Holiday Season

Oddly enough, many Americans do not seem to realize that Thanksgiving is only celebrated in North America. It's one of our biggest holidays and is celebrated by nearly everyone in the country due to its cultural versus religious origins. Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving annually on the fourth Thursday in November since 1863. On the other hand, Canadians have only been celebrating it annually since 1957, and their holiday is on the second Monday of October. Nevertheless, the main idea is to be thankful for all you have and celebrate with family and friends.

Since it's not celebrated in the Czech Republic, the Fulbright Commission gave us a celebration in Prague the day after Thanksgiving. First, the ETAs got together for a seminar on tactics for teaching EFL/ESL classes. I must say it was quite useful and we had fun taking on the roles of students. We learned various strategies for classroom management and differentiated instruction that focused on group work. 

In the activity below, each person in each group had to draw something on a poster board that summarized one key aspect of all we learned at the seminar. Then, we hung the poster boards around the room and the other groups asked questions about the drawings using post-it notes. Afterward, one person from each group presented their poster board and answered the questions for everyone else. 

My Group's Poster!

Following the seminar, all of the Fulbright grantees met up with us at the U.S. Embassy to discuss our achievements and some issues we were having in adapting to our Czech lifestyles. Most of it was quite interesting and entertaining.

Enjoying Hot Drinks and Snacks

Serious Conversations 

Storytelling

When all the business was finished, we took the funicular to the middle of Petrin Hill, where we had a lovely dinner at a restaurant overlooking Prague. The Fulbright Commission funded the whole thing. We basically took over the entire restaurant.

Speeches

Wining and Dining

It wasn't a traditional Thanksgiving, but the Czech version was yummy, too. As an appetizer we had squash soup. I thought that was the best part of the dinner and it was quite excellent. The main course consisted of a turkey roll with stuffing inside, potato pancakes, and a version of cornbread with ham and stuffing inside. For dessert, there was cream with cherries. It was a lovely setting with piano entertainment. The pianist was fantastic and played all different eras! 

We all stayed overnight in Prague, and the next day a bunch of the girls went to the mall to go shopping. In all honesty, we hadn't really been shopping since we arrived. Now that it was getting colder outside, we needed to add a few warm items to our wardrobes. The mall had a lovely decorated Christmas tree in the center. By the way, you won't find a long line of parents and children waiting to take pictures with Santa Claus in this country; he does not exist here.

Oh, you know, just some chipmunks making a snowman and lounging in the snow.

Then, we headed to Old Town Square to see the Christmas tree and the Advent/Christmas Markets. 

Barbara and I

Old Town Square

There were tons of stalls selling various trinkets, Christmas decorations, souvenirs, hot wine (delicious!), hot ciders, and fair food. Trdelnik is a popular sweet here in the Czech Republic. The dough is in a cylinder shape with cinnamon and other spices on top. You either love it or hate it.

Advent/Christmas Market

At 5PM, there was the official tree lighting. They're really into putting clocks on their trees here. Also, there were some choirs performing Christmas carols, too! It was funny because I knew the melodies/instrumental parts to songs, but they sang the lyrics in Czech!

Christmas Tree

Choir

Me, Twee, Barbara

After the tree lighting, we went to Guy's flat to celebrate Hanukkah. First, he said some prayers in Hebrew and lit the candles on the Menorah. This was the first time I ever attended a Hanukkah celebration, so I found it pretty fascinating. Afterward, he made delicious latkes and kugel. A friend brought some corned beef and we had salad, too. It seemed like every time the food disappeared from the table, it would fill back up again by magic. There were Czechs, Americans, and Russians at the party. We talked and drank wine all night. Eventually, we started to get hungry again, so we had some jelly doughnuts for dessert. Someone brought chocolate Euro coins and dreidels as well. This was the first time I fully understood the dreidel song and participated in the fun. We played for a long time, then we gave up and decided to just eat all the chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from the Hanukkah celebration. Sometimes, I'm too busy having fun and living in the moment to document some of my experiences, which I find is often more important!