[I don't know how this document survived till today, written on what was then called Czech recycled paper, something like newspaper paper, then and now a kind of beige color. So I scanned it and put it through an OCR engine. Here is the result of three pages, untouched--as they were and are with and without OCR errors/omissions. Don't change history.
I wrote it I remember to be news from the front, so to speak, for family and friends I left in the US in 1994 and before. This letter of sorts dates from then, the fall of '94 or sometime in '95.
Who was I then? the same person as now?]
p. 1 And of course, there's gossip, which is by definition laced with uncertainty.
| teach two classes which | share with another teacher. He is Rick to me, Mr. Richard Myers to his students. He teaches American English, like it or lump it. And he has told several students to lump it. Particularly the one who continues to argue with him about the fine points of grammar and the preferred ways to say things in British English, with a British accent. In fact, Frank, that is the student, has asked me to teach him British pronunciation. Frank is an elitist and condescending. We regularly speculate whether he is this way when he speaks Czech. There's no way we can really tell. Asking his classmates has not seemed like a good idea. :
Rick has a plane ticket for the 17th of this month back to the US. He threatens to use it. For a well traveled and experienced teacher of English, he is somewhat stubborn on some points. Points of English usage and grammar, of course. Another point is his cat. He travels around the world with this thing; it is first in his life.
Rick talks in the hallway until late into the evenings, with anyone who happens by. He speaks German with the German teachers, English with the English teachers, and with lots of affection to his cat which he allows out in the halls about ten or ten thirty. Rick plans his lessons for the next day after the socializing and the cat's walkabout. He finally goes to bed about two or three in the mornina.
Rick eats out everyday, once a day. He is very thin. He doesn't like to use the community kitchen because he would have to share pots, pans, plates, and utensils. So he buys very little food that he keeps in his room. McDonald's likes him very much.
Conrad, the person who was influential in getting me here to teach, is deathly afraid of dogs. Some childhood experience or other. The guard dogs downstairs are particularly frightening, and Conrad has not been happy about their presence, their barking, their walking the halls at night in the dark without muzzles or leashes. | am not very fond of this situation either. Last week's rumor was that Conrad went to the hospital for a problem which sounded like either some terminal instability or wounds from a fight. He and one of the guard dogs had had it out. Conrad had had it. He attacked the dog! | am happy to say Conrad is back at work and looks and sounds just fine.
We have foreign English teachers in two separate faculties—one faculty is business and economics and the other is a department of education. Pedagogy they call it. The teachers in these departments don't associate with each other. They don't even know each other! Those in the business and econ faculty admit they need help with teaching methodology. That is what the other faculty is doing, teaching teaching methodology. | keep asking silly questions like, why don't we have a workshop or seminar with “them"?
The head of the department (our employer) asked about what we taught during October. Again, | felt like the lone ranger. Seemed like a reasonable question from employer to employee. What have you been doing? My colleagues found the request outrageous. They proceeded to make their responses as passively and un-passively aggressive as possible. Sara has threatened to stop teaching if anyone comes into her classroom to observe. Tim has written a memo to the head of the department with the idea that she will have to use an English dictionary to find out what he has said. She is Czech and English is a second or third language for her.
| teach one student English and he tries to teach me survival Czech. He's getting the better deal. But he, Jan, is curious. He proudly announced the other day that his surname meant tit in English. This had to be sorted out straight away, and | think | did a pretty tactful job of it. Titmouse is a bird found in G.B. | remembered that. Clive, a fellow teacher and from England says they have blue tits, yellow tits, and what not in G.B. | gave Jan the proper cultural tips {with a p) for boasting in the U.S. about what his name means in the vernacular.
He wears the same clothes each time | see him. Top button of his nicely pressed shirt buttoned. He writes in miniscule fashion from the top edge of the page to the bottom
p. 2
edge, and from the left edge to the right edge. | don't know how he reads it. He is an engineering student and might fit some stereotype we would have in the U.S. Listens to music. Likes to draw. And asks me questions about the tiniest details and the tiniest words. He's a very good student, he's nice, he speaks slowly and correctly without stress, intonation, or rhythm. He speaks with a bilingual dictionary in his hand and looks up the precise word he needs, one per sentence, usually without breaking monotone. He is quite fluent with this method. Perhaps he has had lots of practice. Learning the meanings of naughty words
brings smiles but no embarrassment to his face.
Czech students generally are very interested in slang ond off-color words and expressions. | may be reaching but many seem repressed and are now finding freedom of expression with the funny (odd) foreign teachers. They apparently look for an opportunity to shock you with their knowledge of four-letter words, which they mumble in class just loud enough for their classmates and the teacher to hear. Or maybe they're just goofing off.
One young teacher from Minnesota is talented and works hard. He is finding teaching English challenging, as am |. He has a girlfriend back home and will return to her at the end of the year. But he has noted how ail the girls in his classes--they are not much younger than he is--are not very pretty. It would be nice for him to have some nice-looking female students, | think. He thinks so too. After all, he is liked, relates well to his students, perhaps because of his age. Jonathan, this young teacher, has seen Jitka (the J is like a Y and the stress is on ka--sort of draw it out like kahhhh) and asks about her. She is a striking beauty, and one of my students (see below). To me, | don't know, it all seems like a cosmic joke. | have many attractive young students, and | am very much older than the students and my fellow English teachers.
Excuses are amusing. Students come to class. An excuse. Students don't come to class. An excuse. Students leave early. Another excuse. One student, perhaps the most attractive young girl in my classes, has been gone for two weeks to a beauty pageant for mothers. | didn't ask what this was all about, but she is not one of the mothers. She has excused herself for this, | mean the missing classes part. What am | supposed to do with all these excuses? My response is no problem; it is your choice of whether or not to be here. But they go on and on about why they were not, or did not, or don't have, or couldn't have, or won't be able to, etc. When giving an excuse or asking what they think is a delicate question, | guess, the physical space is closer than | am used to. They stand in front of you very close, softly offering today's story about the dog that “ate my homework.”
Most of my students are reticent. Most are very soft-spoken. Most blush when asked questions. Many don’t look at you when addressed. And | just found out this evening that the culture says don’t answer questions with an obvious yes answer. This is difficult when you are demanstrating yes/no English questions. Did you have a nice weekend? It is Monday and the students are there in class and awake. You shouldn't take offense. The silence is an answer in the affirmative, in language class with an emphasis on speaking.
There is another Jitka. She is the department secretary. She is very nice, but ! haven't seen her for almost two weeks. She is home with a cold. The idea is that if you have a cold, you stay home until you are completely rid of it. Of course, you must present a doctor's excuse upon contracting the cold. Or, is it an excuse from the doctor? The effect is the same, | guess.
Jitka says things to me which | find strange. Because there is a language barrier, and a cultural one which | am still finding out about, this makes for confusion and awkwardness. | was working on the computer in her office one evening and she came in and said how glad she was that | was there. Nothing else, just glad. {| soon left having finished what | was doing. | don't think she even said good bye.
She stopped me on the street and apologized for not being at work. Who the hell am
i? She is the secretary to the chair of the department. She stopped me on the street another
p 3.
time and scolded me, 1 think in a kidding sort of way, for not saying hello to her. But | really couldn't tell. She made a point of asking me to report my weekend activities to her on Monday. | don't know why the request, but | said | would see her later.
One of her jobs is to help foreign teachers get their work permits. She did this for me by taking care of all the paperwork and then officially representing herself as my agent at the police office where you must register and personally show up to receive your residence permit. She forged my name. She boasted that she even used her left hand. She knows | am left-handed. The police know she did this. But they looked away when she committed the forgery because they did not want to witness it. | know | am not the only one she has committed this crime for.
| gave her some cookies which had coconut in them. She said she now had to bake something for me. | told her not to. After all, | hate coconut. She also said she would not eat the last one because it came from a sixteenth century recipe and she likes old things. Was she referring to me in addition to the cookie? How long was she going to keep this coconut cookie? Mysteries. Sometimes it all seems like some kind of quicksand, and | don't know if! am sinking or bumbling my way around unseen and treacherous hazards.
| have since taken to going to her office-the copy machine is there as weil as the | daily mail--when she is not there, which is most of the time. She comes in, when she comes in, at about eight thirty, or later after her errands. She takes lunch from twelve to ane thirty or so. And leaves at two thirty, or a little before. Piece of cake—I think | am making my way around any quicksand. Now that I think of it, | am not realy safe yet. She could be out on the street somewhere!
Hanka and Norman are other mysteries. They, perhaps at Norman's instigation, he's from Scotland and feels his Celtic or whatever oats, have decided to pull my leg, a lot.
Every time | see them. They represent several new businesses here in Liberec (the c is a
ts). | don't think they are real. Perhaps the tour company is real. !t sounded good when they talked about it. But one enterprise is a Czech language school. | am sure it isn't real. It has the name, Czech Girlfriend Agency. Language school, right. | was shamed into filling out an application. | don't even know these people! Hanka and Norman. But | admit | was in a pub drinking beer with them at the time.
Curiously, | received an e-mail message from Hanka quite soberly saying that my application lacked sufficient detail. t would have to answer the questions more completely, or was it answer more questions? She had many candidates to teach me Czech. In the face of this sand trap, | have taken the offensive. | fired questions back. Could be another pond of quicksand--to ask questions back--but it seems innocent. But you never know.
Departmental meetings are definitely quicksand. Four or five different nationalities/cultures with varying amounts of English and tremendous frustrations because this is not like Kansas, or wherever, and no leadership for the meetings or the department as we might want it to be in an admittedly evolving international microcosm. But departmental stories are shop talk and lead to the boring and inane. And | tire easily of gossip, as you might be tired by now with these maunderings. | have better subjects to get to and perhaps share, later.
Just know | am well and getting better, even though 1 am probably in quicksand up to my nostrils. Living here is always a challenge and sometimes very difficult. My conclusion for now is that you cannot walk softly and leave no trace in the forests of a foreign culture. Pine needles crunch under your footsteps just because you are there, and now and again you must part the undergrowth just to get by. May they come to know me by my good intentions and not because | stray from the well-worn locai's ways. | cannot disrobe myself of my culture, nor escape who | am. But then again, you never know.
