{"id":18343,"date":"2019-12-10T11:47:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T17:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/blog\/uncategorized\/\/"},"modified":"2019-12-10T15:09:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T21:09:01","slug":"iew-cooking-as-a-second-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/blog\/exchange\/iew-cooking-as-a-second-language\/","title":{"rendered":"IEW \u2013 Cooking as a Second Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

My name is\u00a0Marija\u00a0Panic, and I am a Special Education Teacher from Serbia.\u00a0\u00a0Currently, I\u2019m participating in\u00a0Greenheart\u00a0Exchange\u2019s\u00a0Teach USA program,\u00a0and am working at Harvard Elementary School of Excellence.<\/p>\n

When I first decided to make a move and start searching for a way to improve my knowledge and expand my experience in teaching, I was longing to find the best option for me. I found a lot of information on teacher exchange programs. I did a lot of pros, and cons and based on my research Greenheart was on the top of my list as \u201cfirst one to contact\u201d agencies. Just like I expected they were (and still are) professionals, organized and caring. Fortunately, we were on the same page and they\u2019ve become my best friends and advisers throughout this journey.<\/p>\n

In honor of International Education Week, Greenheart worked with Hosteling International-Chicago<\/a> to plan a cultural event where I would have had an opportunity to share my culture. So, I\u00a0decided\u00a0to\u00a0prepare some traditional Serbian food together with all the guests. This was an exciting opportunity, so I did not think much before I have agreed to it! When I accepted this challenge, I did not know which meals I should prepare, I did not know how long this would take\u2026 I was thinking to try to prepare some of traditional Serbian meals like\u00a0Sarma<\/em>,\u00a0Podvarak<\/em>, Serbian kind of homemade bread, or even\u00a0Ajvar<\/em>\u2026 I kept thinking and thinking, until I slowly I realized that I will need too much time to prepare any of those hard-core Serbian traditional meals. So, I decided to go light. This light version of Serbian cuisine is actually my\u00a0favorite!\u00a0\u201cIt is so easy to prepare those meals and I\u00a0hadn\u2019t\u00a0had\u00a0 them for a while\u201d, I was thinking to myself, \u201cThis will be a lot of fun\u201d\u2026\u00a0\u00a0Sladak<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Kupus<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Projara<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 that was my perfect combination.<\/p>\n

I did not know how many people\u00a0would\u00a0 attend\u00a0the event, and I was little nervous before everything started.\u00a0However,\u00a0 once\u00a0people arrived, I was relieved (somebody will cook with me \ud83d\ude42 ), and I decided to play a role of a teacher (imagine that!). Before we started cooking, I prepared this little name game I like to play. This icebreaker went\u00a0well\u00a0and everybody was laughing. (Laugh now – you will cry when it is time to chop the onions (bahahahhaha \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Me, \u201cthe chef\u201d in the middle with the funny face.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u201cNow everybody \u2013 wash your hands! Let\u2019s do this! I\u2019m hungry!\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

I did not fear that the food\u00a0would\u00a0not be tasty, because this was and is my favorite \u201chealthy,\u201d easy\u00a0to\u00a0prepare (put everything you have\u00a0at the moment) food.\u00a0(I just call it food because I\u2019m Serbian). We started to chop and chop, to talk and talk, to mix and stir, to cook and bake\u2026\u00a0There were some instructions on how to chop, is it too big, and is it too small, or how many eggs, cheese and ham\u2026 but somehow we managed to prepare two dishes at the same time and I think that everybody could recall at least part of each meal preparation process.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sladak Kupus\u2026mmmm<\/p><\/div>\n

The food was almost\u00a0over,\u00a0and I spoke a lot\u00a0about\u00a0Serbian traditions\u00a0and Serbian people. In that manner I said the next sentence loud enough: \u201cIf this food is not tasty\u00a0enough\u00a0that is your fault! You prepared it!\u00a0I just told you what to do\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0And I could already sense that\u00a0smells just right\u2026
\nDuring the evening,\u00a0there were tons of normal \u201chow do you do this or that in Serbia\u201d questions,\u00a0but one question stood out \u201cDo you in Serbia have this kind of electrical stove?\u201d \u2013 I know that Serbia\u00a0(ex-Yugoslavia)\u00a0often got confused for Siberia or Syria, but electricity, c\u2019mon\u2026\u00a0\u00a0–\u00a0\u201cNo, we do not have these\u2026 We usually put some logs in the middle of our room, light a\u00a0fire, and\u00a0cook on that fire… (I was so serious until this moment \u2013\u00a0until\u00a0I\u00a0realized that someone believed this was true and gave me the \u201cso sorry to hear that\u201d look). \u201cHave you ever heard of Nikola TESLA?!\u201d \u2013 I\u2019ve asked them after long laughter \ud83d\ude42 . This was so funny to me!!! I\u2019ve enjoyed this event too much! It was so precious to me to share my culture and food with people from so many different cultures and nationalities. At the end of the day, and when we finished eating what we made (It was good \u2013 just like it should!), we together came to some conclusions: every country or nationality has similar meals in their culture as we have in Serbia. It\u2019s Just that some of the ingredients change\u2026 This led\u00a0to\u00a0even bigger\u00a0conclusion:\u00a0that we are all just people of Earth. No matter where we live, or what we do, we all have our similarities and differences and there is just one thing that matters. You are either a good or bad person. (Or like\u00a0I love to say,\u00a0everybody is a good person \u2013 to somebody).<\/p>\n

I would recommend this kind of\u00a0an\u00a0activity\u00a0to all exchange teachers and students, and to all people who have something to share! This is\u00a0a\u00a0precious experience because you get to know and share one part of you to people,\u00a0who can become your friends. You get to\u00a0learn more about yourself and your capabilities,\u00a0and also\u00a0learn more about other cultures around you. You can have some of\u00a0the\u00a0\u201csmart conclusions\u201d, or you just can have tons of fun! If any of you decide to share part of\u00a0your\u00a0culture,\u00a0make sure to put me on the list! I\u2019ll be there \u2013 will not miss!<\/p>\n

So happy sharing and happy caring \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My name is\u00a0Marija\u00a0Panic, and I am a Special Education Teacher from Serbia.\u00a0\u00a0Currently, I\u2019m participating in\u00a0Greenheart\u00a0Exchange\u2019s\u00a0Teach USA program,\u00a0and am working at Harvard Elementary School of Excellence. When I <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24916,"featured_media":18344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,218],"tags":[103,136,279,50],"class_list":["post-18343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exchange","category-greenheart-international","tag-chicago","tag-advocacy","tag-international-education-week","tag-volunteering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/24916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/18344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenheart.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}