Ahoj!

Ahoj is an informal greeting, like "hi." I have learned that it is inappropriate to use it with strangers, and just to be safe I wait for the other person to say it before I say it back. It is sort of a sweet gesture when someone does use ahoj with me. I feel like I have made a friend. Perhaps I am reading too much into it...

The best part about ahoj, though, is that you pronounce it ahoy. Like a pirate. Ahoy, matey! So it is like everyone walks around playing pirate all day. Grandparents, teens, kids--they are all in on the game.

Ahoj adds a touch of whimsy to my days.

Besides my trip to Plzen on Monday this week has been fairly quiet. I went to two yoga classes--love the teacher, the English, the yoga--but otherwise I have been in the village. I tried the Cukrarna, (inexplicably pronounced sukrana; I am never going to learn this language), the cafe and bakery in the village. Nice coffee and loads of baked goods. I had a chocolate covered, Nutella filled doughnut. I didn't really want it, but it was the closest item to the counter and thus the easiest thing to point to. Quite rich but tasty.

The boys: The baby no longer screams in anguish when he sees me, so that is positive. He almost seems to like me now. And the four-year-old and I had a breakthrough of sorts. Up until now he has not been very interested in English. His seven-year-old brother is willing to repeat things and use the English words he knows. But the four-year-old had refused to play along with me. He did learn "push" since we often go out to the swing and I say "push" every time I push him. And he thinks "okay" is a very funny word, so he says that at random times. But the other night we were looking at the family's favorite outdoor clothing and equipment company catalog, and Lukas started pointing at one of the pictures and saying one word over and over. He was pointing at a red jacket, so I said "red" and Honzik said "red" in Czech. Lukas said "red red red red red" in English. This went on for a while, Lukas pointing at red things in the catalog (tents, water bottles, backpacks, hats) and announcing "red." I would point and say "This is" and he would finish the phrase with "red." Then we moved on to yellow and green and black, and Lukas started pointing and saying "This is yellow" or whatever color it was. I was so excited! I felt a little like Annie Sullivan when Helen Keller got "water." That's quite a stretch, I know...

Today he fixated on "thank you" and "you're welcome" and said them over and over and over. But hey, repetition is how you learn, right?

I have played soccer with Honzik several times this week. It makes me miss the sport! I have had several dreams about soccer recently, and I have been thinking about certain games and moments, like when Sally slammed into an opponent, literally knocking her off the field and onto the track, because the girl had taken me down in a dirty tackle. Or when we were losing in the state finals to our rivals with only a minute left so I told a teammate to just start "hurting them." I was very angry.

All the phrases have come back--"land on your striking foot," "laces!" "follow through" etc., and the movements are back, too. It is funny--I haven't played soccer in four years but it still feels natural. Honzik thinks it is amazing and really funny when I juggle or do one of those fancy shmancy step-overs that no one ever actually uses in a game. I have tried to do drills that I remember with him, like toss volleys, but he is not very interested. He would much rather swing at the ball with everything he has, who cares where it goes! He prefers to use a bouncy ball, like the kind that are in grocery stores in the big cages, instead of an actual soccer ball. He can kick the soft bouncy ball much further.

So that is nice having soccer in common with him. Though it is a little bittersweet--odd to do something for years and years and years and then stop, only to pick it back up again when you are a nanny in Europe. It feels like college never happened and I am waiting to start pre-season training for my senior year of high school again. Of course, the soccer reminiscences are not helping me to stop missing home.

And here ends the soccer tangent. Good thing they don't play field hockey or this post would be even longer and more random.

Ahoj!

(Ahoj is like the Italian ciao in that it can be used for hello and goodbye. This is confusing for the boys. They have hello down, but they also say hello when they mean bye. I am working on distinguishing between the two but it is tricky since they are following the ahoj pattern. It is a shock to my brain to have someone go out the door, waving goodbye as they say hello!)