Good Idea That Should Come to the States No. 149

Flower Shops.

No, I know we have flower shops. But they're the pick-out-some-pre-made-bouquet kind of flower shops. They're not flower shops like the Czech flower shops.

The way it works is that you go in and pick from a long wall of indivual flowers any combination of number, kind, color, height and size that you think works, and hand the bunch over to the lady behind the counter. She then adds greens, etc, and arranges it into a pretty bouquet for you. And then you take it home and *ahem* hopefully don't make a fool out of yourself on the bus by admiring your hand-picked color combinations the entire ride with a silly grin on your face.

Daughter of my Mother(s)

Mothers are very influential creatures. Oftentimes the things that they teach us become so ingrained that we don't even realize that we learn them--anything from the way we treat other people, to the order in which we wash our dishes. Silverware then cups? Wash the cups first? I bet whichever way you do it, your mother did it the same way.

I was thinking about this when I was putting the leftovers from dinner away today, and I wrapped the rice into indivual servings of saran wrap. Next time someone wants rice, they can just take a packet and microwave it as is for a minute or two. It will steam itself inside the plastic wrap--very convenient. I picked that up from my host mother in Japan...but the way I used the leftovers from the bread I made yesterday to make breadcrumbs for the meatloaf was from Zuzana's mother in Prague...although the recipe itself came direct from my mother.

I take many things home from my travels: presents for friends and baby cousins, pictures, and memories. However, the things that are most worthwhile have been the things that I've learned from the many excellent women who have welcomed me into their homes for a time. They didn't replace my mom, of course, but in a way they became a mother to me for a little while. Especially when I was in Japan; in some sense, there I was a child again, and was taught all over again the rules of society: how to greet people, table manners, phone manners...all of the things that mothers teach us. Just in the way that I do things or say things sometimes and then think "Dear Lord, That Was My Mother!", very occasionally I'll do something or say something and then think, "Dear Lord, That Was My (Japanese) Mother!" Aside from the occasional tone of voice or turn of phrase that I picked up, qualities that my parents have taught me since I was little, like generosity, service, and common courtesy, have been driven home by role models in different cultures.

I don't often think about this, but when I do I am deeply grateful to my mom for letting me come under the influence of other families. I know many people think my parents a bit...crazy, shall we say...to let me go live abroad from the age of sixteen. I dare you to say that I have learned anything that they didn't teach me in the first place, lessons only made more impressive by their affirmation from outside sources.

Unless, of course, we're talking about my habit of doodling chinese characters all over any piece of paper that comes under my pencil...

Lost...

My ability to get completely and hopelessly lost in any and all circumstances, particularly in countries where I speak maybe three words of the language, is pretty astounding.

Today I woke up and decided that the last thing I wanted to do was go into the center of Prague for the fourth day in a row. So I puttered around the house, beginning the beginning of packing, until around one o clock, and then decided that the weather was too glorious to waste inside, and on top of that I wanted ice cream. So I went out, I thought, for a longish walk: maybe an hour or two.

I walked around till I found the convenience store next to a little pond, and sat there for a while enjoying my ice cream cone, and then I wandered along the path running beside it until I found myself in a wooded area. "This is exciting!" I thought, continueing to follow the path, knowing full well that home was maybe a half hour's clear walk behind me. The temperature is a perfect cool spring day, there was a beautiful green smell on the breeze, and a little creek ran beside the path.

Two hours later, I realized I was completely and totally lost in a maze of pleasantly paved footpaths with no discernable way out. I knew, I knew, that there had to be an exit somewhere: after all, my main companions on the path were either older retired-looking folks or mothers with strollers, and surely these aren't the people to wander around for hours and hours and hours. I just couldn't find it. Sneakily, I followed a mother until we came to a place that brought joy to my heart: civilization!

Only, I realized, it was civilization completely unknown to me and apparently pretty far from the civilization that keeps me sheltered at night; I live in a district called Kunratice, and the street signs here said that I was in Chodov. I managed to find a bus stop (oh, bless all-purpose public trans passes that don't expire until tomorrow!), which I took to the nearest metro station. Which was two stops further along the line from my metro stop.

And people, from that metro stop I have to take a bus for about fifteen minutes to get within a ten minute walk of my house...

Old Town: The Jewish Quarter

I decided not to be a cheapskate and paid to go on a guided walking tour of the Jewish Quarter in Old Town. It was good, not merely because it was pretty interesting to actually hear about what it is you're looking at, but also because going with a group is more fun. There was a Canadian college student and his dad, a British couple, and a younger lady and her friend's mother, here to visit her friend. The lady (she was in her lower thirties, I would guess,) had spent ten years in Philly; she went to Penn for her undergraduate, Drexel for her graduate, worked there afterwards deal. It was really great to have someone to talk to about home and what we were seeing and made the whole thing alot more enjoyable than if I had wandered around alone.

Although I have to say I was pretty surprised about how much my fellow members of the group didn't know about Jewish history. They were shocked to learn that Jews had been discriminated against for centuries, restricted to certain parts of the city and routinely massacred whenever a plague/famine/disaster/boredom came along and people needed some handy scapegoats. "But surely," protested the British couple, "All of Europe wasn't like that! Certainly that never happened in Britian!"

Although I'm not entirely sure about Britian...actually, sir...welcome to the nastier side of Church History.

I remember something I read in C.S. Lewis that was very apropo, and it ran something like this: "A majority of people will never listen to the gospel until the Church has publicly renounced much of it's history...why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the worship of Moloch"

Remembered and Revisited

On Thanksgiving break of my freshman year in high school, the choir took a trip here to Prague, and I came as well. It's been interesting sightseeing these past few days and revisiting places that I remember from our previous trip. I've spent the last two days wandering around Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, and the surrounding Old Town area, and finding odd corners of "Oh! This is the puppet shop that Dad and I went into and the lady was so friendly!"

One of the things I really remember is going into St. Vitus Cathedral and seeing the chapel where St. Wenceslas is buried, a small room that I remember being completely encrusted with velvet and gems.

Now, one of the things that the lovely people up at Prague Castle want is (naturally) your money. I'm not worried about money, persay, but after paying a considerable sum for a ticket to see everything in the castle complex, I was not happy about being strongarmed into buying another, seperate and similiarly expensive ticket to see the cathedral. I'm cheap. And I didn't buy the ticket. Aside from the money, also, part of me wants to keep the--admittedly, somewhat vague-- memory of impressed awe at all the dead people and wealth. I've seen a considerable number of baroque monstrosities on this trip, and I think I'd like to keep my memory of the first cathedral I ever went to as the most impressive.

What I Learned

When I went to Japan, I did not like tomatoes. Not my thing. Then my host mother, who would get up early every morning to make my host sister and I breakfast, would thoughtfully provide huge chunks of tomato to go with my salad and eggs. (Yes, Japanese people eat raw cabbage for breakfast. Actually, they'll eat raw cabbage with everything at every meal. Betcha didn't know that, didja?) Not wanting to offend anyone who actually makes me breakfast, because I know a good deal when I see one, I would force myself to eat them. By the end of four months of daily tomatoes, I actually didn't hate them anymore. Another food to take off the "No, Thank You," list.

One of the most enduring foods on that list has been yogurt. The curdled taste of it repulsed me. And then I came here, where they have all types of yogurt that comes with so much fruit stuff that you don't get but a smidge of that curdled aftertaste. So I started eating that, and then gradually got used to it. I realized that last week I was eating the stuff that I swore I would never eat twice or even three times a day.

Go figure.

WWMT (What Would Mary Think)

As I wandered around the Czech National Gallery today I realized that I have never seen a peice of art depicting the infant Jesus clothed.

I wonder what Mary would think of that reflection on her parenting skills. Well, Mary, amazingly enough for a child with nothing but the occasional scarf protecting him from the elements, at least He's clean.