Sky Blue Sky

Posted by Joe Deegan (Martin, Slovakia) on 6 October 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

I took this shot while walking yesterday. I went down this country road that's my favorite. It was a perfect day, and there wasn't a sound except for the occasional bicycle riding by. I wanted to clear my head so I could process what I learned on the trip to Poland.

The trip we shared gave me so much perspective on the students. I sat in the back of the bus the whole way. At first I felt a bit self-conscious for having chosen this seat, but I’m grateful I stuck with it. I got to learn about the way these kids are.

In many ways, it was touching. They shared candy and snacks with one another (and with me) all the way to Poland. I watched as one girl wove a friendship bracelet out of gold and purple threads. They comforted each other through the halls of Auschwitz. I was there when they were scolded by a Polish security officer for feeding pigeons.

“We wanted to have a carriage ride,” one girl (one of my best students) told me while in Krakow, “but it was too expensive. One hundred Słotych! I took a picture instead.” It didn’t matter that I think horse-drawn carriages are stupid. As she related the story, her smile broke my heart.

Other times, I got what I expected. When we stopped for a bathroom break, one boy came back on the bus with three beers, grinning. Girls snuck away three and four at a time to smoke cigarettes behind our hotel. I’m sure most of them didn’t sleep more than three hours each night.

Each evening, I retired to the suite in the hotel reserved for teachers. I talked with them over the Slovak brandy and livovice (plum liquor) they had brought in metal flasks. My Slovak-English dictionary made frequent appearances as the more fluent speakers left the room on occasion to participate in raids on the students. Often, they returned with packs of cigarettes confiscated from the guilty.

For some reason, the subject of windows came up. I remarked how strange I found it that windows here didn’t have any safety bars or screens in them. You open the window, and face the outside air, totally unmediated by such devices. They wondered aloud if a screen would really stop someone from falling anyway. We had a good laugh about it.

I guess the point I’m trying to make with all of this is that, because of the trip, I became more sensitive to the nuances of student and teacher personalities. Simpler things are appreciated— share your snacks, be quiet at night, feed the pigeons, be friendly and help one another— and even important. Meanwhile, there is always an understanding that, in a way, these small acts of kindness really only refer to themselves. Just as the screen in my window at home couldn’t really save me from a fall, neither could the students’ magnanimity change the price of a carriage ride. This feels unfair on some level.

Teaching went well today. I think that I’m beginning to connect with the students more now.

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