Cassandra Gutterman-Johns
is a creative writer and stage manager. In the 2022/2023 academic year, Cassandra served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) at Gymnazium Strakonice, South Bohemia. With a BA in Creative Writing and Theater and minors in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies and Comparative American Studies, Cassandra was placed at a school that applied for an ETA in order to introduce students to a new culture, to discuss current themes, such as gender and multiculturalism, and to promote students' English conversation and debate skills. Cassandra enthusiastically built on her students’ tradition and interest in theater, and she helped lead an after-school drama club, where her students experimented with rhetorical techniques, practiced public speaking, and sharpened their English language skills in a creative way. She also led two conversation clubs at her school, participated in a community choir, and volunteered in English classes for young children. In her free time, Cassandra cooked and baked, and she explains that: “Food became the cornerstone on which I built community in my new home.” This month, 30 new ETAs are starting their Fulbright journey all over the Czech Republic, and Cassandra hopes to ease their transition by reflecting on her experience with building a new community and, at times, fighting isolation.
Cooking for One
I arrived in Strakonice without any tupperware containers. My mentor had assured me in emails that the kitchen in my apartment was stocked with everything I could need: pots, pans, cutting boards, plates, silverware, a truly unnecessary amount of glassware, and I had spent a not insignificant amount of time squinting at the zoomed in photos he had sent, trying to get the lay of the land. I would have a kettle. I would have a stove. I would have a fridge. What could I be missing?
Tupperware. Freezer Space. A mixing bowl. Home.
The first afternoon, my mentor took me shopping at the co-op minimart around the corner. He was going to be away for the weekend, but he told me, pointing from my balcony, that there was a bigger store if I went down the road, around the corner, and past the shopping center. Later in the year I would travel on my own to Český Krumlov, Italy, and Ireland, but the big grocery store in town was my first solo trip. I set out with Google Translate, a shopping list, and a sense of assurance–I knew how to go grocery shopping. But I didn’t even make it inside before I began to struggle. Unable to ask for help, I watched as person after person undid the chains that held the lines of shopping carts together. I didn’t have a coin (or a bank account, or any koruna), so eventually I stuck my new apartment key into the slot. I was rewarded with a shopping cart, but I had a new fear: what if I couldn’t get my key out? The literal means of entry–to my apartment and to my Fulbright–was stuck in the shopping cart.
Shopping in a foreign country is a little like entering a parallel universe. They have all the same things, or at least most of the same things (in a year of looking I never found black beans), but they’re in a different place, the packaging is different, or there’s a variety you’ve never seen before. And of course, everything is in Czech. I had no idea what to make of hladká mouka, polohrubá mouka or hrubá mouka, so I left the store with lots of questions and no flour. Cheese is either sliced in a package or behind the deli counter–and I was far from confident enough to try to talk to the woman at the counter. Pasta, fortunately, is easily recognizable and usually labeled in Italian, and vegetables are vegetables are vegetables. I managed to stumble my way through the checkout by nodding and looking confused and nearly cried in relief when I returned the cart and my key popped out.
And what do we do when we feel like we’re failing? We tend to resort to something we know. For me, this has always been cooking. The rhythm of following a recipe is centering. An empty flat feels more like home when you have a hot meal to eat. I was rewatching The West Wing when I first arrived, so I sat down to dinner with CJ, Josh, and Toby. It wasn’t until I went back into the kitchen to clean up that I realized I didn’t have any way to store my leftover pasta. I searched the cabinets: pots, pans, plates, glasses, glasses, glasses (why were there so many glasses?), silverware, more pots, some random spices that had been left behind–no tupperware. And nobody to eat the rest of the pasta. Dinner, which had always been a family event in my house, was now a solitary affair. I put the lid on the pot and put the whole thing into my still mostly empty fridge. I made myself a cup of tea. I called my mom.
It would take me a few weeks, but by the end of September my fridge was stocked and I had bought a small pack of containers. My leftovers filled the fridge and my belly, and on occasion the bellies of my colleagues and friends.
And yet, even among so many kind and welcoming teachers, there were days I felt lonely. The thing about cooking for one is that you always have leftovers. I ate vegetable soup for most of November. I filled my tiny freezer with food I was sick of eating, then had to eat it later. Most nights, I ate alone.
When you go to the Czech Republic on an ETA grant, you are prepared to spend 20 hours a week in the classroom. You will have some lesson planning to do, and you’ll run a few clubs. You might join a local choir, as I did, or a local sports team, or another group in your town. But even if all of that takes up 40 hours, and you manage to sleep 8 hours a night, you’ll have 72 more hours to spend.
The key, I learned, is generosity. When you’re cooking for one you always have leftovers–or you always have something to share. Give yourself space to grow comfortable. Sit in a cafe alone. Take yourself out for dinner. Go on a solo trip. And then call your friends and tell them all about it. And the next day, go sit in a cafe with your students, or get dinner with another teacher, or meet up with other Fulbrighters and travel somewhere new. Find something to share. Throughout my grant, there were weeks when I had nothing going on, and months when I didn’t spend a single weekend at home. At the end of April, in the midst of maturita exams and traveling to program days at other schools, and preparing for programs at my own school, I spent a quiet evening making myself a birthday cake. I had never had to make my own birthday cake before, and I deeply missed my family and friends. But the next day, when I brought the cake to school, I had a room full of teachers to share it with. They shook my hand and wished me all good things for the next year. That weekend, I went on a trip with one of my best friends on the program. She brought me cookies–another treat to share, this one split over tray tables on the train to Budapest.
In May, gathered for the Fulbright Farewell, our cohort reflected on the highs and lows of our grant. Another ETA articulated what seemed like a universal truth, or at least one that I had been feeling all year: “the highs were really high, and the lows were really low. But it was all worth it.” I don’t remember who said it, but they were absolutely right. I would do it again in a heartbeat. The lows of my year were low: I was homesick, I was lonely, I had to eat my leftovers alone. But highs were so high: I traveled to some of my favorite places I’ve ever been, I found amazing friends, and I connected with the teachers and students at my school, through my lessons, on outings with teachers, and by sitting down to share a meal.
