Graduation...Now What?

It has been a few months! For those of you out of the loop or just didn't get all the details, I did graduate. YAY. Not to brag but I did graduate at the top of my class! It was a lot of hard work and many long hours but in the end it was worth it. Just like everything else in life.

I stayed in Prague for a week or so after graduation trying to get things sorted as to where I was going next. I decided on South Korea. Little did I know that it was going to be a long grueling process to get there.

One day while surfing the Internet for jobs I came across this ESL (English as a Second Language) recruiting firm for an island called Jeju in South Korea. I saw the pictures and instantly fell in love. I was at the moment in a KFC with Josh and I turned to him and said "Josh this is it! This is where I want to teach!" Sure enough I was contacted by the recruiting firm and so the process began.

I needed to return to the US in order to get my e2 Visa for the first time. South Korea recently changed their immigration laws and in orer to recieve a working visa you must applu while in your orgin country. So back to the US I came. That was a little unexpected but my wonerful family (Mom, Norm, and Nanny) helped me get what I needed done!

There was a slight bump in the road to getting my documents because my criminal background check using my name and birthday id not clear. I guess someone with an arrest has some similar information as me. I had to then get a fingerprint background check done. I was home a total of about 7 weeks. Then on a Tuesday I got an e-mail from my recruiter saying that my flight to Jeju was booked for Saturday June 7th!

It was a long trip. I flew from St. Louis to Los Angeles. I had a 4 hour layover then took Korean Airlines from LA to Seoul, South Korea. The flight from LA to Seoul was about 13 hours. I was only able to sleep for about 4 of those hours. It is a good thing that they had personal TV screen on the back of each seat and I was able to watch movies the rest of the way. Once in Seoul, I took a bus 40 minutes to another airport and flew to Jeju. My recruiter's partner met me at the airport.

I spent my first day running around to various educational offices and meeting all sorts of important people. I also had to go to the Immigration office an apply for an Alien Card. This card is sort of the Golden Ticket out here because once you have that card you can do anything. I can get Internet/cable at home, a cell phone, and most importantly a bank account.

My apartment is wonderful and I have a fantastic view. I have added pictures of my view with this blog post. I will be writing another post just on my apartment soon.

I went to the Elementary School that I will be teaching at the second day. I had to go straight to work! Ha ha ha. That was OK though because that is what I am here for. I will be doing a post on the school and program that I teach soon as well.

Mostly I am trying to adjust to the 14 hours that I gained in time, the culture, food, and weather. So be patient and know that there will be many more posts to come :)

Tibor

I know I had mentioned a while back that I would write a little snippet about Tibor. He was my Czech student that I was assigned to do one-to-one lessons. The lessons were great. Tibor is 22 years old and currently attending a University here in Prague where he has lived for the last 12 years. He is an only child and was raised by his father. In his free time he plays tennis and likes water sports.

The entire one-to-one teaching was a great experience. It was challenging at times when I could not understand what he was trying to ask me exactly. That is why pronunciation is such a huge part of learning a language. I worked mostly on teaching him how to speak in the past. In the Czech language they only have the present. So he does not understand how to form a sentence that tells about a life experience and so on. Tibor requested that I gave him lessons that were hard. I laughed and said ok. My professor Terry said that for once Tibor had met his match. His other one-to-ones hadn't challenged him enough! Then I came along. Ha ha ha

Tibor is very smart and I made the lessons as fun as I could. We even watched part of a movie! Ha ha ha. Hey, I had permission from my professor to show the movie. He thought it was a great idea for the lesson I had planned.

I plan to keep in touch with Tibor even though I will be leaving the Czech Republic. He has been a great part of my learning experience and definitely challenged me as a teacher!

Intimidation

The other day in class I was speaking to my professor Terry about intimidation. He was shocked that someone with my talent and personality would be intimidated by other teachers in the class. He told me to follow him to the library and there he pulled out a book with a poem. It was so inspirational that I decided to post it here on my blog for everyone to read. Enjoy!

by Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness,
that most frighten us.

We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of the universe.

Your playing small doesn't serve the world.

There is nothing enlightening about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest
the glory of the universe that is within us.

It is not just in some of us: it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

And as we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

Birthday weekend

I am now officially 24. At first it didn't feel like Saturday was my birthday but after a quick phone call to my mom, it was a little more real. She and I have this thing where we try to talk at 3:31am which was the time I was born 24 years ago. Well with the huge time difference that was hard to do but we still chatted.

My birthday was great. I spent part of the day seeing more of the city and part of the day working on stuff for school. Not a very fun way to spend your birthday especially when it happens to finally land on a weekend. Oh well the work must get done.

Saturday night a few of us went to dinner. We had traditional Czech food. It was very good. I shared a plate with Tina and even then we didn't eat the entire plate. We had duck, pork, ham, three different types of dumplings, and white and red sauerkraut. I washed it down with a glass of Czech beer. My friends bought a small cake and they sang Happy Birthday to me. It was a great dinner.

After dinner we went to a few different clubs and others that didn't go to dinner met us out. We stayed out until the wee hours of the morning. Oh and this weekend was daylight savings this weekend and no one told us. Thank goodness that cell phones automatically change over.

Class is still intense. We have a lot of grammar this week. I give a 15 minute presentation on the Future Perfect Simple form. I also teach a new group of students this week. They are at the advanced level so their English is very good. I have to teach them adverb collocations. Fun fun.

Escalators, Crepes, and To-Go Boxes

So far this week is off to a great start. The stress level has risen and that is to be expected. I am really pushing myself this week to get things done ahead of time so that this weekend I can enjoy my birthday! That's right for those of you that forgot my birthday is Saturday March 29th! YAY. I will be 24.

There is a reason that I titled this blog entry the way that I did. Mostly because I have had interesting experiences with all of the things listed; Escalators, Crepes and To-go boxes. Here is why:

Escalators are so steep it is scary. I mean it is like going up a hill in San Fran. I took a picture so take a look at it. From the bottom you cannot even see the top. People here actually run up and down them. Not me I enjoy the ride. Then there are the young guys that try to go up the escalators that are going down. One kid did it witha huge back-pack on! Props to him for making it to the top. When he did finally get to the top there was this huge crowd there cheering him on. I admit I clapped for him because it was nothing short of amazing.

Crepes... for those of you that have talked to me over the past month or so you know that one of the things that I gave up for Lent was sweets. So the other night I could finally have one and I did. Easter Sunday I had an authentic Czech crepe with my roomie Tina and Josh (the guy in my class from FL). It too was perfect. You could order it with so many different things inside. I had the one with coco and butter with powdered sugar on top. I talked Josh into getting the one with Nutella because he had never had Nutella before. Needless to say he will not be questioning my reccomendations again when it comes to food. A side not about Josh he is a great cook as well. So he and I often talk about different cooking techniques and food in general. We both agreed that it is hard to cook here without our own cooking tools. Anyway the crepes were great!

To-Go Boxes... well you hve to pay for them. It is not very much but you do have to pay. I was shocked the first time I had to do it. I thought maybe it was just at that one resturaunt but it seem to be the norm here. You have to pay for grocery bags here too. So it is important to always keep those things or I guess bring your own to-go box if you don't want to pay for one.

That is all for this entry. I will try to write another one soon! Enjoy the pictures. Ha ha ha

First Week

The first week of the course is done! Oh boy it has been more work than I thought it would be and I was challenged every step of the way. I have had two Czech lessons now and they have been so helpful. I have actually used all the phrases that I have learned.

Speaking of new phrases... I have learned a few new ones from my fellow classmates. For example, I guess we are the English speaking country that uses "Z" as the last letter of the alphabet. The other countries say "Zed". Hmmm.... I think that is weird but they thin we are weird. My roomie Tina uses a lot of different phrases that I am not used to either. When she wants to vaccume she says "hoover". To paint her nail she says "nail varnish". Instead of saying line, (as in standing in line) she says "que". I think that I am starting to pick up a Canadian accent from my friend here named Katie. She is from Vancouver and we hangout a lot. She and I are sooo much alike that it scares us sometimes. Ha ha ha.

Class is harder everyday. THis week we have spent a lot of time on learning the phonemic script. I had no idea that the English language had 24 vowel sounds. Most of us thinkof the six main ones that we learn in school. Also we have had to learn grammar all over again. Such as past perfect tense and verbs and what kind of verbs they are and why we use them. There are actual formulas that my professors are teaching us to make sure that our sentences are correct.

I taught my first class all alone. Well there were fellow teachers watching me and one of my professors observed too. It ws amazing. I had a group of intermediate students and I think that they really liked me. After the class I had to meet with my professor to see areas that I need to work on and he told me that he had to think realy hard on what I had to do better. In fact he said that I wowed him more than anyone else that he has seen in a long time. He also told me that I had a natural ability to teach that shines as soon as I start. Basically he told me that I could teach and not even have to take the class but that he was glad I was there and that he might want to recruit me to stay there and work at the school! Ha ha ha. I was on cloud 9 after that. I was so worried that he was going to shred me apart.

I have a one-to-one student that I meet with for the first time this next week. His name is Tibor and I will tutor him for the next couple of weeks and then I have to write basically a huge term paper on it. It is going to be great to work with a student one on one. I will know more after I met with him Tuesday! Hopefully I will get a picture of him on here too :)

THis weekend my classmates and I went out on the town. Friday night we went to a night club called Karlovy Iazne. It has about 4 or 5 levels of dance floors and music. It was amazing. There were go go dancers and lounges. Also there was a huge dance contest goingon that I watched most of the night. I met a group of people from Denmark. They were so nice. We all had a great time. Saturday night Katie cooked us all a light dinner and we all sat around and talked. Most people (mainly the guys) were hungover from the night before! Ha ha ha. Today I did a little more sight seeing. I had my first authentic Czech meal and it was out of this world! I had bread dumplings, potatoe dumplings, cabbage, duck, and a beer.... total = $8! I had so much leftover that I will eat it for dinner tomorrow night.

I'm here

I have made it safe and sound to Prague. YAY. It was a long journey and a few hiccups on the way but those are all sorted out and everything is fine now.

Prague.... well it is a beautiful city with more history that I knew about. This past Sunday I was given a tour of the city including most of the well known places such as the Castle, King Charles Bridge, The Jewish Ghetto (yes that is the correct way to say it), and the Astrological Clock which is really just a large Koo Koo clock. We did see the Prime Minister out walking with his lady friend and their out of wedlock child. There was no security with him either.

The people here are wonderful. They are all very friendly and patient if I cannot pronounce my Czech properly. Although I was surprised by how many people spoke broken English. The Czech Republic is the drinking capital of the world. I believe it. Locals drink beer with almost every meal and you can get a class of beer anywhere you go to eat including Mc Donald's! Ha ha ha. Oh and for those of you that have asked.... yes there is a Starbucks! YAY for that.

Class... well there is only one word to describe it... INTENSE! I have loads of work everyday after being in class and teaching for 8-10 hours per day. They say that we will be busy about 80 hours per week. I thought there was no way that could be but after being in the class for three complete days, I believe it. On the second day of class we started teaching in pairs to Czech students from Prague that have paid a less price to be taught English by those of us that are going through the course. Thank goodness they are patient!