Happy Friday

Hello all - here is your long awaited post! I'm sorry that it's taken so long, but life has been a bit hectic these past few days.

On Wednesday, my evening class was observed by one of Skrivanek's senior teachers. I got an "A"! In fact, he suggested that I might be paid for having other teachers sit in and observe my lessons, as long as I was willing to a debriefing afterwards. I'm seriously hoping that this is a possibility, and am praying that it will work out. It was really exciting to get such positive feedback. I know that I don't want to teach for the rest of my life, but it's nice to know that I'm good at something that's related to what I want to do long-term. Arranging conversation groups for seniors with strokes is surprsingly similar to running EFL classes, so I'm thrilled that I both like it and am good at it.

On Thursday, I got paid. Enough said. Paydays are ALWAYS happy days. Only, it wasn't all that happy, because I was feeling a bit stressed about money. (Ah, don't we all go through the same problems in life?) There was a minor whoops with my pay that had to be sorted out (frustrating!) and a very large number of my lessons are being cancelled due to holidays and doctors' appointments. I understand that my students deserve holidays and medical care :) but I still wish it didn't mean that I lost classes. :( Fortunately, I scrutinized the budget, and I should be Ok. Hopefully they'll slow down on the cancelling...

Or if they don't, hopefully I can continue to pick up the occasional subbing lessons. Today I subbed in two classes, which was... challenging. It's weird to go into an unfamiliar situation and just teach one lesson. You follow the book if the regular teacher has tleft you enough information to do so, but if they haven't - you just go from scratch. And it's not like my ordinary "first lesson" where we get introduced and play games - these guys have already one of those - they just want an English lesson! All in all, the two classes went quite smoothly (minus me being late for one due to miscommunications - all sorted out in the end). I've picked up another sub lesson for next week, which will help make up for the 4 lessons that cancelled in advance...

I also met my new student today. So nice! Very friendly and very relaxed; I imagine we'll get on just fine. She wants to work on grammar, which is fine by me, because I do love grammar. I think it'll be a great class.

Tonight was Bible study, which was excellent, as per usual. We're working on the book of Malachi, and I'm quite enjoying studying some of the Old Testament, because I don't know a whole lot about it. It's very interesting, and the conversation tends to get quite deep quite quickly. I'm interested by how applicable it is - I'd always kind of thought that the Old Testament was good for sort of an academic pursuit, but maybe not so relevant personally - boy was I wrong!! Of course, it was also good to see my friends again, and to spend time gabbing away with them after the study section was finished.

Tomorrow is laundry and housecleaning and writing to Grandma during the day. In the evening we're having the first Oxford TEFL Poker Party at Rob's place, and I'm quite looking forward to that. Rob's hosting it, so all I need to do is show up and have a good time!

Sunday I'm meeting with Tiffany after church to bake cookies. Yum! I haven't baked since I've been in the Czech Republic (4 1/2 mos., a major record for me!). I'm sooo looking forward to it. C is for cookie, that's good enough for me...

Ok, I'm off. Love you all, hope things are well.

Love,
Elizabeth