A History Lesson....

One of the best things about living in foreign countries is learning things that I would never have either the opportunity or desire to learn much about back home. And here in the Czech Republic, teaching well educated adults, I've been given a lot of opportunities to learn about Czech history, mostly from first hand accounts.

As the Czech Republic gets ready to commemorate the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism twenty years ago next Tuesday, I thought I would take the time to share some insight that my students have shared with me.

One of my students, Pavel, has shared a lot of his experiences growing up in a communistic society with me. He says his father had some trouble with the police because he was involved in some protests in the 60's. Because of this, Pavel wasn't allowed to go to high school. Even though he had some of the best marks of his class and successfully passed his entrance exams, he was told that there was no more room at the school. He was sent to a vocational high school where he learned some trade work and was eventually allowed to attend a regular high school. But this meant leaving his hometown and moving to Prague by himself at the age of 15.

He also told the story of his brother who left their hometown to study in another part of the country. He has to change his last name so no one would know he was related to the family, and Pavel was never allowed to talk about his brother in public.

Students tell me stories of "voting" during the communistic rule. It was reported that 99.99% of the people voted and they all voted for the communism leader. Well, this was obviously because they were given no other options. You had to go to the polling place on the day of the election and fill in the ballot, even though there was only one option. And if you chose to go into a private booth to fill in your answers (such as is common practice now) it would be noted and you would probably be questioned and black listed later.

I have another student, Josef, who told me his memories of the Velvet Revolution. He was actually involved in the revolution and participated by spreading the word throughout the towns and villages around the Czech Republic. He said he would make posters and traveled around the country posting the information to those who were out of touch with the happenings in the big city.

He also remembers the days before the revolution when he was a university student. He says he liked metal bands, such as Metallica, but he was only able to buy their music on black markets and had to be careful about it. Music that was ok'd by the regime? ABBA and Michael Jackson. He also said that some foreign products, like Coca Cola, were available in Czechoslovakia. But they were only in specialty stores which used some certain type of bank notes that only foreigns were able to obtain in exchange for their foreign money.

Now, about 15% of the Czech population still supports the communistic party. Who makes up this 15%?, I ask. Older, poor people is the answer. The small part of the population that actually benefited from communism.

Even though the Czech Republic is traditionally a Catholic country with beautiful cathedrals littering the countryside, there are very few people practicing religion today. Only about 25%. And in Prague, I hear it is even lower, more like 10%. I think this has to be one of the most - if not THE most- unreligious cities in the world. When I talk to some of my students in their 20's about religion, they say that they don't know a single person who attends church and believes in God. One student says she "goes to church" occasionally. When I ask her more about it, she says that she goes to see the cathedral, not to attend mass. Maybe she will attend mass on Christmas, she says. But she describes that mass as not being religious, more just well wishing for everyone. Surely much of this is due to the cummunistic rule that was in place for decades and did not allow religion. But, there are other countries that have been under communism for just as long. So what makes the Czech Republic different? I'm still not sure...

In one of my classes the word "confiscated" came up one day. When I tried to check my students' understanding of the word, I got a little bit of laughter along with this response: "If you've ever lived in a communistic country, you know the meaning of the word confiscated."

While most people I speak with seem to feel very strongly about communism and there are clearly still fresh wounds there, I have one student who doesn't seem to care too much. She says she thinks very few people's lives were changed by the fall of communism. Most people's everyday lives are the same as before, she says. But, I think she might be in the minority on this. While it's probably true that most people's lives didn't immediately change, I think everyone will cite plenty of differences between their past lives and today.

Happy Birthday Sehyun

Sehyun's 5th Birthday party at my school in Korea.

Life in the CZ

Okay, I know I've been a little behind about writing about life in Prague. We haven't had properly functioning internet at home until now, so it's been hard to update. But I really do want to keep u with my blog a little better, so it's my goal to write more on here. Starting..... NOW!

Life is Prague has definitely been a little crazy. Getting settled here has been much much more of a challenge than the other countries we have moved to (Peru and Korea). In Korea, we had everything settled before we even left the US: jobs, work visas, apartments, etc. In Prague, we came with NOTHING. All we had was a hotel to stay in for the first four nights and some names of schools to start sending our resumes to. So when we got here, we hit the ground running.

Luckily, we found an apartment after about 3 days. We met a nice British guy who worked at the hotel we were staying at (he has since become a good friend here) and asked him for any tips on getting settled here. He just so happened to have a friend who was moving out and needed to sublet his apartment for a while. Perfect! The apartment was in a really nice area of Prague, but a little far from the center. It was also pretty old and not the nicest place ever. But it was fine. But after a couple months of living there, we decided we needed something new. And the guy we were subletting from was planning on moving back in in January. So we had to find a new place eventually. We found a really nice apartment closer to the center and closer to a metro station and just moved in three days ago. The only trade off was that we couldn't afford to live in a central location by ourselves. So we are sharing a place with two other American girls, both teachers as well. The apartment is big, recently redone so everything is nice and new, and we have a nice big bedroom on the 5th floor with a little view! Life is good.

We started going on job interviews our second day in the city and landed our first offers after about a week. Like everywhere else in the world, the Czech Republic has been affected by the financial crisis (although not as much as many of it's neighboring countries). Because of this, we realized we were most likely not going to be able to find full time jobs. We both ended up getting two part time jobs, which leads to plenty of work. Jason and I both work at a small language agency and then we each have separate jobs at two bigger schools.

I use the term "school" loosely here, as very little of the actual teaching is done in the school. The majority of classes in the Czech Republic are taught 'in company', meaning a language teacher is sent out to various companies around the city and teachers individuals or groups in their own company. So, I spend my days running around all different parts of the city. I go everywhere from the very heart of Prague to places that I don't think are even technically considered to be part of Prague. This definitely was a little crazy at first, figuring out everywhere to go and how to get there, but after a few weeks it became pretty easy to get it down. All of my classes are once a week, so my schedule is different everyday. On some days (like Wednesday, my easy day) I just have one class in the morning and one in the evening. Lots of free time during the day to plan for classes, come home and relax, etc. However on other days (like Thursday, my busy day) I go non-stop from 8am to 6pm - 5 classes that day.

I have almost all individual classes and most of my students are at a pretty high level. So I have a lot of conversation classes where we spend our time just talking about various topics. I have a lot of students that are very interesting people and make my classes really enjoyable. I learn a lot about Czech culture, food, history, etc. from them. A lot of my students have very interesting jobs, and it's a good experience for me to get to talk to all these successful and different people. I teach everyone from a high school aged model, to the owner of a media production company.

And as for the visa process...... still working on it. Jason is further along on his than I am on mine, and we're getting different types of visas. Coming here, there was so much mixed information, it was really hard to figure out what our best options were and how we should go about doing different things. One of the big questions we had was about the visa. You can choose to get either a regular employment visa or a business license (Zivno). The advantages of the business license is that you don't have taxes taken out (you're supposed to be able to keep more of your money with the Zivno) and you have the freedom to work how ever many jobs you want. I got convinced to do the Zivno, so I'm in the process of doing that. I have to go to Germany on Friday to apply for the visa at the embassy, so we'll see how that goes...

Only problem with the Zivno that we're just learning about, is that I may not be able to leave the country for quite some time. It has a long processing time - several months- and until it's finished being processed, I'll kinda be here illegally as far as I understand. So if I were to try to leave the Czech Republic and come back in, my tourist visa would be expired and I might not be able to do it. This is going to be a problem for Christmas when we have two weeks off and were hoping to travel to some warmer countries... Border patrol is pretty lax in these parts, so we may just be able to go somewhere by bus or train where we won't be stopped and have our passports checked. We'll see!

So that's life here in Prague. Who's coming to visit!?!

Prague: The Beginning

What a whirlwind! We have now been in Prague for about 2 and 1/2 weeks, and it has flown by! Been a little hectic and crazy, but I think we're starting to get the hang of things here.

But before all of that... I had a great visit in New York and New Jersey. Got to see a bunch of friends and family, and Jason joined me out there for a couple of days as well. We had a great trip.

From NJ, we flew to Brussels and had a day stop over there before heading to Prague. Both Jason and I had been there before, but it's been about 10 years for both of us. I barely remember it from my first visit, so it was fun to go back and spend the day walking around. We got pretty tired by the end of it, but got to visit a cathedral, beautiful park and gardens, the main square, etc... And of course, we took some time on our first day in Europe to sit out at a cafe and enjoy a cup of tea. Always a must.

After our great day in Belgium, we were exhausted and slept the entire flight from take off to touch down to Prague. We sleepily made our way on the bus and metro and found our great hotel near the center of Prague (thanks to a coupon from Expedia we got the place for 1/2 price!). [By the way... we were disappointed to NOT go through customs and get a stamp when entering Prague! Only got one when arriving in Brussels. Bummer!]

Our hotel ended up being a great base for us for the first four days. Luck would have it that a friendly British guy working at our hotel had a friend who needed to sublet an apartment. So after just four days in the city we moved into a little apartment for a great price.

So for the last week and a half, we have had a home! It's a very simple place but is clean and comfortable and has everything we need (pretty much...). We're trying to figure out if we'll stay here or move on to a new place. The area where we are living is very nice with many cute cafes and restaurants and even an organic grocer right down the street! I was thrilled. Only problem is that it's a little ways from the center, takes a while to get anywhere. And while that even wouldn't be so bad if we were working regular 9-5 jobs and only had to go back and forth once a day, we're not.

Teaching in Prague is definitely handled differently than other places I've taught. Most "schools" here don't really hold many classes at their offices, but rather send teachers to companies and private residences to teach courses there. It seems like there will be good (variety, not being stuck in your school all day) and bad things (lots of travel time) about this. That means that some classes might be really far from the center and there could be up to an hour travel time between different lessons - this is why a 'full time' schedule here is only around 20 hours a week.

And the other thing that's different - and this might just be because of the bad economy, I'm not sure - it's difficult to find full time jobs. Most schools we interviewed with were only hiring part time positions. So, here I am now, with two part time teaching jobs. I'm a little nervous about balancing them and scheduling issues that might arise. But I guess I'll handle that problem when it happens. So my two schools" both seem good, different from one another. One is a smaller school that handles mostly private individuals with one-on-one classes and is pretty flexible with how the courses are run. The other school is big, about 2000 students with some big name companies. Everything is pretty fixed, although still leaves more of the planning up to the teacher than the other places I've worked. And even though they offer a lot of support for their teachers, it really seems pretty impersonal, such as many big companies are.

So far I've only taught one lesson, which was with an 18 year old high school student/model. I think I'm bound to meet some interesting people here...
More of my classes will begin this week or in October.

So, this is life in Prague so far. As for the city itself, it is incredibly beautiful. We've been so busy figuring out life here we haven't had much time to explore the city and see the sites. We did take two days to see things and think we are going to do more of it this weekend.

Prague, Here We Come!

After months and months of indecisiveness, we have finally arrived at a decision! In just a matter of weeks we will be making the big move to Prague, Czech Republic. We're both very excited and a little nervous about our next destination. We're moving there without anything prearranged, so it makes it a little scary. At our previous destinations pretty much everything was set up before we arrived. But this time, we don't have a job or a place to live or anything, really. But that's not because of poor planning or few options. Things just work a little differently in the Czech Republic. Where as most other parts of the world will hire English teachers through email and phone interviews, it doesn't work that way there. It makes it a little scary, but it will actually be better for both the school and for us to be able to see the school and meet the staff before signing a contract. This way we'll know what we're getting into and won't get into a bad work situation without knowing something about the school first.

So the big question everyone seems to be asking is, "Why Prague?" And to that I say, "Why not Prague?"

Neither Jason or I have ever been there, but it's a place that we've both had a strong interest in visiting, as well as the rest of Eastern Europe. And Prague seems to be one of the big spots for American Expats and teaching English. (Probably our ideal place in Europe would be Spain, but it is very, very difficult to get a job there as a Non-EU passport holder for visa issues.) Prague is supposed to be a wonderful city, everyone who visits loves it. When I studied abroad it college, I loved living in Europe and I'm excited to be back there again.

The other reason to go to Prague, is that this is just how it worked out with applying for jobs. Some of our other hopeful options kind of fell through. We had considered going back to Korea, but with North Korea becoming more of a threat in recent months we decided against it. We had also looked into some positions in Mexico and Japan, but nothing was really working out how we had hoped it would. The Czech Republic was always kind of the option that we thought we'd be able to work out no matter what. But don't get me wrong, we are both very excited for this new adventure.

Our first few weeks in Prague will surely be a little stressful, finding a job and an apartment and everything, but I have faith that it will all work out. And if it doesn't? Well, then we got to vacation in Prague anyway.

My future home, in just a few weeks!

It's Really Over...

I can't believe I'm done!  It's been a whole year in Korea and my, how the time has flown.  It's been a great experience and I can't believe it's over already.

Saying goodbye to my kindergartners was so hard.... well, for me at least.  They didn't really seem to realize what was going on.  They know that I'm going back to America, but I don't think they understood that when I said bye to them after their graduation ceremony on Wednesday that that was the last time I would ever see them.  Actually, about half of then didn't even say bye to me.  I was a little disappointed that the parents (who know that I'm leaving) wouldn't have their kids come up and say bye and thank you or anything.  Oh well, I know they'll miss me and they'll remember me years from now.  And I'll always remember them as well.

Ahh, another chapter is finished.  

It's Not All Rainbows and Butterflies.

Many people seem to think that living abroad is one big adventure and every day is new and exciting.  That's not exactly the case.  My day to day life is pretty much just like it would be at home.  I have Monday to Friday job.  I come home and make dinner.  I go to the grocery store and run errands.  Ya know, normal life.  I just happen to be doing it on the other side of the world.

And living abroad can be difficult sometimes.  There are the obvious reasons that you are far away from friends and family and miss home and your loved ones.  I also miss a lot of little things, like driving my car.  Having an oven (we only have 2 burners and that's it).  Lots of good food from home.  Being able to communicate with people easily (I kind of forget what it's like to be able to walk in a store and ask any questions I want without having to speak like a 4 year old).  There are a lot of little things.  But there's also more.

One of the hardest things about living in a foreign country is being a foreigner.  You don't know customs and culture and how things work.  I've learned quite a bit about Korean culture in my year here, but there is still so much I don't understand.  But I'm not getting into that now.  Maybe at a later post.  Anyway, back to the subject:  being a foreigner.  This can be a big problem if, say, you have legal problems and don't know how the legal system in your current country works.  That's our problem now.  

Our school is a small, privately owned language school; called a hagwon in Korean.   There are thousands and thousands of hagwons in Korea.  There are several within walking distance of the one we work at.  Because of this (and currently the bad economy) a lot of them fail.  Our school has been going for about four years now, but it is on it's last leg.  They haven't had enough students this whole year and now they keep losing students left and right.  They have been having financial problems since we arrived, but things are suddenly getting a lot worse and in a scary way.  

Despite the financial problems, we have always been paid on time.  That is, until last month.  We are supposed to be paid on the 5th of every month, which in January was our first day back to school after vacation.  So when we weren't paid right on the 5th, we weren't too worried about it.  But when it was 2 days later and the director of our school still hadn't mentioned anything about being paid, we started to wonder.

We eventually got HALF of our pay checks two weeks later.  And now, on February 2nd, we have not been paid the other half of our paycheck.  The school has no money.  None.  Our boss can't afford to pay us.  It's kind of a problem.  Oh, and did I mention that when we finish a one year contract we get a severance (equal to one month's pay) and our plane tickets home paid for.  There are 3 of us leaving at the end of this month.  

If we were in America, we would know how to take care of this.  Not getting paid would hardly even be an issue.  I don't think I've ever heard of anyone I know not being paid in the States.  But here, how do we deal with it?  We're not Koreans, we don't have all of the rights Koreans do.  And dealing with the legal system in a country where don't know the laws is not easy.  We really don't know what to do.  Our boss says she's trying her hardest and wants to pay us.  We believe her, but just wanting to pay us isn't quite enough.  We've been kind of stuck.  It doesn't seem like there is too much we can do.  So we just wait and hope that she finds the money to pay us.  

Waiting, waiting...

Life, As of Late

I haven't posted much about what I've been doing here lately because for a while, there wasn't much to post about. After the Japan trip, things kind of slowed down for a while. Life was just normal, day in day out, nothing special going on. We did a couple weekend trips to the beach. Jason went home for a week to go to a wedding. He was gone over a four day weekend, so I spent a lot of "me" time then, which was actually really great. But in the last week or so, a little bit more has been going on.

Here at our school, there are five English teachers and then four people on the Korean staff. Jean, the academic director, is who we go to for pretty much anything we need. She is so great and so helpful and speaks the best English out of all the staff. She is the go to lady. She helps us with anything, whether it is school related or not. Last week, a meeting was called and it was announced that Jean would be leaving us because of "personal reasons." We were told that on Monday and then Tuesday was her last day. There will be no one coming in to take her place, so Ronnie, the owner and director of the school, will be in Jean's place. However, since Jean left, Ronnie hasn't changed a thing about what she does here at the school. She still comes in late everyday and then just sits and talks with the other Korean staff. She's not constantly working on things the way Jean always did. And Ronnie just isn't a very approachable person; you don't really want to go a talk to her about something unless it's completely necessary. Jean is the type of person who knows what is going on with every student in the school. Not Ronnie. Basically, all of us teachers are just going to have to get used to figuring things out for ourselves, because no one else here knows what is supposed to be done, either. So we'll see how that goes over in the next few months.

But on a better note.... We went on a weekend trip this past weekend to a city down south called Gyung ju. Really nice place. It was once the capital of the Shilla dynasty, so there's a lot of history there; kind of like the Rome of Korea.... kind of. But I'll write more about that later, once I upload all the photos from the trip.

And I think we're going to do a few more weekend trips in the coming weeks. One to Soraksan, a famous mountain and good hiking area. And then another one to a city a couple hours away where Jason has a soccer game coming up. (He plays in a soccer league every Sunday. Most the games are fairly nearby to where we live, but there are a couple outside of Seoul. It's a really international club, which is kind of fun. His team includes people from 5 different continents.) This past weekend was our last 3 day weekend until our Christmas break. Oh maaan that's a lot of full work weeks....

Until next time, hope all is well back home. Love and miss you all.

English for Partygoers

Often times on the subway ride home, I will see people studying English.  Usually, it's just strait forward English lessons, or sometimes on specific subjects such as economics or biology.  However, today I saw something completely different.  There was an older business man in a nice suit sitting next to me, studying a small English book.  It had conversations in English and then translated to Korean as well.  Let me give you some examples of the things this businessman was learning:

A: Hey man, let's do a lap around the bar before we get some drinks.  We need to mack us some shorties.

B: No, I already met this beautiful young lady.  She's gonna be my boo!

A: Dude, she doesn't even like you.

A: Yo, girl.  This party is jammin'.   How bout you give me your digits?

B: No, I don't give me number to strangers.

A: Dude, Tom is totally trippin'.  

B. Yeah, he took way too much acid.  He has to be forced to go to a doctor.

A: Yo man, you got any weed?

B: Yeah you got the cash?

A: Of course. I'm gonna be rollin' in this club all night!

A: I saw you flip me the bird from across the room.  Why you got beef with me?

B: Chill out man, it was a mistake.  I don't got beef with you.

I wish I could make stuff up that was this good.  But unfortunately, these are real examples from the businessman's book.  I'd like to see him try to use some of those.

Kindergarten Hell

Well I guess hell is a bit of an exaggeration, but things definitely have made a turn for the worse. All summer long I only had three to four kindergarteners. It was perfect. Of my five original students, one was on vacation in the USA for three months, and another one was just staying at her grandparents house for a month. I got really close with the remaining few kids and really enjoyed teaching just them.

And then, about two weeks ago, I got a new addition to my class. This little boy had been going to a Korean kindergarten (where they also spend some time learning English) and had had some problems there. His mom, who speaks fluent English, came and talked to me on his first day. She told me that she was really concerned about him because he was a little younger and slower than the other children.

Side note: I think I've mentioned before how Korean age works. When you are born, you are one year old. And then on January 1st, everyone turns a year older. So, if you are born on December 31st, you will be considered 2 years old on January 1st. And it causes problems for school. This little boy's birthday is in November. He is 6 years old in Korean age, but is actually only 4 in American age. If he were in the States, he wouldn't be starting kindergarten for another year. Here, he's already been in it for 6 months. Too young! End side note.

So I thought this mom was probably being over protective of her son and told her not to worry, I was sure he would be fine. Ohhh man was I wrong! I've dealt with some students that were a little younger and slower and nothing has been too bad. But this boy is seriously slow and behind. After spending about an hour with him I couldn't imagine how the next six months were going to play out. He knows some English, is able to respond to questions with one word answers. But he can't sit still, was all over the place jumping up and down and blowing spit bubbles and screaming. And that was just the first hour.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. It all kind of accumulated into a nightmare yesterday when he pooped his pants in the middle of class. I could tell he needed to go to the bathroom and sent him there, but about a minute after he came back he was pulling down his pants and motioning that he needed toilet paper back there. It was too much for me to handle. I got a male Korean teacher (who has 3 kids of his own, so he should be used to this kind of thing) and told him that I thought William needed some help in the bathroom. I didn't really appreciate it when William came back to class and tried to hand me his dirty underwear. Yuck.

He is so slow and so young, and I think he may have some learning disabilities. Not sure, but it just seems like the trouble he has might be more than just him being young. I've tried talking to the Korean staff, telling them that I think he is not ready to be in kindergarten, but they're hard up for cash so there's no way they're going to turn him away.

Beyond that, I got another girl last week. She's a little behind the rest of the class and cries easily, but other than that she'll be alright. And the one who went to the USA returned today, speaking great English in full sentences, but being bossier and harder to control than ever. So now my class is up to seven. It's so much more difficult to get them to behave, they're all so easily distracted. When I had the smaller class, they were really good. No Korean. Always payed attention. Followed directions. All of that is now down the drain. Even the best students follow the bad ones in misbehaving and they have all resorted back to speaking a lot of Korean. It's going to be a long six months with all of them.