train-ride from Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train).

In Kyoto, Rmax and I were both were having small aches and pains from traveling, so we decided to get massages. We happen to pass by a nice looking spa and went in and booked two massages for the following day. When we arrived for our appointments we were greeted with cold, herbal tea and asked if we wanted a traditional shiatsu (pressure) massage or an oil massage. We both decided on the shiatsu massage. The receptionist's English was not fluent, but with my Japanese we could understand each other. She asked if we wanted to have separate massages or massages together. We said separate and then received separate bills. Once again we were asked if we wanted separate massages and we said we did. Then Rmax and I were lead in separate directions to the female and male locker rooms. Before entering the spa I was instructed to take off my shoes and put on slippers, and then I was provided with amazingly comfortable Japanese-style pajamas. I changed in the locker room and then was taken down a long hallway to a red room with dimmed lights. To my surprise Rmax was there! And there were two tables set up. We had a private foot-bath (when we chuckled about the fact that we were having a couples massage in pajamas) before we took our spots on the tables for our massages.

My masseuse spoke more English than Rmax's masseuse, which was ironic because I speak more Japanese than Rmax. So any questions that they asked like "how hard would you like your massage?" were asked by my masseuse and usually translated for Rmax's. I think Rmax and I both dozed in and out during the massage. When we were done we were guided back to our respective locker rooms and then met at the spa bar, where we were serviced water and given a warm/wet towel to wipe our hands.

The couples massage is a small example of the language-barrier we encountered, but the massage itself was definitely relaxing and worth it for our backs!

Adventuring in Tokyo: Asakusa, Akihabara, Shabuya, Harajuku

Konichiwa from Japan!

I am traveling in Japan with my friend from college, Rmax. On graduation day we decided to go to Japan together. Of course this decision was made while eating sushi in Claremont, California. Although, we have yet to experience sushi in Japan... For me, the purpose of this trip is to practice my Japanese and to explore parts of Japan and Japanese culture that I have not previously seen. We are currently staying at my friend's parents beautiful home in Tokyo. The family has been extraordinarily generous and helpful. We are located in Shibuya-ku, which happens to be central and near many desired attractions.

Today, we started in Asakusa, which is the oldest part of Tokyo. Asakusa and the Sensoji temple survived fire bombings in World War II. Th e Sensoji Temple is a beautiful wooden and red temple with iconic red lanterns. The temple is surrounded by a bazaar, full of shops selling little cakes, drinks, shaved ice cones, and little trinkets.

From there we went to the electronics district, Akihabara. Here you can find just about any part, battery, or wire needed to build or fix literally any electronic device. There are also computer, camera, and phone shops. The entire area is like Best Buy on speed. The streets, buildings, and billboards are brightly colored and often have English phrases that don't make sense. Rmax felt overstimulated by giant posters and the mass amount of people in this district. This area is also known for its anime (Japanese animation/cartoons) and cos-play (costume play). In this district it was immediately apparent that I was in a mostly male-dominated area. The few Japanese women around were walking and dressed as cartoon characters, maids, and school-girls. These women are typically dressed up to promote a club, store, or product. Whenever we tried to take their photo, the women would turn around and usually shield themselves beneath umbrellas. From an outsiders perspective, Akihabara is like geeky, male fantasy come true, with women, anime, and computer games to go along with that fantasy. This made the district a great place for people watching and we were able to find a very reasonable and quiet soba (buckwheat noodle) shop. We both found the quiet and organized restaurant to be a nice refuge from the bustling streets. Additionally, it has been in the 80s and very humid, so cold noodles were very refreshing!

After exhausting Akihabara, we traveled to Shibuya station, which has one of the largest and busiest crosswalks in Tokyo! When the pedestrian symbol turns green, it does so at every crosswalk and a sea of people flood the intersection. We went to a split-level Starbucks to watch the action! At one point there were so many people in the intersection that I could not see the the painted white lines in the crosswalk. We purposefully went Shubuya on a Saturday afternoon when people were out of work and in the streets. This area is very popular because it has a lot of clothing and fashion shops, as well as restaurants. Mass crowds are a theme throughout Tokyo because of its extensive population.

After taking in the crowds, Rmax and I walked from Shabuya's intersection to Harajuku and Takeshita-Dori, which are also known for their fashion and people watching. However, these neighborhoods more funky. Women dress up in corsets, platform converse shoes, dyed hair, bright colors, etc. Usually dogs are also dressed up and have their hair dyed. Harajuku style was made popular in the US with Gwen Stefani's music videos, which featured Harajuku girls dancing. Interestingly, there are many dance troops in Japan and boys and girls compete to get on TV shows and perform musical numbers in this style. When Rmax and I went to Yayogi Park, in the center of Tokyo, we were able to see groups of students practicing their dance moves.

Overall, this was a pretty jammed-pack day. We covered a lot of ground and saw some of the more famous districts in Tokyo! Photos to come later!