Natalie Czaban – Milk & Honey

#47 Slovo, jazyk, řeč, Natalie Czaban, rozhovor

Moments of Normality and Understanding: Teaching Czech to Foreigners in CB

22. ledna 2023 Žádné komentáře

Autor: Natalie CzabanFoto: Osobní archiv Pavly Válkové Perex: We never appreciate the use of our own language as much as when we are deprived of it, in a foreign land where nobody understands us and nothing we are used to makes sense. Pavla Válková has spent her career helping people in this situation, teaching German and Czech to students of various cultures and backgrounds. At present she teaches Czech to Ukrainian refugees here in České Budějovice. Milk & Honey interviewed […]

esej, Natalie Czaban

Imbolc – And Could We Live Without Winter?

23. března 2022 Žádné komentáře

On walking through the city on an unusually sunny day in late January, I lost count of the number of people sitting silently on benches with their faces turned towards the sun, drinking it in like bees do nectar. It was a simple, primeval, eternal human reaction which warmed my pagan heart. They are bang on time. The 1st February marks the pagan festival of Imbolc, the part of the wheel of the year which marks the very nascent beginnings […]

#41 Touha, esej, Natalie Czaban

An Unexpected Side-effect of Covid: Desire for Religion

22. července 2021 Žádné komentáře

Despite being an agnostic and basically distrusting and disliking religion, I do understand the longing for an imposed order and clarity on how to live. This past 18 months of our worldwide Covid existence has, for me, only increased the sense of floating through life in a vacuum of meaning. There is so little of the ordered structures that helped us before – no daily routine, no trips to the office, no dropping off and picking up the kids, no […]

#39 Děti, Natalie Czaban

“That’s not how we do it at home…”

8. února 2021 Žádné komentáře

The differences in parenting styles around the world My neighbour commented recently on my “English approach“ to child raising. This does not involve wrapping my son in the St. Georges flag or weaning him onto tea when he was four months old, but more the fact that he screams himself silly every single time I try to get him dressed to leave the house. My neighbour was not commenting approvingly – apparently my English approach is that I do not […]