A downside of being a foreign mother

I've spent the last week desperately looking for a lampion. And a drak.

It all started last Thursday with a text from Smalls's školka, which was a friendly reminder that at 5 pm, parents were welcome to join the kids for a walk with 'lampiony'.

This was the first I'd heard of this event, and I didn't have time to pick anything up from a shop. Also, 'lampiony' is a general word for lanterns, so I wasn't quite sure what they meant.

'Perhaps they've carved pumpkins. Or made lanterns out of glass jars. Or put candles in paper bags,' I comforted myself. And brought J's beloved flashlight just in case parents were supposed to bring something.

Ten excited kids. Three focused teachers. Ten pleased parents. Nine paper lanterns-on-a-stick with candles merrily burning inside. One little orange flashlight.

So, it turns out that in the context of easily overlooked notices on the noticeboard at školka, 'lampiony' is not, in fact, an all-encompassing word for various lanterns.

'Proč nemáš lampion?' [Why don't you have a lampion?] one of Smalls's friends asked him, while happily waving around his own one.

See, that I understood.

'Protože mám baterku!' [Because I have a flashlight!] Smalls proudly pronounced.

Because you have a foreigner for a mother, I thought.

And, of course, this should have been the end of it. I should have poured myself a lovely cup of tea when we got home and filed this away under Things to Remember When Smalls Slams Doors as a Teenager.

But, then the noticeboard at školka informed me that this week, they would be flying 'draky'.

The blessed chance for redemption!

The word 'draky' can either mean 'dragons' or 'kites'. I was relatively certain that kites were the things required in this case. We already had a kite for Smalls, but it is a cheap affair and I would put the chances of it breaking pre-flight close to 80%.

I could practically hear Smalls's friend again: 'Why don't you have a kite that isn't broken?'

No. I had to prevent this from happening to Smalls.

A new, better kite was required. One that would be sturdy, colourful, impressive. A kite that would be the envy of Smalls' friends and would convince the teachers that I am a good, if sometimes inexplicably foreign, mother.

Also, I decided, while I'm at it, he should have a proper lampion-on-a-stick.


This was, of course, never a logic-based mission. In fact, as I was going from shop to shop, a not-insignificant part of me reminded me that Smalls did, in fact, have a kite and that this really was about guilt and ego more than anything else, wasn't it?

But, sometimes we need to be a little irrational.

Three stationary shops, two book shops, two supermarkets, two toy stores, one Tiger, and three 'Vietnamese' corner shops later and I was the proud, exhausted owner of both a new kite and a lampion-on-a-stick.

I also have a much better understanding now of the goods on offer in Prague shops.


'How was the kite flying today?' I asked Smalls when I picked him up from školka.

'It was ok,' he said. 'I stepped on my kite and it broke.'

Getting used to driving in the Czech Republic

As you might have gathered from previous posts, I am the very proud bearer of a Czech driver's license.

However, this extreme privilege comes with one major downside: I now must drive on Czech roads (fine) with other drivers in the Czech Republic (problem!).

In fairness, probably 80% of Czech drivers are perfectly acceptable.

The other 20%....

A few weeks ago, I was driving home on the motorway and some enthusiastic member of the 20% club had caused an accident which caused the whole three-lane road to be bricked for a solid, miserable 5 km. And what, I ask you, do the other drivers do?

Me, I swear a bit and become good friends with first gear and the radio. A dark calm settles on me, very similar to the feeling as one waits at the Foreigners' Police or any other of the grand Czech bureaucratic institutions.

The other 80% take a similar approach, or use the extended interval to take an impromptu roadside pee break.

However, those strange souls in the 20% start waving their arms wildly, spring into any gap between cars that is more than 15 cm wide, and make their way to the shoulder, which they commandeer into a fourth lane and zip at terrifying speeds between the overloaded trucks and the yawning ditch.

I'm pretty sure that not all of them are heart surgeons with a transplant specialty and a waiting surgical team.


A few days ago, I was driving through the village next to ours and a car came speeding up behind me. He kept trundling along until he was practically on my bumper, and then started gesturing at me from behind his windscreen.

I would like the record to show that I resisted the temptation to ease off the gas at this point.

'Just driving like my dear old Dad taught me!' I said cheerily instead. And pointlessly, of course.


I officially learned how to drive (the first time around) at 15 and a half through after-class lessons at my Junior High School. (I am now horrified when my 18-year-old students tell me they are taking driving lessons.) But my real driving approach was honed by early morning drives with my dad.

Together, we'd brave icy twilight mornings. I'd drive to school, he'd carry on to work. Along the way, he taught me the Dad Approved Way to drive.

'They'll give you tickets for going even a few miles per hour over the speed limit,' he'd tell me, with the bitterness of experience.

'Always leave plenty of room between you and the person in front.'

And the generational wisdom of: ' Take your time! As your grandmother used to say, if you wait long enough, there is always a hole.'

Driving is very different where I grew up. Traffic is ten cars waiting at the stop light on Main Street. I can't bring myself to call the main roads here in Europe 'highways'. The highways of my youth stretch for miles in straight lines, dotted by the occasional semi truck. So, 'Czech motorways' it is.

The drivers are different too.

'You really need to watch out for drivers here,' my sister warned me when we were visiting this summer. 'They are crazy.'

L and I laughed a little bit. Crazy? Compared to Czech drivers?

But at soon as I got behind the wheel, it all came flooding back. A different kind of crazy.

20% of Czech drivers seem to believe they are in some timed video game and the rest of us are computer-generated obstacles.

On the other hand, 30% of drivers from my sister's town seem to believe they are dream-driving and the rest of us are invisible.

The whole experience tends to be slower, but equally terrifying and considerably more unpredictable.


As for me, I've had to adjust my driving approach somewhat. I still hover around the speed limit, but my thinking is sharper. I spend more time identifying the heart-surgeon drivers. I am more assertive.

And I've amended my grandmother's saying.

'If you wait long enough,' I mutter to myself with grim satisfaction at weaving, waving, tailgating drivers, 'there's always an a-hole.' 

Studying home culture

The apples are falling from the trees in our garden. I'm sitting in a sweater with a cup of tea. Our local hedgehog was out last evening meticulously snuffling his way around looking for just a few more calories before hibernation.

Fall, glorious fall, is here again.

The boys are off to press apple cider in L's uncle's mini orchard, leaving me at home in a contemplative mood.

It's been 10 years since I left the US, and in some ways, I'm beginning to feel it.

Occasionally, students ask me about the nuances of adult-type things in the US (credit cards, job interviews) and I have to confess my ignorance, since I was a young student when I left.

Similarly, there have been a lot of social changes in the US in the past decade since I left, some of which make me feel twinges of patriotism and others that make me mutter: '...And that's why we'll never move back.'

And then there was the embarrassing incident when I informed a student that 'pic' is not generally used in spoken conversations. Still feeling a little red about that.

A few years ago, L and I were in a hotel in the US and decided to see if there was something interesting on the TV. I sat there blinking at the flashing screen, completely lost in the strange ad campaigns and bellowing TV personalities.

...And we're back! Will Jen and Rocky be ECSTATIC about the complete and total renovations that we did IN A MERE TWO HOURS or will their minds BE COMPLETELY BLOWN and not in a good way. FIND OUT AFTER THE BREAK!!!


So, to augment my receding cultural knowledge, I watch a few American TV shows, read online forums with mostly American members, and keep an eye on what my high school friends and acquaintances post on Facebook (not creepy! I swear!).

In many ways, I think it's helping me stay mostly up to date, though I suspect my knowledge of memes and slang is lagging behind.

Fortunately, since I grew up in a remote area with pretty much only a Walmart and a JC Penny's, I'm used to being a little behind on the fashionable things.

I do suspect that my Home Culture Studies are lacking in diversity of views though, since I want to read and watch things that don't make me too angry.

I was reading an interesting book a few days ago about this phenomenon - that the internet gives us much more information of a vast diversity and depth, but that we naturally self-select things that reinforce our own views and prejudices.

Give me another decade, and I'll be convinced that the US is filled with educated liberals with strong social consciousnesses and a love of quality books and ethically-produced food.

And that's why I never block people on Facebook. 

An ode to the Czech cottage

I'm writing this in a 200-year old cottage, at the edge of forest, looking through the window to see the stars twinkling above a little pond. A rather large fish has just jumped up to snatch a mosquito (keep up the good work, my fine finned friends).

You see, I am following in the grand Czech tradition of spending a few weeks during the summer at the family cottage.

To be a true Czech, I would need to devote many of my weekends and much of my pay check to the care and maintenance of said chalupa, but fortunately/unfortunately we have plenty of work at our own house.

This isn't just any Czech chalupa (I say, with glowing familial pride), this is our family's chalupa and this is its story, as told to me in a mixture of Czech and English by L's grandparents.

Nearly fifty years ago, when Grandmother and Grandfather Czech were first starting their married life together and starting a family, they decided they needed a place to escape from the heat of Prague, and quite possibly the rest of the family. A place of their own.

This was during the Communist regime and, as Grandmother C. put it, 'Our friends were emigrating to the US and to Australia. We emigrated to the cottage.'

So, you can see that there was a lot of pressure to find a cottage that was just right.

How did you go about finding cottages for sale? I asked.

'Sometimes in a paper, sometimes from someone who knew something about someone who wanted to sell one,' said Grandfather C.

It was a slow process, made slower, possibly, by the exacting nature of Grandmother C.

They would drive for hours to look at a prospective cottage, only for Grandmother C. to utter the pronouncement that it was too big, too damp, too small, too new, too far, too just-not-right.

And then they found out about a dilapidated mill, on the edge of a tall forest, next to a charming pond.

'Much too big,' Grandmother C. pronounced. And then they both looked across the pond and saw it, a little cottage with a sloping roof.

It was in terrible condition. It was perfect.

They knocked on the door and asked the couple who lived there, with their farm animals in the room next door, who owned the cottage and if it might be for sale.

'They were very old,' said Grandfather C. with a laugh. 'Probably almost as old as us now.'

The couple rented it from the forest service and used to be the forest keeper's house, so Grandmother and Grandfather C. made a trip to the forest service's property manager.

'That cottage?!' The manager said. 'It's in terrible condition. We are planning to tear it down as soon as the current occupants move out. We have many nicer properties. You should look at them instead.'

So, Grandmother and Grandfather C. dutifully drove all over to look at the other properties.

But no, it had to be that cottage.

Not long after, the older couple moved (hopefully to a more comfortable abode), and Grandmother and Grandfather C. began to work on their fifty-year project.

They tore down a more-recently added barn attached to the house because the original structure badly needed a new roof and they didn't have the money to fix all of it. They reused the tiles. They rebuilt the stove. They replastered, repainted, reworked the house.

Nearly every bit of spare time they had - weekends, holidays - they drove from Prague to a tiny village in the middle of the Czech Republic.

'It wasn't anything like the roads now,' Grandmother C. said. 'There was no dálnice, no motorway. We drove for two hours, up and down through little villages. There wasn't even a proper road to the chalupa. We had to navigate really slowly through the holes in the path.'

Life at the cottage wasn't easy either. There was no electricity and no running water. Water had to be carried in buckets from a well near the mill, or, if that ran dry, from a well deeper in the forest. The toilet was a hole in the woods. The cottage was heated through a large, wood burning stove.

'We, of course, didn't have a chain saw. We just had little handsaws and would cut the wood' - Grandmother C. mimes a saw moving back and forth - 'like this.'

'Those were simpler times.'

They tell me that the nights used to be much darker, the stars much brighter.

We are now up late with our laptop screens glowing, the wifi light flickering merrily. The faucets bring water at a flick of the wrist. The shower is hot. The toilet (generally) works. A road now connects the nearby village to the one on the other side of the forest and motorcycles whiz past in the evenings.

A garbage truck comes trundling down the dirt road once a week to collect the rubbish.


Grandfather C. says he found a record that mentioned this cottage that was written in 1812.

'It said a woman with a French sounding name lived here,' he says. 'And that Napoleon's army came through here. But....' (With a laugh and a shrug). 

The problem with having too many homes

I've been wanting to write some funny, cheery blog post for a few weeks now, but these last few months have been a special kind of awful...and it's definitely these darker times that make living abroad seem less like a fun and crazy adventure.

Of course, one advantage of living in Not The US (as L likes to remind me), is that I have two glorious months off, and he was able to get 2 weeks of annual leave in a row, plus some working-from-home time, so we headed back to the US for a whole 3 weeks.

My goodness, things get easier in one's home country. So, so much easier. Stranger on the street says something? No worries, not only do I understand you, you grinning, loud, cat-shirt wearing person, my cultural conditioning comes surging up from the depths of my memory and knows how to answer in an appropriate way. Very American mental high fives for everyone!

All of those foods that I miss and that I meticulously try to find on dusty shelves in specialty shops or try to recreate based off of suspicious online recipes? Guess what?! They sell them in the supermarkets! Main aisle. In cans. And they're CHEAP. What a beautiful, beautiful land.

And, of course, let's say I want to talk to my dad. And it's 11 am. Miracles of miracles, it is also 11 am his time, and so, I just meander over to my parents house and have a chat.

So, going back this time reminded me very painfully of all of the things I miss now that I live abroad.

Let me tell you about this amazing place where I'm from.

The mountains, my friends, are not mere pimples in the landscape. The fields stretch out luxuriously from mountain range to mountain range. The wheat shimmers and shimmies in a wind that has traveled for miles to run its fingers through their golden stalks. The air parts readily, the sun shines brightly, my dad sits on the porch, eating his fudge-sickle and rubbing his chemo-thinning hair.

And also loose dogs circle behind you to chomp on the back of your leg, as my nearly-faded bruise can attest.

I'm pretty certain that most of what I'm feeling is expat nostalgia brought on by a heartbreaking helplessness as I watch remotely through Skype and G+ while my dad is staring down cancer. It is so terribly tempting to pack a bag and move back (We could rent my sister and brother-in-law's second house! L could work from home! I could....work in Walmart...), but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the right thing for Smalls and L.

And probably not for me, either. In many ways, the Czech Republic is now very much 'home' and the things that would be lost and left behind would also be painful and much missed. It is the 'too many homes' phenomenon, the inescapable flaw in this whole adventure.

Children, be wise. Fall in love with someone from your home town. Find a nice job nearby. Avoid having kids/pregnancies. Tell your parents in strictest terms that they are not allowed to get terminal illnesses. Friends will also need to be thus instructed. Also, spouses. And avoid getting too attached to adorable black kittens.

Yes, obey these instructions while wearing dog-resistant protective gear on your legs, and happiness is sure to follow.

The Phenomenon of the Peeing Man

I'm originally from a very rural part of the US where, if I saw a car pulled over to the side of the road, I tended to look carefully to see if the person needed help. (Because God knows when another car will be passing by.)

You guys ok there?

In England, if I saw a car on the side of the road, I generally looked closely because, well, when the road is so narrow that you can't squeeze past, what else are you supposed to do?

I am now trying to teach myself that if I see a car parked by the side of the road in the Czech Republic, the new reaction should be to look away, goddamnit, woman, look away!

To not look away means that 9 times out of 10 you end up gawking at some stranger's dick.

(A little crude, I know - apologies, parents - but on the list of things I like to see on my morning commute, surprisingly, strangers' penises are not included).

This phenomenon of the roadside peeing man is unusually pervasive. All makes of cars, from rusted Skodas to freshly-waxed BMWs seem to have the potentiality to carry a roadside pee-er. What's more, most of them-what-pee-along-the-road seem to think that peeing towards the road is a necessary part of the procedure.

Toddlers are included in the culturally acceptable peeing group and their rights seem to extend pretty much everywhere. When we first moved to the Czech Republic, I was bemused during a visit to the Zoo to come around a corner and find a collection of ten toddlers merrily peeing on the grass while watching the hippopotamuses.

However, interestingly, women don't seem to be included in the societal acceptability of roadside relief. And it's possible that this is due to a misconception about basic reproductive biology.

I had a student last year demand that I let him leave the room during a big exam because he needed to pee. I explained that if he did that, he wouldn't be able to finish the test because my policy was that students can't leave the room during an exam.

This was an egregious assault on his basic human rights, he told me.

Furthermore, he said, vibrating with indignation, 'You have no idea what it's like because you're a WOMAN.'


Notes to self: stop looking at cars parked along the side of the road, you overly helpful fool. And try not to laugh mirthlessly at the things students say - this is quite possibly another human rights violation. 

Speaking Czech with Czechs

I was on the bus a few months ago with Smalls. We were sitting next to each other, with a pair of middle age Czech women directly across from us. One of the women had been eyeing me up at the bus stop when Smalls and I were chatting. She turned to her friend and said (in Czech):

'It's terrible, all these foreigners here. It's even worse when they try to speak Czech. I heard this American woman trying to order some soup. It was so horrible.'

(Still staring right at me, and apparently attempting an American accent)

'"Chtěla bych polévku." It was awful.'

I understood most of their conversation and was sorely tempted to make some cutting remark. But then realised I would be speaking Czech with this horrible foreigner accent.

Also, I couldn't think of something suitably withering.

Fortunately, this was on the far end of my experiences so far as a foreigner muddling my way through this rather challenging language.

On the other end of the spectrum, I had to take Smalls to a dermatologist a few weeks ago. I apologised immediately that I didn't speak much Czech.

'Nevadí!' [No worries!] she cheerily replied.

I walked out of the appointment convinced I'd made huge progress because I understood nearly everything for the whole 15 minutes. I would like to claim this is completely down to me, but in reality, she was a master of Speaking Czech to Foreigners. She used simple words. She mimed occasionally. She spoke slowly and with very precise pronunciation.

Gods, she was lovely. A gem among dermatologists.

It seems to me that it must be quite hard for many Czechs to speak to foreigners, primarily because - unlike most English speakers - many haven't had much experience.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who suspects this. The government-affiliated Centrum pro integraci cizinců (Centre for the Integration of Foreigners) released a few brilliant video shorts in April aimed at helping Czechs better understand some of the difficulties of foreigners trying to speak with Czech native speakers.

The first one is self-explanatory, I think.

This second one has an American speaking Czech with the shocking American accent.

And the final one delves into the difficulties of the dreaded formal and informal variations of Czech - the people coming into the shop are speaking informal Czech, but when the man goes to a government office, he accidentally causes offense by not using 'proper' Czech.

This final video is especially interesting because it touches on some of the racial aspects of Czech-foreigner interactions. But that is a whole other blog post, I suspect.

To end on a slightly mysterious note, a few days ago, I came home from work to find this video cassette of Pinocchio resting on our front fence.


In case you can't tell from the photo, it seems to be French. Also, I feel I should mention again that it is a video cassette.

The best explanation I can think of is that one of our neighbours was cleaning out their attic and thought, 'Ah, this is perfect for our local Foreigners!'

Am I flattered that they believe I can speak French? Or offended that they think I am so backwards that I have a VCR? The jury is still out.