No Water!

Monday evening when I was getting ready to get in the shower about 8pm, I turned on the faucet and nothing came out. I tried the sink…nothing…tried the kitchen sink…nothing. We were out of water.

Apparently, this happens occasionally, and you just have to wait for it to come back on. It was not back on Tuesday morning, so I went to school a little smelly with a washcloth and washed my face in the sink at school. I did wear perfume, so that masked the BO a little bit.

When I got home at 4, there was hot water, but not cold yet. The water was definitely brown, and left gross dirt stuff in the tub. I washed it back out after the water had run for a little while. We got the cold water back about 6pm, so I took a shower and got all clean. It was definitely more appreciated that day than most others.

Today is Saturday, and I'm trying to do a load of laundry. I'm afraid we are not going to have water again today. The pressure is low in the sink, and there is no water going to the washing machine. I turn it on, but no water goes into the tub. Ashley is still sleeping, and I don't know who to call about this unfortunate event.

But this is what life is like in Slovakia…there is no warning, and you just learn to deal. But I'm really hoping I don't have to go to church without a shower tomorrow. And clean sheets and clothes would be nice too.

First Days of School - sort-of

School officially started on September 2. The students came to their homeroom classes (I am not a homeroom teacher) and received a little bit of information. Then we went to a large opening session with the elementary school. After this, we took the high school students to the gym and each teacher introduced themselves. At this point, the students split back into their homeroom classes and stayed for about an hour. Then they went home about 10am. That was the end of the first day. We had a staff meeting at 11 to discuss the "field trip," which is code for emergency training, and then spent some more time planning.

Friday, the students arrived at 8:10 and went to their homeroom classes again. Then we split up into two groups: Theoretical and Practical. The theoretical groups had a class session of what to do in emergency situations. I was paired with a Slovak teacher, and she did the whole presentation in Slovak, so I have no idea what she was reading. But I'm pretty sure it had to do with first aid, what to do in a natural disaster, and what to do in case your friend gets alcohol poisoning. Then they switched groups and the Practical group had a few activities outside, but I wasn't there, so I am not sure what went on. Then we had fire drill at 11 and the students went home. We stayed and did some more planning and preparing for lessons.

Ashley and I went to see the movie "SALT" with Angelina Jolie Friday night. It was in English, with Czech subtitles. (Czech and Slovak are very closely related, and in general, they can always understand what each other are saying, so some movies are in Czech, some are in Slovak.) I really enjoyed it and it was nice to get out and just relax. The ticket prices are comparable to the US, but the popcorn and drinks are much cheaper.

Monday will be another strange schedule…Melissa and I will have 2 classes with the sophomores called NAT Chat - New American Teachers Chat. This means that they didn't have anything else for these students to do, so they get to hang out with us for a little while.

Tuesday, we will start actual classes. I will only have my first two classes since the SuperSeniors will still be doing some other training and seminar activities. But it will be nice to finally be in the classroom after all this planning time. I'm starting to feel like I'm ready to begin teaching. The first Block (quarter) will be more difficult than the rest since I will have all new classes. But after Block A, two of them will repeat, so it will be a little better.

Hrad Devin (Devin Castle)

OK...I can't figure out how to move the video to the bottom of the page, so here goes anyway. The video is 10 seconds long. In the courtyard of the castle, there is a very deep well. They provide a bucket, with a cup attached that you can use to pour a cup of water down the well and wait to hear it hit the bottom. In the video, Ashley dumps the whole bucket so you can hear it a little bit clearer. There is a lot of wind noise, because it was so windy, but you can hear the water hit the bottom of the well. Listen closely!

The Ruins of Devin Castle from the parking lot

Saturday we went to Devin Castle. I slept until 8:30 and then we got ready and left our flat about 10 am. We were going to try to leave earlier, but were pretty slow movers, which is alright. It had felt like a very long week, but I am finally adjusted to the time and on a regular schedule, so it's nice. My body is mostly adjusted, except for this really huge knot under my left shoulder blade. I'm working on finding a heating pad and am using the door jams to rub it out. I look like the bears that rub their backs on the trees, and it's working a little bit.

A Blacksmith at the Craft Festival

There is a great website here that will help you figure out which buses to use to get to where you want to go, but it was down on Saturday, so Ashley contacted a few friends that were able to help us figure out how to get to the Devin bus. We got off the 83 at the mall and walked across the bridge (under the cars) to the Novy Most bus stop. We bought bus tickets since the castle is outside of zone 1 (it's kind of a complicated system, and most of the time we don't need tickets because we have passes, but this time we did.) We were kind of just looking around, and then realized that the bus pulling out in front of us was the one we had wanted to be on, probably 30 seconds too late. The next one came 30 minutes later, so we went across the street to a very fun old-time craft fair. There was a blacksmith, people wood-carving, basket-weaving, making pottery, making corn-husk dolls, beautiful-magnificent-incredible-gorgeous eggs (the kind you might think of from Russia, but they are local here as well…not really expensive, but impossible to transport. I'd really like to have one, but have yet to figure out how to get it to the US. Any ideas?)

Slovak Knights

We went back to the bus stop and found our friends Melissa and Ryan there, so we joined up with them and got on the bus. It was about a 20 minute ride to the base of the castle. It's really beautiful out there. We paid our 7 Euro entrance fee…(still cheap by American Standards, but more expensive than normal for Devin due to the festivities) The Renaissance festival was just getting started really, so we wandered around the tents some, watched some Slovak Knights on stage…it seemed to be a comedy routine, since there was lots of laughing and Monty Python-type gestures, but it was all in Slovak, so I can't be sure of that.

The entrance to the castle grounds

Then came the castle itself. It was really incredible, and Ashley says it's just a baby castle, and not nearly as pretty as the others, but I really liked it. There was a game exhibit with really really old games…and some set up that you could play. Melissa and I played a game similar to Checkers, and it was harder than it looked, but was really fun! We went as far up as we could and took a lots of pictures. It was really windy and cool - probably only in the mid 60s. The locals think Fall is here to stay now and it won't get much warmer for a long time. I could have probably stayed for a long time, but everyone else felt like they had seen everything so we went down to see what time the bus came, and we had just missed it, so we ate lunch at a little place at the base of the castle, missed the next bus again, and walked around the outside of the castle. We found a little place where we could do some mountain climbing, so Ashley and I scrambled up about 25 yards or so and took a picture. Then we came down and caught the next bus back to town. We went back to the craft fair and did some more browsing, but still didn't buy anything. I still haven't decided if I want to go back or wait for the Christmas markets…I saw some things I really liked, but Ashley said there would be more and better prices at Christmas.

Our Checker-type Game: AlQuerque

We came home and did some deep cleaning in the kitchen. Two months of just sitting leaves things pretty dusty and a little gross. Plus, we wanted to rearrange things so that it was a little more organized and easier to find. Then we made a trip to the grocery store for some staples and stock items. We will probably need to do this again in the near future as we find things we wish we had on hand. Good news…I found a chocolate chip muffin mix! It's not quite the same, but makes a good substitute. It's weird, because that’s the only muffin mix we could find…but lucky for me, it's my favorite!

It was a very good day and I felt very good about all we did.

Can you tell how windy it was?