In 2019, Uzbekistan joined the council.
In 2021, Turkmenistan also joined as an observer member so now, except for Tajikistan, four of the five of the "Stans" are members of the council.
Earlier this year, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan applied for observer status but no decision has been made public yet.
While not an official language, English is a working language of the council.
A friend had a cookout today and asked if I would bring real American cheesecake. Well as "real" as possible given that the ingredients here in Euroland aren't exactly the same. I originally thought that this would be a simple post about me making cheesecake but it's going to be way more complicated than just that so bare with me.
What you can get is Philadelphia cream cheese spread. First, the spread is not the same thing as regular cream cheese. I do know people who make cheesecake with the spread but it doesn't taste the same. A 125g (4.4oz) container here costs 43Kč ($2). This would be kind of pricey to use for cheesecake plus it's not the right ingredient so it would not turn out right.
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| Tvaroh |
I use lučina for all of my U.S. recipes that requires cream cheese. Lučina comes in little 100g (3.5oz) blocks for 23Kč ($1.08).
In Germany, people use quark. Quark always messes with people because there is no translation for it. When you type the German word "quark" into Google Translate the English translation you get back is "quark". Quark is kind of like cream cheese but not really. It's a soft, fresh cheese that can be used for either cream cheese, ricotta, or even sour cream.
Side note...every child in the USA learns the nursery rhyme about Little miss Muffet.
Little miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey
Along came a spider who sat down beside her
And frightened miss Muffet away
Graham flour is just whole wheat flour that is ground more coarsely. It has just slightly less protein than white wheat flour.
With no graham crackers over here, people use digestive biscuits. Now comes the British English.
In Euroland, people grind up digestive biscuits to use for pie crusts.
The first cheesecake I made for my friend's party was a chocolate peanut butter cheesecake. I used a recipe that I found on YouTube. Here's the video but to be fair I did make a couple of changes.
©El Mundo Eats
I didn't use digestive biscuits for the crust. I have a bag of graham cracker crumbs from a care package so I did make a proper graham cracker curst for the cheesecake.
This thing took hours to make but it turned out really well.
I also used one of the pre-made graham cracker pie crusts that I had from another care package.
Both of the cheesecakes were popular but the chocolate peanut butter one was the winner.
I've written before that Czech names can be a complex thing. One of the key differences is that surnames don't always match up. Due to some patriarchal rules for names, and the lovely Czech grammar that treats surnames like adjectives, a husband will have a different last name than the wife. A mother will not have the same last name as her son while a father and daughter will also have different names.
Mr. Novotný and his sons will be called Novotný while his wife and daughters will be called Novotná. That's because Novotný is the grammatically masculine version and Novotná is the grammatically feminine version.
Most of the time, the feminine suffix is -ová. So Mr. Novák and Mrs. Nováková. The -ová is so common that the Czech press adds -ová to women's names automatically. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is written as Angela Merkelová.
Personally, I still see it as odd that a parent and child don't have the same last name. Czechs aren't the only ones to do this. It's the same in all of the Slavic countries, and I believe the Baltic countries, too.
Until 2004, every woman in Czechland was required to adopt the feminine version of her husband's last name. There were few exceptions allowed in order to avoid the whole -ová thing. Foreign women marrying foreign men in Czechland were exempt. Czech women who married a foreigner whose name ended in a vowel were also off the hook. Czech citizens with permanent residence abroad or women who had plans to live abroad could also request not to get the -ová. I don't know how much but there was a fee for this.
A proposed amendment to the Registry Act made it past the Chamber of Deputies, 91-to-33, that would give women the right to utilise the masculine version of her husband's name. The Senate had 30 days to debate the topic and if passed it would go to the President to be signed in to law. Well, it passed. So most likely in January 2022, women can choose to take her husband's masculine-form surname. So both spouses will have the same last name.
Grammatically the -ová indicates ownership. So a woman either belongs to her husband or a daughter belongs to her father. Some view this as kind of sexist and archaic. Others just view it is tradition and important for Czech grammar.
In Czech every noun is either masculine, feminine or neutral. So a last name needs to be either masculine or feminine. The argument is that if you can't decline a last name correctly then this could lead to miscommunication.
I have a Czech colleague who took her Czech husband's (masculine) last name a couple of years ago. I need to ask her how she did it. I do believe that their daughter has the -ová form. She's said that it really hasn't been a problem other than a few times on the telephone when people stumble a bit thinking the last name is an -ová when it isn't.
A few things that I found out...
I get how this all applies to women when they marry. I don't know if the -ová thing will still apply when a child is born. Can the parents now decide if their newborn daughter will take the -ová form or not?
I wrote an e-mail to ÚJOP asking for my scores and they replied back with my marks. Overall I did better this time than I did last time. My overall score last time was 61% and this time I scored 65,5%.
On the the reading comprehension I scored 80% which was way better then the 68% I received last time.
On the written section I scored 60% again. Right on the border but I'll take it.
I didn't do as well on the speaking section as I did before. Last time I scored 76% and this time I dropped to 70%.
It was the listening comprehension that did me in last time. Previously I only scored 40% but this time I scored 65%. I got 13 questions right which is exactly what I needed to pass this portion of the exam. Had I missed just one more question then I would need to take the exam for a third time. Oh the shame if I had to take it a third time.
I still say that the listening comprehension portion of the exam is unnecessarily difficult. It is more of a short-term memorisation exercise than anything else. But it's over and done with. I should receive my certificate in a couple of weeks. Now I can start thinking about all of the paperwork I need in order to apply for Czech citizenship.
Update: I received my certificate on my birthday!
Coming here is still one of the best decisions that I ever made. Next year will be 13 years which means I will have lived in Brno just as long as I had lived in Atlanta. So when someone asks me where I'm from will I still say Atlanta? It would be weird to say that I'm from Brno. When I lived in Atlanta, the answer was that I was from California. Maybe that will be the correct answer. Who knows? Besides I've got a whole year to try to figure it out. For now, happy Czech-iversay to me.
The nurse verified my insurance information, took my temperature and told me that I had to get in a separate line for foreigners. This was different from last time. Six weeks ago there was just one line. Of course the place was busier this time because more people were here. Last time everyone was getting their first vaccine. This time some people were here for their first vaccine and some were here for their second vaccine. In the past six weeks the government has sorted out the administration of vaccines for foreigners here in Czechland who have self-paid health insurance. This mostly applied for English teachers and the like who are technically independent contractors. Now that these foreigners could finally get their first vaccine it meant that there were more now more foreigners here so I guess that was the reason for a Czech line and a foreigners line.
So it was busier than last time but still very well organised. From start to finish it took me about 45 minutes and I walked out with my stamped vaccination card. I was given a weblink so that at home I could print out a digital vaccine card. Kind of funny to print out a digital card but whatever. The important thing is that now I'm fully vaccinated and I didn't have any side effects. I'm sure that at some point I'll probably have to go for a booster shot. Now how soon before I can travel somewhere?
I'm still keeping up with my Czech while I wait for the results of my B1 exam. Fingers crossed that I pass it. I need B1 in order to apply for citizenship but I'll keep studying until I reach the B2 level which is the level required for someone to study at university. I'm not planning on attending uni but I want to get my Czech to this level. However, I have zero intentions of taking the B2 exam. I'll be happy enough to pass my B1 exam.
Learning Czech verbs is both easy and a pain in the arse. They are easy in that there are only three verb tenses - past, present, and future. The past tense gets a little more difficult than in English because in Czech the past tense acts like an adjective so it has to agree in number and gender.
It gets way more complicated with aspect which is basically a concept of completeness. Since verbs are either imperfective or perfective it means that Czechs use two different verbs where English just uses one verb but with lots of different tenses.
In English we use different prepositions to change the meaning of a verb. For example, there's a difference between to to, to go into, to go out of, to go around, to go through, etc. Czechs also use prepositions but there are also different prefixes which can change the meaning of the verb.
The different prefixes are do-, o-, od-, na-, po-, pod-, pře-, před-, roz-, u-, v-, vy-, z-, za-. If you learn the meanings of the various prefixes it can help you guess the meaning of the verb. This is doesn't help 100% of the time but the prefixes can point you in the right direction.
Jít = to go (on foot)
Přijít = to come; to arrive
Odejít = to leave; to depart
Přejít = to go over; to pass over
Rozjít = to break up
Najít = to find
Pojít = to die
Předjít = to prevent
Vyjít = to go out; to exit
Zajít = to go around
Obviously, a stamp is always required when you mail a postcard. The air mail sticker is optional. When I was still travelling, pre-COVID, I would ask the post office clerk for a few extra air mail stickers. Sometimes the post office had them and sometimes they didn't but when they did, no country's post office has ever not given me a few extra stickers.
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