Czechmatediary

It is often said that once bilingual kids go to school the language that is spoken at home is slowly pushed out by the language spoken at school. Well, not in our case. Hahna successfully finished her kindergarten year and  I am happy to say she still speaks Czech the same way she spoke before she started school. Sometimes it is hard for us to translate new school terms like “supper star” or “happy/sad face” or “freeze time” or “library time” to Czech without sounding clumsy but we do it anyway or we just leave the term in English.

So what are my legal alien observations as a brand new school mom?

1. Homework – the kids have too much of it! A 5-year old should be spending a little less time on learning and more time playing outside. Also, our homework is written in English on one side and in Spanish on the other side. How are these Hispanic kids ever going to learn English I don’t know….

2. I did say they get too much homework but I have also been observing (as a one-day-a-week-in-class volunteer) that they have a LOT of play time at school, which I guess, balances out  my point number one. They make artsy stuff all the time! I don’t remember doing anything like that when I went to school, only during prescribed ‘art class” time, which was once a week.

3. Now this one really chopped my you-know-what. Since I volunteer in the class I get to talk to the teacher quite a bit. One day she started talking to me about Hahna and how distracted she gets. “She has an attention problem. She daydreams and I have to tell her things multiple times.” She went on saying that I should talk to the pediatrician, hinting that I should maybe go the Ritalin way???!!!! For those who don’t know what Ritalin is, it is a drug used for ADD, given kids here in America like candy. I talked to my dad about it who is a doctor in the Czech Republic and he was appalled. He told me that in Europe it is NOT allowed to be given to the kids at all…kind of a red flag, don’t you think? [continue reading…]

Check out this beautiful and FREE National Geographic wall paper of the Prague swan with the Charles Bridge in the background. That will look good on any wall! It definitely has an atmosphere….

CZ: Kouknete se na tento wall paper z National Geographic, ktery si muzete na downloadovat zdarma! Zobrazuje noblesni vltavskou labut a v pozadi je co jineho nez Karluv most! To bude vypadat dobre na kazde stene…

Free Prague wall paper

You know I am usually very approving of the American culture BUT this is a one thing that really bothers me: wimpy parents!!!

The other day my younger daughter Ava and I went to the local library for a story time. You know, story time,  where no one pays attention to the librarian because the kids are too little to listen and moms are too busy watching what the other moms and their kiddos are wearing? That story time.

Well, after the librarian was done with her book it was time for some free playtime with the library toys.  Ava started to play with this box which she filled with some plastic eggs and was shaking it around, having fun. All of a sudden this boy comes up to her (he must have been around 2 years old, like my daughter), takes the box away from Ava and starts playing with it. My daughter, of course, starts wailing.  So far, we have a pretty normal situation here, right? A 2-year old takes away a toy from another 2-year old and the wronged side gets upset.

The mom does not react to the whole situation so I assumed she did not see what had happened and that is why I proceed to tell her, in a very nice, non-accusatory way. She says “Oh”. Then she comes up to her boy and starts literally pleading with him:” Honey, please, give it back to the little girl.” The boy  is obviously not into it. So she goes again: “Honey, please, she was playing with it first. Please….”.And the boy, again, nothing (if he was in his teenage years I bet he would give her the finger at that moment). [continue reading…]

In case you want a recipe on how to make a Czech person really angry, Matador network blog has a post on just that topic – it’s called ‘How to piss off a Czech’. The writer lists 12 points that should make you successful in your task. Most of them are right on :).

CZ: Cim namichnete Cecha ze vseho nejvic? Tim, ze se ho cizinec zepta, jestli je ‘from Czechoslovakia’, nebo jestli jste jeden z tech ‘a couple of wild and crazy guys’? Nebo jestli si splete vasi rodnou zem s Cecenskem? Prectete si nasledujici clanek zvany “How to piss of a Czech” a hned budete moudrejsi ;).

I found other two grocery items which can be included in our list of Czech/Slovak-like groceries in the US. The first one is Pascal whole wheat bread from Trader Joe’s. It is sold in half-loaf sizes (huge half-loaves mind you) and also in mini loaf sizes. It does not have caraway seeds in it but apart from that it tastes just like Czech bread.

The other discovery is this Kodiak cakes  flapjack/waffle mix from Target believe it or not. The pancakes taste delicious and if you let them cool down they taste just like livance!!!!! I was so excited when I found that out! Now I have to watch out no to make it too often otherwise I will soon not fit in my regular-size pants ;).

CZ: Mam dva nove objevy, ktere patri do nasi sbirky ceskych/slovenskych surovin v USA. Prvni je cesky chleb z Trader Joe’s (sice nema kmin, ale jinak chutna velmi dobre) a ten druhy objev je palacinkovy mix Kodiak cakes z Targetu. Kdyz tyto palacinky nechate vystydnout, chutnaji uplne stejne jako nase livance!!!! A je to bez prace…

Remember we had that big discussion about another offical name for the Czech Republic called “Czechia”? And remember most of us were not very happy about that name? Well, this is another conformation of our inherent instincts:

‘As new details about the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings came to light, confusion on Twitter led some users to mistake Chechnya for the Czech Republic.

The names of the distinct regions trended on the social network after two suspects in the bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were described by family and law enforcement as “brothers from a Russian region near Chechnya.”

In response, Twitter users made crude “infographics” and shamed misinformed tweets, in an apparent effort to correct the Chechnya-Czech Republic error.’ [continue reading…]

I hear horror stories from my Czech friends when it comes to the customs at the airport. How many valuable things they got taken away!!! They may not look that valuable to a bystander but to us – Czechs growing up in the Czech Republic – those are priceless! For instance, my girlfriend lost Uherak that way – they just cut it in half and threw it in the trash right in front of her eyes. Uherak is a Czech salami (actually originally a Hungarian salami) that is just the best and of course, you can’t get in anywhere else but in Czech. My personal story is not that dramatic, I lost a couple of bottles of Becherovka, a glass jar of honey but that’s about it.
What else did they take away from you? Do you have a story?? [continue reading…]

PS: This article was written before the Boston  marathon bombing happened. My prayers go to all of the people involved in it :(.

Radio Praha did a very nice article on the history of the Prague marathon. I do NOT run marathons myself (I think such tortures belong to places like hell :)) but my doctor keeps talking about it so I figured I may as well get educated in this arena.

The person behind this whole thing is an Italian businessman Carlo Capalbo who has been living in Prague for over 20 years. His friend, an Olympic gold medalist and a winner of the Boston and New York marathons, came to visit him in Prague and gave him the idea to start a marathon here. Carlo explains: “In order to do a marathon you need a background, and Prague is a fantastic background. You should have a sporting tradition, and this country has a great legacy from Emil Zatopek…I called Mr. Zatopek and together we went to see the mayor. Or course, the people ad the administration were completely shocked, because they did not know what a marathon was. For them, a marathon was 100 people sweating and running through the fields.” [continue reading…]

Marian column in Old Town Square before 1918

The Old Town Square, the most visited place in the Czech Republic, is expecting big changes. If you have ever been there, you probably remember the monument of Jan Hus, a fearless protestant who got burned at the stake in 1415. Now they want to put another monument next to him – a controversial, 16-meter tall Marian column. It was actually part of the Old Town Square architectural set up until a mob toppled it in 1918 to rid the capital of the new Czechoslovak republic of a symbol of catholic Habsburg oppression. You see, originally the Marian column was built in 1650 to commemorate the Habsburg victory over the Swedes. Do you see the dilema? [continue reading…]