The First Week, Coronations, History, and Skype

All of the American teachers, at least by their own accounts, survived the first week well. Paula found her 4the level classes a bit--well--sophomoric? There's a vocabulary word for you, students! Her 5th level folks are more mature, more focused, as well they should be, since they'll be taking the maturita, the big test, at the end of this year. How they perform on that test will determine their futures. Some will go to universities all over the European Union and the world, some will go directly into professional schools, and others may opt to take some time off before going, well, wherever they're going.

We were surprised by the "direct to professional schools" option. That means medical school, dentistry, law, the seminary, whatever. As one father admitted, some of them really haven't matured enough to make an informed decision, and don't succeed very well. Some will go to school for a year or two, and then drop out. Some come back to it, some go on to other things.

A weekend (or in Slovak, vikend) ago was the Coronation Festival. For nearly 200 years Bratislava (then known as Pressburg to the Austrians and Poshony to the Hungarians, served as the Coronation site for the Hapsburg emperors of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Maria Theresa was crowned here, for example. The Slovaks celebrate that part of the past with a parade, a coronation reinactment, and lots of partying. We walked up to the castle, which is just above us, to catch the Sunday version of the parade. The drums were loud, the jester energetic, and much of the crowd followed the "king" and "queen" down the hill for the reinactment. We stayed around the castle, however, since we had not been there before.


Of particular interest to me is the statue of Svatopluk, a leader of some renown in the Ninth Century, about the time of the Great Moravian Empire in this area. The statue is very controversial in Slovakia. First, there's argument about what he looked like; the sculptor made him very modern-looking. Then, the sculptor put an insignia on his shield that looks rather like a swastika. Third, the inscription on the statue talks about his concept of a Slovak people, when those ideas didn't come for another couple of centuries. Historians are upset and say the statue should be moved somewhere else with a new inscription. However, it was sponsored and unveiled by Smer, the political party which just got voted out of office. They led the election with nearly 35%, but in the end were not able to form a coalition. Moving the statue would be "un-Slovak," they say, and you should hear that as if it were "un-American." What will the current government do, especially with Smer rising in the polls? Stay tuned. It will be interesting to see what happens; history, and statuary, as political footballs.

We're fans of Skype! Not only does it help us keep in touch with our children and friends, but it allows us to show what our lives are like here. We appreciate the two-way communication; better (and cheaper) than telephone calls. Next time we'll go where the laptop can't, like outside. Meanwhile, keep y'all's powder dry (is that an idiom?).

School Begins

School at the Evanjelicke Lyceum began on Thursday, September 2, with a worship service at the Big Church. Now, that stands some explanation, but only a little. When the Hapsburgs allowed the Protestants to build churches again (actually, that stands some explanation as well, but you'll have to look it up yourself), the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (the Lutherans) built a big church and a little church. The Little Church is used for the English, German, and Hungarian services, and the big one for Slovak. Anyway, faculty, students, and parents, including the primary and secondary, gathered for a worship service in Slovak. One of the hymns was the Slovak version of "Tryggere den ingen vare," or "Children of the Heavenly Father," which (of course) is a Norwegian hymn. Or maybe Swedish, depending on your point of view.

Then the students all went off to meet with their class teachers, who shepherd them through all of their years in the Lyceum. On Friday, the English teachers (but not the librarian) had to proctor a placement exam for English and German. Many students had no German at all, and stared at their tests. Classes met for the first time on Monday.

So what do we do? We walk out of the apartment to the bus stop. Then we take the number 80 bus to the second stop and walk to the school. When we get there we go in, go up to the second floor, and sign in. Paula's office is right there (the "English Office" or the "Fifth Year Office"), but the English Library is on the other side of the building where, incidentally, most of the English language classes are taught. I have been trying to parallel the hours for the library with Paula's hours for teaching which, although she has the same students each day, vary from day to day as the schedulers fit in math, sciences, informatics (computers), and so forth. To us it is no wonder that, at the end of the first week of school, there is yet no permanent schedule of classes.

According to Paula, classes went very well for the first two days. We will write more about that in future entries. Jim is learning his way around the library, still unconvinced about the Dewey Decimal System and beginning the process of shelf reading. Without question, the students are very smart. They wouldn't be in this school if they were not. Some of them are more mature and ambitious than others, but that holds true around the world, we suspect. Certainly it holds true in the US of A. More on students, and our continuing social life, in future posts.

Getting to Know Bratislava, and Getting Ready for School

Although students showed up at the school yesterday, September 2, we will start earlier. Yes, we took a trip to Ikea to get some "essentials". Pastor Arden Haug took the Fredells (the other couple) and us after church, bless his heart, and had to make two trips to get us back to the apartment

We've also been downtown a lot, which is not saying a lot since it's only a kilometer or two from where we live. To the right is the square around the Primate's Palace, which was built to house the head of the church when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was essentially run from Bratislava. Several clubs from around Bratislava made lace in the square the next Sunday; it was very expensive. Don't expect lace for Christmas!
Walk down from the Primate's Palace and you arrive at the Old Town's main square. There you can get a wonderful cup (bowl?) of hot chocolate. We were there because we were going to the craft fair, which we had found the day before, after venturing through Aupark, a megamall not too far away. Artisans come from the three cen-tral regions of Slovakia (west, central, east) to demonstrate and sell wood carvings, metal work, ceramics, cookies (yum) and preserves, traditional music and dancing, and a bunch of other stuff.

Yes, we are here to work, and we have been! We've been squired around to the Foreign Police to begin the process of getting our resident visas, to the clinic to make sure we haven't brought any noxious foreign diseases into the country, and to the bank to open up an account into which Paula's salary will be deposited. Jim's been learning his way around the library which, while small, has many resources. Paula has been figuring out what she'll teach 4th years about British literature, and 5th years about Latin American literature. We're glad for predecessors, but we have to learn our own way around, too. Paula especially has worked hard, and will continue to develop lesson plans as the year rolls by. Next time we'll blog about (we've been itching to use that term) our (unintended) second trip to Vienna, and the opening of school.

Here, and Oriented (Sort of)

We arrived in Bratislava, received our orientation classes, and are ready to begin life in Slovakia as faculty members of the Evanjelike Lyceum, right? Well--maybe, but more on that later. First, the process. We flew from Dulles to Vienna through Zurich on 11-12 August with few mishaps. One suitcase got delayed from Zurich to Vienna, but considering the amount of stuff we brought, that was no big deal. We opted for Vienna beginning Thursday to reset our body clocks and recover from our "farewell tour," but first we schlepped our luggage from the Vienna airport to our hotel, the Prinz Eugen, chosen because it stands relatively close to the Sudbahnhof, where all trains bound for Bratislava depart. The absence of one suitcase did not bother us then, you can believe. This pictures Prince Eugene's palace, the Belvedere, not our hotel, although they are not far apart. Eugene displayed buck teeth and great military genius, and when the Turks are at the door people ignore your less comely aspects and pay you lots of money to lead the army. That's what the Hapsburgs did and that's why he had the money to build his palace. But he never married. Go figure.

We walked around Vienna a lot and rode the U-Bahn, the underground. We also saw many churches, heard many organs, and ate very well. Monday the 16th did come, however, and we strapped on and rolled our bags the half kilometer or so to the train station. We found out that a train for Bratislava-Petrzalka left a little after noon, so rather than waiting for the 1:10 we hopped aboard. This disconcerted Peter, who was supposed to meet us, because we waited in the station rather than arriving on the 2:05.

Then we received our first surprise--rather than having an apartment in Petrzalka, the part of Bratislava where the school is located, Peter took us to our new home in downtown Bratislava.
This is the view from our place. In previous lives the apartment had two bedrooms, although Phil and Sue, who had the apartment before us, turned one into a giant living room. So, once we get it set up, folks can come to visit us and still have a bedroom--we'll just eat in there later! Many hotel options exist nearby, however, since we are downtown.

Orientation began with a "get acquainted" dinner that night. Claudia Nelson came by to get us. She interviewed us back in the spring, and was set to teach the teachers. She had first stopped two floors below to gather in Bill and Kathy, the other couple, and then we went on to the headquarters of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran church in Slovakia. Apartments there house the six singles. Eight of the ten of us are new this year. We learned how to take the bus to the seminary, where we had dinner.

Tuesday morning we took the bus on our own up to the seminary for breakfast. After breakfast Pastor Arden Haug, European Mission Director for the ELCA and pastor of the International Church here, led devotions, and Claudia started teaching about teaching English language learners. We also had Slovak language lessons and went off to get our bus passes and register with the Foreign Police. On Friday night we had a "talent-no-talent" show. Finally, this morning, we were commissioned to this work by Pastor Haug and Bishop Klatik of the Slovak church.

So what did we learn during orientation? First, Slovak is a very difficult language. Second, good teachers of English as a target language are very gifted people. Third, those who come to serve the school from the ELCA, and those who are already here are also very gifted. Will we succeed? While we know there are difficult times ahead, especially in the first couple of months, We are committed (and called, and commissioned) to try. Keep in touch!

And Awaaay We Go!

At least we hope so. Here we are the night before we're supposed to fly, and the airline is giving us trouble about staying longer than the country says we should (90 days). So we'll have to go to to the airport to explain that we'll be taking a train to Bratislava, where we'll be registering with the Foreign Police and applying for a resident visa. That way they'll let us fly!

We're at Cristina's in Arlington, VA, now, finishing our "farewell tour," after a great time with Anna in Somerville, MA, Erika and Joe in Superior, CO, Dale and Janet in Cedaredge, CO, back to Anna's and now back to Cristina's for our launch from Dulles tomorrow. Oh, yes, and a visit to Tutankahmun, the golden boy, the pharaoh. Well, we didn't see him exactly, but a lot of his stuff and his relatives' stuff. Hmmm, a lot of this experience has focused on stuff. Stuff we didn't know what to do with. Stuff we stored. Stuff we gave away. Stuff we sold. Stuff we took to Arlington, Somerville, and Superior. Stuff we intend to take with us to Bratislava--did you SEE that pile? And that's not all of it. Do you suppose anyone will care in 3000 years? We won't remember what we had in three.

So right now we see through a glass darkly, but in a week or so we'll see more clearly. Some things, anyway. We start orientation with dinner on the 16th. We'll let you know more after that. Na'zdrovie! (OK, Andrey, za'zdrovie!)

Boxes, Boxes, Everywhere...

We get closer to moving day(s) all the time. Since we will reside in two countries, we need two types of storage--long-term and accessible. How do you predict what you'll need, say, this Christmas time or next summer? Or where you'll be? We'll shlep stuff off to accessible storage tomorrow, hoping that what we choose is right. The donation van is scheduled for Thursday; amazing (or maybe not) how large that pile is getting. Then the moving and storage people come Friday. Saturday we'll be cleaning an empty house, and Sunday we take off for Arlington, the first stop on our "farewell tour."

How do you say goodbye to your home of nearly 28 years? We know it's time to go, the same way we knew when it was time to retire, but that doesn't make it much easier. We've experienced this before, but that doesn't make it easier, either! Neighbors came by last week and brought well-wishing card (kind) and a bottle of wine--really kind.

Nephew Phil(ip) has been here since Saturday, on leave from his AF assignment in Pensacola learning how to teach newbies how to be weapons systems operators. His military experience, not as a WSO or as a teacher but as a frequent mover, has been a blessing. We broke bread with Andrey and Oksana at their house Saturday night. Cristina came down Friday to go to a wedding, and got roped into packing a box or two, too. The Wednesday before we said "see ya" to Phil and Kathy because they were taking off to cruise the Baltic, and Mark and Sherry because they were off to NJ and NY. If they can go off other places, they can come to Bratislava, by golly! Maureen and Matt will be in this house sooner (we hope) rather than later, and the boys will liven up this neighborhood--but that doesn't make leaving the house much easier, either!

Paula got her teaching assignments this week--Brit lit and Latin American lit!

Time to quit and go eat lunch, and then pack some more. Tempus, after all, fugits.

A Great Couple of Weeks (mostly)

Special friends, special times, special places--all add up to a great couple of weeks, if you don't count filling even more boxes. But, we chose this position, so we won't complain (where anybody can hear us). We spent the weekend of the Fourth of July in Washington with Cristina and Dick and Sylvia Rortvedt. Family all, they provided great company, great food, and fireworks over the Washington Monument for us and several thousand of our closest friends on the lawn in front of the Netherlands Carillon.
We got to go to Power in the Spirit, the Virginia Synod's retreat focusing on worship and telling the story, and got to spend quality time with Diane Jacobson, who's directing the ELCA's Book of Faith initiative. She came to see us, oh, and to be the Bible study leader at PITS. Good to see her and take in all she had to say, good to get the great food at Roanoke College, and wonderful to see all of our good friends from around the synod. Diane got a little pot in Salem. Hope she shared with Paul and the other workers in Grand Marais. Sigh. We missed y'all!
Sunday Pastor Jean Bozeman, Assistant to the Bishop of the Virginia Synod, and Pastor Chris Farrow, who shepherds our home parish, commissioned us, and the people of St. Paul's put on a wowser of a potluck. We were treated in style, let me tell you! And Sunday evening we spent with our children, Cristina and Anna here and Joe and Erika on Skype. A bit of advice--it's better to have 2+2 or so rather than 4+2 on each computer.

The hardest thing, besides being so far away (geographically) from all here in the US of A, will be living up to all of the love we're being shown. But I guess we're going because of the unconditional love we've been given, so maybe it will all work out after all....