Catching Up

Just in case you don't have the travel blog bookmarked - I am catching up on the places I've visited from THE LIST.  New posts should be showing up every couple of days and then the non-list stuff should start showing up here.

Except Auschwitz...it'll show up eventually, I just can't quite figure out how to convey how horrifying it was. Even thinking about it makes me cry.  The pictures don't do it justice and neither will my words.

In the meantime 1000 Places to See is waiting for you!

Random Prague Pictures

Girls Rule, Boys Drool!  This sticker was on our kitchen door.



Czech Play Place - in the KFC downstairs from school


Maria was the only flat mate not staying for the 5th week.  We had this note waiting for us Sunday morning. I am lucky enough to be seeing Maria again at the end of September in Barcelona!  (At that time I will record her saying "Oh come on!" because it makes me sooo happy!)


Dancing House - this was just across the river from our flat. Roxy simply referred to it as the "really ugly building".


Narodni Divaldo (National Theatre)


Trams!


View from Most Legii


Karlovy Most from Most Legii


Most Legii


Boats on the Vltava


Houses along the Vltava


Random apartment building on my way to school


I love all the colorful buildings.


Seriously, just on the side of a random builidng


Prague is beautiful






This building meant I was almost home




This little store is about 2 doors down.  I went there a lot in the last four weeks!


Zborovska Forever!

Two Down Two to Go

Week 3:
Week Three was possibly the most hectic week of the program.  After Mid-course Appraisal we switched classes and began teaching longer lessons.  I was moved to the Intermediate + level.  I loved this class!  They are basically fluent, so you can joke around with them.  It also helped that I was much more relaxed as a teacher.  Miroslav was so fun to tease.  I taught him the expression "give a hard time to".  For example, I would tell the class that they had 3 minutes to complete a task and then say, "Miroslav, you have two and a half."  His reaction was always worth it!  Libor was also a saving grace in that class.  He should have been in the Upper Intermediate class - he is fluent after living in the UK for a few years- but it was so nice to have someone in class who could be counted on to know the answer.  Karel, Marqetta, Zdanka, Veronica, and Teresa were also regulars and I really enjoyed getting to know all of them.  I am hopeful that we can all keep in touch!

We also had to develop 1:1 lessons for the Learner Profile student from the analysis we had done, have the one hour lesson with the student, and then write up our conclusions based on it.

It was also during Week Three that I realized I was very likely to fail the language awareness exam at the end of the course.  I am rubbish at grammar.  I didn't realize this until we started doing proper grammar input sessions, but English is seriously messed up, y'all.  There are twelve verb tenses!  TWELVE!  And , guess what, you think you know all about past, present and future tenses, but you can use THREE present tenses to talk about events that occur in the past, in the present, and in the future, and do you even know what a modal is?  Pure modal?  Semi-modal?  What about conditionals?  Do you know how many types of conditionals there are? (Four, just in case you were wondering.)  Without Maria and Brittani at my table I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have even been able to complete the in-class worksheets.

I spent the weekend working on my Learner Profile and making the decision to return to the states rather than stay in Prague.

Week 4:
I thought Week Four would be the most stressful, but it was actually pretty easy.  I handed in my Learner Profile on Monday, taught a lesson that went really well (and at the same time was far more challenging than I anticipated... past simple regular verb ending phonemes), and used one of the activities I created for my Trinity moderated Materials Assignment.

I felt well-prepared for my teaching assignments this week.  I had pre-planned lessons ideas in Week Three so although I taught more lessons than ever before I felt calmer and more prepared.  Although, as the week wore on I became more and more nervous about the approaching exam.  I felt about 90% certain that I would fail.  I simply did not have the grammar part down.

Our exam was Thursday afternoon.  I taught that morning and then had a feedback session afterwards.  This meant that I only had about 30 minutes between feedback and the exam.  I was sweating it.  I had tried everything to learn the verb tenses.  I had super smart people explain it to me, but it always ended with more confusion.  I looked online and still - confusion.  Almost all of the explanation of the English tense system has to do with time...when in time something occurred.  I finally realized...for me to understand it, I had to completely forget about time.  And I had to almost entirely ignore the main verb.  Here is the miracle of English Verb Tenses - I am unconvinced about the overall accuracy of the system, but it works often enough for me to use it from here on out.

ENGLISH VERB TENSE

1. Ignore main verbs (You know the past, present, future simple tenses anyway.  I jumped.  I jump. I will jump. This is not rocket science.)
2. If the auxiliary verb is were, was, or had you are in the past tense.  (main verb...screw it, doesn't matter)
• present auxiliary verbs = is, are, am, have, has (but who cares - you only really need to know the 3 past tense aux verbs..."have had" may try and screw you up, but HAVE is present...screw the main verb!)
• future tense = will or going to (again, this part is not rocket science - if you know the past tense verbs you're golden)
3. Been = perfect tenses
4. -ING = continuous tenses

I felt a little uncertain about my methodology, at the same time, I felt like I finally found a way to interpret the miasma of time and place that had me so confused for the last month.  I sat down, took the test, thought it went pretty well, and then waited.

Sinead, the program coordinator, met with the group and gave us a little course roundup.  She said that the "boys" were busily correcting the exams and we would be excused from school as our scores came in.  We busied ourselves with a hangman and story dice until Sinead reappeared and told about half the class that they had passed and were free to go.  The party atmosphere kind of drained away as the rest of us sat and waited for our results.

Over the next half hour, Sinead would reappear and congratulate one or two people at a time every few minutes.  I started to get really, really worried.  I thought about how it was statistically likely that at least one person failed, and that it would make sense that anybody who failed would be the last to get the news.  It would be kinder to tell us after our classmates had left.  Finally it was down to three people.  I was feeling rather queasy and went to get a drink in the kitchen.  When I came out, Helen (my flat mate) came and said we could go home we passed, but I wanted to make sure with Sinead.  

So, I found Sinead, waited rather impatiently while she finished talking to another student, and asked if I passed, if it was okay to leave.  She said, "Yeah."  I was elated for half a second because she immediately followed it up with, "Oh, wait a second."  I was scared to death, but she had just printed out the percentages (we had only been told pass/fail at that point - not specific scores) and wondered if I wanted to see the complete grade.

She showed me my score and I couldn't believe it.  Maria, my other flat mate was standing at the door and came over to see her score as well.   As we were walking down the stair she asked me what I'd scored.  According to her, I was chalk white and looked pretty freaked out.  I got an A; a 90%.  I had prayed to squeak by with a 50%, but a f-ing A?  All I can say is screw the main verb.  My system for understanding tenses ROCKS!

From there we went and meet everyone else at the beer garden downstairs.  Ate some tasty friend cheese, and went home to collapse.  The Blue Group had their moderation scheduled on Friday, the Red Group was on Saturday.  I was in the first Saturday Group so after moderation I walked around Old Town Square and went to the Estates Theater and bought a ticket for Don Giovanni in mid-September (1000 Places to See Stuff).

The August 2013 group met up again at the beer garden (where I had some incredible goulash) after everyone was finished with moderation.




We pretty quickly started getting our emails detailing our pass/fail and our overall grade for the course. I passed with an overall B (2 A's and 2 B's).  After dinner we walked down to the river and just hung out, chatted, and had a good time.  The kids (as I like to refer to them) went to some weird club (it was described as having lasers and machines) while the older folks in the group stayed and talked until it started to rain.  Libor lives over by my flat and was kind enough to walk me home, and we talked about trying to solve the problems of the world, and his hopes for the country after communism.  It was a great ending to the official Oxford TEFL course.

That said, I'm here doing extension courses and day trips for another week, and then I'm off on a jaunt around Eastern Europe.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep updating as I go!

Two Weeks

I meant to blog at the end of each week - really I did, but as it turns out I have been really very busy for the last four weeks.  The bad news is that I didn't blog, but the good news is that I am now an official TEFL teacher possessing the Trinity Certificate for TESOL. So, I'm totally qualified to correct your grammar or pronunciation.  Read on for a mad dash recap of the last two weeks, and look forward to the next two a bit later.

Week 1:
I started Oxford TEFL on August 5th and taught my first lesson on August 7th.

(Our home away from home for 4 weeks, we were on the 3rd floor)


(Our actual home - Zboroska Flat)

There is no time for anxiety to build up - they throw you right into the deep end of the pool.  I initially taught a Pre-Intermediate level class and found them to be delightful, yet challenging.  They know enough English to get around, but not enough to get your jokes.  It is quite humbling to be the teacher in a room where everyone else speaks at least two languages (usually more).  I will never forget the lesson where the learners had to pretend to be a "celebrity" and fill their social calendars with "dates", Vojtech chose Kim Jong Il and went around the class telling everyone that he would love to meet them for dinner, a movie, or something else, but because he was the leader of a poor country with a big military they would have to pay for the date.  Also, among my favorites were Lee (my learner for my Learner Profile 1:1 assignment), Anya (from Russia!), and Stanislov (Standa).  I taught them for the first two weeks and really appreciate what a great experience they provided me as a first time teacher!

Oxford sponsor a Pub Night every Thursday when any affiliated with school (learner, trainee, tutor, etc.) can meet up and socialize.  They held a special Quiz Night one of our first nights in town.  Guess who was on the winning team?  I got a 4 color white board marker set and a "Language Teacher's Survival Handbook".


Walking back to our flat we saw...

Tons of bats were flying all around this building.

Over the weekend lots of work!  I had to complete my first assignment the Unknown Language Journal over the first weekend, and didn't get to go exploring at all. The class was split into two groups with one learning Irish (ugg!  I wanted to learn Irish!) and one learning Japanese.  The purpose is to help new teachers empathize with their learners and to steal some TEFL tricks from an experienced teacher.  I learned that I am rubbish at Japanese, and gestures are really, really important in language immersion programs.

the Zboroska flatmates did go to dinner at a "Native American" restaurant down the street called WigWam.  I think their idea of Native American covers anyone who is actually from America.  The first thing we learned was that in Czech - nachos do not come with cheese...that is something you need to add to the order.

And even still, the cheese, is not what you might expect.

I ordered the chicken in cornflakes.  It turned out to be chicken fingers.  They were actually pretty tasty.

The sauce was really good.  It was kind of a spicy not really ketchup thing.  I love, though, how it is served with julienned raw veggies and a toasted baguette.

Week 2:
The second week was really busy.  I had to recruit a 1:1 learner for my Learner Profile and have the initial one hour session to gather the samples (reading, writing, speaking) for the linguistic analysis.  Friday of Week 2 it was already time for our mid-course appraisals.  I spent Saturday working to complete the linguistic analysis so I could do something fund on Sunday.

Sunday I got up early and braved the tram system for the first time to attend church.  The trams are not that intimidating once you have a working SIM card and data plan to help navigate your way around town.  When I got off the tram I wasn't sure which way to walk.  Luckily there was a women wearing  a dress and a young man in a dark suit.  BINGO!  They are definitely headed the right way.






The branch in Prague has translation equipment available for Sacrament Meeting and Relief Society, while Sunday School is an all-English affair.  I'm guessing that this is the only Prague branch/ward because there were a lot of missionaries in attendance.  Several, of course, from Utah.  One from Bristol, UK, and one from Farmington, NM where I ate the best sandwich ever not even a month ago.  She was really surprised that I knew where Farmington was.

The oddest thing about the service was the Hymn book.  I surreptitiously snapped a photo in RS, but it doesn't do justice to the odd numbering system they have.




After church, I went exploring at Prazsky Hrad and Charles Bridge - both on the 1000 Places list.