What do I throw away??

So here they recycle everything. I swear half of my day is spent trying to figure out what container I need to put the item I'm throwing away into. They have the main trash can (under the sink like true Hollanders), but then keep a container next to the sink for small items to be sorted appropriately later, and then multiple bags in the laundry room for plastics, paper, paper containers, etc. Mostly I just hold up the item I'm hoping to dispose of and find a similar one in one of the bags and then put it there. I know I often throw away things that should be sorted somewhere, but really?? I don't have time for all of that thinking! haha. Then every so often we load up the back of the car with all of the various bags and take them to one of the trash places in Klonovice. (picture to come) Then each bag has a seperate dumpster that it goes in. What a process just to take the trash out! There is a small dumpster of sorts outside the house (like a typical large family garbage that would be picked up weekly) where we throw the under the sink trash, which is supposed to be only for diapers, but it gets picked up from the house "occasionally" according to Henk. After living in this house about 4 years, they still haven't figured out any schedule to when it's taken away, so they just plan on it NOT being picked up. Yay Czech garbage systems.

I located the US embassy today. Holy security! I'm pretty good at looking at a map before I go somewhere and then navigating on my own to find it once I'm in the city. The embassy made this especially easy by the enormous US flag that could be seen from a block and 1/2 away. The whole street was lined with police and nobody can drive within a block of the embassy before being stopped by them and questioned I guess. I was headed there in attempts to get an "official" copy (because MY official copy isn't good enough according to Czech standards) of my criminal background history. The police outside of the door asked what I needed, then needed me to repeat myself 3 times because their English was not so good, and then after all that told me to return Monday. Too bad I have a job on Mondays! Ah well, thanks for nothing US embassy. If they would answer their phone at least once in a 3 week period I wouldn't have to go knocking on their door.

So it turns out that Alex isn't the appropriate age for the bilingual school he was hoping to get into after all that, so he didn't have to take any entrance exam. He'll (rather Ivana and Henk) now have to choose between a prive school like Sunny Canadian where he currently attends, or go to the public school here in Klanovice. Henk and Ivana aren't crazy about a 40 minute one-way drive to school for another year, but he has a really good friend there right now, so if the friend returns to Sunny Canadian, then Alex probably will as well. If not, he'll just head down the road to the Klanovice pre-school. Lucky for me Henk and Ivana have made many comments about him making great strides in his English, so they're more worried about the social aspect and him being happy over the worry about him being immersed in an English classroom. Registration time was this week, so I think for now he's enrolled both places and then they'll simply pull him out of one school once they make their final decision.

Now to appease Justin, I will try to describe the things he wants to hear about. Hey, I'm a lady who aims to please :) I know a few random laws! It's illegal to not put winterized tires on your car between November and April. Sometimes the cops pull you over to check, and if you don't have the appropriate tires on you're fined a hefty fee. It's also illegal to not have health insurance. All employers must, by law, provide it to every employee, and if you're unemployed then you're lawfully required to pay to insure yourself. Also, if you are married in the Czech Republic you are required as a woman to take on the Czech tradition of adding the female ending to your last name, which is OVA. So here I'm technically Heinenova, and if I would live here permanantly I would legally need to change my name. Ivana got out of changing hers to Goosenova simply because her mother is an official translator, so they hired her to translate their marriage licence and tricked the system to allow her to simply be Ivana Goosen (pronounced HOson). the OVA makes the name mean "belongs to ____" and Ivana didn't want to "legally belong to someone, like a possession or something"

Another note about the language before I complete my section of answering Justin's demands. Ivana is almost equally as worried about Alex's Czech as his English, because he cannot speak it properly. Czech has male and female forms, like many languages, except the male and female form is used depending on who you're addressing. Instead of certain items being male or female, you use the male form when talking with a male and the female form when talking with a female. Since Ivana speaks Czech to the boys and Henk, who doesn't speak Czech, speaks Dutch to them, the only form of Czech that Alex hears regulary is the male form. Because of this, he usually (so Ivana tells me, it's not like I know this from hearing it) speaks to Ivana in the male form as well since he hasn't learned the female form. She's currently in the process of trying to explain the difference between male and female to him, and we were all delighted when last night during dinner he suddenly approached the table to blurt out (in Czech) "daddy is a boy, mommy is a girl, maxicu is a boy, becca is a girl, and I'm a boy!! over and over.

Back to you, Justin. The streets and sidewalks are all cobblestone. I should take a picture of that as well. Boy won't my blog be pretty when I get my computer and add pictures!! The buildings are made of cement mainly, and ironically enough, the city it reminds me of most is Montevideo. It's still a city, but a small city, and it has the same general feel, minus the obvious cultural social customs and language. At crosswalks people generally just go as they please as long as the street is mainly clear of cars coming. Cars don't aim for you and try to hit you like they do in Latin America, which is a huge plus. I guess they used to, but after the fall of communism the law was changed so pedestrians do have the right of way, and most people acknowledge that. Henk has informed me that if the bus is crowded I should not expect any male to give up his seat for me, however. That's one thing that hasn't changed since communist times. Women are still on the same level as anyone else, and men see no reason why they should give up seats, open doors, or do anything else for a woman. They also have a rather lacking view on customer service. If asked to provide service in a store, they may even looked shocked like "I have to do something for you!?" Today when I went to buy my ticket for the train, the lady working was out back socializing with some friends. I and several others waited for quite some time before she walked over to her desk to assist us, and even then she looked really irritated about it. She was probably even more irritated when I didn't speak Czech and did my usual act of buying the right ticket simply by showing an old one and motioning that I would like another just like that one. I can say please, thank you, yes and no, but other than that the vocab I've picked up won't help me at the train station. Unless she decides to start selling beer or wants to lift a glass and say "cheers!" with me. Then maybe we could talk more.