Daylight Savings

The time change has been very confusing for me all day. I have been in warped time since this last Wednesday, and knowing that there is an hour time difference than yesterday simply makes me further off. Even so, this has been a very memorable week. I am not looking forward to waking up early and teaching tomorrow, but I do feel pretty good after doing some cleaning with Laura, grocery shopping, and getting a kebab =). It will be good to be back in the weekly routine, because I spent a lot of money this week between Kutna Hora and Prague. Anyhow, my roommate took a lovely picture of our house, and I thought I'd put it here. Back to lesson plans!

A Long October Weekend

This past week, I only had to teach on Monday and Tuesday. I put together some presentations on Halloween for my third and sixth graders and cancelled my private lessons for the rest of the week. I wanted to do some traveling for my 5 day weekend, but my company held training on Wednesday and Thursday, so I could not go far. Training was in Kutna Hora, though, and we were able to see the church filled with bones from 40 thousand people. It was a little insane, to say the least. We ran into some people from the states who are working in Germany now that were very nice, and may try to make a trip up to see them in November. Because it was the company recruiter's 30th birthday, we kind of went crazy at a disco on our only night there. I have now been a witness and partial participant in dancing crazily, singing in the hand-held microphone and rocking out to some songs in front of a bunch of people, body shots, etc. At around 12:30am, after the recruiter had already fallen and broken her wrist an hour previous, two girls and I walked our drunk compatriots and handicapped recruiter back to the hotel. I was the only one who knew the way, but it was simple, so it didn't take too long. I had to help my co-worker out of her boots and make sure she kept her wrist iced and elevated until she could get to the hospital the following day. Lots of people were hungover the next day. On our train to Prague, six of us sat in a cabin with an older woman. Our group was sharing funny travel stories and talking about how hard it is to find the right kind of tampons, surviving bar crawls, funny styles we have seen, etc. for roughly an hour. At the end of the trip, the woman casually asked if we were at the right stop...in English. A few people were extremely embarrassed about all of the subject matters discussed while thinking she was Czech, but the lady said it was one of the most entertaining trips she's been on...she very much enjoyed being a fly on the wall. I really liked her =). Laura and I came back to Liberec afterwards so I could get to my band practice, but it took a long time and I ended up not going and going to bed around 11. Yesterday (Friday), I went to Prague to show my friend Matěj how to make better food than spaghetti with ketchup. Laura came shortly after, and the three of us walked around the city while Matěj told us about the history of the place and of the holiday that was being celebrated. It was a lovely afternoon. Then, Laura and I went to meet Nicole for her birthday party. Nicole and her friend Jarda, who we met last time we hung out with Nicole in Prague, were celebrating their birthday together by renting out a pub, having Nicole's old band come and play, and dressing up like teachers or students. It was a good time, overall. Now it's Saturday and I would like to take a nap and get some cleaning done so I can work on my lesson plans and enjoy the day tomorrow.

ALSO! Míša of Pavel and Míša who I first couch surfed with when I came to the Czech Republic and are among the 30 year-old crowd of doctors that I hang out with is...PREGNANT!! I am so excited for them!! They told me last Monday but Míša was shy and didn't want the news to be spread about, but I randomly ran into her on my way home from Prague today at the bus station and it is confirmed! They will have their baby while I'm still here =)

Every Day A New Beginning =)

I am so happy with life today!  I went to sleep early last night (cerca 11), and woke up at 8:30 to find a text from my friend Matěj offering his TV to watch the Rugby World Cup at 10!  I cleaned up a bit around the house before he picked me up, and was very happy to see New Zealand win!  I stayed for lunch with his family before playing some ping pong and walking back to my house through fields and forest in the beautiful autumn countryside.  I have since talked to my family and some friends on skype and am currently sipping mulled wine and eating too many cookies with my roommates.  In an hour or so, I will head out to go rock climbing with Dustin, probably Ines (German teacher from Husova), and who knows if or who else.  Last week, I joined a band.  I went to my first practice on Thursday night and it went very well...I really like the guys and they are very good musicians.  The only drawbacks are that they want me to sing AC/DC and such and prefer I sing in Czech, but I think I can rock it and it will help me learn quickly.  We went out for beers after and then half of the band invited me to go to another bar to celebrate my new position as singer.  It was extremely fun and I won every game of foosball I played =).  I walked home to check my phone and found out that I had stayed out until 4:30am, which was a bit unfortunate since I wake up between 6:15 and 6:30 during the week and had to teach a math and science class to the Czech third graders in English by myself for two hours, since the professor I usually cooperate with had a funeral to attend, but I woke up fairly easily and had a great day of classes.  I took a nap afterwards and went to dinner at Matěj's.  His mom made beef tar tar and it was delicious! Then, we went to the soccer game and Liberec won which was fantastic.  After the game, we met up with 8 or 9 of Matěj's friends from track and field and celebrated one of their birthday's.  I knew three of his friends and was pleased to meet some of the others.  Overall, it was a fun night.  For those who are wondering, Matěj has a girlfriend and we are just friends =).  I have met his girlfriend and hung out with her on two or three occasions. 


Yesterday, I got some things for the kittens at the store between spending the afternoon and evening with Katrina and two of our co-workers through Wattsenglish, Lisa and Suzanne.  We bought mulled wine and ingredients to make pizza, and enjoyed some cheese and crackers while we waited for the pizza to cook and the wine to warm.  I was very happy to go to bed and do some reading at 10:30 =).  Tomorrow night, I will spend some time with my Dr. friends at the pub who I haven't seen in a while and am looking forward to it a lot.  It should be a great week filled with two days of teaching, training at Kutna Hora or so I think it's spelled....details to follow.

 Yes, we're local celebrities.

Side Note...

1.  I just realized I may have gotten food poisoning, and not have been sick from alcohol.  I will know for sure if I get sick in the next few hours after eating some delicious stir fry with the same semi-borderline chicken meat.

2.  Kat, Laura, and I got out pictures taken for a website for Liberec while we were at the reservoir, so I will post the link to our photo tomorrow =).

Post-Pay Day

We got paid on Friday!  First month's salary and first real chunk of cash I've earned since being here.  When I was walking to pick up my check, I was followed by a parade in the street being led by a man on stilts and a student of mine in costume who came over to say hello to me =)  He's a cute little kid from the second grade.   It's a pity we don't get paid more so I can save up a lot for when I get home and decide what my next step is, but money goes further here, so my coworkers and I feel like ballers!  I went out with Laura to a vinoteka on Friday night and we bought some of the burčak (new/fresh/sweet/cheap) wine and ended up talking to 3 groups of people who were curious to speak English with us and learn why we were there. One girl and her boyfriend I am staying in touch with, because they were super sweet. The three British accented English speakers from Czech bought us shots and Laura tasted one and stopped, but I am pretty sure that they led to me having one of my only and certainly my worst hangovers of my life. It was very rough, and I had to cancel on my friends Dustin and Ines for rock climbing, but I still went shopping with Petra (co-teacher) and bought a winter jacket and sweat pants! I didn't bring any sweat pants with me, here! I still need to get a lot more to be prepared for winter here, since I put my winter stuff in a box to be sent from home but it was too expensive to ship.  


After shopping, I went on a quick trip to a lookout tower with my friend to see Liberec and the surrounding towns. He made tea for us and the night was very clear so we could see very far away, but it was pretty darn chilly. When we got back to the car, he opened the driver door and asked me if I wanted to drive. I told him I couldn't drive manuals, but he was not deterred! I drove around in a field, first, and then the 20 minutes home! I stalled a few times close to home after stop signs...But otherwise it wasn't so bad! I am working my way up to being able to borrow the company car to go on a short trip to Germany or something, but I'm not sure if if/when I will ever feel comfortable enough driving to do it. Today, I am looking forward to being productive and lesson planning for my week full of classes with 7 private clients. First, though, I am going to the reservoir with Kat and Laura to enjoy the sun and have a picnic =)

Some Sayings for the Year

"Teaching can be like going to school when you're hungover and having to give presentations all day long."


"I will swim to the deepest depths of the ocean to pull you out of the muck...i will put my own breath in your lungs...but i will not hold your hand if you tie yourself to a sunken ship."


"We make mistakes every day and that is a part of our human experience and growth. Just don't let someone else make them for you."


"Time is neither your greatest friend nor foe. He simply plays witness to your highs and lows with no ability to interfere. The only one with the ability to change how you feel is you."


"It's never too late or too early to start over."




...I'll probably add to these if I feel so inspired...there are just the ones i have on my mind now... enjoy!

Another Sunday

I didn't end up going mushroom picking last week.  I got an invitation to go to Prague for a free rock concert with my friend Matěj instead.  I stayed late after class to help Petra prepare our classroom for her teacher's meeting by drawing a mural of sorts on her blackboard-or blue-board, rather.  We were talking for a while and listening to music, and I found out that she read my resume and hand-selected me to be the teacher at Husova!  She also asked me if I would consider working directly for the school next year, because my company is expensive and they would rather pay someone directly.  I really like my job there and the life here so it is tempting, but I am pretty sure I want to go home and get something settled there before I go off traveling again...I said I would think about it more over Christmas.  Anyway, I finished the autumn scene on the blue board and left from there to pick my passport up from the office and catch the bus to Prague.  I made it to the festival without any problems, but my friend wasn't able to get there until a few hours later, so I bought myself a burger and a beer and made it my mission to enjoy the music and find some people who spoke English.  It wasn't much of a challenge, since the music was great and I ran into some people who were fun.  We ended up going on two rides at the adjacent carnival together:  A mini roller coaster and something that spun around and lifted you up...called "Twister", I think.  The group was really fun, but I left them and met up with my friend once he got there, since I only had about 15 minutes left to hang out before I had to leave and make the trip back home or I would miss the last bus to Liberec and not be able to make it to school on time with the first one in the morning...It was a tempting option, but I'm a teacher now, not a student.  

While on the bus, I ended up in a long conversation with the guy who was sitting next to me.  He is a teacher at the technical university here in Liberec and was on his way back from a trumpet gig in Prague.  He invited me to come to the next show that isn't too far and told me yesterday that he knows a band looking for a singer...I'm going to check them out this Thursday or next and see if it's a good fit!! Very excitied.  Anyway, I was supposed to go away with the 30-yr-olds for a birthday hiking weekend at a cottage, but Misa, the poor birthday girl, was too sick =(.  Instead, I decided to join Laura in Prague for the weekend an hour before the bus left.  We went to book a hostel but remembered that we have a coworker and friend Nicole living there who said we could crash at her place.  We were very close to missing our bus to Prague...we literally had to run with our bags and JUST made the tram with enough time to get to our bus before it left.  We had a crazy fun night with Laura's friend from home, Nicole and two of her good guy friends, though I have no idea what hour in the morning we got back and went to bed at.  I found pieces of a phone on the ground in front of one of the discos, out it together, and texted the recently talking friends to find out how I could return the phone.  Luckily the phone was much like mine in the States so I could use it, the guy spoke English, and it was pretty easy to meet him in front of the museum the next day.  Laura and I passed through a techno festival parading through the center of Prague on our way to meet the man who lost his phone, and I almost laughed aloud when I realized it was the guy from Ireland who proposed marriage to me before he even introduced himself to me.  Fun Friday led to a pretty lazy Saturday, though, and Laura and I couldn't stay at past 1:30AM with the guys from the night before at a birthday party at a bar because we were too tired.  

Our trip back today was rough to say the least.  I accidentally bought a child's ticket and got stopped by a controller and had to pay 800ck-roughly $50.  Kind of frustrating because it was an honest mistake and I'm not rich, but it certainly could have been much worse.  When we finally did get on the tram, we witnessed a mugging of an old lady in our section of the tram.  We heard a commotion and saw an old lady pulling the hair of a woman in her early thirties who had been rummaging through the lady's purse while she was being distracted by the girl's guy friend or something.  The tram doors closed quickly and the old lady was seriously ruffled and upset, but it was so fast there was nothing anyone could do.  I'm not sure if those two were able to nab anything of hers, but she was so frazzled!  Shaking uncontrollably, it was horrible.  In contrast, the two 17-year-olds across from Laura and I were making out and groping each other as if they were in a private space somewhere.  Really a disturbing series of events.  This may be too much information, but I had a cough to to congestion all morning (most likely due to inhaling too much cigarette smoke), and as we sat there and wondered where our day went wrong, I coughed again, turned to Laura, and said "On the bright side, I think I just coughed up a booger." I know it's disgusting and I'm sorry I wrote it, but you must know that we both fell into laughter that we could not shake for five minutes straight or so.   

I am home and happily so, at this point, but must get to my lesson planning and such.  

Dobrou noc! 

Mushrooms for Mankind

A great many things have happened since I last wrote, per usual.  I was invited to play volleyball with a new group of university students and tried to speak in Czech the whole time, was treated to a football (soccer) game, went hiking through old castle ruins with Laura and friends, crossed a bridge via a horizontal pulley system, went to a jam session in a storage unit, taught a lot of classes, named my kittens Kuba and Tulačka (Tula for short), etc.  Saturday was my most packed day, as I had volleyball, the soccer game, a trip to one pub with some friends, a trip to another venue for a concert with more friends, and then to a disco to meet up with the teacher I work most closely with to celebrate her birthday.  Laura and I didn´t get back from the disco until 3:30AM or so. 

I am currently waiting for my first after school club with three 3 and 4-year-olds to begin.  I am a bit tired and not exactly looking forward to teaching small children at the moment, but I am sure I will fall in love with them easily enough.  My boss will be watching and the parents will be there, but I think that things will go smoothly enough.  I think things usually work out better for me if I don't think about the lesson too much before hand so it's still a little new and interesting for me as the teacher.

I have thus far neglected to mention this town's obsession with mushrooms and mushroom picking as a pasttime.  There are so many different kind of mushrooms here, and it seems that everyone young and old knows their names, how to recognise them, and which ones are safe to eat and which are poisonous.  Almost every other art project I have assisted in has to do with painting, drawing, or molding mushrooms.  The first graders know how how to say mushroom before they know how to say apple, I think.  I have wanted to go mushroom picking for a while, but have not yet had the time to go or the people to go with. It's supposed to snow this weekend in the mountains, though, so I think my last chance to go will be in the early morning before school tomorrow or friday.  I am not sure if I will have the energy or will power to get myelf up at 4AM or so to go mushroom picking on my own, but the early morning will be when they have just sprung up and haven't been discovered by others yet so we shall see...

I have also been teaching my first private lessons this week.  I tutor some students from the school, a young mother in her home, and a young Chinese student who I will meet and tutor for the first time after this kindergarten class today.  I'm feeling more and more like my busy self each day, but still have been able to make time for all of my friends here and enjoy the weather as well, so no complaints! 

In other recent news (Yes, there's more!), I booked my tickets for the holidays and my spring break.  I was going to try to surprise my family and go home for Christmas and New Years, but the prices were so expensive and I remembered that I came here to travel and try new things.  I will be spending a week in Ireland with my good friend Caoimhe and her family, flying from there to Scotland to spend the new year with Laura, her friends, and perhaps a friend from home if he can make the trip to Edinburgh.  For my spring break, I looked for great deals all over Europe and found roundtrip airfare for Madrid for only 129 dollars.  I look forward to planning what I do while I'm there a little bit later, but I will definitely be drinking sangria, eating tapas, speaking Spanish, and visiting the bassist from my band back at home.


My students should be here soon, so I'm off to prepare the classroom.  The keyboards here at the office are very different from those at home, so please excuse any typos I may have missed and have a great day!