The Hills Are Alive...

Tomorrow I'll ride the rails to Vienna. I'm really looking forward to practicing my German for the first time in a real-life scenario. Maybe I'll even run into the van Trapps along the way.

Prague has been wearing me down. I'm already sick of living in the city, especially the communist-influenced, dirty, worn-down area, far from the city's cultural center. I hate riding the metro, and starting Monday have to find another way to school. There is a tram stop right outside my window, so I'm going to leave early and check that out...it may involved a bit more walking, but it will be worth it to stay above ground for a bit.

Prague is an odd city. It has been magnificently preserved throughout it's history, and escaped destruction during WWII. So it's old center and historic district is quite a sight to behold. But that's the problem...it's only a sight.

Where the bombs of WWII missed their mark, tourism has scored a direct hit. The city's ancient buildings and myriad of confusing cobblestone streets are gorgeous when viewed from a distance. But once you enter the maze of old town, you're simply inundated with gaudy tourist shops and ridiculously expensive restaurants.

There is a side of Prague that I enjoy. It exists on the opposite side of the river from Old Town Square, and is more quaint, more green and more local. But from where I live, it's light years away, which is a bummer. Mia and I did find one cool Turkish cafe off of a side street in Old City. I had the best coffee of my life there. Middle-eastern decor lined the walls while enchanting Indian music created a surreal surrounding. Two men next to us delighted in their enormous water pipes, the sweet smell of flavored tobacco a delightful respite from the other 'smoking allowed' pubs. I will revisit this place, hopefully on more than one occasion.

But off to Vienna I go, tomorrow at 8:23am (it's currently Friday evening at 9:51). I had a strong urge to get out of town this morning waiting for class to start. I really wanted to go to a much smaller town, somewhere in Germany perhaps, and avoid the city life for a bit. But then three friends from class said they were heading to Vienna, so I decided to capitulate and tag along. It's a four-hour train ride from Prague, one which I hope offers some interesting scenery along the way. Apparently Vienna has some really cool cafes, a big forest just outside town and some amazing museums, so I'll be a tourist for two days and soak up this part of the world while I'm here.

USA! USA! USA!

Sometime this spring I will be returning. I had previously announced to several friends that I'd be heading off to St. Maarten for another adventure this summer. I changed my mind.

It was a difficult decision, but at the same time it was an easy one. I've been in a bit of a funk lately. Prague has been eating away at my sanity...nowhere green to explore, no good places to run, breathing the filthy air, riding the dark underground metro everday. It's had it's good moments...Mia and I exploring last Saturday night, looking for a decent pub, not returning home until 3:30am. The zoo, my Turkish cafe, the small internet cafe where a glass of wine costs $1. It's been an up and down experience here to say the least.

The teaching has been the same. Some days I get excited about it, other days I ask myself why i wanted to do this in the first place. I don't have much of a choice at this point...I'm good at it, so I might as well put my energy into it while I'm here and see what happens.

I realized this morning that every time I've traveled somewhere before, I've had a definite return date and some concrete plan to return to. This time, I didn't have that. I left for Sweden, and ultimately to Prague without so much as a return airplane ticket, and it got me all out of whack. I didn't realize it until this morning. I've been so obsessed with trying to figure out what the future would bring that I neglected to live my life in the present. This is part of the reason i decided to head off to Vienna tomorrow...at least I have something to look forward to, am on the move again to see a new place and have some new experiences.

When I made the decision to return home, a lot changed. I feel like I am freer now to experience life here, knowing I'll be returning to something familiar in the future. Jen has already told me I'm welcome to return to the Woodwind family, and I can't wait to go back there. I thought it would be cool to skipper a catamaran in the Caribbean, but what could possibly be better than sailing on the fastest sailboat on the Bay with your best friends, everyday, while living half a mile from the center of my favorite town on earth. Um, not much.

So my spirits have lifted. I'm lucky that I realized this now while I still have two weeks remaining in Prague. I actually can't wait to hop on that train tomorrow and enjoy the 4 hour ride through the countryside to a new city I can explore. I've been reading up on it tonight in a guidebook that I found in my apartment, and I definitely have to go to one of the outlying wine gardens. I only wish Nate and Ryan were here so we could reminisce about the Finger Lakes.

How to Teach English Without Actually Speaking It

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sent $500.00 to Prague. I think it was sometime around July. Wanting a little adventure and excitement, and a chance to make some money when I travel in the future, I decided to sign up for this TEFL Worldwide course in Prague, of all places. I hadn't the slightest idea what the city was like, only that it was near Germany and used to be communist. 

As the fall rolled along, my mind was focused on going to Sweden, not Prague, and I didn't give it a second thought until literally the morning I left Uppsala for the airport. It only hit me then that I was heading off for a month in a new city to go to school for something I knew next to nothing about, and wasn't sure if I really wanted to know anything about.

So here I am, two weeks into this business, and am still not sure what to think. I'm excelling at the English teaching bit...so far I've been observed twice by our professors while I student taught, and both times they had excellent things to say. I'm finding that i actually really enjoy the teaching as well. All the training and the theory cannot create the feeling of standing in front of Czech students, who really want to learn, and successfully being able to facilitate that. It's a cool feeling. But it's also a ton of work. 

Class starts at 10:00am sharp everyday, and Terry and Pete, the two British guys who teach the course, are very strict about their time schedule. Their great teachers, two of the best I've ever had for anything, and they command the attention of their students. It's an added bonus that they both speak with that enchanting British accent...Pete sounds like John Lennon and looks a bit like Keith Richards, while Terry sounds like Prince Charles and looks a bit like a 12 year old kid. They've been doing this for over 12 years, and have taught all over the world, from the UAE to Japan, Spain and Russia. Their stories alone were worth the price of admission to the school.

So anyway, school begins at 10, with the first session lasting until around noon. After that we get a 15 minute break, followed by the afternoon session from 12:00 - 1:30. On Mondays, school resumes at 2:30 after lunch. But the rest of the week, the afternoons are reserved for student teaching, when the Czech students come to the school for their lessons. We only teach twice a week, either T-Th or M-W, having the other two afternoons off to plan our lessons. So on any given day, I'm at school from 10am until at least 7pm, sometimes longer. But it's rewarding work, and to me is like solving a little puzzle. Planning the lessons requires a lot of thought to actually make them interesting (despite following a book as a syllabus). And successfully implementing a lesson is enjoyable.

The biggest challenge is getting your points across while not actually being able to say anything. Our training follows a theory of student-centered tactics...meaning essentially that the students do all of the work, and the teacher is only there to facilitate the learning process. For example, when presenting a new vocab word, we must first try to elicit the word from the students through visuals and sometimes elaborate and quite humorous modeling. A lot of English teaching is really just acting, and once you realize that and embrace it, it can be quite fun.

The planning bit is the difficult part. I spent 2.5 hours planning my first lesson (each lesson is 45 minutes long). Which is roughly 2.5 hours longer than I spent on anything I did in college. The difference this time round is that I really enjoy it. I'm not doing it for the sake of getting it done, I'm actually looking at my lessons as a little problem I have to solve, and when I get to present them and fit in that last piece of the puzzle, it's very satisfying.

I've written and discussed before the notion that all deeds are essentially selfishly motivated. I think this teaching thing is a prime example. My initial motivation for coming to Prague and to this school was so that I could potentially get a job while traveling the world, and finance my adventures. Which obviously is a selfish motive. Since I've been here, however, I actually enjoy more than i thought the actual act of teaching. So while I'm fulfilling my own selfish needs by simply feeling good about myself when i complete a lesson, I'm also helping those Czech students learn English, which they are paying to do. So I think sometimes it's ok to have selfish motives when in fact you're helping others at the same time.