Plisner Fest

As my Aunt pointed out in a blog comment, Czech people drink more alcohol per capita than any other country! Alcohol is ingrained in Czech culture. In restaurants it is more expensive to buy water than beer. I have asked people why this is and the two common responses are: (1) the cost of beer is less than water for Czech pride. (2) why would you want water in a restaurant? While there are many local breweries, Plzen is most known for Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus brands of beer. In fact, they have tours of the factories and museums for Pilsner beer. It is not just a brand, but also a type of pale lager. Therefore, it makes total sense that in Plzen there would be a celebration of their invention.

Pilsner Fest is a two-day music and beer festival that happens every year! I arrived in Plzen just in time to attend! Like many festivals in the US, there are rows of tents selling beer and snacks. They had two main music stages, and early in the afternoon there were competitions on the stages to see who could hold two liters of beer straight out in front of them the longest without spilling. At 7:30 the Czech Olympians (only the ones who received medals) and the entire crowd cheered! There were thousands of people, most of whom were already a little tipsy, cheering each other. In the Czech Republic, it is impolite to take a sip of your beer before you have cheered everyone. There is also a rule that you must make eye contact with the person you are cheering – this meant that I had to stare into the eyes of random strangers!

I went to the festival with a teacher who wanted to meet up with some of her students. All the students I met were male and they were 18 years old, which is the legal drinking age here. We mostly sat under a tent and talked with them. There was an automatic bull machine that was in the shape of a can of beer rather than a bull that the teacher wanted to try. So we all tried riding the beer can. I was getting tired, hungry, and cold, but wanted to wait for the teacher before heading home. So I went and got a snack. Of course, this snack was the highlight of the night! I may be a vegetarian, but I love food! I bought a cinnamon, sugar, and almond covered trdelink, which is a doughy pastry. It tasted almost like an elephant ear (the kind at carnivals and fairs – not the animal). It was warm and delicious!

I was planning to leave at 11PM, so I could make the last tram to my apartment, but the teacher wanted to stay. Around 12AM I asked if she was ready to leave, but she wanted to stay longer with her students because she hadn’t seen them all summer. At this point I felt uncomfortable because in the US teachers never stay out late with young students, and definitely not in a place with alcohol. She asked me if I could get home by myself and I hesitantly said yes. The night bus to my apartment left at 1:15 AM, so I waited a little while before leaving her, the students, and the festival. Two students wanted to leave at that time and I am thankful they did because they walked with me to the bus station, which was different from the tram station!

Unlike when I began traveling (my junior year abroad in college), I was not upset or in shock by these types of events and got culture shock, I was not upset or in shock by these events. I understand that there are different customs and norms. My professor in college who took my senior seminar class out to a bar for our last class was deemed cool, and all the students were older than 21. In a sense, this event was no different. It only felt strange to me because our drinking age is older than that in the Czech Republic and we have different customs.

Na zdravi! (Cheers!)

Door

My first night in my apartment I unpacked all my belongings and got settled. I have a washing machine, but no dryer. I went to hang my clean clothes on the clotheslines on my balcony and when I tried to close the door I couldn't. So I called a teacher. She told me to try to slam the door and manipulate it, but nothing worked. It was pouring outside and she wanted to come over. I insisted that she wait until the morning and explained that I would close the door by putting my chair in front of it. So the next morning, the teacher came over around 7:30 AM to look at my broken door. She declared that it was in fact broken and called one of our school’s many handymen to come over. He was also unsuccessful, so the teacher went and knocked on my neighbor’s door. My neighbor said that they would come over at 3PM to fix it. We closed the door as best we could and we went to school.

Now this is not an ordinary door! It is a big, glass door. If you turn the handle 90 degrees from its locked position it becomes a regular door, but if you turn in 180 degrees from its locked position it becomes a window. I have a smaller window that has the same technology. The door was broken because the handle would not move above 90 degrees or back down in its locked position. It also just wouldn’t close!

When I got home from running errands my neighbor and his wife and child came over. His wife knows a little English, but her baby was crying, so she had to leave. My neighbor, Vladimir, opened his toolbox and started working right away! I interrupted to introduce myself and ask his name. He took apart the door handle and played around with the different mechanisms on the door and then it was magically fixed! He wrote down his phone number and apartment number and called the same teacher. Then he passed the phone to me and the teacher translated for him that if I needed anything I could go and ask him and that he was going to try to call the internet company for me. I was so happy and felt so lucky to have such nice neighbors! He had been so generous to fix my door for nothing. She also explained that Vladimir’s wife was on maternity leave and would be around in case of emergency. I am hoping to run into her in the hallway and make a friend, since she speaks some English. I really want to meet someone who I could tutor in English in exchange for Czech lessons. Maybe it will be she.

Door as a door:

Door as a window:

Brno → Plzen

Orientation continued with learning how to teach English grammar rules and play educational games. As native English speakers we don’t think about these rules and why we say sentences certain ways. This was probably the hardest exercise for the group and me because we had to define phrasal verbs, adverbials, etc. It has been years since any of us have actually reviewed grammatical structures. The game section of the orientation was fun, and our competitive sides came out. Games included filling in the correct conjunction in a sentence, matching photos of food items with their names, and filling in an alphabet with different food items beginning with letters A through Z.

The last night in Brno we met again up with students from Mastyk University who took us to a castle, which was also a lookout point (see photos). Here we could see the cathedral we had climbed the day before. After the castle we went to a microbrewery and had dinner, and then sat in a park and played on the jungle gyms. It was a little funny to be 22-years-old and see-saw, flip on bars, and swing. At one point I asked the University students to teach me some Czech and of course they only wanted to teach me swear words. So now my Czech vocabulary consists of hello, thank you, please, excuse me, cheers, how are you, what’s your name, and my name is, and five phrases unsuitable for younger audiences.

On Thursday the 30th, representatives from our schools came to Brno for an orientation and lunch, and then they took us back to our respective towns. It was a three-hour drive from Brno to Plzen. I was originally told it was a five-hour drive, so I was happy! It was very hard for me to stay awake during the drive though. I sat in the back seat, the school’s handyman drove, and my teacher-mentor sat in the passenger seat. Each Fulbrighter has a mentor who is suppose to help them get settled and introduce them to the school. My mentor is Lenka and she speaks English really well. She is one of 11 English teachers at my school. I will share an office with her and a teacher named Hana. Next door there are nine more English teachers and one French teacher. Lenka and the handyman drove me to my small studio apartment and helped me get my bags upstairs. They showed me how to turn on and off the water, electricity, and heater, as well as how to use appliances that have Czech instructions (I will explain more about my apartment later). Then Lenka and I went to the super-grocery store a block from my apartment where she helped me food shop and buy things I would need. There were so many things I wanted to buy, but felt like I was wasting her time. There were also some cultural differences. I was looking to buy certain things and she did not understand why. I felt especially awkward in the shampoo isle. It takes me a long time in the US to buy shampoo because there are a thousand options that all do slightly different things. It is even more difficult to choose the correct shampoo when all the bottles are in Czech! I decided to buy only a few necessity items and to go back to the store on my own. Plus, I had enough travel soap to last me a while!

On Friday August 31st, Lenka and I met to go to the school, which is two trams and 40 minutes away. Luckily, the tram station is a block from my apartment! At school I met some of the other English teachers, got school supplies and classroom keys, connected my computer to their internet system, and ate lunch. Then Lenka took me to open a bank account, talk to an internet provider (my apartment does not currently have internet), get a city map, and buy spices at a special store. After running around all day we were pretty tired and needed a break. I went home and made dinner, and had my neighbor repair my broken balcony door (I will save the door-story for another blogpost). Later, I met Lenka again and we went to the Pilsner Festival, something I will also keep you in suspense about!

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: