Czechmatediary

Hello my fellow Czechmatediarians!

I am reporting to be still alive and well. I would like to share with you a video of my 8-year-old daughter Ava (Eva), who did a project on family traditions. She picked Czech Christmas and here is the rest…:)) – CLICK ON THE LINK

CZ: Tak takto ma mladsi dcera Eva referuje o ceskych Vanocich….:)))
Czech Christmas by Ava

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I hope you have enjoyed your summer like I did. Our whole family made it to the Czech Republic this year and although my husband could not stay for too long, we made our time count. For a whole week we were city-hopping, airbnb-ing, and doing the tourist-kinda-stuff. Turns out, I have never been to cities like Cesky Krumlov or Ceske Budejovice which would have been a deadly mistake had I not visited the cities in my lifetime; they are absolutely breath-taking! Granted, Ceske Budejovice is mostly about the square itself, but since it is located on river Vltava, you can enhance your trip  experience by doing  boat rides to the Hluboka nad Vltavou for example (exquisite castle in the late Gothic style). [continue reading…]

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There are only a few things I could criticize about the US and one of them is the knowledge of (or the lack of) geography – mostly the wold geography. When people have asked me in the past (especially during my college years) what ocean beaches the Czechs go to, what part of Russia is ‘Czechoslovakia’ located in, or whether we have traffic lights in the streets, I was speechless but I had grace with them because they were genuinely interested in my country. My feelings of grace have increased in volume over the years as I have come to an important conclusion: since the United States of America is so big (there are practically 50 different ‘countries), it is easy to ‘forget’ about the outside world.

Now that I am a teacher and get the inside scoop of things, I have noticed the first time students get a good look at the world map is in 7th grade when they start to study other cultures, starting with the birth of Roman Empire.

When I do a geography review with my students I make them draw a map of the world (simplified) and when we zoom in on Europe I never fail to start with the actual heart of Europe – the Czech Republic ;). We start adding all of the other European countries around the Czech Republic (yep, I may be a little biased here). When we get into the more remote countries like Romania I have to use cheap attention hooks such as “Dracula” and “Transylvania” (most kids think Transylvania AND Romania are made up lands of monsters by the way). They also never fail to be amazed at how enormous Russia and China are. [continue reading…]

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Milos Zeman was recently re-elected as a new Czech president and many people are not happy. To be precise, Milos Zeman won the election by just over 150,000 electoral votes. Since the Czechs elect their president directly, those are 150,000 average folks, not politicians. The older people tend to vote for Zeman, while the younger population wanted Jiri Drahos to win. Why such a divide? Drahos stood for heavy partnership with the EU as well as lax immigration politics. Zeman, on the other hand, is anti-EU and does not approve immigration quota prescribed by the European Union.

What would most Czechs tell you? Do they LOVE any of those two candidates? No, neither one of them is perfect, but you have to pick your poison;).

I feel like I am not immersed enough in the Czech politics to participate in the presidential elections but if you voted, who was it?

CZ: Cesi zijici v zahranici – volili jste noveho ceskeho presidenta? Nebo jste si neprisli dostatecne kvalifikovani (viz. ja)? 

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Even this year our dear St. Nicholas descended from heavens and kindly presented himself at our Czech school. I am not sure what is happening with the evil powers in the world but the devil seems to be meaner and meaner each year (he even brought his mini-me!). We managed to protect our kids and he did not take even one with him to hell but, let me tell you, it was some hard work. Each student had to recite 2 Czech poems and they still got a potato from the him! I am not sure how he knew this but in his “Kniha hrichu” (Book of Sins) he had a list of wrong-doings for each child which he angrily presented to the whole crowd. Thank goodness St. Nicholas stepped in with his list of good deeds  (“Kniha dobrych skutku”) and – of course – a present. [continue reading…]

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Which cukrovi (click for recipes here) is your favorite? I can’t wait to see the results!

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Hi everyone!

Has it been already over a year since I have written my last post??!! How shameful of me! Well, as you might imagine a lots has happened. I am now a real certified teacher with a real teacher job. I teach home schooled  kids in a local charter school and I am loving it. I love it for several reasons: I work part-time, I teach smaller groups, and I get to work with students who had a hard time attending regular school because of bullying, anxiety problems,…or they were just too smart or simply  getting into trouble. I am also teaching ALL of the subjects including English which is a bit intimidating as you can imagine. [continue reading…]

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It’s about time for me to put my new sharpened pencils into my new pencil box and put that neatly into my new school bag. Yes, it is time for me to go back to school again!

I am starting the middle school teaching credential program in a few days to become – call me crazy – a middle school science teacher. Why such crazy decision?

1/ I think I will really like it
2/They need more bodies

Seriously, as I found out, nobody wants to teach middle school! Everyone wants to deal with the cutsie little elementary kiddos or the ‘wise’, cool high school crowd. But those awkward ‘middle’ kids – ‘all they do is drip with hormones!'(as one of my teachers once said).

I mean, I don’t know anything about them but my thinking is that they are old enough not to be told what to do every 5 seconds but at the same time still young enough to have some silly fun. We will see how it goes, hopefully I will survive.

On another note, over the summer I was really working hard on my girls’ Czech abilities. I came up with a really fun game called the Czech Olympics. Every time we were alone we made made this dramatic ‘Beep’ sound which made us – robots – switch back into Czech with NO lazy English words mixed in! Hahna, because she is older, had 3 allowed mistakes per day and Ava, the younger, had 4 chances. If they succeeded they got an extra star (our kids work on the star system, which means if they are pretty good all day they get a star. Seven stars gets them a little present or a treat). [continue reading…]

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It has been forever since I have written anything in Czechmate Diary and that is because I have got a lot going on these days – the good and the bad.

First of all, I have wanted to go back to the Czech Republic but the stress of it all just wore me down and I got really sick. Turns out that this ‘sickness’ wasn’t just stress, it was also a re-awakened Lyme disease! Can you believe it?? I have been suffering with strange, migrating symptoms for about 20 years, went to many doctors and most of them just shrugged their shoulders and either said it was the ‘nerves’ or some kind of dysautonomia. Just recently I connected with a friend that had similar issues who was diagnosed with Lyme disease. I got tested through the mainstream laboratory once before and the test came back negative. But the more I talked to my friend Rachel and the more research I did on my own, the faster I was realizing how hard it is to actually diagnose a chronic (late) Lyme.  This time I got therefore tested via IgenX which specializes in Lyme and other tick-born diseases. And I came back Lyme-positive. Now it all makes sense!! As a kid I loved to run around the Czech woods with my friends and we were getting ticks quite often. I don’t remember the exact ones but I know I had some. When I was about 15 years old I got vaccinated against the tick-born encephalitis but the vaccination was discontinued (strange…). [continue reading…]

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