Culture Shock

I came across this post on my friend Milo's blog the other day. Whether you're Croatian or American, good leadership can be refreshingly shocking. Milo's observations are valuable to anyone serving as a leader in any capacity: I have spent the last 5 months in the Intensive care unit with my little boy Josiah Nathaniel. During this time, I have witnessed some things that can learned about leadership, and a working environment that may be helpful to your organization. 1. Everyone understands the chain of command, and the appropriate relationships within that chain. 2. The collective opinion of the leadership group is of great worth and value to those who answer to them. 3. Disagreements of opinions by those in leadership are resolved behind closed doors, then presented as a unified decision. 4. The opinion of those involved in the day to day work/care (i.e.. parents and bedside nurses) is regularly evaluated and listened to. 5. Every doctor and nurse has a training time when...

There's nothing better in language learning than a nice phonetic alphabet to get you started. Just ask anyone learning Croatian. As soon as you know the alphabet, theoretically you know how to pronounce every word in the dictionary. So before I even moved to Croatia I was pronouncing Croatian words. After we moved, when I attended church, I was singing along to all the worship songs. I didn't have the slightest clue what they were singing about (unless it was a translated song) but I sang nonetheless. But if you've grown up on a steady diet of phonetic letters, the English alphabet will feel like a punch in the gut. The first English class I ever taught here was a lesson in this fact. I was going through the alphabet with some adult beginners. After I had shattered everything they knew about the letter A, there was one lady who became increasingly frustrated. Finally at "W" she lost it. At the time I had no idea what she was saying, but later one of the stud...

Petra and I have had the opportunity to guest-teach English in the local High School here in Orahovica this fall. One of the topics we used to get students talking was "culture shock". What does it mean? We followed that conversation with an activity where the students had to come up with 3 things Americans would be shocked at here in Croatia. Just about every class brought up alchohol. Some mentioned that Americans would be blown away by the strength of Croatian "rakija". Others noted how many people drink in Croatia. One person mentioned the legal drinking age (18) which is not strictly enforced. And that's true. If I know where I could find underage drinkers on any given Saturday night, I'm sure the police do too. But it got me thinking about the "legal age" a person has to be in order to do something. For example, in Iowa, a 15 year old can get their permit to drive. Here you have to be at least 18 and pay an arm and a leg for that privelege. I...

And then there's this one, which is not too hard to figure out, but probably has a good story behind it.

One thing I love about Europe is the signs . In America , we're so boring . We just write whatever it is that needs to be said , attach it to a post and put it up . But in Europe, where practically every country has a different language , they need to accomodate foreigners and create signs with pictures . As one of those foreigners , I've found many of the signs quite interesting . Like this one for example :

As I was flipping through a book of suggestions for English teaching activities the other day I came across one that included the students sitting on the ground. With hardly a thought I turned to the next page. "That one wouldn't work here" I said to myself. Let me tell you a little bit about the death trap known as the "floor" here in Croatia. It's a place that must be quarantined. Whether it's slippers, rugs, chairs or shoes there has to be at least one degree of separation between your body and the floor - very often two or three. I even heard from a reliable source that back in the day, Yugoslav babies didn't learn how to crawl. They went from laying down to practically running - a walker being their one mode of transition and transportation so as not to be overly exposed to the floor. And what do I say about this crazy mindset? Bravo Croatians! At least we have some sensible human beings among us on this planet! I can remember being in 2nd or 3r...

A handful of recent posts may have given my readers the impression that there's a lot to complain about in Croatia. " Very little baseball ", " difficulty with paperwork ", " the language is so difficult ", so on and so on. Jeremy, quit whining! But the fact is, I love it here. And I'm not just saying that. Here are the top 10 reasons I love Croatia. 10. The beauty of the land . It is no coincidence that Creation and Croatian sound so similar. 9. The food. 8. The relative safety. A stranger came up to Enoh the other day and gave him a cookie after Enoh flashed a smile. We realized later, had we been in America we would have had some skepticism. Not here. 7. The climate. All four seasons like New England but a longer summer and less snow make it ideal for the Sensors among us. 6. The generosity of the people . 5. The education. This is a long story that many Americans living in Croatia (not to mention Croatians living in Croatia) wouldn't agree...