June 23, 2010

June 23, 2010

I don’t know how to start this entry. I am completely overwhelmed by the past few days, my last days in the Czech Republic, more specifically in Novy Bydzov. I guess I will simply start by letting you know where I am writing from. Right now I am sitting at the Prague airport. My flight for New York City where I will be reunited with my family doesn’t leave for another 10 and half hours. So, with easy calculation I will be sitting at this airport for a great while. Not really quite sure as to what I am going to do, but I figured it was best to start by letting everyone know how my last few days have been. The kindness and generosity of the people I have met in the Czech Republic has not only taken me by complete surprise, but their actions have placed them above all ideas I could have of true human compassion.

During these last few days my classes at school have been drastically cut due to a lot of activities going on at the school. It has been nice, but it was also disappointing in a way. The disappointment came in the idea I had planned for all my classes. I had each student prepare speeches about themselves and it was during this week I was planning on recording all my students. However, with the cancellation of so many of my classes, I missed out on recording several of my favorite students. I still was able to get many of the students I really enjoyed teaching on video and I hope to compile the videos into a short, I guess you would call it, film. Many of the students were reluctant to be recorded. Expressing that they felt I would bring the videos of them home and all the people I showed them to would laugh at them. I believe this is far from the actuality of it though. I think the people who are able to watch the video will be amazed at the students I had the privilege of teaching. Yes, I know, I complained about them a lot, but after nearly a year with them and having my ups and downs with nearly every student, in the end these students will always be a special part of my life. I cannot lie, at moments they brought me to points of complete frustration, but they also showed me a spirit in the young people of the next generation which is promising and hopeful.

So, as I have wrote, many of my classes were cancelled, but on the other hand, for the first time I think all this year everyone of my lessons happened. Not one of the students I tutored cancelled. It was a special week with these people. I know this may be a bit too much to share, but I am going to do it anyway because each of these people touched my life. I am going to go through each of my last lesson with each of the people I have lessons with one by one. Starting with my first lesson on Monday and continuing all the way to my last lesson last night. In addition, I wish to share with you some special moments I had with people from Novy Bydzov who were not receiving lessons from me.

Let me start with the first lesson, it was at 4:00 on Monday afternoon, and it is a lesson with a woman in her mid-forties, I believe. She is brilliant and unbelievably kind. All year long she has not cancelled a lesson with me, except when she was forced to have surgery on her leg and couldn’t even go into work. The funny thing about her absence, she actually started coming back to my lessons before she started going back into work. She truly amazed me at her thirst to become a fluent English speaker. Now, the amazing thing to me about this woman is her age. Now, I am not saying in the least that a woman in her mid-forties is old, but the rarity of seeing a woman of that age have such a passion for learning was amazing. I cannot lie about these lessons because at a point I did complain to Andrea about the lessons I had with this woman because for a couple of weeks in a row we were discussing literature, but the discussions pretty much did not go any further than her spending the hour telling me the complete in and outs of some book she had read. That was nothing more than a couple of weeks though. And the discussions we have had on travel, literature, politics, and a whole variety of topics have been intriguing. I have found myself in lessons with this woman, sitting down with her and being so captivated by our discussion that the next thing I look up and we have gone over the allotted hour time. It never bothered me; it was refreshing to have such intellectual conversations. See will be greatly missed, and when we finished our final lesson she handed me a present. I wasn’t expecting to receive any types of gifts from the people I gave lessons to, I know this may sound sexist, but I figured the people I gave lessons to would see me as man, and in my view typically it as women who exchange or give gifts. I was happy my sexist view did not take president here; the woman gave me two extremely nice pens, the perfect gift for an aspiring writer. More sexist comments, but women really know how to pick out presents much better than man. She had hit the nail on the head with the idea of give me something to use to write, to continue with my passion. It was heartwarming goodbye, you will see this trend continues, but it is difficult to say goodbye to someone you have built a bond with and you never know if you will see them again your life. Her parting words were really touching; she told me that even if we don’t get a chance to see one another again, she is excited she will be able to read my novels someday when I become famous. Although, this may never come true, it did make me feel good about myself.
After that first lesson on Monday I meet with an older gentleman. He is sixty years old and he had not been as frequent of a student as some and my lessons with him have been difficult. First, for the fact we do not have much in common and, second, because his English is not as advanced as some of the other students I work with. I often struggle to get through the entire hour lesson with this man, losing ideas of what we can discuss. You see, he is extremely, and I mean extremely interested in everything to do with nature. He is always talking to me about different types of plants, trees, flowers, anything which grows for the most part. Me, on the other hand have very little interest in these topics. So, on many occasions we have had periodic moments of silence. But, these last two weeks we have found a very nice common interest. You see, even this 60 year old man has such a excitement to learn all types of new things and I discovered he had started a computer class at the school I teach at in Novy Bydzov. This is where we found our connection. He has been taking these classes, but he has been having a very difficult time with them. Last week, I actually taught him, and I know it is not exactly an English lesson, but I did speak to him about it in English, how to send emails. It was funny having him sit at one computer in the Matrix and send me emails while I sat on my laptop and sent emails back. This week he told me about how his computer instructor had tried to teach the class about Microsoft Office; PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Well, this week we spent the lesson with me showing him how he can use Excel to organize his garden. He has a large garden and I showed him how, with Excel, he could organize all his plants, flowers, and such. We even created an Excel spreadsheet together. We did it on my laptop and I emailed it to him. I hope he is able to open it and continue to work with. He seemed very excited as I showed him how we could input data about every variety of plant and flower he had in his garden. And I might just have a little right to maintain my sexist view in regards to gift giving because he did not have a gift for me at the end of our lesson. I know this will come off as completely cheesy, but it is gift enough to be able to help someone of an age, especially in a place like Novy Bydzov, who is striving to become more educated.

My last lesson of the night is with two women and we had decided to meet at the pizzeria in town for our lesson. The lesson went great as usual. Both of these women are far better at English than they will ever give themselves credit for. We discuss all types of issues. We have talked about politics, world culture, as just a couple of topics we have touched on. The majority of our time has seemed to be dedicated to the schools in the Czech Republic and particularly the schools in Novy Bydzov. As one of the women in the pair is a teacher at the other primary school in Novy Bydzov and the other woman has a son who attends the same school. It has been very interesting to listen to the comparisons I have heard between the two schools, as I have found out they are somewhat rival schools. My curiosity was limited to the fact that there were actually two different primary schools, schools for children from the age 6 to 16 within the same town and that town only having a population of roughly ten thousand people. But, both of the women feel the separate schools are for the better and when I assert my view that it might be a good idea to mix the schools, have the younger students at one school while the older ones are at the other. You must realize these two schools are less than a football field away from one another. Each time I suggest the idea it is somewhat scoffed at as these two women think the competition between the two schools is more productive than if they were combined.
Anyway, with our last lesson together very little changed we still discussed the school issues, but it was also nice to hear about their plans for the summer. However, one thing baffled me. The woman whose idea it was to meet at the pizza place did not even eat. I was under the assumption we the idea was suggested we would be sitting around talking as we shared some pizza. It was not to be. They did, however, before I got up to leave give me a present. This goes back to my sexist point, but I must make it again. From the women I had so far had my final lessons I had received gifts, but not from the men. Well, this gift also brought forth an awkward moment for myself as I noticed the packaging of the present they had got me. It was the same packaging of the pen the woman I had met earlier on in the day had gave me. Low and behold, these two women had also bought a pen for me. When I was opening the present I tried to conceal the fact I knew what I was getting as best as I could, I am not very good at that though. I did my best as I opened the box. I was expecting to see the identical present inside and, yes, it was a pen, but it was a whole different type of pen and I was able to show appreciate with the fullest of my abilities because I had not received identical presents. Although, I had received pens from both parties, they were completely different styles of pens and I was truly excited to receive this other type of pen as well. I believe the women wanted to continue our discussion, but I had told Andrea I would be one Skype at a certain time so we could get a chance to speak, a perfect way to end the day. I can believe in less than 24 hours I will be back with her baring any delays. Luckily, I am sitting at a wooden table.

On Tuesday I had three lessons as well, but before I get into those three lessons let me tell you about how my afternoon started. All of the English-speaking teachers at my school decided they would like to meet at the Matrix for a goodbye drink. Now, in their minds they had expected to have a glass of champagne with me. They had some idea of my dislike for alcohol, but they had no idea how avidly I was opposed to it. They we taken aback when I told them I did not even eat deserts if they had any type of liquor in them. Despite my objections, one of the teachers, in Czech, ordered four glasses of champagne. Including one for me, now, you would think I would be able to be courteous and think this one little glass of champagne, but I can’t. For some reason, this is a very hard concept for people to grasp; I will not drink any alcohol. So, as they persisted, I lifted my glass of champagne with them and as all of them took a drink I simply lifted the glass to me lips, let the champagne hit my closed lips, and set the glass down. The glass sat on the table the rest of our time together completely full as they emptied theirs. I do think I may have offended one of the women at the table by not drinking, but it is not something I do. So, if she was mad, I feel bad, but there is nothing I can or should I say, will, do in those situations to please people. I am not going to go against my convictions to make another person happy. Beside this uncomfortable moment, the discussion we had was wonderful. They asked me all types of questions and I in turn asked them questions. It was very interesting to discover how these women had learnt English. All of them had begun in primary school, but after primary school had let their English fall to the wayside and then when they had got older they had just rediscovered a passion for English and devoted many hours to study and taking courses when they had already reached an age when most people have made the decision they no longer need to learn anything new. And again, continuing with the same theme, these women gave me gifts. They gave me a couple of traditional Czech gingerbread cookies and one, Helena, the teacher whom I have built the closest relationship, gave me a beautiful picture book of all of the surrounding areas in the Czech Republic. The book is strictly devoted to their region of the country, which is rather astounding as I looked the pictures and thought of the size of the Czech Republic. It is such a small nature, yet it contains so much beauty. Anyone who visits the Czech Republic and is only able to limit their visit to Prague is missing out on a world of beauty. Lucky for me the women, the teachers from my school decided to break up the party at about 4:00, we had met at 3:15, and I had told a girl I had been giving lessons to that I would meet her at 4:30. With that thought, I did not want to be the one to have to tell these ladies that I needed to leave their group. So, it all worked out for the better and I met the young lady I have been giving lessons to periodically right on time at 4:30.
This young woman is advanced way beyond her years. If I were able to be the decider of who is and who isn’t a genius, she would definitely fall into the genius category. I am not sure if I have shared too much about her, I know have I written about her difficulties dealing with anxiety and that she is being home schooled for the moment, but I don’t think I have ever shared any of the stories, which show off her genius. First, I want to write about a story which happened about a month ago. Well, this young woman is completely devoted to the game of chess. She goes to chess camps, she plays in chess tournaments, and she even is going to be an official for an international chess tournament this summer. Anyhow, let me tell the story. So, we were having a little difficulty discovery new topics to discuss and I have been trying to learn the game of chess because I have a computer program on my computer. Well, this computer program, for me, is nearly impossible to beat. I think I have played upwards to 200 games and won six. My idea was to have this girl attempt to teach me some of the intricate parts of chess. So, I opened my computer and asked if she would play a game against the computer, which I could never beat. I was awestruck. She started playing the match against the computer. She was explaining to me why she made each move she did, but the problem, she only ended up making about five moves before she had defeated this impossible computer program. It was funny to me, because she laughed and talked about how stupid this computer was, this computer that had dominated me and still to this day dominates me. The second instance of her brilliance came to me during the last meeting we had together. We began discussing the racial issue in the Czech Republic between; I guess you would say original Czech people, white people, and a group of minorities called Romas. Well, I have spoke with several people about this issue and I have bitten my tongue more than I wish to remember regarding the racist found in Novy Bydzov. However, as I discussed the topic with this young lady, only 17 years old, I was glimmer of hope for the future generations of young people. She explained to me all about her point of view of the Romas. She told me she had written a paper on the Romas history and since her paper had held a whole new perspective. She talked to me about how Romas are the exact same as everyone else. Further, talking about her understanding that Romas were not given the same opportunities as the opposite side of the population because that is how history had dictated it. The Romas had never been given a fair shake, so to say, in the Czech Republic or in any other Eastern European nation where they migrated from India and it was because of this that she believed it was very hard to escape the cycle, which has been continuing for way too long. Finding a young woman with such a brilliant, open mind in such a remote place in the whole was fantastic, she will never be forgotten. I believe she will go on to do great things in the Czech Republic and the world. I really am hopeful she will someday be able to find someone to help her with her issues with anxiety. I completely know how she feels and to have such high levels of anxiety can be crippling. I do think she will work through it though and I hope my encouragement at least rubbed off a little.

My last lesson of the evening was with another individual I am truly in awe of; she is 27 years old and has had so many life experiences already. Her outlook on life is something to be mirrored. The only disappointing aspect of our lessons together is that I did not meet her until second half of my stay in the Czech Republic. She has a profound outlook on life and is probably one of the most generous people I have ever met in my life. Our conversations have always enlightened me, made me think deeper about subjects than I had ever before. I do not want to go on and on about how much our lessons together have meant to me, me I am sure learning just as much as herself, because I would like to share a little about how we ended our last meeting together. As I wrote she is so generous, she brought me an entire bag of presents. Including Czech chocolates, which were gone that night, treats for Ernie, she even thought of Andrea and gave me presents to give to her when I see her. She has never even met Andrea, but told me that the way I spoke about her made her have no doubts that she was a beautiful person. Now, this last part I am going to write is hard for me because I always want to seem as though I am thick skinned and tough, but she nearly brought me to tears as we departed from one another. She told me that beside her boyfriend I was the first person she had ever met in her life with a pure heart. That she could see in me something special, something that she had only seen once before, and that was in her boyfriend. I am not good a receiving compliments and I was at a complete lose of words. She spoke to me as though I had personally given her hope in life. She went further to say that she knew I would be a great man one day. I could not take the compliments and I was completely shocked. I do try hard to be a good person every day, but the way in which she put her words made it sound as though I would change the world. I will be forever grateful for her kind words. Plus, all the presents she gave me doesn’t hurt either.

That was the end of my lessons for the day, but there is another meeting with a friend I had that night which will forever stay with me. I had promised one of my friends I would come over to show him a few more things on the turntables. He is younger than me. Not a whole lot younger, but he is only 23. In spite of the fact he invited me over to go on his turntables; I think he had other thoughts in mind. When I arrived at his apartment we did mess around with his turntables a while, but then, as I was tired, I told him I needed to go home. He asked me to stick around for a little to talk. It was at that point he started speaking to me about his life. He expressed that he wasn’t satisfied with his life and living in Novy Bydzov. He explained to me he greater ambitions in life. He wants to travel and see the world. He wants to break away from the traditional mold he has found in Novy Bydzov, where people are born there, start families there, and live out their lives there. After he explained all this he turned to me for advice. I really did feel honored that he would look at me as someone who could give him the answers he was looking for. I don’t know if I gave him the best advice, but I tried. I spoke to him about how he has to be his own man and not allow outside influences determine his future. I remember one phrase I used while speaking with him, I said, “Don’t think that you will do things you want in life. Know you will do the things you want in life.” It is also very difficult for him in particular because he does come from such a small town. The influences many times in small towns are not the best, you find people who are satisfied, and more than that, happy with their lives living in a small town and sometimes those people frown upon people they have grown up with for having the ambitions to live said small town. It seems to me that often is the case that people who have found themselves stuck in a small town would like to keep as many people stuck in their position right by their side. I told my friend, “His true friends will support him whatever he decides to do.” It is a lot like my friends, I know who my true friends are because although they may joke sometimes about my always leaving the Detroit area as soon as I get back they are nothing, but my true friends again and show me support. My friend from Novy Bydzov even ended up walking back to my apartment with me; he wanted to continue to talk and give me a present. So, maybe I am wrong about the sexist idea I had.

As I left my friend and walked upstairs to my apartment on my last night in Novy Bydzov I realized what an amazing, life-altering experience I have been blessed with. I cannot wait to get home to all the blessing I have been given back in the US, Andrea, Ernie, my parents, my friends, my family, and the opportunity to go to Graduate School in the Fall, but I would not give up a moment I had here in the Czech Republic. All of the hard times that fell upon Andrea and I pale in comparison to what we each got out of this adventure. I do not want to speak for Andrea, but she may not see it now, but I am sure when we are old, wrinkled together, she will talk to me about the experience of a lifetime she had in the Czech Republic.