We've moved!

Meaghan and I have moved out of her mom's house and into the city of Boston. My commute to work is now 15 minutes shorter, and we're starting to take our cool furniture and stuff out of storage. Friends are welcome to email me for our new address.

This is pretty much the last stage of our readjustment from our year in Serbia. Most young couples here have their own place, so moving back to the city is like rejoining society, in a way.

New blog

Hey -

Since I started my new job I've been busy and not much inclined to blogging. We have done some cool stuff - we saw Jon Stewart live, we celebrated our third wedding anniversary with a trip to Vermont, we spent a weekend in New York with my family - but I haven't had the motivation to write about it here. (Sorry.) And of course I've had lots of work stories, but I didn't feel comfortable putting them on the internet.

One thing about my new job, though - I've got like an hour commute each way. This gives me lots of time for reading. And while I've always been a big reader, I realized how sad it is that I eventually forget most of what I read.

Well, no longer. I've started a new blog to keep track of what I'm reading. Mostly I am my own intended audience, but if you're interested in what I'm reading please check it out. It's called All The Things I've Lost.

Enjoy it.

woo-HOO!

I got a job!

As of yesterday, I'm the new full-time ESL teacher at a public high school near Boston. I'm teaching two classes of ESL 1, one class of ESL 3, and two study skills classes, each of which meet daily. The students are all immigrants to the US, from a variety of different countries. (No Yugoslavs though - немам шансе да вежбам мој српски :( )

So far, my impressions are generally positive. (In fact, I'd like to go on record as saying so now, so that I can look back on this in case I change my mind later.) The students seem sweet, my colleagues have been very supportive, and I'm looking forward to really getting started.

American high schools are a strange institution. There's a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork; I'm responsible for filling out a variety of grades, record books, report cards, attendance forms, and such. I've never really had a teaching job where I had to grade my students, so this will change everything in a way.

Despite all that, though, the most difficult thing for me is waking up in the morning. You may know that I am a "night person" by temperament; well, high school teachers are required to arrive at school before 7:30 in the morning. (This must have something to do with the "old days," when Americans were all farmers.) As a result, I have to wake up well before six. I have a feeling that in the days to come, coffee will be my new best friend.

Sweet memories

Meaghan's school made her do a "technology orientation requirement" that involved a bunch of simple tests in computer and internet literacy. The final piece was to write a simple web page in html, including two web links, one photo, and a link to a .pdf version of a 3-slide powerpoint.

The choice of topic was free, so Meaghan decided to post this love letter to Srce, one of our favorite KG hangouts.

Enjoy!

The Montana wedding

Nothing much going on. I'm at yet another temp job, and at this particular moment I have no work to do. It's the perfect opportunity to take care of some old business, and I owe you a story about the wedding I attended in Montana. This was the story so far. Now, here's what I meant by scenery:

This is Flathead Lake viewed from the wedding site. When I took this picture, I was standing on the wooden deck around the lodge building, looking out over the lake at around 9:00 in the morning. The lake is one of the most strikingly beautiful things I've ever seen.

While Serbian wedding ceremonies take place in the city hall and the Orthodox church, officiants in the US are free to conduct weddings pretty much anywhere, and many couples choose outdoor locations. (I myself was married in the Public Garden in Boston.) This trend explains why The Simpsons' Reverend Lovejoy lamented that more people don't get married "inside the church with God, instead of out here in the cheap showiness of nature."

In this case, the choice of location was also one way that the couple adapted the wedding ceremony to reflect themselves and their personality: the groom, A., grew up in nearby Kalispell, Montana. Naturally, he became an avid hiker, skier, and all-around mountain man; in addition to being convenient for his family and beautiful to look at, the Flathead Valley has an important meaning in his life. In a way, I felt that I got to know him better by just being there.

Aside from the setting, an original poem written and read by a friend, and the choice of music - during the ceremony, a string quartet played, among other things, familiar melodies from The Beatles and Radiohead - the wedding was pretty traditional. A. had his best man and three groomsmen in tuxedoes; K., the bride, had her maid of honor and three bridesmaids in matching red dresses; K.'s father walked her down the aisle; they read the traditional vows from the prayer book.

It was the first time I'd been to see friends of mine get married. The last wedding I attended was my own, nearly three years ago, and it was much less traditional. We invited only fifteen people, read silly love poetry, signed a Jewish marriage contract, and were married by a justice of the peace (not clergy) who did not mention God or use the phrase "till death do you part." It was a perfect wedding for Meaghan and me, and I've been very snobby about our decisions since then, assuming that people who had "big" weddings were sacrificing their own best interests for the sake of family pressure and tradition.

Attending A. and K.'s wedding helped me to understand why someone might actually want a big wedding. During the rehearsal dinner, which is a smaller gathering held the night before the wedding, they distributed lists of phrases describing guests who were present, such as "once transported horses across the Atlantic" or "lived on a farm in Taiwan." (Mine was "knows how to dance Argentine tango.") We were instructed to match our fellow guests to the descriptions, just like on the first day of a language class. Of course, his relatives received descriptions of her family, and vice versa.

During this activity (and in between conversations with random North Dakotan relatives) I spoke briefly to A. and K. They were taking in the spectacle of all these people meeting - their parents, cousins, friends from high school and college, everyone they care about. It was like seeing their whole life in one place. What better way to celebrate the symbolic joining of their two lives, than by physically bringing all the important people together in one place?

Overheard at Boston Language Institute

Spanish Teacher: Nice to meet you.
Daniel: Mucho gusto.
ST: Ah, ¡hablas español!
D: Sí, malo znam ...
ST: ¿¿¿???

I'm writing this from "work"

Today's temp assignment is to sit at a desk and answer the phones in an office that shall remain nameless. Today is the Friday before a three-day weekend (Monday being Labor Day in the US), so it's slow. Really slow. I'll get two calls in a row, then sit and surf the web for fifteen minutes. Once every couple of hours I'll screw something up with the phone system, but that has provided all my excitement for the day.

Almost all, that is. I did get one caller who provided a minimum level of excitement. The exchange went something like this:

-----

  - Can I talk to _____?
I check my list of extensions. The caller has asked for a name that's not on my list.
  - Could you spell that for me, please?
  - (Spells the name.)
I check again. Still not there.
  - I'm sorry, I'm not seeing it.
  - What do you mean, not seeing it? Check again. She's worked there since before you were born.
  - (I spell the name back to her)?
  - Yes. _____. This has been her number for the last twelve years. I don't know what the problem is.
  - I don't know what I can do for you. I'm just covering the phones.
  - Well, I don't know either. I mean, if you won't --
  - Let's try this. Hold please.
I push a promising-looking button on the phone that will at least get rid of the call.

-----

I assume I did something right, because I never heard back from this person. But what the hell? Who talks to people that way? Did she honestly think I was twelve years old?

It's an ad, ad world

Apparently some other people are also fed up with the flashiness of marketing everywhere. There's a new TV commercial that takes a distinctly low-flash approach.

Nedostajete mi

As time passes since my months in Serbia, I miss different things. Well, some of the same things, and some different things. For instance:

• Juice is still a big one. I was in the supermarket yesterday and the only reasonably priced juices are like 25% actual juice. The rest is water, corn syrup, dyes, and fillers. To get good juice, you pay something in the $3.50-4.00 range. I had to walk right by the tempting bottles of blueberry and pomegranate and settle for cranberry, as usual.
• I wrote to one Serbian friend about this: recently, I was walking by a restaurant on a beautiful day, and there were no tables outside. Something about this just seemed wrong to me. The next week, Meaghan and I were out to dinner and she was getting nostalgic for Serbia, although it hadn't come up in any way. When she thought about it, she realized that this was because we were sitting outside.
• When Meaghan and I go out with our friends here, there's always a process of planning that happens first. There's a lag time, somewhere between a day and a week, to make sure they're free, we're free, when we're meeting, what we're doing, and so on. In Serbia, when I wanted to go out (at 10 PM, whatever) I would call someone up and we'd go out.

While I'm on the subject, I should mention this: on my current temp assignment, I work for a guy who makes coffee in the office a couple of times a day. Whenever he makes coffee, there's a pause of ten minutes or so before any work gets done. I wouldn't say this is Serbian style - he would need to take at least a half hour, and he doesn't smoke - but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Time wasters

What keeps me occupied when I'm not working or wandering around.

Books

• Epilepsy, David B
• Uncommon Carriers, John McFee
• Iron Council, China Mieville
• A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

Television

• Reruns of The District
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD
• The Daily Show and The Colbert Report
• Red Sox baseball games
• Whatever's on*

* At this point, I should reiterate my belief that the downfall of Western civilization may be linked to our habit of watching "whatever's on."

Video games

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (I know, corruptor of our nation's youth)
• Minesweeper (a sure sign of desperation)

While I am walking around, I listen to music. Out of thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of iPods in Boston, I wouldn't be surprised if mine were the only one to feature Haustor and Deca Loših Muzičara (hvala, Dončiće).

Blogstuff

In case you didn't know about it, Pustolovina: Adventure in Serbian is a very cool expat-in-Belgrade blog, and its writer is so cool that I just had to try this too. Feel free to check the results yourself.

I'm sure I'd get more traffic if I posted more often .. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Work work work

Despite a couple of strong possibilities, I still have no firm teaching job for the fall. To make a little money while filling my days with something better than video games, I've been taking small jobs here and there. I believe some of my Serbian friends know this situation well: the jobs that you have to take while you're waiting for the job that you want.

The main way I'm looking for small jobs is through a temporary employment agency. The first time I worked for them, I went into a central office where I took tests to prove that I'm skilled with Microsoft Office and can type fast. Since then, they've had my name on file, and I call and tell them when I'm available to work. Other companies will call in to ask them for short-term office help - my jobs have ranged from a day to a week, but some can go longer - and when their needs meet my skills and availability, I get a day's work.

I had one such job last Thursday at an office in Boston's Financial District. I spent the morning sorting old newspapers (getting black ink stains on my suit) and the afternoon typing names and telephone numbers into a computer spreadsheet. This sort of work, I realized, is an exercise in humility. When I go into the classroom, I carry a great deal of pride and confidence, and I expect to be given interesting, challenging work. My temp employers, on the other hand, were not looking for me in particular, but for some filing help for Thursday. They have to offer jobs that anyone could do. This makes them easy assignments that carry very little responsibility or interest; mostly I keep quiet and work fast.

Saturday's job was a little different: I went to work at the retirement community run by my father-in-law. I've worked for him in the past, so he knows me better and tends to assign me jobs that require thinking and writing, not just typing and knowing the alphabet. I spent the day writing letters to residents and their families addressing various social issues. I enjoy working on the best language to address these delicate situations: how to tell an 80-year-old to stop complaining about the neighbors? How to inform a child of their parent's progressing dementia?

This week, I have no temp assignments yet, so I may have to continue with my daily video games. In any case, this is the time of year when they hire teachers, so I expect to have a real job soon.

Readjusting

A wedding report is in the works, just as soon as I get my photos in order.

Montana was great and I spent a nice week with my family afterward, but since then I've been pretty bored. To make matters worse (for me), Meaghan started work this week, leaving me with very little to do while I'm waiting for some resolution on the six or seven jobs I've applied for. Since she spent nine months in Serbia with no particular job, Meaghan sympathizes with me, but doesn't exactly feel sorry, if you know what I mean.

To fill my time, I've taken to walking around the city. Yesterday I spent about two hours walking around Boston (in blistering heat), rode the train back to Quincy, and then walked around Quincy for an hour, before returning home to watch television for a while.

Swimming through the humid summer fug made me thirsty, and being thirsty in the city really made me miss Serbia. You see, in Boston there is nowhere you can just sit down and order a drink. Belgrade has a great cafe culture and even a provincial town like Kragujevac has dozens of sidewalk cafes where you can stop for coffee, juice, lemonade, water, or whatever you want. Boston, on the other hand, has cheap restaurants and expensive restaurants. It's possible, but unusual, to sit down in a restaurant and order a drink, unless you're planning on eating. Remember the way I used to fantasize about ethnic restaurants? Well, on yesterday's walk, dying of thirst, I walked past a Mexican restaurant, Thai restaurant, sushi bar, Middle Eastern grill, and two or three American grills, all of which I found totally uninteresting.

Eventually I found a convenience store, something like a miniature supermarket that sells newspapers, snacks, cigarettes, and prefabricated sandwiches. In my wildest dreams, I was hoping for a real lemonade, containing only water, sugar, and lemon juice. Any drink made primarily out of fruit juice would have been acceptable. Sadly, this convenience store was poorly stocked and offered mostly Coca-Cola and such.

I continued down the street to the next convenience store, which had a wider selection. When I looked closer, though, it turned out to be a wide selection of crap. First came the soda drinks, which ranged from the familiar Coke, Pepsi, and 7-Up to the exotic chemical concoctions of caffeine-enhanced Sierra Mist and - I am not making this up - strawberries and cream flavored Diet Pepsi. Next came the masterpieces of chemical engineering known as energy drinks: Red Bull and its various clones. Then, "upscale" drinks like iced white tea, which include massive portions of corn syrup along with the snob appeal, making them so sweet as to be almost undrinkable. There was a selection of bottled water, which I avoided because I wanted something with electrolytes and flavor, and also because earlier in the week I bought something I thought was lemon water until it turned out to be essentially diet Sprite.

At the end of this marketing parade came a selection of drinks claiming to be juice. I chose one called "Dole 100% Juice Ruby Red Grapefruit," took it to the register, purchased it, and consumed all 15.4 ounces (45.5 cl) in two gulps. It tasted fruity enough, but when I looked at the label, I saw that despite its name, it contained a selection of artificial sugars and stabilizers, and more grape juice than grapefruit.

I'm frustrated with what I see as an American tendency to complicate everything for marketing purposes. The drinks aisle includes more chemistry than juice, and more gimmicks than anything, so companies like Coke and Pepsi can deny that they're producing the same thing. The snack aisle is even worse: one flavor of Doritos corn chips after another, each with aggressively garish packaging featuring at least one exclamation point. The overwhelming chemical-spice taste of the chips completes the sensory overload.

Probably being out of work leaves me with too much time to think about these things. Just the same, I'm reminded of a friend from Novi Sad who spent a year here in the U.S., and how frustrated she was with the scarcity of opportunities when she got home. She wasn't only talking about consumer choices - believe me, I'm grateful that I had six or seven relatively interesting job opportunities to apply for - but consumer choices were definitely part of it. In response, I'd point out that more choice isn't necessarily a good thing, and that the most satisfying thing is the availability of the one choice you really want.

I'll take a glass of cherry juice, please.

Who cares about sports:

There's an interesting thread on Crooked Timber about soccer and nationalism. Of course, it's often observed that the World Cup is a more civilized alternative to total war, but I do get tired of some writers drawing unwarranted parallels between countries and their soccer teams.

One commenter on Crooked Timber notes:

On a stop-over at Aukland airport I was amused to find the tourist shops selling t-shirts that read, “I support New Zealand and anyone who is playing Australia.”

I wonder if there's a geopolitical explanation for this.

Traveling

The Native Speaker comes to you today from the Broadway Inn motel in Missoula, Montana. I wish I could tell you a typical July 4th celebration story, but I spent all of yesterday on the road.

Here's where I was yesterday morning at 5:15 -

outside 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. That building on the left was completed since last time I was in Philly, and it makes an interesting architectural contrast with the old station building - something like Copley Square in Boston.

Montana has beautiful natural scenery. Yesterday I drove here from Spokane, WA, through the mountains and past Lake Coeur D'Alene in Idaho. The view is very much like Brokeback Mountain - I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures for you while I was driving. (Watch this space in the next few days.) The local radio stations, on the other hand, are not so great. Your choices are Christian devotional, country, or hardcore metal. (One friend who is from here told me about a radio station that plays hardcore metal and Rush Limbaugh.)

While I missed the Independence Day barbecues, parties, and even the stand-up comic in the hotel bar, I did get to see some fireworks. All the small towns in the area have their own fireworks display, and you can see them all going off at once, up and down the valley. I just pulled my car over on the side of the highway to watch. You can see five or six flashes of colored light very small and close to the horizon, and the mountains looming in the background. I guess everything is bigger out here.

On a walk around Boston

Here are a couple of things that caught my attention:

This is Beacon Street in Brookline. Notice that there are separate areas reserved for walking, parking, and driving. With no cars parking on the sidewalk, Serbian-style, there is plenty of room to stroll. To provide this amount of space to pedestrians in a city like Kragujevac or Belgrade, the city authorities need to install metal posts along the curb.

Notice also the meter next to each parking space. You put coins into a slot, and a little clock tells how much time you've paid for. In Kragujevac, on the other hand, an attendant in a day-glo vest collects parking fees and tickets violators. In a post-socialist country like Serbia, the first solution to a problem is to create a government job; in the US, we prefer to invent a machine. Of course, someone has to read the meters, but the process as a whole is less labor-intensive.

I spotted this cement mixer on the campus of Simmons College. I had never before seen a piece of construction equipment painted with the lyrics to a patriotic song. If you're not familiar with the song, here's the whole text.

Confusion in any language

Since the incident I wrote about earlier in which I wanted to speak Serbian to a restaurant seating hostess, the Serbian language has continued to try to assert itself in my everyday speech.

With no internet at home, I've been frequenting a local cafe with free wireless access for my laptop (free plug: Java Jo's in East Milton Square). Last time I was here, when I got up to use the bathroom and the barista looked my way, I was a split-second from asking, "Mogu u WC?" Another time, someone bumped into me and apologized, and I replied, "Nothing." (I'm not even sure if that's good Serbian; is ništa an appropriate response to izvini?) And all this is nothing next to the effect Serbian has had on my other foreign languages, such as my frustrating tendency, when speaking Italian, to say da instead of sì.

Worst of all, though, my English seems to have acquired the feature of Serbian English (srpsko-engleski?) that I found most frustrating on my arrival in Serbia: the use of the phrase "I know." When Serbs say "I know" (znam) it can mean something like "I understand, I follow what you're saying, I'm familiar with that." To an American (at least to me), the meaning is more like "You didn't need to describe that in such detail, I was already familiar with it, you're wasting my time." To make matters worse, Serbs tend to repeat this sort of brief utterance twice, so "Yes, that's acceptable" becomes može, može; "I will do that" is hoću, hoću; and "Yes, I understand" is znam, znam. In Serbian English, this gets retranslated as "I know, I know," which to an American is the expression of someone who's just barely restraining their impatience with your intolerable denseness.

Once I worked out the hidden meaning of "I know, I know," I felt an immediate sense of reassurance: the Serbs don't all think I'm a moron after all! My second response was amusement at this sociolinguistic glitch, and "znam, znam" became something of a humorous catchphrase between Meaghan and me. But then, like the kid who makes one funny face too many, my language began to stick that way. It got to the point where Meaghan had to give me a stern talking-to. You know you've crossed over to the dark side when what used to frustrate you in others becomes a bad habit of your own.

Now I'm monitoring myself carefully, trying to go cold turkey on "I know" until I can use the phrase as a native speaker would(!). If you're talking to me and get the impression I'm frustrated with you, now you know why.

If I really am frustrated with you, I'll try to be extra clear about it.

Who knew?

For really intense moments of nostalgia ...

It turns out you can buy kajmak online.

ps. Some of you might not know what kajmak is. I heard from many people that it's only available in Serbia, and from one person that it's only available in Serbia and Iran, but Wikipedia says different.

Serbian habits (možeš da veruješ??)

Here are some things I've caught myself doing recently, showing the clear influence of my time in Serbia:

• As many of you know, ethnic foods are one of the things we missed the most during our stay in Serbia. Naturally, when my mother-in-law, Evelyn, picked us up at the airport (in her Pontiac Bonneville, which has a passenger area big enough to fit a Fića inside), she drove us straight to a Mexican restaurant. The seating hostess came out to greet us, and I started formulating Serbian sentences in my head. I had a moment of shock when she said, "Hi."
• I got a photocopy made at a local copy shop. Copies are something like ten cents each, so my total bill was about thirty cents. I took my receipt with me to throw it away later, because in Serbia, you have to take your receipt for everything so the tax authorities can audit official receipts. I guess all those months of official signs reminding me to УЗМИТЕ РАЧУН!!! got into my subconscious.
• The selection of items available in stores surprises me. I was in a video rental club, which like most stores here has immensely high ceilings and shelves crammed with merchandise. (Students from my second-year classes will remember the Best Buy photos.) Browsing the new releases, 2-for-$30 DVDs, and 3-for-$15 pre-viewed VHS tapes, I wondered how many of these films were available on DivX.
• Making breakfast for Meaghan and Evelyn this morning, I realized that the eggs here have thinner shells and the bacon has more fat. Also, as I expected, the juice is clearly inferior. We've been drinking Cranberry-Grape, which has a rather generic fruity-sugary taste, and missing our cherry nectar. At least we have our domaća šljivovica (homemade plum brandy) for moments of nostalgia.

Mission statement

I started writing this blog to tell people in the US about my adventures in Serbia. As I wrote, it became apparent that other people were interested, particularly Serbs who wanted to know about my foreigner's view of their country. As of today, I no longer live in Serbia. At 20:00 EST last night, my plane landed at Logan International Airport in Boston. I'm looking for a job teaching English, preferably in a university setting, and Meaghan starts graduate school in September. With my new circumstances in life, my blog requires a new purpose. So here's the focus for The Native Speaker v2.0:

1. Stories from Serbia that I didn't have time to write when I was there;
2. Stories of my readjustment to American life, giving my insider/outsider view and reverse culture shock adventures;
3. Answering questions you may have about life in the US.

Point three, inspired by Belgrade Blog, seems like a natural way to respond to all the questions my Serbian friends, students, and acquaintances asked about the US. Now that I'm back here, I can answer your questions as an on-the-spot reporter. I'm not sure if this'll work out; it depends on you! Send me interesting questions and I'll do my best.