The Kids (in Montenegro) Are Alright (mostly)

One of the things kids have asked me here is how I find the people and the students - and how they compare to Americans.  In general, I find worldwide that people are people and kids are kids (ooh, deep!). You find good people, assholes, lazy people, crazy people, everywhere--although, in general, kids seem more similar around the world than adults.

Take the twins I live with. At neatly 11 years old, Dmitri & Sofia are much like American kids: sometimes bratty and whiny, sometimes silly, often bemoaning the restrictions kids face and eager to grow up (at which point they'll wish they were kids again), etc. A week or so ago, Sofia got in trouble for being "unfair" to Dmitri (not sure of the specifics) and was grounded for a week from the downstairs playroom and from playing on her phone.

Apparently Dmitri wasn't satsifed with this punishment as Sofia called her dad at work a few days later to complain that Dmitri was "torturing" her. Dad asks her to find Dmitri and put him on the phone. When he gets on the phone, Dad asks how he's doing. Dmitri says fine. Dad asks, "So what are you doing?" Dmitri: "Torturing Sofia."  lol

In my 8th grade classes a couple months ago, I was teaching conditionals and doing a chain story on the board (e.g., start with a sentence like, "If I go to Egypt, I will see the Sphinx," and then the next person adds, "If I see the Sphinx, I will also see other toursits," and the next, "If I see other tourists" and so on). The sentence I started with for each of the three 8th grade classes was: "If the weather is nice tomorrow," All 3 classes started off with something pleasant/fun: "I will go to the park," "I will ride my bike," "I will play football with my friends." But after a couple of sentences - in every class - the situation turned dark and devoled into them ending up at the doctor's office (getting sick from too much ice cream) or the hospital (severe sun burn or broken leg). When I asked my counterpart about it after the 3rd class, she kind of laughed and said, "Yes, the children here are generally very pessimistic like the rest of us."  Score one for American optimism - a trait frequently remarked on by the locals.

There's the occasional fun English language confusion, of course. I was doing a Jeopary review game with the 9th graders and one question was to use 3 adjectives to describe your teacher. One decent/not great student chirped up with "Expensive!"  A 7th grader, when asked to list 3 well-paid jobs started with "Teacher!" which caused us to take a break while my counterpart and I laughed and laughed and laughed!  

I already mentioned in a Facebook post the 8th grader who snatched a neighbor's car and took it for a joyride before crashing and dying. This goes to show that 15-year-old boys around the world can be crazy, but it was still jarring. The kid was often absent, the only kid in school that smokes, etc. - so it also shows there's bad parents everywhere.

Finally, they are definitely plugged into American culture - probably our "biggest" export at the end of the day. But it's strange the things they know and don't. In my Creative Writing Club, they had an assignment to do a shopping list for a famous person - real or fictional. A 7th grade girl chose Avril Lavigne, but when she shared in class, it turned out I was the only one who knew who that was.  A 9th grader chose Bo Jack (for real!) and I was surprised to find about half the class, maybe a shade more, knew who THAT was.  Finally, an 11th grade girl picked Patrick Bateman (!) - and they ALL knew who that was. I found that disconcerting. Now I'll let you old folks Google "Bo Jack"

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.

Montenegrin Language/Sayings

As most of you know, I suck at languages. Montenegrin is now the TENTH language I've attempted to learn (in addition to English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, French, Russian, Kazakh, Sesotho, and Hawaiian), and outside of Spanish and Russian, I can barely say anything beyond Hello, How are you, My name is, etc.  I'm doing a LITTLE better than my first go round with Peace Corps in Kazakhstan as the language classes now have 2 teachers and I really made more of an effort.  But I still won't get beyond low-intermediate.

It doesn't help that the language is often listed as one of the 10 most difficult to learn. And when I say this, I say that Serbian is often listed as one of the 10 most difficult.  See earlier post re: Montenegro/Serbia, and also note that the joke here is that when we return to the states, we can tell folks we now know Montenegrin, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, as they are all very similar - and of course no American would know the difference  

On the one hand, it is relatively easy to read as you generally pronounce every letter in a word - much like Hawaiian. And, that is, if you are reading it in the latin alphabet and not the Cyrillic. The problem is, the language is VERY consonant heavy, so you have words like this gem: Srpskohrvatshi which means Serbo-Croatian. Naturally.

The locals here are uniformly shocked when I tell them Americans aren't forced in school to learn a language and that very very few speak even a second, let alone 3 or more. Montenegrin schoolchildren are required to learn English as a second language and then MUST choose a third - usually Russian, Italian, German, or French. 

During training, I actually was watching reruns of "Teen Wolf" with Montenegrin subtitles, and that helped a bit.  And when the host fams here is at their weekend house, I'll watch the occaional American flick on one of their cable channels with local subtitles.  But I just can't turn that corner.  Sigh.

I HAVE learned a couple of "fun" local phrases they have here, tho - of course put downs. One of their faves is "You're zero of a man." Can't get much worse than that! lol

But my very favorite is this one: "You goat of a goat's goat!"  Now THAT is one I hope to remember to use from now on!  :)  

 Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.

A Surprise Appearance at my First Extra-Curricular Club!

So my very first day at school here in Danilovgrad, I was introducing myself to one of the 8th grade classes. In between all the usual questions I get, like "Why are all Americans fat?" and "Ronaldo or Messi?" a boy stood up and asked if I supported the LGBT community. At least he didn't flat out ask if I was gay, so I was able to play Melanie Hamilton and said, "Of course, I do; they're people, too." He then responded about how the bible said they were all going to hell and wanted to continue before another student interrupted him to ask if I had yet tried burek.

After class, he tried to engage with me again about it, mostly talking about religion, and I argued with him for a little while - mostly along the lines of how he "knew" his particular religion was the correct one and did he think all Muslims, Buddhists, etc. were also going to hell? To which he replied, "Of course." and tried to continue proselytizing until some of the girls in the class shut him down and shooed him away so they could ask me if Americans really and truly can't find their own country on a map. After that exchange, this boy pretty much disengaged with me. I mean, he still was in class and participated, but he never approached me again, never tried to chat me up like virtually every other kid in my classes, etc.

Fast forward a couple of months to this past Friday. I had my first extra-curricular club meet-up: a Creative Writing Club. There were 10 students - all girls except for......you guessed it, little Mr. Religious Zealot/Homophobe. What's strange is that he came not even knowing it was a Creative Writing Club, he just heard that David was doing an extra-curricular club and he showed up.  

It gets better. For this first class, I printed out the lyrics to about 6-7 songs to have an easy intro class discussing how songs are basically poetry and their first assignment would be to try and write one. I had a good mix of stuff from Country to Pop to Alt-Rock to Rap, from Dolly Parton to Jack Kays to Taylor Swift to Macklemore.  The Macklemore song I picked was "Same Love." If you dont know it, click HERE to listen/watch the video so you have the context.

I picked this song, because: a) it was one of the few rap songs I could find not littered with swear words, and b) for the "irony" of a rapper doing a pro-gay message and how you could use writing to promote a cause.  Again, I did not expect this boy to come to the class.  Of course, he immediately zoomed in on the Macklemore song, and the opening line that says, "When I was in third grade I thought I was gay," and scoffed. "I could write something better than this!" And so of course I told him to try and do just that. He also had some unflattering things to say about Taylor Swift. lol

Will he show up again this Friday? I genuinely do not know and wouldn't put money on it either way.

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.