Scribbling #38: The Babka Army

The "babkas", or grandmothers, or, in extreme cases as seen in a previous post, OLM (Old Lady Mafia), are to some extent the backbone of Slovak society.  Unfortunately, it could do with some sort of lumbar support, as there are various pains and complaints that surround the aforementioned back area.  Maybe even a bit of sciatica for good measure.  To put it bluntly, most of them see the 80's during Communism as some sort of Golden Age where they knew where they were, knew where they stood in the bread line, and also knew that it was going to take an impressively long time to get their own car, if they could afford it.

The ones in the village are the worst and the best at the same time.  They will give you vegetables for free, while dishing out "advice" (scantily-clad orders) for the husband to find a better job so that he can finally fix that roof, repair that hole, and get rid of that, that and especially that.  Their pensions are tiny, as back in the bad old days, everyone got the same and everyone was more or less on the same level regardless of experience or skill.  A doctor would only earn a little more than a factory worker.  Once they get to a certain age, the beige, brown and off-white clothes come out, and they would rebel against any sort of fashion sense and stick with those colours, thankyou very much.  There are some fundamentalist extremists that go the other way, and insist on doing the high-heel, I've-still-got-it look, but those are in a tiny minority, and none of them can pull it off.  The other small minority are those who actually do try to keep working everyday, and have some appreciation of other colours in the visible spectrum.

And let's not forget the "everyday advice" (basically more orders).  This could range from anything.  The babkas are, mostly, some of the most pessimistic bunch there are, while being the most friendly.  It's a strange mix, and it really doesn't have to be experienced.  You can live without it and die happy, it's fine.  During our lil' Joseph's baby dedication, I was bouncing him on my knee so that he didn't squirm too much, get over-stimulated from all the people looking at him, and cry.  I was dead in the water.  Almost instantly, I was set upon by a couple of ladies who wanted to give us their so-called help.  After what happened, we were lectured on what not to do... not what to actually do in the first place, but what not to.  Nothing positive really came out of it, as happens when you're given a tongue-lashing for the sake of it.  As new parents, we're thankful we're not that type who ignore the child by just shutting yourself away.  We show love to him, we play with him, we attend to him.  We keep it healthy, because we want him to have a healthy relationship not just with us, but with others as well later on down the line.

There's one massive difference of almost biblical proportions between the babkas and today's generation.  We have passports, they didn't.  They could only have permits to go around the other countries around Eastern Europe, such as Hungary.  It is becoming more and more common for Slovaks to leave the country and find work abroad, and then come back with new, positive ideas.  One of my colleagues wishes to open up a community park, as he saw one at work in Dubai.  Another knows the importance of being successful while having a balanced life, and not getting sucked into the "new wealth" of the country.  There are always nay-sayers and there always will be, but taking a fresh, reasonable approach to things is a great start to this post-Communist time.  We've probably gone into post-post-Communist, and it might end up being pre-(insert something here) at this rate.

Working towards establishing a community through actually doing something rather than telling other people what to do should be a growing trend here, or anywhere for that matter, and if today's people can do that, then they can stand tall.

Scribbling #37: The London Riots

Taken from the viewpoint of somebody that is British but actually lives away from The Motherland, and since there have been a fair few questions from my Slovak colleagues, my first response to the inevitable query is that, well, "it's sad".  I feel disappointed about our country and culture, and having to defend them since I'm an expat.

However, I believe that the government has handled it well, although definitely not as quickly as one would like.  The individual can move a lot faster than an established group, and this is seen here as random people are pilfering from shops, throwing rocks at police, setting fire to buildings, along with horrendous muggings and even murder.  This isn't all disenfranchised hooded youth either, as is shown on television.  People that have been caught have ranged from the guy who takes away your rubbish every Monday, to university students, and even a primary school teacher.  Yeah, the people who were looking after your children, where were they?  These people have seen the opportunity and taken it, since it means that they get to have more stuff.  More shoes, more electronic items, more clothes, more food.  The UK is a very expensive country to live in, especially when compared to here, and people who don't make the grade may feel continually trodden on until they just don't care anymore.  Others may never have cared in the first place, and just want to see the world burn.

People who leave comments on various news channels have said such things as using water cannons and rubber bullets, in some cases to bring back the rope, burn them at the stake, water torture, and even bringing in the British Army.  Remember the bit when Labour was in power and they used the Army to quell a minor prison riot?  That didn't go down so well...  Although the water cannons and rubber bullets (which can both kill) are on standby, the streets of London have been (according to news reports) flooded by police.  This is totally the right thing to do.  Police keep order, infantry kill people with big frickin' guns.  Happily, the guy in charge is David Cameron, not Pol Pot, so when he eventually came back from holiday, he had a sit-down with the police or Cobra or Sylvester Stallone or whoever, formed a plan, then talked to the press.  Instead of talking like Theresa May, saying that all the rioting won't be tolerated, he spoke about what the police will do and then carried it out.

People can be like sheep.  If somebody does something, and they don't get caught, then someone else will see them and do the same thing.  This young man here (the video above) caught on camera what people do when they just follow each other.  An idea from this, then, is to be a rebel.  To do something that nobody else is doing.  Joining the riots because everybody else is doing it is moronic.  Helping to clean up the streets afterwards goes against UK culture, in that current thinking is that the government should pick up the pieces afterwards.  To be an actual, living, breathing community within a crowded society is a wonderful thing.  This is exactly the time for the good ol' C of E to get out of their four walls, volunteer and help out.  After the hockey riots, the people of Vancouver went out in force and cleaned up the place afterwards, taking holidays if needs be, since they were so embarrassed about what their fellow countrymen had done.  England should do the same, in that we should be proud of the place in which we live.

Scribbling #36: Welcome to Earth

It's 4 a.m and I've been awake now for the last half an hour due to Mrs. C accidentally knocking over a glass while attending to JJ, which shocked me completely awake as opposed to the near-sleepy-wakefulness that happens when you're concerned with your two-month old.  The cleaning up and making sure everyone was fine period happened vaguely smoothly, with not even a peep from the baby.  Me, on the other hand, still had that "I'm now wide awake enough to be annoyingly awake so that I can't actually get back to sleep again".  So I turn to my secret weapon.  I turn to BBC News.

I didn't know it was my secret weapon until I used it just now.  That's how secret it is.

So, anyway, I decided, after seeing some worrying Facebook statuses, that I would look up the current financial crisis that's happening in the Eurozone, with a side order of "look how well UK is doing in comparison, see?" or something to that effect.  There was a nice little graph that went with it, and according to that, Slovakia still has the highest GDP growth in Europe.  It's higher than Germany.  Germany. With all their big machines, and their precision, and their chocolate and watc- no, wait, that's Switzerland.  I always get the two confused...

Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised to see this, since a lot of top management are very ambitious.  I teach English at a couple of firms, and there are a lot of nice cars outside the front door... and I mean like Audi R8s, big Mercs, Jags and the like.  It's good to see, and half of these guys don't even have a degree, it seems.  It's mostly just the will to work long hours and getting on with the job at hand, and of course, having the right connections, which is all part and parcel in this bit of the world.

Swinging lazily from one extreme to another, the other one is bears.

The conservation of bears in Slovakia has really taken off in the High Tatras, according to some charity groups (like Bear Project), and they're now taking interest in the goings-on and the food in the local villages.  I mean, the bears are now taking an interest.  Not the charity groups.  Although both are probably true. Most bears are now going home with new fashion accessories, sporting the latest collars, which was a far cry from the 80's where the latest gadget to have given to you by a human was basically a space shuttle clamped to your forehead.  Wife bears wonder where the heck their husbands have gone to, rummaging through Mrs. Olgarova's rubbish again and coming back to the forest at all hours of the morning.

I'm getting tired.

Good night.

Scribbling #35: We Hate Rock 'n' Roll

Well, it doesn't go down too well in Slovakia.  It's a bit like a lead balloon.  Or as useful as a chocolate ashtray on a motorcycle.

Nearly every radio station here delves into pop and Slovak country music.  The '80s, '90s, '00s, and '10s are all covered with the intention to rot the brains of the younger generations by playing the same songs over and over again until they like them.  There is no other real use of music on the radio. There is no classical, no rock and especially no indie music present.  This is a shame, because most pop music nowadays is rubbish (see Lady Gaga's "Dance in the Dark" and Rebecca Black's "Friday" for details), and there is no sense of variety on radio stations here.  This is something else that I miss about the UK, then.

Also as a side note, the "YEAH!! Rock 'n' Roll!!" sign, otherwise characterized as the fist in the air with the first finger and the pinky freely pointed upwards, has a slightly different meaning here.  If this sign is pointed at another man, then this means "your wife is cheating on you".

Something to remember next time you find yourself at a rock concert in Slovakia and are getting slightly carried away.

Scribbling #34: Remembering Where You Are

Sometimes it can all get a little too cosy.

Before the baby, we had pretty much settled into a routine in that, first, if a mission (e.g. going to the Post Office) involved a lot of talking, then Mrs. C would have to come with me.  Going about our daily lives like this was more of a routine than anything, as she was the language expert in our family, while I was the person who brought in the dough, any way possible, stopping short of selling a kidney.

And then the baby came, and things have now got a little (as in, Winner of the Understatement of the Year Award goes to...) harder for all of us.  In order to go to the Post Office again, and to do the same thing again, then we'd have to put Baby J's stuff all in the car, make sure that he's been fed and changed (if needed), bringing the pram/stroller with us, taking it all out when we reach the Post Office, putting it all together, taking baby out, putting him in the pram, etc., etc.  This wouldn't be so bad except that none of us have the patience of doing this, time and time again, especially Mrs. C.  We're going to have to do the same thing on Monday, to get the car sorted out for its technical checkup, and there will be a lot of technical words spoken by Slovaks that I will not understand at all.  Nothing.  Not even with mime.  And Slovaks don't mime.

A lot of people would be thinking now that, well, yeah, duh, learn the language, geezer.  Easy enough, isn't it?  To this I would say, yes and no.  Firstly, because it's due to context.  Last year was so mental that trying to learn anything was approached with a mindset that it would be best to saunter up to it with a twelve-foot rusty halberd and very gently poke it in the back.  I found out, slowly, how I learn language, and that is, unconventionally.  I learn by making a lot of mistakes, not by a simple positive learning experience in a classroom.  Case in point, I had four teachers last year, and it got to the point of starting, stopping and then starting over again so often that learning a language was tiring and highly demotivating for me, on top of the three-shift work I was doing as well.

This year, however, I think I have a little bit more of a chance, and language really does have to become a priority.  I have to learn this by myself, as this not only involves Slovak, but also learning more about the English language as well, as I have now started to teach that particular subject.  With the teaching, I wasn't very good at all for the first few weeks, and then I got into the swing of it, started to learn more, found out about more techniques and plans and all that stuff.  I feel more confident now, but I'm still not able to rest on my laurels, and that's a position I want to be in for a at least a little while longer.  I want, or even need, the same thing for my Slovak language learning.  I won't ever be fluent, but I want to know enough to get by.  I need help in doing this, but in the end I have to do the work myself in order to learn, and I learn well by using the language and through repetition, as one slightly frustrated Slovak teacher found out.  This is the hardest thing for me to do here, because so far, its just been a case of being able to take the wife along with me, or muddling along by myself.

Secondly (yes, all that was just "firstly"), language is empowerment.  You're able to go out, find stuff, be able to work the mundane day-to-day things by yourself.  This is obvious.  Learning a language, especially a Latin-based one like Slovak, is incredibly difficult for me.  Those French classes I took all those years ago were a walk in the park in comparison to understanding Slovak.  For Mrs. C, she has a gift in language, as case in point, she was able to translate from Slovak to English within her first nine months here.  This is an awesome thing, as in really, truly awesome, and not how a lot of people use that word today, a little too glibly.  What she did, what she was able to do, really dawned on me during Scribbling #1, thereby creating this blog.  For her to be here by herself, to fend for herself like I haven't, is also an amazing thing.  Her help came from Slovak friends who spoke good English, and later on, a couple of Canadian friends came over and she was able to help them in turn because of her knowledge of the language.

I don't want to set myself a challenge, I don't want to set a deadline, but I would like to do a blog post in Slovak.  This sentence reminds me about the time I got a text message from Christina in Slovak, and shortly after at Betka's grandma's house, I watched Betka go through Christina's grammar and correcting bits of it.  Anyway, who knows, it may be by the end of the year, or maybe not.  In the end, I'm here, I have to provide, and I've had enough of giving everyone a blank look when they're talking to me in Slovak, and getting repeatedly slammed for not learning the language when I first came here (a little bit unfairly, I feel, given the circumstances), or not doing something because of culture clash or whatever.  I can't fear about failing, so I have to dare to fail instead.

Scribbling #33: Enter Baby J

So, yes, we've spawned.  We are now the proud/excited/mystified parents of one JJC (we like initials/acronyms here, in case you haven't noticed), otherwise known as Baby JJ, or just JJ.  Living as a parent is a new experience, since when you're a dad, you can participate in the first, middle and final stage of a newborn's daily life.  That is, changing him, feeding him, and then putting him to sleep.  For me, this type of episode has only happened the once, since the milk wagon (translation: Mrs. C) is usually available for the middle section.  So:

JJ wakes up at 3:24 a.m.  As he is wont to do.

JJ: BWWAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! NWWWWWWWWAAAAAHHHH!!! FNAAAARRRR!! *snort* *snort* FFFFFWWWWWAAAAAHHHHHHBBBWWWWAAAAHHHHHHH...nur, huur, hurrr, WAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNWWWWYYYY *snort* BWAAAAAAAAHHHHH---

I sleepily arouse from bed, in slow motion, like a rubbish Lazurus.

JC: Oh, boy...

JJ:  GWWWWWWWAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

JC:  Oh, my, the world is ending, the world is ending!

I bend over to pick him out of the crib.  Stage 1: Check to see if he's filled his nappy.

JJ:  Wuh?

JC: Naaaah!  Okay, time to change lil' JJ....

JJ:  WAHHHHHHBWWWWWWAAAAAAHHHHHWAHHHHHHHWAAAAAHHHHH WAHHHHHAHHHHHHH *snort* *snort* NWWWWWAAAAAHHHHHH

I put him on the changing table, trying to undo all the buttons of his sleeping clothes/costume.  It looks more like a costume to me.  No right thinking human being would actually wear a proper t-shirt saying 'Grumpysaurus' on it, would they? 

JJ: WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAHHH...  WUUUUUUHHHH? Snnnaaaaarrrrrr.... wuhhhh...

JC:  Okay... how many buttons does this thing have?... for crying out... stop kicking!... stop... right, one leg out... stop kicking the other... other leg out... how did the other leg get back in again?...right...both legs out.  Success.  Right.  Move you up, got your legs, got your legs...squish that thing underneath you...

Mrs C:  Is this going to be a running commentary all night? 

JC:  ...shut up...right tab off, left tab off. and open...oh, Lordy me.

JJ: Nwwaaaa...

JC: Oh, wow.

Pause.

JC:  How does this happen?  So much comes out of a little body...

Contemplative silence.

JC:  Okay, off it comes.  And away...and fold...and in the bin.  And wipes...wipes...wipes?  Ah, there.  Ok.  So up we go again.  And on with the new... And wiping this bit, and that bit...and those bits...get in there... right, done.  Maybe one more time... all bits... and the cream next...stop struggling...

JJ:  wwwaaaaaHHHHHH...

JC: ...wait...wait...

JJ: ...HHHHHWWWWWWWAAAAAA...

JC:  Do this clip than that clip and other clips...wait...no, that's not right...where's the instructions for this thing...?

JJ:  ..AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH...

JC: ...okay, done, done! Hah! Done! Ready to go.  See, all done, all done...

Pause.

JJ: GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

JC: Right! Right, feeding! Er...

Mrs. C: Cupboard, bottom shelf.

JC: Right, cupboard.

And here, dear reader, the next hour (Stage 2) consists of bringing a bottle of formula for the baby, if Mrs. C isn't "available", then feeding the baby.  Although he doesn't want it at first, no.  And then he does...and then doesn't again.  He changes his mind so many times, and may instead tire himself from all the decision making and eventually fall back to sleep.  This then consists of putting him into his crib, walking softly away, turning off all the lights, then going back to bed.

And then he hiccups, waking himself up.

Repeat these two steps at least six times over before he's actually fed.  Whereby he must be burped.  And if it is formula milk he's having, this particular belch can be heard, and this is from a neighbour's testament, that the baby can be heard from across the street.  This may also frighten him.  If so, then repeat Stage 1 to 3 until he's calmed down and has fallen asleep.  By this time, it may be 6 a.m. and time to go to work, leaving Mrs. C happy and content.

All of the above usually never happens, with a tired Mrs. C having to get up in the night at all hours and making sure that the lil' one is all right.  She's a trooper.  A knackered one, by 6 a.m.

N.B. We do love him to bits anyway. :-)

Scribbling #32: We. Love. Hockey.

There is at least one thing that really connects Slovaks, Canadians and Americans, and it's not the distance apart from one another.  All of those countries, especially Canada, really, really, like hockey.  The World Championships are being held here in Slovakia, where the little big country is hosting a lot of great teams.  Currently, games are split between Kosice in the east and the country's capital, Bratislava, in the west.

My first (and only, so far) ice hockey game was watching the Calgary Flames vs. The Edmonton Oilers.  I was surprised how fast it was, and how good the guys were on the ice.  It's even more aggressive than rugby, as people are practically thrown over barriers and across the ice to get at this little puck thing.  There was also a great synergy to the crowd, and really felt that the best man should win, with supporters poking fun at each other, rather than swearing and fighting with each other like that other great English export, football hooliganism.

Quite recently, Slovaks and sport are doing pretty well for themselves on an international level.  In football (or 'soccer' for those exotic creatures known as 'Amer-eee-caaans'), Slovakia quite soundly defeated Italy, the 2006 World Cup champions.  It was looking a little sketchy towards the end, but in all, Slovakia caught them with their collective pants down.  During the Winter Olympics, they gave the Canadian team a run for their money, making a population six times greater than theirs all sit on the edge of their sofas, clenching their buttocks.  Of course, after that amount of body-slams, the Canadian team eventually won, and went on to win gold.  Hey, if the team that wins against yours ends up being the overall winner, then it doesn't sting as much, right?

Slovakia is still a young country, since it split from the Czechs back in 1993.  It has a thousand-odd years of history, sure, but as a country now it is still pretty young.  Unfortunately for them, it meant that the country's team had to play against a bunch of real no-hopers before they were allowed to play with the big boys.  Winning against Sweden in 2002 put paid to that, and as a team, they do have hope.  And after playing with the Canadians earlier this year, they may be a little more aggressive...

Scribbling #31: British? Really? I'm So Embarrassed...

There's been a couple of comments made to me (from Slovaks) recently about how they view most British people as arrogant, cold and rather self-serving.  This seems to be especially true when said Brits find themselves in a foreign country, so I'm thinking there may be some sort of post-colonial pseudo-Empire complex going on there.  Let's face it, us Brits had a pretty big plot of what we could call "land" for a number of years, and there have been many stories about British people travelling the world and how they've been told by the country's native inhabitants in what ways the UK has ruined them, since they are official representatives of ol' Blighty, and may therefore offer an apology on behalf of the Queen, the British Government and the producers of Coronation Street.

But there are some horrible instances which happen right in front of you where you wish that you weren't British at all.  Toe-curling situations do happen.  We are, unfortunately, the Americans of Europe.  We're loud, we don't care, we get drunk, we believe that we're in some sort of Eastern European hellhole where everyone is an idiot, we wear clothing that should need a licence, and we're continually amazed that people don't speak English, even when we yell at them very loudly, clearly and distinctly.  

Case in point.  There was an instance where myself and Mrs. C had decided to go to the cinema together, for a nice date night.  We sat down, then three British girls flounced in, walked past us and sat down on the other end of the row.  Basically what they said was:

1st Idiot British Lady: 'Awwwraght.  This is totally basically the worst cinema I've ever been in!'

2nd IBL: 'Where are the drink holders, where are the drink hold... they got no drink holders!'

3rd IBL: 'They got drink holders on the end of the seat things.'

1st IBL: 'Arms.'

3rd IBL: 'Yeah, arms.'

*pause*

3rd IBL: 'Stupid country.'

So, after insulting an entire country based on drink holders and a cinema (which was fine), they sat down, the film started shortly after, and then the film had a problem and stopped.

1st, 2nd, 3rd IBL: *sighed all at once very loudly*

Apologetic-Looking Slovak Technician: *in Slovak he says that he's sorry about the delay, and that the film will resume shortly*

1st IBL: 'ENGLISH!!'

My toes gripped the bottom of my shoes so hard I thought they were going to break through and grip the floor like an eagle grasping an enormous vole.

2nd IBL: 'Why doesn't he speak English!?'

I'm not with them.  Saving grace, I'm not with them.  Mrs. C is suppressing laughter.  It's coming out in small, disjointed snorts.  She pulls herself into the crook of my arm so that even those are muffled.

Friendly Person Sitting Next to IBLs: *translates what ALST said*

3rd IBL: 'Thankyoooou.'

The film went on, it ended, the girls left, and I still felt embarrassed by being near to them, in like a five-mile radius kind of way. 

The island culture is so ingrained into us nowadays, that we show off by saying what countries we've been to, and how much travelling we do.  Seriously, guys, when you live in a Central European country you can pretty much go anywhere, and the history is way more interesting in some places.  From our house, we can reach Vienna in two hours by car, Budapest in two and a half, and Prague in four.  We can reach four capital cities pretty easily, and Slovakia also has mountains only a few hours away as well.  It's a whole lot cheaper than Switzerland, that's for sure, and you get the same sort of mountains, like ones that are tall and have snow on them.

But Slovaks, don't get too smug.  There may be comparisons drawn between Slavic cultures later down the the line, and it's not in your favour...

Scribbling #30: That's My Business

Those who can't do, teach.  Well, that's how the saying goes anyway.  Those who get made redundant from a factory job in a foreign country also have to teach, so to me that phrase is a very sweeping statement.  Happily, all is not lost for prospective EU types that wish to work within Slovakia, as they can get a trade licence quite easily, if they fulfil the criteria of not being a mass murderer and don't mind going through the hassle of obtaining one in the first place.  For Canadians and other exotics, the process is similar to varying degrees.

What I had to do first was to get a notarised statement of saying that I, JC, has lived in an English-speaking country for more than ten years so that I, JC, could teach there in the first place.  Never mind the actual teaching qualification in the first place, of course, but so long as you've lived there for that period of time, that's okay.  The next part of it is showing that you do not have a criminal record.  According to the British Embassy, they don't send criminal records overseas to people like me, so instead you have to write out another statement stating that, no sir, I have not got a criminal record.  This is given to the guy at the Embassy, he changes the wording a bit, and then you have to read it out loud like an oath.  This is one of the weirder experiences that I had to deal with in Slovakia, as having to state that you do not have a British criminal record to a Slovak who is behind an inch or so of bulletproof glass was rather ironic.  Seventy-ish euros were paid, and I got a bit of paper saying that I didn't have a record.  It was nice paper though, presented in an equally nice folder.

The other weird experience that we had to get used to was that the people at Sala's council were nice.  In all of Mrs. C's experience, the pen-pushers were always brisk, prejudiced and in some cases downright mean.  But this bunch were nice.  They chatted amiably to Mrs. C, surprised that there was a Brit and a Canadian standing in front of them speaking broken and fluent Slovak respectively.  After wondering whether or not to send me to Bratislava in order to do some more paperwork, one of them stated that, "no, he's our Brit!".  After giving the payment in stamps, I had my licence within a week, saying that I could teach, with the tax card following along soon after.

And, I like teaching.  Thank goodness.  Instead of standing around waiting for something to happen, I'm standing, teaching young and old minds examples of the English language.  For me, it was something I wanted to do when I was here, but circumstances... At any rate, I gain more experience everyday, and it's something I'm getting good at, since you're re-learning your own language in different ways.  Conditionals? Fine.  Passive voice? No problem.  Students switching from Slovak teachers to a native speaker?  Ummm.... we're working on that. :-)

Scribbling #29: Lollipop person with a gun

In good ol' Blighty we have a brigade of older ladies that are affectionately called 'Lollipop women'.  These superior beings stand in the middle of the road early in the morning or later on in the evening with a sign that says something along the lines of 'Stop, children', so as to stop traffic for the school kids. In Slovakia, I've just noticed that Slovaks have a similar thing, except that the police do it with a small red stop sign, but on the other hand, they've got guns.

...

I would stop for them.

Scribbling #28: For This Week Only...

We're coming to the end of our stay in in England for this week, with a few stopovers along the way (especially in regards to Indian restaurants).  The last time we were here was last Easter, which in itself is an unreasonably long time to be away and still feel like I'm still part of the country.  Many things are easier, such as the ability to go down the bank by myself, but also we see how many things have degraded over time.  It only took six hours before the first chav threw a bottle of apple juice at our rental as we were passing through my hometown, and there is still a feeling that the UK as a whole is still as hurting as I left it, if not moreso.

This doesn't mean that I'm going to up sticks and leave Slovakia, far from it.  The guys in the UK may have a harder job to do, but more often than not, there are more resources at their disposal.  When living in Slovakia, it is easier to see from comparison what we can bring to a society who may or may not listen.  The fun part is integrating yourself into an alien society, and I do kind of feel like an outsider when coming home and catching up with people.  It really feels like I've got to 'traveller' status and I'm reminded by that quote from one G.K. Chesterton that 'the whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land'.

It feels strange coming home after being away so long, but now it is time to go home again.

Scribbling #27: You Can't Supersize Me, No Sir...

Mrs. C and myself have just been through the most excellent movie that is Supersize Me, which is a documentary about how fast food and MacDonalds in particular can make obesity levels in the good ol' US of A slightly problematic.  In all my best efforts, I try not to go to the Golden Arches in Slovakia, but still end up going maybe once every one or two weeks. 

Shameful, I know. 

Canada is a different story.  When on fundraising or family-oriented journeys, there are a lot of Wendy's out there.  We have found after coming back here that we have gained a fair amount of weight, even if we were only a month in the country.  Mrs. C would interject at this point and say that we don't live a normal lifestyle during those visits, especially since we're in 'social overdrive' mode where this would mean a coffee with a pastor, a free refill of said coffee, a breakfast, and maybe a trip to Boston Pizza for lunch to meet with a youth group and then driving back home, stopping at Tim Horton's along the way to meet another supporter.  Having a fast food meal every day like the guy does in the movie becomes a reality, because for that month we live on a condensed time scale where we need to see lots of people quickly over long distances.

When we came back in November 2009 from Canada, lots of things struck me all at once.  First, our time was so much less condensed, so much less hectic.  I could walk to Tesco, where they would sell products that are not ready made.  Even now, Mrs. C complains about recipe websites when the 'recipe' consists of 'get this mix, add water, add a cut apple'.  That's right, an apple that's already been cut for you.  We can't get these things in Slovakia.  We have real food, real vegetables, real things we have to mix and cook together ourselves.  There are random Indian sauces and whatnot that are made from a packet, when you can find them, and the hilariously expensive Marks and Spencers do great things in that regard with their ready-made jars, but even then, they will tell you that marinating it for twelve hours is the better thing to do, making it a type of fast food that only France would approve.

I've lost a lot of weight from going from starchy, carbohydrate-saturated foods to things that consist of more nutrition than the container it comes in.  It's better for you in the long run, its better for your health, better for your mental stability (which you really, really need if you expect to survive as an expat in your first year).  It's just another reason why I'm glad I live here.