After-Christmas Joyfulness

The initial goal was to visit more schools in the Litoměřice area, however I only had three days of the new term left before my flight back to uni. So the original plans had to be amended. To be honest, the lack of time on my side wasn’t by far the only reason for not seeing more pupils: in the majority of cases, it was the directors of the schools who refused to have this presentation, probably fearing that OG might take all of their students… Well, I wish it had such a capacity to do so :). Despite these organizational issues I managed to make a friendly talk about studying in a boarding school, which in many aspects resembles the famous Hogwarts School. It was attended by roughly fifty pupils of the primary school in Terezín, where I also studied at certain point in my life. The students seemed to like the invitation for trying the sample examinations, which might guarantee them the entry into the school. At least half of the load raised their hand agreeing that they are going to try to apply, which I found very satisfactory, as I believe that every young person deserves good quality education (especially the children from such deprived areas as Terezín, where there is the concentration camp from World War II). I hope to have more chances to visit some other schools during my spring break, so that I can spread the word about Open Gate and especially about the support of The Kellner Family Foundation among even more students.

If it wasn’t for the ever present decorations back at Czech Republic, I would not have even noticed it was Christmas. The weather wasn’t really wintery this year. Apart from missing sledging from the Kalich mountain to my door, I quite appreciated that I could have spent a lot of time outside with my dog without freezing. And when I returned to Scotland, the situation wasn’t much different - except for the strong, and for Edinburgh so very typical wind, the weather reminded me of spring more than winter. During the first weekend, right before the beginning of the second term, I and my flatmates decided to go to the mountains and see Edinburgh from above. We were amazed by the beautiful views. To make the hike more entertaining, we exchanged different regional variations of proverbs and sayings. Although we all speak English, everyday communication still brings joy to us, as we make fun of each other’s vernacular (or mispronunciation in my case :D). The Aussie Maria calls our dinners “din dins”, umbrellas simply “brellies” and gifts “prezzies”. On the other side, the Scottish Eilidth is happy only when she is being referred to as “Doctor Ducker’s Daughter”, which I am sure would represent a smaller tongue breaker to most Czech people.

Traditionally, the New Year’s resolutions are part of the after-Christmas joyfulness, and so I have made a couple of them too. One of them was not to fall ill during this semester. I thought is was rather easy to keep warm in this spring weather, which was perhaps the fatal underestimation of the risks, and so I got tonsillitis just after the first week of school. Now I am trying to cure it here in my room and, while nostalgically missing the loving care of Mrs Goldmanová. Although there are no such professional nurses in our medical centre here, I still received some advice and antibiotics. At least I have had a direct experience of the hugely debated NHS (National Health System), which seems, contradictory to all the critiques, to run very smoothly. I would even say it appears to be quite more helpful and accessible than our Czech system, but maybe my experience of the uni medical centre isn’t representative for all the other public institutions. My biggest hope now is that I don’t miss too many projects in school while being ill, because it would be very hard to get all the work, which is mostly done in teams, done just by myself...