Difficult as it is, I enjoy learning Czech. I have learnt that doleva is "left" and doprava is "right". Nemluvím česky is "I don't speak Czech" - a very useful phrase. I can count, with reasonable success, to 100 and can ask Kolik to stoje? - "How much?" My Czech lessons have been one of my favorite parts of training to be an English teacher and I am looking forward to continuing them.
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There are over 30 people in our TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) group. We have spent the past three weeks attending workshops, writing lesson plans, dissecting grammar, preparing activities, and giving actual lessons in TP (Teaching Practice), which is followed by feedback sessions.
Because this is a year that I want to spend learning, I'll write about a few things I've learned.
1. English grammar is hard. Czech has 3 tenses: Past, Present, and Future. English has 13 or so, depending on whom you ask, and they are further complicated by the fact that some very erudite gentlemen in the 1600s decided English would be more posh if it fit into the Latin verb tenses. My four years of Latin have helped me more than anything else the past three weeks.
2. Teaching is hard. Lesson planning, making certain you fully understand what you are teaching, preparing engaging actives for your students, and not going crazy; it's all quite a juggle. But it's also a great deal of fun. My Czech students love to joke and go along with whatever I throw at them. It's odd to teach adults foreign language; I've found that I have to work on some of my subconscious perceptions. When you speak with a native English speaker and they consistently mispronounce words or use improper tenses and sentence structure, you assume they didn't receive much education - though they are a wonderful person. Here, you are teaching people who are generally highly educated. Most of my students have completed university and are learning English to improve they job chances or make their life easier. When they mispronounce words or say "Yesterday I am eating dinner at 5" it is not a lack of education, but rather the opposite. I am constantly impressed and put to shame by the effort and work my students are putting in to learn another language, and it drives me to study my Czech harder.
3. Europe is different. Which we all knew already. One of my favorite things about living abroad is the little daily things that are done differently. My flat has a bathroom and a toilet room; they're generally separate here. The washer and dryer are in the bathroom and are teeny tiny. Light switches are large square panels on the wall, and are sometimes outside the room containing the light they switch on. Flats in Prague often come fully furnished and have all sorts of interesting things left by the people who lived in them before: sheets, cuckoo clocks, odd tools, cassette tapes, books in Czech. Grocery stores do not give you bags, you either bring your own or buy them - or, if you've forgotten the former and don't fancy the latter, you balance two boxes of cake mix, chocolate whipped cream, icing, and a bottle of wine for two blocks.
My favorite things so far?
- Yummy yummy yummy Czech deserts, EVERYWHERE.
- Looking out the window from my new third-floor flat in Prague 3, pictures soon.
- Rediscovering Nutella.
- The beautiful buildings everywhere.
- Going out and meeting people from all over the world - Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Italy, etc.
- The art-deco Metro stops.
- Texting my family via gmail.
