Czech Point

Man, these days are going by fast.

Day two of giving EFL lessons was a success! Teaching grammar was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. For some reason, students' eyes tend to glaze over when you mention terms like "future perfect progressive." Weird, huh? I did manage to get them using the grammar skill at least. I put students in pairs and told one that they have been granted psychic powers, but can only see silly futures. The other student must ask questions about his or her future, and the psychic will give their silly predictions. For example, Q: "Will I have bought a house by 2015?" A: "No, you will not have bought a house. You will have bought a dozen purple goats." Funny stuff.

My teacher observer this week is a certified speech-language pathologist who used to specialize in traumatic brain injuries. It's been really great to get advice from her and nerd out about phonology. Apparently, they use a different version of the International Phonetic Alphabet in Europe, which kind of defeats the purpose of it being "international," eh? We're scheduled to learn that on Thursday, so it will be interesting to see what differences crop up. (COUGH-nerd alert-COUGH)

It was anther TEFLer's birthday today, so we had a truncated celebration in our flat so that everyone would still have time to lesson plan.

Wine, cheese, and bread because class.

Oh, I'm feeling much better than I was yesterday. Hopefully I'll feel even better tomorrow. I'm doing a lesson focusing on listening skills. I am thinking about doing a lesson themed on cyber-bullying, but it might not work out. For now though, I'm calling it a day.

-Anthony

First TEFL Lesson: Czech!

Phew. Today was indeed a Monday.

My schedule went something like:
7:00 AM: Wake up and do some mild exercise
8:00 AM: Shower/grab breakfast/pack for school
9:00 AM: Catch a tram to school
9:30 AM: Class starts-Teaching Listening
11:00 AM: Break
11:30 AM: Class again-Correcting Errors
1:00 PM: Class over-teachers available to assist with lesson planning
During this break I grabbed a late lunch--potato veggie soup in a bread bowl
3:00 PM: Get back to school to run through lesson plan/gather materials
5:00 PM: EFL class-teach 6 advanced English students
5:45 PM: Observe partner teach second half of class
6:30 PM: Get feedback from observer/receive next lesson assignment
7:00 PM: Get back to flat, take mental break
8:00 PM: Start planning tomorrow's lesson
10:00 PM: Cry from exhaustion
11:00 PM: Get ready for bed/do a quick blog post
12:00 AM: Pass out

A bit of a bug has been going around us TEFLers. Nothing serious, just your run-of-the-mill head cold sort of thing. I think I have it right now though, so I'm not such a happy camper. I wasn't able to sleep very well last night because I was fighting mucus to breath well, so I've been fatigued all day. It didn't help that today was our first full EFL lesson. However, my lesson went very well!

I noticed this summer that when you have a class of students in front of you, all your personal problems go away and you become focused on their learning. Luckily, this principle applied today as I fought through my running nose and droopy eyes to deliver my lesson. Being my first EFL lesson, there were some snags, but it was a great success overall. The students learned and applied new vocabulary terms such as "contagion" and "impregnable" in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse survival scenario. Of course, these were advanced students, so this level of difficulty was appropriate for them.

Tomorrow I'm doing more of a grammar lesson. While I feel really confident with my own grammar knowledge, it will be challenging to introduce these concepts to foreign speakers without going into unnecessary detail. I'm hoping my cold clears up enough for me to get some adequate rest. Speaking of which, I'll try to get some of that now!

-Anthony

A Quick Czech Up

I am in love with this city. Although I've only been here a week, it feels like much longer. I'm feeling settled in, I know my way around well enough to walk around without a map now, and I'm becoming a pro at navigating the metro and tram system.

I woke up quite early my first day here to get oriented to my part of the city. Walking around Prague by myself was a surreal experience. It was difficult to accept that I really was in the middle of Europe and that I wasn't seeing this through someone else's eyes. I've posted all the photos I took on Facebook, so I won't repeat them here.

My first few days here, I was basically alone. On Sunday, we all met up for an initial meeting at our school. There are 10 other students taking this course, and almost all of us are planning on staying in Prague to live and work. It's remarkable how much I enjoy all of them. They're all seriously cool people, and I can tell I will enjoy getting to know them better over the course and hopefully long after as well.

The course itself it actually quite fun as well. Much of class time is spent receiving demonstrative lessons formatted the same way we should be creating our lessons when TEFLing. This means we got to play a lot of fun get-to-know-you games and do some creative activities like create your own evil company and attend an evil company convention (shout out to my personal favorite, "Homophobes R Us"). Near the end of the first week, we were placed in a class of Czech students at varying levels of English skill. All we had to do was run through a warm-up activity and an ice-breaker. I had a class of six advanced English students, and we played "Never Have I Ever" and "The Very Long Sentence." Starting tomorrow, we will be giving full 45-minute lessons of our own creation Mon-Thurs. For Monday, I am doing a vocabulary lesson with the advanced students themed "It's the End of the World as We Know It." They will have to come up with a zombie apocalypse survival strategy at the end of class using new vocabulary terms.

This course also assists with more practical issues of TEFL such as how to find housing, getting visa assistance, job hunting advice, etc. This information and assistance has been great so far, seeing as the whole process starts to feel extremely overwhelming at times. I still need to add TEFL information to my resume, hone in on some potential housing, sort through job listings, setup a Czech bank, etc. You can see how it starts to feel insurmountable. However, I have decided to stay here in Prague to live and work. Housing is actually fairly cheap and easy to come by. I've already looked at two places with my current flatmate. They were both much nicer than my old college apartment and more modern looking than my house in St. Louis. Plus, rent was less than $450 each in both places we viewed. We didn't sign for anything yet because we want to consider living with strangers who came to Prague from other countries or even find some local Czechs to room with.

I'll try to start making it a habit to jot down a few things that happen each day so I can give more specifics on what day-to-day life here is like. I'd also like to answer a few FAQs and nerd out about the Czech language a bit. Let me know what you're curious about in the comments! (I think I changed the settings to allow anonymous posts, so give it a try and let me know!)

-Anthony

Czeching In

Believe it or not, I bring you this blog from my temporary flat in Prague! It was quite the ordeal to get here, and it's very surreal actually being here now.

I woke up Thursday morning at 8:00 in St. Louis with Daniel, Cait, and Molly camping out at my place there. We had had a rocking New Year's celebration, which only ended up making me sadder about leaving such amazing friends. I love and miss you all! I'm not sure why you keep me around, but I feel very fortunate to have you all in my life.

Cait got an early lead on winning Best Friend of 2014 by dropping my shell-shocked self at the airport. I probably wouldn't have survived my St. Louis stay without her putting up with my sad attempt at becoming "a real city boy." In all seriousness though, she has been there for me when I needed help, and I will always be grateful to have such an amazing friend.

And then I was on my own. I had gotten used to the STL-Lambert airport this summer when I flew to South Dakota every week for five weeks, so that wasn't too unfamiliar. I got there way early, so I had a few hours to just sit and read. That initial flight to Dallas was delayed, but only by 30ish minutes. In fact, all three of my flights were delayed somewhat, so I guess it all worked out. In Dallas, I made some final calls to my parents while I was still Stateside and ate some BBQ because 'Murca.

The plane to London from Dallas was very nice, but I was squeezed in the middle seat for overnight flight. It wouldn't have been so bad had the man on my left not had a twitch in his right arm that elbowed me in my ribs at least once every minute. I ended up just not sleeping and watched three movies instead.

We flew towards the rising sun into London, which was fairly disappointing from the airport, but still interesting nonetheless. I was finally shuttled to my final flight to Prague, which ended up being the least crowded plane I've ever been on. I had a whole row all to myself. My stomach lurched when the flight information was announced in Czech, reminding me that it will be a while before any of that starts making sense to me. Flying over Europe was quite exciting; I got some nice views of European countryside with houses clustered together in villages amongst rolling green hills shrouded in mist. I was approaching 24 hours of no sleep though, so I kept nodding on and off.

Before I knew it, I had landed at my final destination. Views from the plane looked great. The airport felt very modern, and English was widely available. I panicked for a bit trying to find my airport pick-up. I grabbed some Czech crowns and tried/failed to use a payphone, but my pick-up was just running a bit late and was there waiting for me when I came back from the phone. We picked up one more student after me, and he shuttled us to my flat. Our driver was very helpful and pointed out some interesting aspects of the city. I'll get more time to explore it later, so standby for more. I was dropped off at my flat on Vlkova Street where I met my landlady, Stepanka, who is very nice and helpful.

I won't repost pictures of my flat since they're on Facebook now, but I have been really happy with it so far. I got all my stuff unpacked (I'm pretty sure I overpacked already. Oops.), cleaned off in the tub (no overhead shower nozzle), and took a minute to let the view from the back balcony sink in. Two Australian women are staying in this flat for the first night because theirs won't be ready until the next day. They are extremely nice and gave me my first beer in the Czech Republic, although it was technically a Belgium one. Plenty of time to find authentic Czech beer later though.

After chatting with the Aussies for a bit, I excused myself to go pass out from exhaustion. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Up next, exploring the city!

-Anthony