For a Village of 700 people, Sulkovci is Pretty Happenin

Hey Everyone,

Ay, so much has happened in the last few days and I have so much to tell about my new host family and my new kids. After my stressful travel to Croatia, I finally arrive at my host familys house at 730 in the morning, about 9 hours late but pretty pumped. When we pulled up, I noticed the ridiculous amount of chicken feathers on the front law. The oldest brother in my family who lives in a different village just had his first daughter, and my host brother told me it is a Croatian tradition to dump chicken feathers on the familys lawn as a prank after a new baby is born. Dijana dropped me off and I met my host mother. Shes a pretty cool lady, but she doesnt speak any English really. Shes the German teacher at the local highschool so basically she speaks German to me I speak English back and we both wave our hands around a lot. Its pretty hilarious to watch according to my host brothers. Also, side note, I totally went for the hug hello with my host mom and brothers, and they all went for the handshake so it was super awkward haha.

I also met my two host brothers, Marco and Pasco. Marco just turned 19. He is tall and wears glasses. He is a nice guy but pretty shy around me. Pasco is 22 and in school to become a music teacher. He is really friendly and always down to chat.

My host family here has a sort of mini farm in their backyard. Their property had a sort of interesting lay out. Its like 20 feet wide and reallly long. They have a dog named Juro and a few cats and a ton of kittens. In the back is a big garden, chicken coops (and the chickens who live in them), some turkeys (who really are very unfortunate looking creatures), and a sheep pen. At night I can hear the sheep (shuffle shuffle baaaaaaa snort) and the roosters wake me up.

They already knew I was a vegetarian and have been super understanding of that so far. Its been really nice. I laugh remembering how my Romanian host mother would serve me golosh with both soy and pork chucks floating around. Most of what they eat comes directly from their garden, so its been really tasty. Also the eggs rock. No, seriously its like an egg ephiphany. The other night my host mom made sort of stir friend onions and red peppers with paprika (they are all about the parika) and then cracked an egg in the veggies and made it over easy. Then we ate it with this awesome thick grainy bread. It was dobro! (Thats Croatian for Good! I just sort of shout Dobro continuosly through every meal because its basically the only word I know)

The very first night I was here was Markos 19th birthday. Pasco told me they were having a few friends over to celebrate. When I came out of the shower there were about 10 very quizzical Croatian boys in the front yard, drinking my host moms homemade wine with Coke. It was one fo the most intimidating social situaions I have even been in my life because everyone was chattering in Croatian and I understood not a word except for my own name which came up suspiciously often. Pasco said when I first sat down Emma dont worry after three drink Everyone speak english! And true enough later on it was much more fun and I talked to a few of Markos friends. They made me take a sip of my host moms homemade plum schnapps and whoooa it was strong! Just a sip literally cleared my sinuses. They told me it was 70 proof and I believe it.

Teaching here is very very different than Oradea. For one, I only have about 20 to 25 kids in my three classes. Also, they are at a much more beginner level and much less enthusiastic about learning English. It is much more challenging than Oradea, and I am struggling to adapt my teaching style. Some things have worked and some have just failed miserably. However, one thing remains consistant the kids are adorbale and sweet and well as great as every kid is.

My first class of the day is my hardest and today was my most challenging day of teaching I have yet faced. I walked in and began to write out my lesson on the board. I wanted to teach them a little bit about New York before doing the usual vocabulary and grammer stuff. One of other volunteers gave me this idea to draw out the mouments of NYC and then explain them. So I drew the Empire State Building, the Satue of Liberty, Little Italy, Broadway, Cental Park ect. When I was done I started class. I was immediatly frustrated when the kids in the back row pulling their favorite trick, laying their heads down on the desk and pretending to sleep. I told them to sit up or go home and then started to teach. They were talking the whole time, and I finally lost it when I was talking about the 9 11 terrorist attacks and they were all giggling and not paying attention. I turned and said Anna and Kristina thousands of people died in the twin towers what is funny about that????!!! After that we started the regular lesson (we were doing descriptive words tall short fat skinny ect). Things went ok until I tried to get them to play pictionary with vocabulary words. They usually love competitive games like that (I give stickers to the winning team), but today no one was interested and they all kept saying We dont want to play This isnt fun. I finally lost my temper a bit and shouted Fine! If noone wants to play the game well do grammer and writing! Everyone sit down. 5 minutes later, one of my favorite students Josipa asked to go to the bathroom. She had gone only 20 minutes ago so I said No Josipa class is ending in 5 minutes you can go then. And then she started to cry. I ended class a few minutes later and put my head on my desk, feeling near to tears myself. I felt like a failure. Why couldnt I get them engaged? What was I doing wrong?

It was a hard day today, but after talking to my mom who was a teacher for a very long time, I realize that classes like are part of the territory of teaching. Sometimes it just doesnt work and sometimes you just have a bad day. I am really going to try to change my teaching style up to get them more interested. I have some ideas for Monday, so well see how it goes.

My later classes are much easier and my kids are loads more cooperative. Yesterday I had a really successful second class on descriptive words that was both fun and useful. Also my older class is good fun, they are all at very differnet levesl though so it is a challenge to create lesson plans that dont leave the more advanced ones bored or the less advanced confused. We did a lesson on directions that was really fun. We went outside and took turns blindfolding one student while another gave him verbal directions to a tree I chose. I let them blindfold me at the end which was terrifying but hilarious.

Although my host brothers are kind of shy around me ( I get the sense that they are like what the heck do we do with the peppy talkative American girl who just landed in our kitchen), Ive really made an effort to talk to them and its paying off. I think we are going out together tonight.
Every night all the Sulkovci teenagers go and hang out of the school steps (its a village of 700, so this is the cool hang out spot). Ive been going every night and through some effort have made some friends. Also, there is randomly this Canadian family here visiting family and we are buds because they speak English.

Tomorrow I think I am going to Zagreb for the day because its only two hour train and well its the capital of Croatia so why not. I am going by myself I think, so Ill probably just wander around museums all day which should be nice I think. And on Sunday they are taking me to some sort of lake so that should be fun.

I miss you all terribly. I also really miss pizza hahah.

Love you all!

Emma