Shrooms, Zuzka, School, and So it goes

Last Tuesday I went mushroom hunting, and I haven’t been the same since. I can’t believe that I’ve wasted 21 years of my life not mushroom hunting! It was a wonderous, adventurous, relaxing experience, and I fully intend to take up the habit back in the states. I will, however, need some more training first. After tiptoeing through the brush, scrutinizing the ground for any sign of fungi life, I would let out a yelp of success, only to be told by my temporary host sister, Zuzka (Suzy), that I would die if I ate my triumphant find. After a string of these failures, an exasperated Zuzka implored me to just “Look at this one! See how nice and warm and friendly it is?! Now look at yours, see?! It’s cold and mean.” While that advice did not help me, I manage to consistantly identify one “good” mushroom- a very friendly dark brown little guy with a yellow spongy underside- and I generally stuck with that one from then out. We bought back quite a bounty, and immediately schnitzeled them for dinner. Schnitzeling is a delightful and easy process with a rewarding name, so expect me to schnitzel you something when I get back. Actually, schnitzeling seems to be a sort of euphenism for “deep-frying,” so maybe it’s best if I don’t do it too often. This was all dandy until the next morning, when Zuzka woke up terribly ill, and I had a flashback to my own plate full of schnitzelled mushrooms. I didn’t get sick that day, though, so we concluded it was just a good old-fashioned Czech bug, which I promptly picked up two days later. I can’t say I’m surprised; I spent all week drinking Kofola (a strange, rootbeer-ish soda), water, and tea out of the same bottle as Zuzka. She asked me if that bothered me, and I, deciding to throw my American caution and anxiety about germs to the wind, said of course not. Foolish Claire discovered that there’s some widsom in our worries after all. So, here I am, in bed for the fourth straight day, with plenty of time to update my blog.

Our Kofola- (for Zuzka) and water- (for me) drinking binges give you only a small idea of the true picture: In Olomouc I experienced a five-day slumber party. But let me start with the reason why: Zuzka. She was a bit taller than I and very skinny, with chin-length dark hair and glasses. The first thing she said to me was, “Are you Claire?” and the second was “Do you like carrots?” When I told her that I did, indeed, like carrots, she was so delighted she ran straight into a wall. I’m not kidding. For those of you who know Hannah Moodie, Zuzka could be her identical Czech twin, personality-wise. She was an absolute dear. She lived in a flat with her 18-year-old sister, dad, and stepmom (sometimes—the parents left because I was there, much to delight of Zuzka’s older sister, who is also a sweetheart but clearly valued my presence only because it meant the absence of her parents, and she took the opportunity to spend every night with her boyfriend), and I was clearly there for Zuzka. I have never in my life met anyone who adored me so completely and unreservedly. She was SO EXCITED that I’m an English major (she likes literature, too!), she was SO EXCITED that I played broomball (she had never heard of it but had the Wikipedia site bookmarked from her desktop, she was SO EXCITED that I wasn’t mean (the first night she told me “I’m so glad you’re you!”), and she was SO EXCITED that I was there that she was sure I’d rather sleep with her in her room than in the bed her dad made her set up in the living room (she was wrong, but I slept with her anyway, because she’s exactly the type of person who I hate to disappoint). SO, like I said, it was a five-day slumber party, and I am not exaggerating. She rented movies for us to watch, we ate pizza and ice cream and candy and soda, we kept talking after turning the lights off and started talking right away in the morning. Now, let me make it clear that I have never really liked slumber parties, even when I was 15, and this was no exception, but I guess it was fun sometimes. Other times, it was extremely smothering and annoying that I had to practically babysit this 15-year-old.

But, like I said, she was a darling, and her capitol-d Dreams are to visit/live in America and go to Yale. Seemingly unrelated, she also loves Gilmore Girls (She also reminds me almost exactly of Rory), and this turned out to be a very dangerous combination. Throughout the week, she would ask me things like, “Is it normal to drive a Jeep?” and I would reply as honestly as I could with something like, “No, I do see people driving them, but it isn’t very common where I’m from,” and Zuzka would furrow her brow and say, “But Lorelai (from Gilmore Girls) drives a Jeep.” And I was forced to become a big-bad illusion crusher, though I was saved from Zuzka’s wrath because she simply chose not to believe me. Whenever I told her something that didn’t add up to what she had seen, she looked skeptical and pushed me for awhile, then clearly concluded that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I didn’t go to Yale. Ay yi yi.

The gigantic benefit of Zuzka, however, was that she helped me “Explore Olomouc.” We traipsed all around the city, which is a University town and holds about 100,000 people, admiring buildings, taking photos of fountains, strolling through parks, climbing towers to get the best view of the whole city... My favorite part was when we crept inside this HUGE church. We could hear music coming from inside, and we thought that mass might be in progress, but Zuzka assureed me that we still had to at least peek inside. When we did, we saw a full orchestra and choir simply practicing for a performance that night, so we sat down and watched for almost an hour. It reminded me of that scene in the church in Home Alone, but it was better. We also went on several short excursions, one to a nearby tiny villiage with a beautiful church on top of the hill which the Pope visitied in 1992, and one to a town about 30 minutes away with a huge fairytale castle. The castle’s inside was the best castle’s inside I’ve seen so far, all dark wood and with gorgeous furniture. The tour was hard to take seriously, however, because we all had to wear these ridiculous red shoes over our shoes which made us look like a company of jesters getting ready to be interviewed by the king.

On Monday-Wednesday in Olomouc I went to school with Zuzka. This was a mixed experience for me. First, the school is public (as almost all schools here are, and public schools are usually far better than private), and it’s one of two English-immersion schools in the country. By their third year in the school (when they’re about 12), students are taught all of their classes in English. I mostly hung out with the teachers, and they were all very interesting, energetic, and kind people. I went to some literature classes and many English language classes where the lesson was, “This is Claire. She is American. Ask her questions.” It was strange to me to be so valued for my ability to speak English. The students asked mostly predictable questions, and it was interesting to hear their assumptions about Americans, like that all Americans have met celebrities, that we are all vegetarians, we all love McDonalds (as you can see, these are sometimes contradictory assumptions), that we are all fat and usually loud, and mostly “Crazy.” (I’ll go more into the perceptions of America idea in a later blog). Every class asked me whether I like Czech beer, which seems to be yet another matter of exceptional national pride.

A few of the other differences? Well, the students all stand up when the teacher enters the room (always a few minutes late), and don’t sit until permitted to do so by the teacher. I was in a history class that was teaching Evolution and I didn’t realize how strange that would be to hear so blatantly in a school until I was there. There’s a picture of the Czech president hanging in every classroom, which is very Big Brother-esque. The students all change their shoes when they get to school, a fact I didn’t realize until late Wednesday afternoon after I had traipsed my contaminated outdoor shoes all over the school for three days.

Really, though, the school was remarkable mostly for its similarities to American schools. In fact, it almost could have served as the model school- the students were well-behaved and very smart, it was creepily utopic. The strangest thing might have been how hesitant the students were to guess about something or assert their own opinion- they were very eager to spit out only exactly what the teacher wanted to hear. The near-perfect nature of the school was what I found somewhat frustrating. First, I was coming into it with an idea for a project in mind, and my project revolved around the problem of integrating Roma (Gypsy) children into the schools, and this school in particular didn’t have that problem because they didn’t have any Roma children. In fact, when I asked one of the teachers what the biggest challenge she faced in her school was, she said that it was the lack of bilingual textbooks (written in both English and Czech). This, to me, seemed like a rather luxurious problem to have. In addition, they were very progressive and aware in that in several classes I hear them discuss everything from Global Warming to Guantanamo, and they were all outspoken about Bush and the stupidity of the war and all of the other problems he caused. Yet they never really discussed the problems with themselves or their own country, namely that of the extreme marginalization of the Roma population. I had a terrible and frightening conversation with Zuzka which greatly discouraged me, because she was extremely racist, but I won’t go into that now- ask me if you’re curious.

All of this is not to take away from the extreme intelligence and talent of the teachers and students. For example, I went to a Spanish class that completely blew my mind. The teacher was teaching in both English and Czech and the students were all speaking in Spanish and I was the only one who had any trouble with it. I, in fact, had a lot of trouble with it, and I still have been answering people in Spanish. In addition to that, Zuzka’s starting to study Latin and joining Sign-Language club. It’s simply overwhelming. It’s just that the school, with all it’s liberalism and progressive nature, is somehow so awfully behind on this topic. In any case, the whole experience helped me conclude that I probably won’t go to that school for my project, an option which I was strongly considering before.

In any case, I thouroughly enjoyed my time in Olomouc, though it wasn’t as rural as I expected, and there I received one of the best compliments of my life: Zuzka told me, “You have a really good ‘ahoj!’.” “Ahoj” means “Hi,” and she went on to say that she thought I was her sister because my ahoj was so Czech-like. I also saw many people hitchhiking, which was a strange sight for me.

Anyway, at the end of that I met up with the group of students in Cesky Krumlov. It truly was idyllic, I could see why so many people so heartily recommended it. It features this huge, colorful castle, tiny cobblestone streets, and beautiful buildings and shops, all around a river. It was so quaint that it was almost funny. I’ll put up some pictues, then you’ll get a real idea. It was rather touristy, which was a bit disappointing, but it sure was gorgeous. There was a big fair to celebrate St. Wenceslas Day, which featured stands selling sausage, donuts, Burcak (special wine made from young grapes), tons of hand-made jewlery, scarves, pottery, etc. It was almost too perfect. The most exciting part was the gathering of Wenceslases on Saturday- they were trying to set the world record for the most Wenceslai in one place at one time. However, I wasn’t able to enjoy this or really anything else because I got sick almost right away in Cesky Krumlov, so unfortunately I’m not a fair or a generous judge. I did go on a tour of the castle and the Baroque theater, and both were pretty incredible. The theater, though not usually my thing, was breathtaking because it was extremely old, all candle-lit, and the backdrop/sides of the stage made it look like it was a hundred feet deep, even though it only went about 15 feet back. It was really really neat. But I couldn’t fully appreciate it, so again, I’ll try to put up pictures. Time to go rest again, but rest assured that I’m back, and I’ll be updating frequently again.