It's just like Alberta...

... you so much as blink and the weather changes. What is UP with that? :)

I woke up this morning all excited because it was sunny out. I showered, ate my morning round of yogurt (it's really good here), and headed out the door. By then it was partly cloudy. I should have known to go back and get the coat and umbrella, but I figured it would all blow over. And it did! Unfortunately, it didn't blow over until after it rained all over me as I ran from Skrivanek to the metro station. *le sigh* That's my lesson though... do not go out in Prague in the autumn without coat and ollie. You will regret it! But now the sunshine is peeking through the clouds, and I think that my next venture outside should be both sunnier and dryer.

I'm at Oxford TEFL right now, as I had to make some photocopies. I'm going to teach a pre-intermediate class here Tuesday and Thursday nights, and I'm looking forward to staying in touch with folks here. I loved doing my course here (it feels like it was years ago... I can't believe I just finished a week ago!!), and I'd like to be a part of it for a while longer, at least. Plus, free photocopies and internet... can't go wrong with that. ;)

Not that internet's an issue anymore. The guy from www.upc.cz showed up and hooked up the internet for Megan. It's wired, which is a bit sad, but it's sure nice to have access to the net in our apartment. I try not to use it too much; after all, it IS Megan's computer, but she very graciously lets me write my emails and blogposts on it.

Last night was pub night, and we got to meet a few of the new trainees and see some old students/tutors. It's so neat to be a part of a group like this, because you plunk yourself down and meet 7 new people and visit with 4 of your old friends and just have a really good time. Thursday nights rule!! Maybe I'll commence a Thursday night pub night back in Edmonton when I return. Kind of like coffee-night, but pubbier. (Yes, I just made that word up. But I like it. Now back off!)

I think Courtney and Adrian are going to come to our apartment tonight to watch movies (we don't have a TV, but Megan's laptop plays DVDs and has a good size screen so we can make it work). I'm excited to show off our apartment, since no one has seen it besides ourselves yet. Not that it's anything too fabulous... after all, it is only moderately furnished. But you can easily admire its elegant lines and the exquisite kitchen that actually possesses a sink. Indeed. Doesn't it make all of you want to hop on the next flight over the pond and check it out?

Well, I'm well off of "interesting things to say" and have progressed firmly into "random babble" so I think I'll say good bye now. Hope you all are keeping well. Currently Kim is my favorite; she emails me lots. ;)

Love you all!

Elizabeth

I love coffee, I love tea...

The waiter ticked me off, and now he hates me.

Ah, well, hate might be too strong of a word, but it's fairly close! You see, we met up last night to go out for dinner to say goodbye to my most darling Lucy, who is headed to Spain for a month or so. We met up in a beer hall where we eat dinner fairly frequently, and several others had already arrived and ordered their pivos (beer). Since I've still got a bit of a cough, I ordered a tea. The waiter looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and said "pivo!" I looked right back, and said "tea!"
Pivo!
Tea!
Pivo!
Tea!
Pivo!
TEA!
He left, and came back 32 seconds later... with a beer! He plunks it down in front of me, adds another beer to the bill and turns to leave our table. I said "I want tea, NOT beer." He says "pivo!" I say "I WANT TEA." He says "pivo!" I whack the table emphatically and say in my best my-grandfather-has-a-baseball-bat-for-kneecaps-like-yours-and-I'm-not-afraid-to-use-it voice "I WANT TEA."

Well! He grabs the beer, grumpily scribbles it off the bill, and storms off. He returns ages later, slams my tea onto the table in front of me, slopping water everywhere, and storms off again. After that, no one at our table could get any decent service! They practically had to buttonhole the guy to get more drinks. We decided we wouldn't eat there, and were heading out the door when he walked right by me. I blew him a big kiss (oh Uncle Dave, how I killed him with kindness...). His face lit up, he blew me a kiss back, and happily shouted "ciao!" And you thought I had mood swings! *lol* What a night.

Today I'm going to go wander through some 2nd hand shops and try to find a lamp for our rather dim living room. I'm also going to go down to Oxford TEFL to pick up my assignments. I think they'll be handy, since I have all my lesson plans and such in one of them, so I can recycle the lesson. Plus, if I ever want to TEFL again, they make a good portfolio. Tonight is Thursday night pub night, so all of my mates who are still in Prague are going to meet up at the pub to meet the new trainees, visit our old students, and chat with the tutors. It should be fun. I was going to go to the zoo today, but the weather is a bit grey, so that's been postponed. I'm a bit disappointed, because I was really looking forward to it, but such is life.

Well, I think I'll toddle off now. Oh, I now know my new mailing address, so if anyone wants it, I'll email it to them (Kathie, I'll email it to Hils, and she can give it to you... or do you have an email addy now?)

Love you all,
Elizabeth

Oh Hilary... you asked for it!

Alright. Hilary wanted pictures, so Hilary is getting pictures. I'm not sure how formatting is going to work, so I apologize in advance if this post looks really screwy. Blogger is only so user friendly...

Photo the First: This is the view off of the balcony in Skalka, where I lived in the student residence flat. It's quite lovely, no?

Photo the Second: My bed and dresser in the Skalka flat. Note that the dresser is positioned in such a way that one cannot actually open it, therefore rendering it useless. You can't see it, but my suitcase is sitting open on the floor... I used it as a dresser the whole time. Made packing to leave easy.... You may also note that the giraffe is in bed reading. Takes after me and mum! The shadow behind the giraffe is Megan. You shall see more of her in a moment or two.

Photo the Third: Adrian, Joe and Courtney at the Konvikt, our common hangout, and the location for Thursday night Pub nights. Apparently, they are all napping. This is very unusual. Perhaps they are adopting the Czech manner of drinking? I'm not sure. All I know is that they were definitely awake when the bartender came round taking orders.... Adrian is the chap from Britain, Courtney is from Seattle (and every time we talk we find out that we something more in common, it's quite funny) and Joe... well, Joe.... Um. Joe. Huh. I actually know nothing about him, because he wasn't in our course, and I'm not quite sure how he joined up with us and came to our end of course dinner night out. Hm. I should maybe look into this.

Photo the Fourth: Fernanda, Sydney and Jon. I don't know what happened to Fernanda. I blame it on the dark beer. She has the most beautiful smile, and normally doesn't look so... "dwarf in the headlights." She was very sad when she saw this picture. She will be sadder that it is on the internet. All you need to know is that she doesn't look like this at all... she's actually gorgeous. Sydney is not a gun-for-hire. He looks like it, but he isn't. He's a very nice man who's going to Turkey. He's very funny. And he really isn't going to kill you... no matter how much he glowers at the camera. And Jon, well, that's Jon. He's from San Francisco, and is really smart. He just must have been in the middle of saying something, or something. :)

Photo the Fifth: All of us at the Afghan place. We had a great time, and the food was excellent. We were way to big a party for how small the restaurant was, so they brought out each dish as it was ready. I was done eating, and Rob and Marta had just gotten their rice. They had their rice for twenty minutes before anything else showed up....

Photo the Sixth: Best. Photo. Ever. I look human! You can't tell, but I'm drinking tea because I'm sick. No beer. No worries people! Megan is on the far end. I love Megan. She looks cute here. She looks much more teacher-ish in person. She strikes fear into her students' hearts, because they know she means business. Next to her is Marta, who is staring adoringly at her boyfriend Rob. I love Marta. She told me that if the pharmacy wasn't open on Sunday, I was TO CALL ROB, and she would bring me something for my cough. She meant it. I was afraid to cross her. She's actually more of a hitman than Sydney is.... Anyway, the pharmacy was open, so it was all good. I like Rob, too. He's really smart, and funny, and he over analyzes EVERYTHING. Just like me!

Photo the Seventh: Adrian. He was not drinking tea. Enough said. (Although I will point out that I tried to physically wrestle the camera away from him.)

Photo the Eighth: Jon. Also not drinking tea. Um. Yeah. 'Nough said. Oh, and sorry it's sideways... I don't know how to rotate it.

And that's it folks... all the pics I have for now. The rest of the film was Jake's costume party, and last Christmas... my parents are a little slow on the flash business. More photos when the next roll is done!

Love you all,

Elizabeth

On the first day of teaching my true love said to me...

this isn't as scary as I thought...

Well here I am! I have officially survived my first class as a teacher! *and the crowd goes wild!* It was very mellow. I followed my momma's suggestion, and kept it really simple. We started with a few introductions, and talked about what we did for the summer. Then I had them write me a letter introducing themselves to me. You know, my name is..., I want to learn English because..... We spent the rest of the class just chatting (we call that a "conversation class" in TEFLese) and I dismissed them a couple of minutes early. You know I'm a real teacher because I assigned homework! I asked them to each bring a photo from home next week, along with a written paragraph about the picture or the people in it. I'm going to have them swap photos and write a story about someone else's picture. Neat idea, eh? And no, it's not particularly kosher, but we don't have a textbook yet, and I figured that this was interesting idea to work with. This class was a beautiful one to start with; 3 women, one my age, and two mum's age, and all very friendly and willing to talk. Half the battle is won if your students will actually try to speak English.

I think that this is my only class this week... everything else starts up next week (first week of October). I hope I can stay busy this week! Josh and I are going to go to the zoo, and I'm going to try and find some art galleries to look at. I'm also going to try and find out about the ladies' Bible study at the International Baptist Church (IBC), and see if that fits in my schedule (we tend to teach a lot in the evenings, which makes other things difficult).

We went out for dinner tonight to say goodbye to Sydney, one of our classmates. He's El Salvadorian, raised in New York, taught in China, met his girlfriend in Romania, and they are moving to Turkey. *whew* He's a great guy, and I'm really going to miss him. Dinner was really nice. We went to the Oompah place, which had no oompah-ing tonight (did I tell you about the oompah place? the one lady could SO not play the tuba....) Josh brought along an American girl that he met in a bar last night, and she was so nice! We chatted quite a bit. She's travelling all through Eastern Europe by herself for 5 weeks. We've got her interested in TEFL now, so maybe she'll come back to Oxford TEFL later!

I would just like to let you all know that:

When I lived in Prague, I had to walk home uphill BOTH WAYS.

Sort of. What that means is that I live on the top of a hill, and no matter which way home I come, I have to hike the hill. My knees keep whispering "why don't you get up on Grandpa's shoulders? why don't you get up on Grandpa's shoulders?" (family joke... sorry to those of you who just don't understand why I wrote that!) It's fabulous first thing in the morning... you wake up, eat a light breakfast, head out the door, and trot, nay skip and gambol, down the hill on your way to an exciting day. On the way home... well, you get to the bottom of the hill, sigh, debate fighting the bum on the corner for his cardboard box (clearly hyperbole... there aren't a lot of bums on corners here) to sleep in rather than hiking the hill. Then you trudge, one slow, sad foot after another, up the steeeeeeeeeeeeeep, tiring, cobblestone hill. Your front door has never looked so good!

Then you get inside, and your real dilemma begins: stairs, or the elevator? We live in Ap't #1, which is on the fourth floor, which is actually the fifth floor (pick your jaws up off of the floor, it's not that confusing *wink*) and it's a looooooooong way up those stairs after that loooooooooong trip up the hill. The elevator is enough to make you consider it. Imagine my parents' home. You walk into the kitchen, turn past the cupboards, head down the hallway to the end, turn left into the yellow bedroom, and face the closet. The teeny, tiny closet. That holds a max of 3 people, 250 kg. Yeah. That's the elevator, folks. It's tiny. It doesn't have a real door. It has like an office door, which doesn't move with you. You can actually touch the wall as it moves past you on your ascent/descent. Crazy! I shall take pictures! Better yet, come and visit, and I'll let you ride in it!

But Megan is saying it's time to go, so I shall say goodbye. I love you all, especially Hilary who emailed me.

Love always,

Elizabeth

Sundays are for Medieval Festivals

Evening all! Today is Sunday, and it's been a lovely day all around.

I made it to church this morning, and I really quite liked it. I attended the Prague International Baptist Church, and the people were really friendly and welcoming. They estimate that they have 25-30 nationalities present in a congregation of maybe 50. Kinda cool! Today was their induction (British term for installation) of their new pastor, so it was neat to be there for that. I look forward to going back next Sunday, and I realize how much I've missed going to church.

This afternoon a bunch of us from our class went out for lunch and found another medieval festival! It's great how these things just "pop" up. We sat in the grass for hours, listening to the music and watching the costumes. We were also watching the two drunk Czech men run their vendors' stands... it was very interesting. One would only stand if he absolutely thought that there was a chance of making a sale, and the other kept dancing around and singing to us. It was really cute. The dancing one was selling teeny little shots of the traditionaly Czech plum liquor, so Courtney and I went down to try a bit. He wouldn't take our money, but instead serenaded us as we tried it. It tasted like burning! We found out after that the stuff is 100 proof, and could probably strip wallpaper. No more plum liquor for this girl.

It started getting chilly, so I headed off for home. On the way, I saw a man walking a gerbil... I mean dog. This little thing was maybe half the size of Michael and Amy's Jasper.... I was wondering why the owner bothered with a leash at all; why not just put it in a hamster ball and roll it down the sidewalk? ;)

Now I'm in the internet cafe, checking emails and such. No one is emailing me. Not even my family (except for Jake... thanks, kiddo!) You all should be very ashamed of yourselves, forgetting about me like that!! Pretty soon I'll head for home, and call mum and dad. Tomorrow I'm going into Skrivanek to sort out my schedule, and I teach my first class at 5:30 PM, which is 9:30 AM your time. Pray for me, please!

I hope you all are well. Anna-Lisa, I want to hear about the wedding, and I want to see some photos!

Love you all,
Elizabeth

I'm s'posed to be in bed

Ola all. Your intrepid Pilgrim is here... feeling much less intrepid than usual. I've caught the cold that's been going around, and I must admit that my "condition" has gone from delicate to downright miserable. Tomorrow, I shall brave the pharmacy to find some sort of Czech decongestant/pain killer/fever reliever... well, you know. Anything that'll dope me up, basically.

We got all moved today, which is great. Megan and I had so much stuff (and I might point out that most of it was actually hers) that the luggage and both of us couldn't fit in the cab. Megan metro'd it, and I went in the cab with the luggage!! The taxi driver was so nice; he helped us load and unload, even though he was double parked on a very busy street!! I tipped him 30 Kc, because it was all I had on me, but I was seriously ready to hug the guy. Moving is stressful!! :D

We dumped our stuff, and headed to Ikea. You know, I think Ikeas everywhere are identical. It felt very homey! I got a quilt, 2 pillows, a quilt cover, a fitted sheet and pillowcases, a bar of chocolate roll thingies (the kind mum and dad always get at Ikea, like rollos but solid milk chocolate) and a new towel for all of 2100 Kc. That's about $100 CDN. I'm so impressed! The bedding is really nice, and I had a little nap in it this afternoon. ;)

We also popped down to Tesco's for a few groceries and an iron and some laundry detergent... just household things. Note to self: NO TESCO'S ON THE WEEKEND. It was a zoo. I've been a little emotional lately, plus being sick, and the stress of pushy tourists and very focussed Czechs mixed with how homesick I've been meant that I was wandering up and down the aisles shopping and crying. A bit embarassing, really... :D But very me!

Tonight my classmates and I got together for one last time together. We went for Afghan food, which is similar to Indian food, but milder. It was really nummy. We had a great time, gabbing and eating and laughing, and singing.... We're in an Afghan restaurant in the Czech Republic, and some fat Italian man was belting out opera at the top of his lungs. Go figure!! I wanted to stay and party a bit more with them (they were going to play foosball!) but this cold has me beat, and all of the smoke was killing me. So I headed back early... and the internet cafe was still open... so I popped in to post, and to see if I could find times for English church services tomorrow.

Tomorrow we're going to see a couple of our mates' new flat, and then they're coming round to ours. I think it should be a very quiet, pleasant day. We'll likely do lunch, as well. I like doing lunch... it sounds very posh, and it generally tastes good, too. ;)

Well folks, I am pooped, and I don't want to be too tired to start work on Monday. I shall publicly confess that I have been wildly homesick these past few days (it really comes and goes, and it feels like I'm on the worst roller coaster ever), so any email at all would be hugely appreciated. If anyone has any pics on their 'puter that they think I'd like, I'd love to see those as well.

I love you all lots... as soon as I figure out my new mailing address, I'll send it to you.

Love,
Elizabeth

Happy anniversary...

Happy 0th anniversary to Anna-Lisa and Scott! I hope your wedding runs smoothly, and that you are excited to start your new life together!!

But that is not the only anniversary that the Pilgrim is celebrating today. It is my one month anniversary in Prague! Crazy, innit? While I officially left a month ago yesterday, I arrived a month ago today. So far, only 2 sad phone calls home! The others have been more even tempered... if a little oftener than the once per week call I was planning. :)

Today is also special because it is moving day. Megan and I decided to haul our stuff across town first thing this morning (well... at like 10. which is early enough), and then go buy bedding this afternoon. I'm quite looking forward to all of this. I love bedding... and I'm very excited to pick up some new stuff. I'm also wildly impressed, because I got all the stuff I brought me, plus all the stuff I've already picked up (a few gifts for people, groceries, lots of stuff from school...) all packed into my suitcase, pack, and 3 shopping bags. Not bad, eh? :D

I was feeling a bit moody last night... (I like all this change about as much as I like being beaten with a sock full of oranges), but we were having a hard time getting people together to make any plans. I also didn't want to go out on the town, because I've got a cold (or maybe it's flu... I can never tell between the two), and am feeling delicate. ;) We finally tracked down Adrian and Courtney, and went to a young wine festival! It was a lot of fun. The young wine looks like, and tastes like, juice. It's the first wine I've ever liked the taste of. There were musicians and artisan stalls, where I picked up Jacob's birthday present. Don't look at me like that! I know his birthday isn't until Nov 6, but I had the chance to pick up what I wanted for him, and I took it! Plus, it'll probably take me a month to figure out how on earth to get it to him. :D It was a nice warm evening, so wandering around sipping wine, listening to music, and looking at all the handiwork was a great way to spend a quiet night.

Tonight we're all going out for Indian/Afghan food to celebrate the end of the course, and to sort of say goodbye to all the proximity we've shared for 4 weeks. I'm quite looking forward to it. Adrian found the restaurant, and he said it looks really good. I've only had Indian food once (and I loved it), and I've never had Afghan food. I keep thinking I'll be eating blankets. I'm probably making a total fool of myself in this paragraph, but I honestly don't know what the difference between the two cuisines are... if there is any. How bad am I?? Help! Chris or Jeenu, if one of you is reading this, can you fill me in? :) Thanks.

By the by, for the parents out there... allowing your children to ride scooters at breakneck speed over the cobblestones, at a wine festival, surrounded by happy and slowmoving adults and dogs off leash... is not a good idea. Take care of your children folks, and one day they'll take care of you. ;)

Love you all!

-Elizabeth

Now what?!

Wowzah! I'm all done the course! It feels... unreal. Kind of how graduating from the U felt - relieving and stressful all at once. I can't believe how fast this first month has gone by.

And despite my title for the day, I do know what now. Now it's moving into a new apartment, and starting a new job. I'm super pleased that at least 6 of us are staying in Prague, so I'll still have my circle (albeit smaller) of friends here. I also hope to meet friends through work, which may or may not work, seeing as I'll pretty much only see students, and I don't think it's kosher to hang with one's students socially. Drat. Just when I thought I'd meet a nice Czech businessman and have a scorching love affair. ;)

I was a bit nervous about this new job thing, but I'm feeling much more relaxed. It sounds like I'll start off with a few classes, and pick up more as time progresses. Peachy! I'm definitely looking forward to my one and only class on Monday... it's one of the few that I'm not picking up from anyone else, but am actually starting all on my onny-knocky. I get to pick the book (with student input, of course) and run the show how I like. Huzzah! The other classes... well, I'll find out more about them on Monday when I head into the head office. Again. I keep having to make all these little trips out there, but if that's what the job requires, then that's what it requires.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this or not, but I've been fortunate and gotten a quite well paying job. Apparently, if I take on some business English courses, they'll pay me even more! Bring on the bank loans, interest fees, and centrally located properties! :D

Well, I'm off. It sounds like we're either going to the black light theatre or for a horsedrawn carriage ride tonight... and then I have to pack. Tomorrow, it's off to buy bedding, and maybe move (that'll be tomorrow or Sunday), and then we're all going out for dinner together. *sniff* I can't believe that I have to say goodbye to some of my friends!

Love you all, send housewarming emails (since I can't seem to convince you to email me with any other excuse...),

Elizabeth

It's Ok, I'm back to normal!

Morning all! I'm feeling like 12 million dollars this morning; a much improved mood from yesterday AM. Why the change? I'm not really sure. Partly, I think it's because my body is starting to understand that it doesn't need to stress out anymore (it's finally caught up to my brain!), and partly, I think it's because I've accepted that I can't control everything, and I'm just chilling with what's happening.

Megan and I signed our "contract of lease" last night. Everything still feels on the up and up, and we've got a pretty sweet little place. We happily discovered that our kitchen does have a few dishes, so all we need to buy is a frying pan! Sweet! I also learned that Prague has an ... wait for it... IKEA!!! So I think we'll head over there on Saturday to hunt up some bedding and a pan. How thrilling!

Today is our course round up (almost done, I just have to hand in my finished Teaching Practice Log, which is a record of all the classes I've taught here, and be moderated tomorrow), and of course, being Thursday, tonight is pub night! Huzzah! A well deserved break after a most stressful week. Two weeks? Three weeks? Month? Who knows. All I know is that this phase of my life "abroad" is ending, and new one is about to begin. Word on the street is that week 3 here is the hardest... and I have photographic evidence to support this. The following photo was taken at last week's Thursday pub night. The poor boy with the "week 3" expression shall remain nameless, but the red hair belongs to Lisa, our Gaelic teacher from week 1, and the bald chappy is Adrian, who's English. And don't think that this photo is some sort of anomaly... we have ALL looked like that once or twice during the course.... :)

I think I may also be feeling particularly chipper, because I committed a cardinal travelling sin, and had lunch in a beautiful foreign city at McDonalds. Yup. And I loved. Every. Minute. The McDonalds here smells EXACTLY like McDs everywhere else. The burgers taste the same. The fries taste the same. But there are differences. For one, this McDs is in a beautiful old building, with subtle decor and sunlight streaming in. They also have no garbage cans in the public eating area; the staff always clean up after you. Also, with your meal, you automatically get a bottle of BonAqua gently carbonated spring water (no water was hurt during the process of carbonation...) as well as your pop. Neat, eh? So I'm feeling nicely hyped on my hormone ridden meat, as well as feeling truly comforted because I thought of Grandpa while I was eating my chips, and wished he could be there to share them with me. When I get home Grandpa, the first trip to McDonalds is on me. I'll even buy you a pie. :) If you were here with me, you could a McDonut! (I think that the McDonalds here have Mc'd just about everything they can.)

Well my lovely lads and lasses, not much else is new here. Pastor Lyle hooked me up with a list of English speaking church groups in Prague (I'm going to be the international... how weird is that?), so I'll check those out next week, because this week we're moving. I'm excited!

Love you all, and thank you for your encouraging emails. Your darling Elizabeth's head is well above the water.

Love and miss you all,

Elizabeth

Comfort!

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139: 9-10

Jovial posting should return in a few days when all the stress and transition subsides a bit. Until then, feel free to continue perusing my slightly angsty and stressed posts! And please, please, please, send me encouraging emails telling me all the details of your lives.

Love,

Elizabeth

So THIS is what blind panic feels like!

Ok ok, intrepid readers... don't get too excited. It isn't exactly blind panic... it's more like HOLY COW TOO MUCH IS HAPPENING ALL AT ONE AND I'M MAKING MAJOR DECISIONS WITHOUT MY PARENTS HELP AND I'M 8000 MILES AWAY FROM HOME AND WHAT AM I DOING HERE???????

Wait! Come back! Don't run away! I promise, no more freaking out. Instead, I shall rationally explain why I feel like simultaneously weeping and curling into the fetal position.

It all started yesterday.... (Cue the flash back!)

I sent out my resume to approximately 50 schools at once. And I had several interviews arranged within a few hours, which is crazy. Good. But crazy. One of those interviews happened this morning. I tried to go to bed early, but my flatmates pulled an almost-all-nighter trying to cram for our exam, and their noise coupled with my nerves meant that I hardly slept last night. I went in for the interview, and it was great! The woman who does the interviewing seemed to really like me, and feels that I'm qualified to teach the advanced English classes of some of their business clientele. I would go out to businesses, and teach the classes in-company. Fabulous. Only one minor hurdle... I have to teach a demo lesson. Tomorrow. At 9am. And then, I have to write my language exam. And then, I have to teach my final lesson at Oxford TEFL. Aaaaargh!! Too. Much. Stuff!

However, the woman at the interview told me that so long as the demo lesson is Ok, they will hire me (yay!) and will assign me classes starting on Monday, which is fabulous. They will give me full-time hours, and the pay is good. So let's all pray together that my demo lesson goes well.

The other big stressor has been getting an apartment. Megan and I need a place to live starting Sunday. The apartments we tried to find on our own fell through, so we ended up going through a company called Happy House Rentals. We found a place!! I didn't realize how much money it's going to cost to get started... we have to pay first and last month's rents (last month is the deposit), and a finder's fee. But my gut says it's all on the up and up, and the place is quite nice. It's a bit costlier than we were hoping, but we're right in Prague 1 (the centre!) near Wencelas Square. The doors lock tightly, it's on the fourth floor, it's a busy street, and the police station is half a block away. It's mostly furnished, so all Megan and I have to buy is bedding and a few dishes (we're going to buy dishes 2nd hand if we can). I feel a bit sick about making this huge of a decision on my own (well, with Megan, obviously, but without my parents), but I'm confident that I made a good choice.

But I have to go now, and prepare my demo lesson for tomorrow, and get a decent night's sleep. I'm starting to feel just a teensy bit homesick with all of the stress, so please email me and tell me that you love me! :)

Love,
Elizabeth

So much to say, so much per minute

'allo! I've given up on being able to use the school's computers (you should see the line up!) and broke down and bought a mocha and some minutes at an internet cafe! There is much to be telling you.

I thought I'd start out by telling you a bit more about our night at the jazz club. The jazz trio sounded amazing... but looked a bit different. For those of you who have seen Napoleon Dynamite, the guitarist looked like his brunette doppleganger! It was hysterical. Here's this totally scrawny guy, wearing dockers and a button down, his belt is wrapped around his skinny waist twice, he's wearing geeky glasses and has buck teeth.... but he OWNED that guitar. It was phenomenal. The drummer drummed with eyes closed for almost the entire time. He missed picking up his drumsticks a couple times, and completely missed one of the cymbals once, but he was still incredible. And the bassist looked like an old man version of Dopey from the Disney Snow White... he only smiled during their last song of the night! And yet it all came together to be one of the most amazing experiences I've had here. I can't wait to go again.

I also saw the true Czech drinking style this weekend. We went into a club, and there were three men at a table. One was sitting upright staring into space, one was leaning on his elbows with his head in his hands, and the third had his head flat on the table, sound asleep. Every now again, one of them would twitch, take a drink, and then return to his pose. I never saw them speak, smile, or look alive. While it was funny to watch... well, I'm glad I'm not like that!

Rumor in Elizabeth's world has it that some of you are a bit concerned that I am becoming an excessive consumer of alcohol. Allow me a moment to correct this impression. The first thing that you have to realize is that pubs here aren't like pubs in Canada... they're more like restaurants. If you actually went to a place called a "restaurant" here, you'd pay 3-4 times as much money for less food that tastes the same. Hence, we eat in the pubs. You don't have to have a drink at all; I frequently drink Sprite here, because I like it, and it comes in nifty little glass bottles. On occasion I will have a (as in one single solitary) beer with dinner. I quite like the dark beer here, but only one. After that, they taste all yicky and bitter. Plus, beer is cheaper than pop in a lot of places, so it's being financially responsible. ;) Now, I can't say this for my classmates... some of them enjoy a little too much beer a little too often. But not me! I'm being very good and responsible and moderate. Your little Elizabeth is a-Ok!

And being Ok... I've already set up two job interviews, and am working on a 3rd. Currently, none of them are offering full time work, but I might be able to put together a few part times to equal full-time, or something else may come up. Given that I only emailed out my applications about... 5 hours ago, I'd say that there's still time. :D And I figure it can't hurt to interview for a couple of jobs that I don't necessarily plan to take, because it will help me get comfortable with these sorts of interviews. Please pray that I can figure out which job is for me! We had a presentation today about a company called Skrivanek, and I'm hoping I might be able to interview there for a full-time position (www.skrivanek.cz). It would be sweet to just have one job rather than several.

Well, that's it for now. I love you all... email me!!

-Elizabeth

Not Exactly Certain Which Day it is...

good... night? morning? It's 4:40 am here, and we just got home. Megan's laptop is in my room (we were doing a bit of Buffy watching before going out) so I thought that I'd just throw up a quick post, since I don't have to worry about being on her computer when she wants to use it (she's sound asleep!)

Tonight was a bit crazy. We'd really wanted to go and listen to some jazz music last night, but everything sort of fell apart, and nothing happened. Tonight, Megan and I picked a place and a time, and just told people we were going. 3 others turned up! How exciting. It seems that the best way to do things is not to ask, but to tell!

The jazz club is this little tiny room that used to be a cellar. You can fit maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe 50 people in the whole joint. But let me tell you, the music is smokin'. It was a trio tonight, and they were hot. The room is so small that Magali was almost sitting on the drummer's lap! We stayed for all three sets, and it's one of the best things I've done since arriving in Prague.

I assumed we'd leave after the concert, and head for home, since neither Megan nor I are overly night-owlish. Nope. We had to go to another club for a night-cap. This other club was on the other side of the city centre! We walked for ages, and I was wearing heels, a tank top, and a pashmina. It was very chilly, and heels+cobblestones=a bad idea. However, we crossed the Charles' Bridge at about 1:30 am, and there were so few other people there that it was worth it. The view was incredible, and we could see all of the statues. It was absolutely exquisite.

Our night cap turned into another hour or so at the club, where my companions became increasingly "happy," and I drank Sprite because I was exhausted and ready to go home! The conversation turned, sadly, to politics... I was definitely ready to be gone! Luckily, I talked them into heading out for some gyros, because I was starving. The 24 hr gyros place is amazing. It was 3:30 am, and the place was packed, with a huge lineup! It was almost all tourists, and a few in our group got distracted talking to some boys from Australia. I finally had to tell Megan that she could stay or go as she pleased, but that I was hailing a cab and heading for our place. The Aussies wandered off at that point, so she decided to join me.

And now I'm home, writing a blog post at what is now 4:48 am. But I just had to tell you about the jazz... some like it hot, and that diamond was worth its weight in gold.

Love you,
Elizabeth

Fridays are for ...

I'm not sure what Fridays are for!! We were supposed to go out to a jazz club tonight, but a miscommunication occurred, and then everything fell apart. I love the people in my class, but it is really hard to make plans with 8 or so people. Eventually, Megan and decided to just stay in tonight, and to try and find some blues tomorrow night. (I'm sick of being happy! I want the blues! *hee hee hee*)

We're quite excited to go look at the apartment tomorrow. We're still lining up viewings of other places, but I think that both Megan and I are hoping that this first one will just work out. It would certainly be easier!

We had a session on "How to Find a Job" today. It was quite interesting! My goal for this weekend is to: develop a one page CV, send a blanket email to all the schools on the Prague list, and post my resume on www.tefl.com. Hopefully, I'll have a job lined up for when I finish the course.

I actually have a lot of homework for this weekend. I was going to stay at the school to work on it, but unfortunately, there are only 4 computers, and they were all taken. I guess I'll have to head 'er into town and pay to use an internet cafe to wrap stuff up. Fortunately, the cafes are cheap here, so it's no big deal. Plus, it's a total motivator to do your work when you're paying by the minute... :)

I can't believe I'm almost done this course. The last 3 weeks have flown by. I'm excited for the "next step of the journey," but a little nervous, too. Word on the ex-pat street is that the homesickness is really bad around the end of month one, and that's going to be a transition time as well. Prepare yourselves: I'm going to need lots of emails at the end of next week!!

Today in class we did a visualization:

Imagine you are walking down a path. What does it look like?
You come across a twig in your path. What do you do with it?
You come across a fallen tree in your path. What do you do?
You keep walking. You encounter a fork in the road. Which way do you go?
As you continue on down your path, you see a bear. What do you do?
You move past the bear, and come up to a wall. What does the wall look like?
You stand next to the wall, and hear a sound. What is it?

My path was brown and gravelly, crunching pleasantly beneath my feet, surrounded by lush green trees. I picked up the twig, looked at it carefully, and put it in my pocket to carry with me. I climbed right over the fallen tree and kept on going. I took the left hand fork, and when I saw the bear, I thought about poking it with my stick. Then I thought that wasn't such a hot idea, so I played dead. I got up, and walked to my wall, which was a beautiful old stone wall, grey and bumpy, but the bumps were worn smooth with age. Over the wall I could hear a small voice calling "help me, help me..."

Path: life
Twig: how you deal with small problems
Fallen tree: how you deal with big problems
Fork: political bent
Bear: how you respond to the opposite sex
Wall: how you see death
Sound: how you see the afterlife.

So, apparently my life is crunchy and verdant. I like to pick up small problems and carry them with me (totally true), but I climb over big problems and keep on going (true? mum, what do you think?). Politically, I'm on the left (unsure on this one... I'm kind of apolitical). When I'm around men, I think about antagonizing them, but choose to curl up and play dead. Maybe that's why I don't have a boyfriend.... ;) I see death as something old and beautiful, and the afterlife is ... someone calling for help? Everyone else heard bells, or birdsong, or waterfalls... not me! I heard someone calling for help!

Other peoples were funny, too. Rob punched the bear in the stomach and ran. John sat down on the fallen tree and hung out for a while. Adrian heard babies crying on the other side of the wall. I'm just telling you this so that you know that I'm not the only nutter in my class! :D

We also did Gardner's multiple intelligences. Surprise, surprise, my highest intelligence is linguistic. What IS surprising is that my musical intelligence (according to the mini test we did) is equally as high. Next was my intrapersonal, which was close to the first two. Sort of middling were my interpersonal and my logical-mathmatical, and waaaaaaaay low were my kinaesthetic and my visual-spatial. So no major surprises there!

Well, stick a fork in me Jerry, I'm done. I hope you have a good weekend... likely no new post til Monday. But you can still email me... I'll be checking!

Love your curls up and dies around men friend,

Elizabeth

Thursdays are for a Huge Sigh of Relief

Hiya peoples!

It is officially Thursday evening, meaning that we've got a nice lead-in to the weekend ahead of us. Tonight is activity night. Activity night is always the same. Everyone goes to the Konvikt pub, drinks beer, and drives the solo bartender crazy with the sheer volume of people in his little place. I think we should stop calling it our social activity, and call a spade a spade. It's pub night! :)

Today was a good day. I was very hungry at the noonish time, so I ran up to Tesco's (think a superer super wal-mart spread out over 5 floors) to grab a sandwich. Apparently, I missed the "normal" sandwich rack, where Megan got a turkey club, because I ended up buying a ham and pineapple sandwich to eat. That's right, ham and pineapple sandwich not pizza. Odd as it was, it was tasty!

I taught my one-on-one lesson this afternoon. My student is lucky that he made it out of the classroom alive. A) he was late. 15 minutes late. After he had texted me to have me move his lesson to an earlier time so that he could make it to a meeting later. I wanted to throttle him. Then, in the middle of our lesson, his cellphone rang. HE ANSWERED IT. I just about beat him bloody with the overhead projector (which we call the OHP... curtsy when you're thinking, it saves time). He saved his skin by paying attention the rest of the time, and by actually accomplishing what I wanted him to accomplish. I know that my CultureShock book said that I should avoid breaking foreign laws because it's notoriously difficult to get a good lawyer abroad, but I was still seriously tempted to break a bone or two! :)

Other than that, not much else has happened. I'm looking forward to tomorrow; it's a short day, and I should be able to get all of my homework done, and be free for the weekend! Tomorrow night we're going to a trendy jazz club, which should be sweet. Then Saturday morning we're going to check out that apartment. All in all, it should be a gooder of a weekend.

Here's hoping your weekends are swell, too!

Love,
Elizabeth

Note from the Management

It appears that I may have received a spam comment, which is not something that I'd particularly like to encourage. Because of this, I have turned on "word verification" for my blog. When you post a comment, you will be asked to copy a word into a box, sort of like a password. Don't worry, I've set it to ask you to do that... it prevents me from having oodles of spam comments, and it protects you from thinking a link in a comment is safe to click on when it really isn't. Any questions? (Put them in the comments... you'll have to type the word they show you into the box they give you to make it work!)

The management thanks you for your patience.

-Elizabeth

Tip of the Day - Know What Day it is

Morning all... this will be a quickie post, with a longer update later today. After something has actually happened. :)

Thing the First: Yesterday's post was titled "Tuesdays are for Panicking." However, they day before that's post is titled "Tuesdays are for Planning." Tuesdays are indeed for planning. It is, however, Wednesdays that are for panicking. Clearly, I was so panicked on Wednesday that I thought it was Tuesday. *whoops!*

Thing the Second: A mildly funny thing happened (on the way to the forum... oops, tangent!) last night, so I thought I'd tell you about it. Megan and I left the school yesterday at 7:15. Unheard. Of. We never leave school that early! Never! Clearly, a can of spaghetti just wasn't going to cut it. Instead, we went to this little pub that's in the metro station (weird, I know... more about that later) to celebrate actually leaving the school while it was still daylight. We had this excellent salad (I love salad here... it rarely has lettuce in it, so instead you get big chunks of fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc. and then it's topped with something. The salad place tops it with yummy purple cabbage. The metro place tops it with really salty feta cheese. Soooo good. Anyhoo, back to my story. At least, once I get out of these parentheses.) Where was I? Right. Excellent salad. Then we had our main course... Megan had pasta, and I had these thin pancakes (kind of like tortillas) baked in cheese and cream with ham and mushrooms in it. So good, I could feel my arteries hardening as I ate! These meals are a good size; I could only eat about 1/2 of mine because it was so rich. We washed our meals down with a Plzn (That's the real Pilsener, folks) pivo (beer). Mine came to a grand total 157 Kc. According to www.xe.com, that's a whopping $7.78 CDN. Then it was time to tip.

Tipping here in the Czech Republic is very different from tipping at home. The waitstaff at most (I would almost say all) pubs/restaurants are actually paid a living wage. Tips are just extra. Therefore, you tip minimally, usually only rounding up to the next ten. If you are very close to the next ten, you round up one more. For example. Megan's meal was 152 Kc, so she would round up to 160 Kc. This is perfectly acceptable, and is, in fact, what the Czechs expect. If you run round wildly tipping at 10 or 15%, they're going to know you're a tourist, and they are going to mock you mercilessly behind your back. I think. It's hard to know, because by the time you've tipped them, you usually don't see them again! But given that the citizens here don't always like the tourists, I imagine there's some serious mocking going on. Now. The funny part (which after this long leave in might not be funny anymore!). My meal was 157 Kc. Rounding up to 160 is a bit cheap, so you would round it up to 170. However, I really like the waitress at this little place. She's young, and a bit cranky with everyone, but she does her job well, despite making you feel like you might be inconveniencing her by interrupting her viewing of the Czech version of Big Brother (yeah, they really have a Czech version of BB). Because I like her, I tipped her 20 Kc instead of the expected 13Kc. I set the coin down where I thought she could see it, but as we turned to go, I realized she hadn't seen it at all. Not wanting to be known a non-tipper (!), I turned back, picked up the coin, and handed it to her. As we left, I said to Megan "I hope that wasn't crass. I just wanted to make sure she got her tip, because that was a good one!"

Megan just looked at me, and started to laugh. "Yeah, Elizabeth," she said "your whole dollar of a tip was a whopper!" We both cracked up, and laughed a good halfway up the hill, until we needed that breath for climbing instead of laughing (priorities, you know). I'm clearly becoming a native... 20 Kc is an excellent tip here... but it is truly only worth about a buck! Can you imagine tipping someone a loonie after a sit down dinner, and leaving the restaurant feeling smug about how generous you were? Oh my... the joys of being an ex-pat (we're not tourists anymore... so we're ex-pats!)

Now, I know that you're all so busy laughing at my episodes of silliness that you're having a difficult time focusing, but try. Because I'm sure that somewhere in your brain a neuron is synapsing, wanting to know why on earth there's a restaurant in the metro station. Well folks, it's like this. There is EVERYTHING in the metro stations here. They're like mini shopping malls. Some of it's above ground, which is more like a bus stop. Our restaurant (which shall be henceforth known as the metro place) is aboveground. Some of it is underground. It's the underground stuff that gets me. At the larger metro stops, they're actual stores... like a grocery store, a pharmacy, a florist's shop (they have fresh flowers everywhere here, it's wonderful)... all like a mini-mall. In the smaller stops, they're more like roadside stands. My personal favorite is the lingerie stall. Yes folks, you too can buy your undies at a stand, in a metro station. Forget hygiene! Buy your underpants loose from a bin! From a stand! Underground! In the metro station! :D If you think about, though... you could probably live in Prague and almost never have to see the light of day, because you could do all of your shopping underground!

Well, enough hilarity for one morning. Hope you enjoyed my silliness, now I have to be serious. For it is time to go to school and receive feedback about yesterday's lesson... should be fun. ;) More later!

Love,
Elizabeth

Tuesdays are for Panicking

Oh dudes. Oooooooh dudes. Oh duuuuuuuuudes. Roughest. Lesson. Yet. But I held my own! *cue triumphant music* It appears that my original plan of the dictagloss (can't remember what is? *sigh* you need a better teacher... check yesterday's post) was not such a good one. At first, the students couldn't understand the dictagloss. Then, they didn't understand what it was I wanted them to do. Then they got bored. Then they started to shut down.

They started to shut down. But then, Captain Amazing (myself, of course!) leapt in, and saved the day. I'm not really sure that one can call it saving the day, when oneself caused the initial problem, but let's try and salvage my battered ego here, Ok? Now where was I? Oh right, the leaping bit. I leapt in and saved the day. That's right folks, I saved the day. How, you ask? How?? Why, by figuratively ripping my lesson plan up into 525 600 tiny pieces of paper and throwing it out the window. That's how.

30 minute dictagloss exercise? Fugedaboudit. Instead, let's leap ahead to the exercise that I was going to do afterwards! Hmmm... now I'm way ahead of schedule... let's go over some details that I planned to avoid! Next exercise! Hmmm... they finished that one a little quickly... let's make up another one! Hmm... again, they're done a little soon... Ok, correction time! We'll put every error up, and correct it as a class! Yeah! And then, then we'll drill our pronunciation of the word "swam." Everybody! Swam, swam, swam, swam.... I finally let them go a couple of minutes early.

Early, you say? EARLY? Well, yeah people... come on, cut me some slack! And I totally got away with it because... throughout the entirety of my half of the class... there was a band. In the courtyard. RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR WINDOW. Warming up. Playing. Being generally obnoxious. We had to keep the window closed, despite the 10 people crammed into this tiny room, with the door shut to keep building noise out, and the WINDOW closed to keep the RUBBISH MUSIC from disrupting us! Darn tootin' I let them go a couple minutes early!

Despite the panicking, I actually don't have any homework that I need to do tonight. I'm waiting for Megan to finish her feedback group. And then we're going home. We're going to get there before 10:00PM. This is unheard of. It's a red-letter day! Home before 10! No homework! Spaghetti from a can! Well... what do you expect? Our apartment doesn't have any of those luxuries like a sink, or an oven! Back when I was your age....

Off I go... I'm sure you're sick of my stark raving madness. I hope you're all enjoying the blog.

Love,
Elizabeth

Tuesdays are for Planning

Evening all! My day is done, and I'm just waiting for Lucy to wrap up teaching the late class, so we can all go for dinner together. I quite enjoy the fact that 5 or 6 of us go out for dinner together every night. It's a nice way to relax, and it gives you a chance to talk about things that aren't related to Teaching English as a Second Language! Today was a bit quieter because I didn't have to teach. I got a lesson plan written for my one-on-one lesson that I'm teaching on Thursday. I'm a bit nervous about that one, because it's so hard to predict what'll happen in a class that's so informal and conversational. Hopefully, it will all go (relatively) according to plan. I also did my lesson plan for my class tomorrow. It's another "materials" lesson, where I have to create my own activity for the class. Last time was using the Allison Krauss song, this time I'm doing a dictogloss. What's a dictogloss, you ask? Good question. It's basically a dictation. I read a brief paragraph, and the students try to write as much of it down as possible. It might not go over well, because it's humorous, and the students might not know enough English to find it funny, but we'll try. The other problem is that I have too much to do, and not enough time! I'm starting to understand why our teachers were always whining about needing just ten more minutes. Man, with 10 more minutes, my lesson would be SWEET!

I'm feeling a bit frustrated these days, because the school has only 4 computers, and 12 students. It makes it hard to do assignments during the day when everyone is here, because there aren't enough computers to go around. I'm starting to see that having a laptop would be a huge asset to a teacher who doesn't have a desktop at home. If any of you know of any excellent deals on a laptop, email me please, so that I can check it out. :) Even if the school that hires me has computer access for me, it would be nice to be able to lesson planning and such at home on my own 'puter.

It rained quite a bit yesterday, so the walk to school this morning was especially enjoyable. The exquisite views down the cobblestone streets are even better when all of the dust has been washed out of the air. Megan and I were were looking up a street the other day, quite a beautifl street, in fact. You have this magnificent view of old buildings lining a cobblestone road that winds up a hill towards a green and verdant background. My comment? "Wow, just think Megan, up that street there's the cheapest pizza in Prague!" Yes folks, we have become so accustomed to the great beauty of this city that we ignore the view to talk about the pizza (but the pizza IS amazing... you get a small pizza (6 good sized slices) for about 60 Kc... which works out to $3 CDN. Really, you can't beat that).

One unusual thing here is that the rain doesn't smell. It was coming down fairly heavily, and I went out onto the balcony to smell the rain and the greenery and such. I stood outside for several minutes, sniffing the wind like a grizzly bear looking for a Michael to eat, and couldn't get a whiff of anything! It's very odd... things smell cleaner, but they don't smell like rain.

Well, I clearly have nothing much to say if I'm telling you all about how I sniff the wind. Next thing you know I'll be telling you all how I track the metro ... (get it? That's a joke, son). Keep in touch, mes amis.

All my love,
Elizabeth

Just Another Manic Monday

Manic depressive is more like it! I never used to dislike Mondays, but man, in this program they're CRAZY! You come in, feeling fairly caught up from the weekend, and *WHAM*... suddenly you have eight million things to do!

As of today, we've swapped teaching groups. Instead of teaching a high level class at 9AM, I'm teaching a low level class at 4:45PM. When I got to school this morning, I got my "materials" together (that's the TEFL term for your worksheets and lesson plan), made photocopies, etc. I then put in a solid hour's work on my Learner Profile, a long and tedious assignment that is an analysis of one student's abilities and weaknesses. During our classes that followed (the ones where we're the students, learning grammar and phonology) it turned out that what I thought was an optional part of the assignment... wasn't. I had to rework my whole assignment! And what's especially frustrating is that the way I had done it was (in my humble opinion) was clearer and WAY MORE CONCISE. *sigh* But it's done now! :) All long and unconcise... ;)

After spending an hour or two reworking the assignment (did I mention I had to rework the whole thing? As in all 8 pages of it?) it was time to teach. For my first time with lower level students, it went really well. There was only one awkward moment where I attempted to explain what it meant to say "we aren't really going anywhere nice" to someone who had no idea what I was getting. Two examples later, we were both confused. Finally, the girl next to her explained it in Czech (not such a good thing in your English immersion classroom...), and we moved on! All in all, I'm feeling much more confident for the next lesson.

You know, there are two things that I've noticed a lot of in Prague, and I thought you'd like to hear about them. A) Making out. B) Dogs. Let me be clear. It is not the dogs that are making out. ;) Rather, there are oodles of couples EVERYWHERE who are wrapped around each other like stripes on a candy cane. It's a bit unnerving, thinking that there's a two headed person kissing themselves on the metro, only to discover that they have managed to fit two people into a teeeeny tiiiiiny metro seat. One of these days, I swear I'm going to see a canoodling couple fall backwards down the escalator in the heat of their excitement!

The dogs are much more enjoyable. Every where you go, everyone has a dog. They're either BIG or small. There is no in between! But they have one thing in common: they're beautifully trained. They are often off leash, and they come when they're called, they don't tend to bark, and I have yet to see one attempt to bite anything except its owner's pastry that's they're holding a little to close to the ground. I have a theory about this. Prague traffic is wretched. I have, in actual fact, had a car's bumper touch my knees while I attempted to cross the street. Therefore, dogs who are not well trained, and run into traffic, die. The stupid non obedient dogs get bred out of the system, because they die in tragic traffic accidents. This leaves only the smart, well-trained dogs to survive and breed. I think Canada should adopt this off-leash policy in order to weed out those wretched dogs who chased me down the street as a child, pedalling madly to get away from its jaws of doom whilst its owner shouted meekly and helplessly "Brutus! Brutus, my little puppywuppy of wuv, stop chasing the nasty girlywirly." Any thoughts?

Well, that about wraps up my day. Enough silliness, that's just the heartburn talking (I ate a whole chocolate bar trying to calm my nerves before teaching... baaaaaaaad idea). I hope someone, somewhere might potentially email me today... I haven't had an email in a while... (except for you mum, you're awesome!)

Love you all,
Elizabeth

PS - the reason why I'm so email desperate is that the 12 people I spend time with here all do the same thing all day, every day. They don't have any news for me. YOU ALL, on the other hand, can tell me about YOUR days... days which don't include: grammar lessons, lesson planning, and a strange man named Mali mocking you mercilessly.... Anyways, email me!

Love,
E.

The Sunday Post

Morning to you all (even though it's afternoon here!)

I know, I know, I said that there wouldn't be any weekend posts. But Megan has a laptop with a wireless connection, and she lets me use it in exchange for the occasional beer/coke light/reading of her assignments. :) It's a good deal, so I thought I'd take advantage of that and fill you in on my quiet weekend.

Friday afternoon we stayed at the school and worked on assignments. There wasn't as much to do this week, so we got away a bit earlier than expected. Yay! Megan and I went to a small "Italian" place near the school for dinner, and had quite good pasta for dinner. We also had the "hot pear in carmel and chocolate" for dessert. Oh man... mum, you would have loved it. Delicious!

We went back to the flat and just sat around for a while, enjoying the fact that it was indeed Friday, and we were indeed free from obligations for a few days. Then we met up with some others from our group (Josh, Lucy, Sydney and Fernanda... I'll try and get some pictures to put up if I can, but no one has a digital camera) and went out salsa dancing. It was a lot of fun! Not many people there spoke English... but instead of it being all Czech, it was mostly Spanish and Portugese! It was a really neat experience. Sydney is from El Salvador, and is very Latino is his flamboyant personality, and he a had a great time trying to teach Lucy, Megan and I how to dance. Fernanda, being from Brazil, didn't need to be taught anything. Man, when she and Sydney danced togther, it was a sight to be seen! In the words of Minnie Johnson reporting the Gwynne news... "a good time was had by all."

Saturday was a relatively lazy day. Lucy and I went and did a bit of grocery shopping. The Albert's (the store we go to) plays a... variety of English music. We heard Wake up Little Suzie, Stuck in the Middle (Bob Dylan), Flashdance, and a Britney Spears song. :) The Britney Spears song is a terrible pop thing about trying to fly, but failing miserable, and it's slow, and pathetic, and I got a little weepy in the ice cream aisle... how sad is that! Maybe I miss you guys a bit more than I let on. ;)

Megan and I headed into the centre after that, and had a nice afternoon wandering around. We found the post office, and it's one of the most beautiful places I have EVER been in. It's like a big open area with the most beautifully designed and decorated walls and ceiling. I could have sat there for hours. We also found a bank machine that gives a chequing/savings account option, and so I was able to get my card to work. Thanks for the tip about the account thing, Bari, you were totally right. Megan's card suddenly didn't want to work at all! She was a bit stressed, and told me she had more sympathy for me over these past few days, but was able to get it sorted out with a phone call to her parents. *phew* Thank goodness for parents and cellphones! :D

We were extraordinarily proud of ourselves, because we made it to one of our favorite restaurants in the city without having to have Josh (our friend who knows Prague and acts as a guide to all of us) take us there. This place has THE BEST cabbage soup. mmmm. And the prices are ludicrously reasonable. Anyone who comes to visit me, be prepared to go to "The Soup Place." I would likely also take you "The Salad Place" if you're in the mood for an excellent salad, or "The Dirty Place" if you want some goulash. The Dirty Place is tricky, because there are some rather "coarse" cartoons on the walls, so you have to stay very focussed on your dining companions to ignore them. However, it has some really excellent goulash and dumplings that you just can't miss out on.

As we exited the soup place (have you noticed that we don't know the names for anything? This is because a) Josh doesn't tell us the names, b) the names are often not posted, and c) if theyare, they're in Czech. I don'tspeak Czech. Megan doesn't speak Czech. Do you speak Czech? No? Ok then. Until YOU come and tell me what the Czech name of these places are, don't complain, and just go with "The ______ Place") we found a pashmina place! They had some exquisite pashminas that were in rich autumn colors with exquisite patterns. Megan bought a deep purple and antique gold one, and mine is burgundy, black and gold, done in a large paisley design. They're beautiful, and will be perfect for the fall here. They were also on sale. We like sales! :)

We met up with Sydney for a movie after our pashmina purchasing, and went to see The Island with Scarlett Johannson and Ewan McGregor. It was a pretty good movie, and it was English with Czech subtitles, so it was fun to try andguess what the Czech words were for a while. Pretty soon I was so engrossed in the movie that I forgot the subtitles were even there. It was a good way to end a Saturday night.

Today has been very quiet. Megan needed to go to Albert's, so I joined her for the walk, and to pick up some fresh fruit. One thing that's very different here than in Canada is that the entrees very rarely come with any vegetables. I've gotten into the habit of having salad everywhere I go, but I still miss out on a lot of fruit with all the eating out we do (lack of stove/kitchen sink = more eating at restaurants). The fruit here is unexciting. The only think I noticed was that bananas cost more per kilo than nectarines! Craziness! We came back here, had lunch, did some homework, read, listened to music... just a quiet Sunday.

Megan and I are quite excited because we're going to look at an apartment next Saturday, and it seems like it would be quite nice for us and our needs. Here's a couple of photos (Hilary said that she'd like more photos on the blog, and since the guy sent us these ones, I can share them with you!) This is a one bedroom, but it has a large living room and a large foyer, so we're going to see if we can maybe convert one of those into another bedroom. Then we'd buy a second-hand futon and cupboard of some sort for clothes, and be set to go! The place is fully furnished, which is sweet. If this one doesn't work out, we've also expressed interest in several other places through a rental website, and we should hear about being able to go and see those early next week. All in all, I don't think that finding a place is going to be too problematic. Yay! Hopefully, job hunting goes as well as ap't hunting seems to be.

So here you have it folks: pictures of the place we might move into. Let me know what you think! (I think that bathtub looks amazing... one of us could just sleep in there!)


























I love and miss you all. Write to me soon if you have time.

Love,
Elizabeth

Last day of the week!

Huzzah! It's Friday, and there's an end in sight for all the work! :)

We're hanging out now, waiting to do our mid-course appraisals. We give feedback to the school about our experience, and our tutors give us one-on-one feedback regarding our progress. To start it off, they returned our Uknown Language Journals (our first assignment). I got an A! Score one for the good guys. A reward for all the hard work, I suppose. :)

Some of our group are going out salsa dancing tonight, and I think that I'll probably tag along. I don't know how to salsa, but Sydney (who is Latino) refuses to believe that the icy frosts of Canada stiffened my joints completely, and insists that he'll show me how. I think it should be fun. The crew here is the kind of group of people that can have fun no matter where they are. :)

Music is very popular here in the Czech Republic. Coming to school in the morning, I occasionally pass an old man playing the accordion. If you give him some money, he'll sing for you. I advise not giving him money.... ;) Also, we were eating dinner in a beerhall one night, and all of a sudden 3 women appeared: one with an accordion, one with a violin, and one with a tuba! They were terrible, but so much fun. They only knew 2 or 3 songs, so they just played them over, and over, and over, and over... (*oompah pah oompah pah oompah pah*!) Their repertoire included the classic Roll out the Barrel so a number of tourists joined in and sang along, which was quite entertaining.

Sunday, Megan and I are hoping to hop a bus and head out of Prague to see some of the Czech countryside. However, just as I was typing that, she called me over to her and said that someone has responded to our ad for an apartment at www.expats.cz , so maybe we will go and check that out. Who knows!

Well, it's time for my evaluation, so I should go. There won't be any posts this weekend, because I won't be at the school, so you'll have to wait in great anticipation until Monday for the weekend update.

I love you all, keep sending your emails. I love to hear about your day to day lives because it feels like I'm right there with you!

Love,
Elizabeth

Question and Answer

Hi folks,

I have another few minutes, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share a bit more about my day to day life here in Prague. For starters, I thought you might like to see where I sit when I type most of these posts. This is the computer hallway at school.

It is, in fact, a hallway. Behind the guy on the chair is one of hte classroom doors. I'm not in this picture... it's not even mine. I "borrowed" it from the school's website. But now you know. :) It's a very nice place to sit, because there are huge windows over the computers, and the sunshine streams in.

Speaking of sun, I have had a beautiful two weeks' of weather here. Rumor has it that it rains a lot in Prague, but aside from the night I arrived, I haven't seen any. Instead we have beautiful sunny days in the low to mid twenties. The kind of days where you sit inside and wish desperately that you could be outside exploring Prague instead of inside learning about English grammar. *blargh* :)

Hilary asked me today if I had gone to a pub yet. I will answer that question here. Yet? YET?? YET?? My darling Hilary... we are generally in a pub at least once a day! That's where students can find excellent food for very little money. I frequently eat a meal (with a beverage, be it pop or Czech water [aka beer]) for 100 Kc. That works out to about $5 Canadian. And these aren't McDonald's meals... these are real meals, like goulash and dumplings (drowned in gravy... so bad, yet so good), or cabbage soup (oh.my.goodness. it's incredible here, if you know where to go) and a mixed vegetable salad (also scrumptious), or potatoes in cream and tomatoes... well, you get the idea. You can eat great food for cheap here if you have someone in your group who knows where all of these places are hidden. For hidden they are. Good food along with cheap prices is generally reserved for the Czechs themselves, so the places that have this intriguing combination are generally hard to find. Not that they aren't right in the center of downtown, because they are. They just tend to have smaller doors, no signs, and to be underground.

On a food related topic, carbonated water is tres populaire here. I couldn't get into at all until Sydney (one of the men in our program) introduced me to... Korunní. Czech for "crown" it is indeed the beverage of monarchs. It's carbonated water that is lightly flavored with orange or lemon. It is to die for. It comes in 1.5L bottles... enough for a full day! And a this wondrous sized bottle of kings' elixir is sold for only 13 Kc. Yes, my friends, a 1.5 L bottle of the most delicious water option is available for a whopping 65 cents Canadian. If you can find it... get it!!

Well, now that you're all hungry for some dumplings, and thirsting for some Korunní, I shall leave you. If you have more questions, send them! We can do question and answer every week. :)

I love you all,

Elizabeth

Old Mr. Webster Could Never Define

Hi all! I have 15 minutes before my next class, so I thought I'd quickly update the ol' blog.

I just finished teaching my "materials" lesson; the one where I had to create the lesson from scratch. I did use Alison Krauss' When You Say Nothing at All, and on the whole, it went well. The students actually seemed to like the song! Bonus! They had a sheet with the lyrics on it, but there were deliberate errors in it (e.g. what I fear when you don't say a word, should be hear). The students had to find all of the errors and correct them. They seemed to enjoy the challenge, and even asked to hear the song one more time so they could make sure that they had all ten. The only thing that I would change about this lesson is that there wasn't really an activity in it. If I did it again, I would have the students write their own song lyrics as an end to the class.

We only teach Monday to Thursday, so I'm feeling like it's the weekend already! I'm going to stay til 8:30 and try to get ahead on my homework, and then it's off to the pub for our Thursday night "social activity." Tomorrow, I don't have to be here until noon, so I can sleep in. Then I need to go to the bank. My debit card doesn't work here, so I need to figure something out. Friday, I'll stay at the school as late as I can trying to wrap up as much homework as possible, but then...

IT'S THE WEEKEND! Yay!! I will have some homework, but not too much. We're thinking we might catch a movie or have a Buffy (the Vampire Slayer, a terrible but addicting teen tv show) marathon. Megan and I want to spend Saturday vegetating... mmmm vegging... and then do some more touring around on Sunday. I don't know what we'll go and see this time... I suppose it depends on whether or not anyone else has finished enough of their homework to come with us.

I've got no interesting anecdotes today... all we do here is slave away at becoming ESL teachers. :) When they said intensive, they meant intensive!

Please keep the emails coming, I'll try and respond in a reasonable amount of time!

I love you all,

Elizabeth

A quick post

Just a brief note, as I have to get to class.

i) Thanks for the emails! I knew a little guilt will help to fill my inbox. Expect replies soon. Mum... Megan has gotten TWO letters from home, where are mine? ;)

ii) Chris found a picture of the crazy musical instrument. Behold!

Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Have a great day, guys... I may update more later.

Love,

Elizabeth

No emails in two days!

Hello faithful readers... though I doubt your faithfulness, since I haven't gotten ONE SINGLE EMAIL since September the 4. I'm very disappointed in all of you. :(

Anyway, yesterday and today have been just terribly busy. As in, even more so than usual. I was all caught up as of Friday night... and then Monday morning, the avalanche came. We have two major assignments to be working, plus planning lessons, plus attending our classes... I love it! No time to be homesick. I could use some more time to, you know, eat and sleep, but I guess those'll wait. :)

I taught my first longer lesson (55 min) today, and ROCKED it. Yes, there are things I can improve on, and no it was not perfect. But it flowed. And I wasn't internally panicking the whole time. It was wonderful... a total rush. My students really seemed to enjoy it, and to learn something from it. Excellent!

Megan and I (do you all know who Megan is? anybody? She's the teacher from Chicago) have been looking to find an apartment here in Prague. When I first arrived here, I didn't think that I'd stay in Prague for the year, but.... Well, Megan and I get along really well, and I don't think that either one of use particularly wants to start new again after this class ends. If we live together, but work at different schools, I think it would be great. There will likely be a few more of our classmates in the city, too, so we have sort of a network here. If you all would send your good wishes and prayers that we'll be able to get jobs and an apartment, that would be fantastic.

I'm currently (as in it's in another window on the computer) working on my "materials" lesson. I have to create my own lesson from scratch. I'm planning on doing relationship vocab (e.g. boyfriend, girlfriend, love, hug...), and I think I'll do a listening exercise using a love song. Keely suggested Alison Krauss' "When You Say Nothing at All" (lyrics). I think it's great, because it doesn't use some of the words that you would expect it to (e.g. "love"), but it is still very clearly a love song. I'm looking forward to planning this!

Well, time to go. I'm sitting in on a low level class tonight to help prepare me for the switch. I only teach my high levels til Thursday, then we swap levels. I think it's going to be very challenging to go from teaching those who can communicate in English quite easily to those who know very little. I'll just have to remember working with the senior citizens... that should help me out!

I love you all. Please EMAIL ME! :) Or call... I like my new phone...

-Elizabeth

I'm not dead yet!

Hi all! Sorry for the long delay, but I've been keeping very busy here in the cosmopolitan cobblestone that is Prague.

First Item of Great and Fabulous Importance: I have a cell phone! It costs me nothing to receive phone calls, but quite a bit to call out. If you are interested in talking to me in person, check with my parents, and they'll pass the number onto you.

So, where I did I leave you all hanging? I believe that I had told you that we were going out to the pub on Thursday night, but that's as far as I got. Well, we went out. It's quite a lot of fun, because everyone comes: tutors (my teachers), teachers (us), students (our Czech students), former teachers, former students.... everyone! And everyone is happy, and very ... "relaxed." It ended up being a VERY late night though.

Fortunately our tutors know that, and so class doesn't begin until noon on Friday. It was very hard to get through class awake! :) Then Megan and I stayed late to finish all of our homework before the weekend got started. This had been what all of our flatmates agreed to do, so that we could all go touring together this weekend. Megan and I are the diligent ones in our group... turns out no one else bothered to get everything done, and had to spend the whole weekend doing homework. *sigh* So much for touring as a group!

Friday night, we went out again. I love how close our class is. Everyone gets along, and we all enjoy spending time together. It's hard to be lonely with 11 built in friends. I spent a large part of the evening joking around with Sydney, an older man who is originally from El Salvador. For those of you who have been to Camp May-Mac... he has a personality just like Sal! It was so much fun. We started out in a pub, but then moved on to a dance club, where it was "80s and 90s" night. Wow! They had a huge movie screen, and we rocked out to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Ra Ra Rasputin, I Will Survive... with all the music videos! It was great! The only downer is that the club is underground, and no air moves through it.... everyone was sweating like cheese on the countertop. We stayed and partied until 3 in the morning... so much fun!!

Saturday was brilliant. I stayed in bed, and read a really good book that Megan loaned me. We did some grocery shopping, made some lunch, had an early night. It was perfect. Everyone else was frantically doing homework, so it was nice to be all caught up. I enjoy feeling slightly superior *wink*.

Sunday morning, Megan and I really wanted to wander around, but no one else had finished their work and could come with us. We headed into the downtown anyways. First, we toured the Jewish quarter. We saw 5 synagogues, 1 cemetery, and the ceremonial hall. This tour was incredible, but very sad. One of the synagogues has all of the names of the Czech Jewish victims painted on the walls. There are so many of them. The script is very small, and the walls are covered corner to corner. A poignant reminder of how terrible those times were.

Another synagogue has all the walls and the ceiling painted in a very intricate design. At first I thought that it was wall paper, until I looked closer. It's amazing, and I can't imagine doing that much work to paint that kind space with such an amazing design.

I could go on and on about these places, but really, you should come see them yourselves. I'll leave you with just one last description. Since the Jewish Quarter (read: ghetto) was so small, they had only 1 square block for a cemetery. They filled the cemetery. They pulled up all of the headstones, laid on a layer of dirt, and put up the first headstones, plus a second round for the new bodies. They did this 10 or 12 times. Now the cemetery is just completely crammed with headstones. It almost looks like a mouth full of a lot of crooked teeth. Mum, the rabbi who invented the golem (I hope that's the right word) is buried here! I almost bought you a little figurine, but decided I'd wait and see if I got your name for Christmas.

After that, we went wandering. Amber, amber is very valued here, and they make beautiful jewellery with it. I bought you a ring! Megan and I did a bit more shopping (I bought a ring and a bracelet; jewellery is very affordable here). Then we wandered smack into a medieval festival! Everyone was in costume; even the horses! There was dancing and acting, and a horse parade. It was incredible. They had all kinds of armor and swords for kids. I almost bought Jake a mace, or a helmet, or a sword... but I couldn't figure out how I'd get it home. Maybe for Christmas.... :) (don't know why, but I've got Christmas on my mind).

As we walked away from the medieval festival, we ran into a folk festival! We watched some really cute kids dance traditional dances in the most beautiful costumes. One of the women was playing an instrument that I've never seen before. It was held under one arm like a bagpipe, squeezed under the other like an accordion, and was played with what looked like a recorder out of the front. The sound came out of two cow horns... one in front, and one behind. I have no idea how else to explain this thing... it was just bizarre!

After that, Megan and I went home, and regaled the others with our tales. They were very jealous, because they had spent all day Sunday doing homework as well. I'm going to continue doing 10 hr days, because it means my weekends are free!

Today, I taught my second lesson. I thought it went terribly... it was like Elizabeth and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Lesson. According to my group members, it wasn't that bad! I think I'm quite good at this teaching thing... I just need to be more convinced of that when I'm actually doing it, yeah? I'll try to remember that tomorrow, when I'm up in front of the group again!

This has been an awfully long update, my apologies. It seems like I won't be doing much updating on the weekends, though, so I had to fill you in.

I love you all, please keep writing (or phone!)

Love,
Elizabeth

Dia dhuit!

Aloha all. The title of today's post is the Gaelic for "God be with you." It's their standard greeting, and the response translates to "God and Mary be with you." Ah, the Irish and one-upping each other with religious greetings. ;)

Another couple of busy days out here in Praha. They've got us working like dogs! Or teachers. I am continually reinforced for my beliefs that teachers are overworked and underpaid! Luckily, I didn't have to teach today, so I had a bit of a break what with not having to plan a lesson last night. I in fact don't teach til Monday (we don't have our students here on Friday), but I'm going to finish my lesson plan tonight, just so it's done. This time around I'm teaching a bit about giving one's opinion... something I'm an expert at! :) I've got a more reasonable amount of material to cover this time, so I think that it will go alright. I've also got the advantage of having observed an extra class. It's common for your second class to be worse than your first, since you're so busy worrying about what you did wrong the last time. I plan to stay calm, stay focused, and mostly not worry too much about it. I've adjusted my planning to account for some of my issues, but if I get to focused on what I have to fix, I'll forget to teach anything!

Last night we went out for soup for supper. This man in our course has been here in Praha for a while, so he knows where all of the good, cheap food is. The soup is a cabbage soup that's a bit like borscht, but has big pieces of sausage in it. It was excellent. Megan and I thought we were reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally hungry, so we also ordered potato dishes. Mine was roasted potatos in tomato and sourcream with fresh olives. Delicious, but enormous, and SO FILLING. The Czechs really aren't fans of lighter fare.

We went to a pub for a drink afterwards, and I headed into the washroom. When I came out of the stall, there was a huge golden retriever in there with me! Apparently, the Czechs TRULY love their dogs, and they go everywhere with them. I thought that this sort of meant the metro, in the car, etc... but I guess it means to restaurants and clubs, too. Not very hygienic, but this guy was super friendly, and let me pet him. I decided he could stay. :)

Tonight is "pub night." Every Thursday the school has an evening at the pub round the corner. Tutors, students (us), and students' students (the people I teach) are all welcome to come. Sometimes former students show up, too, so it's a really good networking opportunity. I'm exhausted, but I think I'll go. A) I need to keep keeping busy, and B) I'll sleep when I'm dead. Or, more accurately, tomorrow morning, since we have a late start. :D

Not sure what our weekend plans are yet, but I think my flatmates and I will do some touring. We all want to tour around the Old Town in a horse-drawn carriage, so we'll likely do that. I shall keep you posted.

Love you all... keep writing to me! And if you want my mailing address, just let me know.

Love,
Elizabeth