Life Lessons

Today was our last day in Prague.  We found ourselves wandering back through the areas that had become familiar and taking in the sights and sounds one last time. 

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I find myself repeating certain lessons in my classes that are the exact lessons I need to learn myself.  Often when a general education student begins a ballet or modern technique class they feel as if they just landed on Mars.  The protocol and rules are all foreign.  At the end of the semester students often respond by telling me they were very afraid to take a dance class and in the end they were surprised by how much they enjoyed it.  I always tell them to remember this and apply it to other circumstances in their lives.  I encourage them not to be afraid of new situations because, just like taking a dance class, new and uncomfortable situations can transition into enjoyable and rewarding experiences.

I think you know where this is going.  Josh and are just getting comfortable in Prague, and I am feeling my anxiety rising about the next stages of our journey.  I have most of our travels sketched out and reservations for places to stay in most of the locations.  Even though we are not going there for almost three weeks, for some reason Rome is terrifying me.  I need to remind myself that the first 36 hours in Prague were very unsettling but we fairly quickly figured out the lay of the land and established a rhythm for our time here.

more puppets

absinthe

wrinkles

Which brings me to another oft-repeated lesson.  A number of years ago author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams spoke on campus.  I have been a fan of hers ever since I lived in Salt Lake City in the mid 80’s and we traveled in similar left wing for Utah circles.  She talked about a letter she received from an elderly mentor of hers when she graduated from college.  The handwritten letter said, “Don’t worry about what you will do next.  If you take one step with all the knowledge you have, there is usually just enough light shining to show you the next step.”  (Right now all of my current or former students reading this are rolling their eyes and thinking “Here she goes again with the light on the path story.”) By now you realize I am, once again, giving myself a pep talk. 

We do have enough light on the path for the next steps.  We are getting pretty good at negotiating new airports and train stations, converting currencies, and, perhaps our most valuable skill, picking out people in a crowd who are most likely to speak English.

In Sweden many of the faces in the crowd reminded me of Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Olaf College, Bethlehem and Christiana Lutheran churches – my Scandinavian-Lutheran Motherland.

The faces in Prague are more like those from Northeast (“Nordest”) Minneapolis – we have clearly crossed over to the Fatherland.  From Prague we are heading into Eastern Slovakia.  We will be staying in Kosice, the second largest city in Slovakia.  My paternal grandparents left northeast Slovakia in the 1890”s.  Of course, it wasn’t Slovakia then – it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Ethnically they were Rusyn and lived in two small adjacent villages in the Carpathian Mountains.  Right now the light is shining on the path in the direction of those two little villages, and with the same positive self-help talk as the little train that kept saying “I think I can, I think I can,” that is where we are headed next.