so, do you speak Czech?

The most common question I am asked by both Canadians and Czechs alike is "But isn't it difficult to get by when you don't speak the language?"

The short answer: No, not really. I mean there is of course the fact that I am essentially illiterate and deaf, but for the most part my life here is comparable to a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, what could instill in you a greater sense of childlike fascination than not having any clue what's going on, ever.

It was serendipitous that I ended up here at all and then it dawned on me that I had accidentally chosen to live somewhere with an inexplicably difficult language that I had no inclination to be apt at.

So, the first thing I did was to start learning foods so I would know what I was buying at the shops, and though most products are easily identifiable some are definitely not, meat conveniently comes with a picture reminding you what animal it is printed on the packaging while milk is not as easy to identify in it's many forms. To get an idea of what I mean, imagine being illiterate and trying to decide what to pick for your cornflakes, you could very easily accidentally pour whipping cream or buttermilk all over your breakfast. Once you learn the basics you can adeptly do your shopping solo. I try to deter people from talking to me by wearing my ipod but in the Czech Republic you don't really have to worry too much about strangers trying to communicate with you. In two years the only people that have tried to engage me in any type of conversation in the shop have been old people that needed help with something and other foreigners. Czechs just don't really talk to people they don't know, maybe they had really intense 'stranger danger' talks when they were small?

After that I focused on learning words at work and trying to understand more of what the children were saying, although being as they are roughly 3 years old they aren't always coherent even to the Czech teachers. But I did learn some useful things like how to count, colours and clothing along with the likes of vampire, ninja, tree, shadow, sand, tissue and ghost, to name a few.

See the hard thing about being an adult and learning a new language is that you are expected to just pick it up on your own, no one congratulates you every time you say a word correctly or offers you a sweet if you can remember all of your colours. People don't speak to foreigners slowly using easy words or sing you songs to teach you new ones. In fact they usually imitate your bad pronunciations and when you are congratulated it's more patronizing than encouraging. Think about all those times when you have seen people raising their voices at foreigners as if they are deaf. We're not deaf, we just don't understand you, and now we are even more confused because we think we are being scolded for some unknown reason.

Since Czechs aren't particularly chatty people there was very little else I needed to learn. There is no banter with waiters and waitresses, you simply order and say thank you when the food arrives. And you definitely don't try to ask for modifications to your meal the way you would in North America, your food will come as the menu says it comes and that's that. Indonesia was a different story because they are particularly chatty people and very interested to know more about buleh (foreigners) and so I learnt to answer and ask quite a few questions about family, religion, work, holidays, food, kids, my fictional husband etc.

I know more than I let on and if I was moving here permanently I would feel an obligation to learn more, but I am not. I can get by and at this point that's what really matters. It sounds harsh, but I work a 35 hour work week and teach 4 private classes, learning a new language takes dedication and energy that I would rather focus on something like watching hockey or getting to know the local beers. Seems more productive in the long run.

some of my homies...

Sometimes I find it really bizarre that my two lives are so separate, there is me at home with my family and old friends, high heels and perfume, walks along the ocean and reading at coffee shops and then there is me abroad with friends who become best friends within days, broken shoes (damn you impractical cobblestones) and cheap perfume, aimless wandering through new cities and long hours spent at pubs with a mix of nationalities that would impress the UN.

Yet the two rarely merge, every now and again a friend from home will come and travel with me and it's only then that I feel that they really get a chance to fully understand me, to see me in my element, natural and vulnerable like you would never be at home.

So upon this reflection I decided that I should write a quick bio of the people who are the most involved in my Czech life this year. People that through photos and stories you probably feel like you already know something about. It feels important to somehow document them since for most of you they will never be more than a face and a name.

So here's some fun anecdotes about them:

Laura is from Boston, USA. She loves cats, like in a weird cat lady way, viral cat videos (shocker), robes and nighties. She also inexplicably loves the UK and would like to marry a British man, preferably with a beard and a cat. Contrary to the crazy middle aged woman you are probably envisioning she is actually a young, fashionable woman who hides her crazy well. She's kind of like a female Chandler, she's awkward, funny and lovely all at the same time.

Whitney is from Rhode Island, USA. She's ginger, loves to sing and takes a really long time to get to the point when telling stories. She often makes rash decisions (like say, getting two kittens from a woman at the museum or buying a violin that she doesn't know how to play) but she is also one of the bravest people I know and she genuinely likes meeting new people (she may or may not have given her phone number to bus drivers - note the use of the plural - and Mormons peddling religion on the street). She is essentially Giselle from the film 'Enchanted', she is sweet to the point of naivety, in a wholesome 'people really are lovely' kind of way.

Lisa is from somewhere in or around Birmingham, UK. (Like when I say I am from Vancouver because no one knows where Victoria is.) She doesn't have a Brummie accent though (thankfully). She loves tea (obviously, I mean she is British) and curry (again, seriously stereotyping her culinary interests based on her nationality, but if the shoe fits...) She has hidden talents like playing the piano and she can name every country in the world. She is funny when you least expect it and loves owls (not like Laura loves cats though...) And can also speak more Czech than she lets on...

Gabi, is from Jablonec, CZ, which is the next city over. She loves hockey and beer (hence why we get on so well) and plays a sport called 'Florbal' (essentially floor hockey) which she is quite good at. She is cute and sweet and seemingly innocent, but get a couple of pints in her and she has a very sick sense of humour, which I adore. She is drop dead gorgeous and doesn't know it which of course just makes her more lovely (as if that was possible) and is engaged to Jirka, whom I refer to as Tom Cruise because of his similar profile (not because of a fall from epic to kinda creepy). Jirka is wildly inappropriate a lot of the time and has the funniest English, which actually improves when he drinks. He told me he learnt some of his vocab from porn (at least he's honest I suppose) and at times has shocked me to the point where I've spat beer out, which if you know me well, you know is a feat in itself.

Lani is from North Carolina, USA. She also loves hockey and beer, in fact she is even still playing hockey and has her gear over here which deserves respect, hockey bags are big and heavy. She loves to bake cakes, especially when stressed, and also shares my passion for bacon, even though she's Jewish (which she is clearly not very good at). She's super smart and has amazing curly hair and she calls toques, toboggans, apparently that's a thing where she is from, but who am I to judge, I thought everyone called them toques until I left Canada.

Suzanne is from Iowa, USA, because apparently everybody in the Czech Republic is American...(seriously, there are so many of them here.) We met randomly at a cabin in the mountains (which sounds super dodgy but isn't, I promise) during my first days here. Suzanne introduced me to Strahov Monastic Brewery, the Lennon Wall, Bohemian Bagel, langoš and trdelník, and together we discovered Beer Cheese, one of the BEST inventions ever. She loves coffee (which we drank lots of in Turkey when we travelled there together last spring) and is just a genuinely lovely person. We refer to each other as Habibi (Arabic for 'my beloved'), a word taught to us by an old Saudi Arabian man at our guesthouse in Istanbul, while he was trying to seduce Suzanne in to becoming his 4th (and final) wife. Legit, it happened and I didn't try to stop it at all, in fact if you listen to her version of the story I was encouraging it...but why would you believe her, right?

While these are definitely not ALL of the people who have had important roles in my Czech life, they are a sampling and honestly I am just too tired to finish...so maybe this will just have to be Part 1...

Photo left to right: Gabi, Lani, Whitney and Laura