Days 5 and 6

An American man is 'Americhan'
An American woman is 'Americhanka'
If you have more than one American woman, you have 'Americhanky'
(It isn't actually a ch, it is a c with an accent over it that sounds like 'ch' in English)
The 'a' at the end has an uh sound. 
So... in Czech, American women are chunky!

For mature audiences only - the phrase for "is that a fact" in Czech is a word the Czechs have learned not to use around Americans, but I'll let you do your own research as to why.

Oh the challenges of a new language!  I hate to think of what we've done to their language.

Today we went into the butcher shop only to realize we didn't have our Czech phrase book with us, and without any hope of understanding the difference between cow and chicken and whatever else, we decided to pass.  We did much better buying toys and lightbulbs.

The other morning Daniel and I were asked to give a presentation about Virginia at the local gymnasium (high school) to some of the older students.  Daniel helped me with several hours of research, and we put together a nice PowerPoint presentation.  Daniel's 4th grade Virginia history knowledge came in very handy.  At the school, (school isn't out here until the end of this week), we met with about a dozen very polite and interested high schoolers, all of whom were fairly advanced in English, and all of whom (I think) were able to understand my presentation.  The best part was the question-answer period after the presentation.  Topics ranged widely from "Why do you have a death penalty?" to "What do you think about Barack Obama?" to "Is it really true that in America you can own a gun?" to "What do Americans think about Europeans?" to "What do Americans think about the war in Iraq?"  I enjoyed the curiosity.

None of the students had ever been to America, but one had been to Cuba.  Another carryover from the communist times I suppose.

In other news, we just survived a heat wave.  The past two days the temperature topped out above 82 degrees (28 C).  While the Czechs found this a bit unbearable, we were glad to break out the shorts (of course the Czechs have been wearing shorts all along, even as we were in long pants and long sleeves.)  Today the heat wave ended with an overcast day of rain, but we did get outside some.
Oops -  I haven't gotten to the firemen yet again.  I guess that will have to get bumped to next time - but I'll be meeting with them again next week in the pub (they want to show me the "life in Tachov"), so there will be plenty of opportunity.

Ok, so here is the first complaint of our trip.  Tachov is surrounded on all sides by farms.  The farmers have been fertilizing (pouring wet cow manure onto their fields).  That's not a big deal on a nice sunny day, but today with the rain it was rather unpleasant.  I suppose if that's the worst thing to complain about things must be going pretty well.