Today was a very long day. We did not get into orientation until after lunch. We did that till about 4pm. I got my class assignment and I will be mainly teaching B1 and A1. These people know almost no English so it will be very tough to make them understand what is going on. On Tuesday I will teach Video, Translation, Writing, and Business all in the same day. And I have to teach it all to the A1 class, that day is going to be just one long headache of a day. How do you teach someone English if they only know Czech? After I got done preparing for Monday and talking to friends and family on the Internet it was like 8pm. We went home and had soup and ironed all of our cloths, which took some time since I despise wrinkles. I think I finally made it to bed at like 11pm.
Teaching tomorrow will be very easy since I only have to teach for 90 minutes. I will mostly do the first day speech and welcome them and get to know what they do and who they are. So I don't think I will get too much actual teaching done. But we will see in the morning.

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Today the church had a guest speaker for the sermon. He was really old but I think that he wrote like the first bible study book or Sabbath School book in Czech. The translating devices were not working very well but I caught most of the sermon. During the process of me trying to figure out how to make the receiver come in more clearly, someone told me that I had scripture reading. Surprise! I had known about the scripture reading but while I was messing with the ear piece I lost track of time. Luckily the scripture was on the bulliten and everything was ok. Of course we had potluck after church and it was ok, about the same as last week. They had those traditional dumblings but they put some type of sourkraut on top. I thought it was good but they ran out of the dumblings so I was forced to fill up on dessert. The new teacher, Melissa, that arrived in the middle of last week went up front and did the introduction thing that we did the first Sabbath. After the short talk we dicided to take a walk to the top of Prague. So we walked and we walked to the top of Prague. There were lots of little gardens at the top and even a rose garden. Of course Korben forgot his camera so we did not get any pictures but we will go back, because there is a tower that goes even higher than the top of Prague. There was a long line and we would had to have paid a small fee, so we will do that after school one day. We got a good view of the Castle, the missle silo, and all of Prague. There is this wall that goes all the way up the hill we climbed that is called the Hungry Wall. It is just a regular stone wall but back in the day people were starving because there was no work. So the king told the hungry people to build a wall up this hill for no reason other than to pay them so they could eat. I would have told the people to build something usefull but either way the hungry people were hungry no more. On our way back down Korben got this fresh idea that we should run down so we did. And it started to rain and the path was all slippery. I am sure that you want me to say that I fell but HA, I did not. We walked all the way back to the school in the rain and it was very cold rain. So other than the freezing rain it was a good day.

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This entry is another two day entry and I am writing it at lunch time on the 29th. Yesterday we learned a little about how to teach video, writing, translation, and business classes. The library here has a few videos and you pick one out and show it to the class. The thing is, you also give them the script to the movie with blank spaces through out the script. During the movie the kids are supposed to fill in the spaces with the correct words. Of course I will have to stop and rewind the movie several hundred times to make sure the kids catch everything. I will also have to explain any words that they do not understand. Eva said that one video that normally lasts two hours will take the whole semester. Each one of the four classes I mentioned is 45 minutes long. With writing it is pretty much up to the teacher. I just pick up an interesting picture and then have the kids write a story explaining the picture. Then go over the sentences to make sure they make since. Or like what I did for my mock class, I brought in some candy and told the teachers to write down what the candy was like in their mouths. Translation will be the toughest because I don't speak the language very well at all. There is a book with Czech sentences and then right next to those are the English ones. I am not to sure how that class will go but I will write more on it when I can. Business is pretty much vocab words that the kids need to learn to function in an American business setting. I will have a hard time making that class interesting for the students.
For lunch yesterday we went to a sports restaurant that had the traditional Czech meal of meat and dumblings. On top of the meat(beef) there was whip cream and cranberry sauce. I can't say that it was great but it was an interesting taste. I was more facinated by the resaurant itself because it was called the Jagr Cafe. It was a whole restaurant devoted to Jamir Jagr, who is a famous hockey player from the Czech Republic, he plays for the Washington Capitals, I think. Eva said that last year students went there to watch the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup. In the evening we fixed the website and posted some more pictures. Then went home and ate some cold spaghetti and I went to bed early.
Today I went running in the morning and then we came to school and started teaching some more mock classes on the four subjects mentioned previously. I hope to get away this evening since I don't have to prepare anything for tomorrow. I want to get some more pictures of what a typical Church service is and what potluck is all about and put them on the website by Monday.

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I am writing a two day entry in one because nothing exciting is going on. We are learning how to teach classes for beginners. I was told before I came to the school that most of the students have a little background in the English language. But from what I have been learning in the past few days, the younger students don't have a clue about what is going on. Eva said that we will have to review what nouns, pronouns, verbs, and prepositions are. While I have a pretty good idea what they are, I do not think I am qualified to teach these things to someone who has little or no idea what they are. I am sure that I will be able to go on but it was just a shock to realize how little the students know about English. I also found out that not only will I have to be teaching regular English classes but I will have to teach video, business, translation, writing, phrasal verbs, and a few others. Don't ask me what I will have to do to teach these classes because I have no idea. I will try and let you know what these classes are when I start to teach them.
I finally figured out how to use the washing machine Tuesday night. So now I can start wearing clean cloths again. No just kidding. There is no dryer so we had to hang our cloths all over the apartment. We were going to cook baked potatoes but we realized we did not have any tin foil so we just cooked fried potatoes. Everyone should be proud of us because they turned out great and we did not catch anything on fire. In closing, I think that once I get into the routine of things I will be able to teach all the classes, but the first few weeks will be very disorienting. I have no teaching experience and Eva expects us to teach all these classes that we are just not qualified to teach. It will be interesting to say the least.

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Today will be a short journal entry because all we did was have orientation. We talked about what teaching will be like and what policies to follow if something happens. Is was very informative and interesting because Jon, who has been here a year already, had a lot of advice to give us. Eva gave us the assignment to teach a mock class tomorrow about a subject that we picked from the textbook. It should be very useful becuase I will finally find out what to do and what not to do. The biggest thing I will have to work on is talking slow enough for everyone to understand. So I am going to go prepare for the class now.

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Today we got a very late start sight seeing which I did not like very much but we did what the group wanted to do. We started sight seeing at three in the afternoon. I was up at 7am doing nothing and waiting for Korben to get up so we could go to the supermarket. We picked up some things for breakfast and supper about 300 Kč. We ran into a small problem with weighing the vegatables. Aparently when you weigh something a little sticker pops out and you attach that to your bag of food. Since in the States they only have those low tech weighing machines, we had no idea that a sticker popped out somewhere. So when we made it up to the check out the lady got this angry look on her face and was waving the vegatables and pointing at the weighing machine. Luckily a nice lady behind us helped us out and everything was ok. But now we know what to do and we will be ready for the sticker next time. After we got the food put away we headed to the school to work on the website and then we went with the others to Prague Castle. The Castle is hard to describe because it is not the kind of castle that I have always seen in the story books. It had a couple of tall towers but there were so many parts to the castle that you could not tell when you were in the castle and when you were not. At the main enterance they had real guards, the kind in England that guard the palace but did not dress as funny. There was also a huge church in the middle of the castle but it was closed by the time we made it up there. It was still really cool from the outside. In the castle area there was also a kind of weeping wall that is impossible to describe so there is a picture of it in the gallary. I am getting ahead of myself because we did stuff before the castle.
First we went to a really cool Church that was just sitting among the rest of the common buildings. It was so wierd to be walking along and then enter this little door that opened up into a breathtaking veiw of what the old Churches looked like. I was not prepared at all for what I experienced inside the church. Unless you have been to a European church I could never descibe it to you so I will leave it at that. Next we visited the oldest synagogue in Europe in the Jewish section of Prague. We did not go in but we got a picture of the outside. It costs money to go in so I will go back later when I have more time to tour the inside and get pictures of that. On our way to the castle we passed just a beautiful old Opera House but that is all I know about it. Then we finally made it to Prague Castle which is what I wrote about before.
When we finnaly made it back to the school it was about 8pm and then on our way back to the apartment Korben wanted to try a new way home. So we did and it took about an hour and a half when it normally takes like twenty-minutes. We tried to take the buses home but to no success so we eventually found the subway and got on that but now we know a new way home that takes and hour and a half. If we ever need to go that way again. We made it home safe and sound and went to bed right away.

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Today was our first Saturday in the Czech Republic and it was a very enjoyable day. We started out about 8:15am and when we made it to the red line subway, we found it was closed. I had no idea where we were at that point but luckily Daniel, he is the Aussie that speaks a little bit of Czech, talked to a few locals and found out that we needed to take the bus the rest of the way. We made it to the school for church with plenty of time to spare so everything turned out ok. The church family is very small only about 50 members were there and they said that the church is not normally that full. Their service is very similar to ours, they started with some hymns, and then some special music, and the choir sang a song, scripture reading, and the sermon. One thing that was weird was the children story, they had none but they took up the children’s offering anyway. Oh, they also had no regular offering during the service. Our school leader Eva translated the service from the back of the room into our earpieces that we had. It was very nice because it was instantaneous so the sermons were normal length instead of really short. The toughest thing about the service for me was the singing. We had English hymnals but all the Czech people had Czech hymnals. I could barely hear myself singing and then if I got lost in the song there was no way of finding my place again because no one around me was singing in English. I managed to make it through the songs but it was definitely a strange experience. A lot of the church members could speak a little English and they introduced themselves to us and said welcome and said a few other words. Of course there were a couple people who would speak to me in Czech like I knew what in the world was going on. I just smiled and nodded my head until they stopped talking to me. After the service we had a potluck lunch and the food was not great but I ate it anyway. We started with some really good cauliflower soup though. For lunch they were serving salad, rice, some noodle thing, potatoes, cheese patties, and fried cauliflower. The dessert was the best though because they had some cream filled pastries, some apple strudel, and pudding. I tried a little bit of every dessert of course, I did not want to seem rude. After lunch we went back to the sanctuary and practiced singing a song in Czech which was fun. I think we are supposed to sing the song next Sabbath for the church. The song was titled “In the Shadows” and from what I could derive, the song was talking about how a tree providing a shadow from the sun is like God’s protection over us. Then we had the afternoon service where all the SMs introduced themselves to the congregation and told a little about themselves. Then the speaker had another quick talk. I say speaker because the church did not have a pastor like back in the states. I think they don’t have one just because the church is so small. So they rotate the job of preaching to different people and the SMs will be part of that group. I think that I will only have to preach once and I am actually looking forward to the opportunity. Each of us also has to prepare the 45 minute afternoon program but I don’t think that will be to hard at all. After that we changed and went for a short walk to the national museum and just chilled on the front steps in the shade for and hour or so. There are pictures of the museum on the website. We were really just killing time until we went to the park for a walk. The park we went to was called Sharka, but that is not how you spell it in Czech that is how you would pronounce it though. The park was not that amazing until we made it to the top of the little hill as you can see from some pictures. I am glad I went to the park but I would not go everyday. One of the coolest things was just riding to the park because we had a driver that could speak a little English and he would point out a few sights here and there. Driving over all the cobblestone streets was quite an experience as well. The car we were in was so small that you could have felt a bump if you rolled over a grain of salt, so you can imagine what it was like going over cobblestone. It is hard to believe that so many people drive cars because gas is so expensive. The price for gas is right at a US dollar but that is for one liter, and there about four liters to a gallon or something like that. So they actually pay 120Kc or 4 dollars for a gallon of gas. WOW! We got back to the school and we had leftovers for dinner and then went back to the apartment. We got back around 9:00pm and so it was a very long day but I am not complaining. Tomorrow is a free day and so I do not know what we will be doing but I am sure it will be fun.

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We were picked up by a few more guys and the girls to head off to the school. One of the guys that picked us up has been here a year already and knows his way around Prague very well. We made it to the school after about a twenty-minute subway ride. The school is very nice with about eight little classrooms, computer room, teachers lounge, two sets of bathrooms, two offices, a kitchen, and the church. Having the church right in the school is very handy. The elevators in Prague are super tiny with no man hole at the top, so if you get stuck you will probably die. The elevators only fit four people and that is very tight. Them John, the guy that has been at the school for a year already, talked about how difficult it will be for the first few months. He said for the morning classes we are teaching teenagers that are being forced by their parents to learn English and they are a tough crowd. As most teenagers are but he said as long as you don’t tell them your age and always act as if you are in charge, we should not have a horrible time with them. The afternoon classes are for adults that want to learn our language and it will be more relaxed environment to teach in. I want to say that it will not be as difficult as they say it will be but I am sure I will find out in a couple of weeks. After a bit of orientation we went out to eat lunch at a pizza and pasta place. The food was good and the portions were huge as compared to the price. I got a cheese pizza for about 3.50 US dollars and the size of the pizza was as big as a pizza from Dominos. Unfortunately there is no such thing as free refills so I had to conserve my water. We then went to a grocery store to pick up some food for potluck and then made it back to the school. We then took a quick tour of the main tourist strip in the center of Prague and walked all the way to Charles Bridge. It had a spectacular view of the river and the bridge itself was beautiful. I found out where the US Embassy is and will hopefully make it over there this weekend to get maps with a direct route from the school and from my apartment. We made it back home around 7pm and had a quick dinner and ironed clothes. We also found out that the converters do not convert enough power to make the clock keep the right time. US things take 50 hertz and here in Prague things take 60 hertz. But we figured how much time we lose for each hour and set the clock for midnight and the alarm ahead according to how many minutes we would lose during the night. It will be a lot of trouble but we will make due I guess. Church is tomorrow and I am really looking forward to that.

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The flight was long but enjoyable at the same time. Of all the people on the plane we sat next to a lady from Prague. So we talked with her a bit about the language and culture. She also helped us find our way around Frankfurt airport. The flight from Frankfurt to Prague was extremely enjoyable because there were hardly any clouds, so I was able to view the German and Czech landscape. When we made it to Prague we went through customs with no problem and everybody’s bags made it just fine. We were met by people from the church and school when we exited but had to wait like two hours for one more person to arrive. All the guys I am staying with are pretty good roommates so far but it is only day one. Danny is from Australia and spent the last two years backpacking Europe and teaching at a ski resort. His mother is Czech and father is Polish so he knows a good amount of both languages. So he has been a big help talking with the locals. The girls are nice as well but they live across town and so have not found a whole lot of time to talk with them much. Hopefully we can invite them over to cook for us, even though we have not been doing that bad. We finally made it to our apartment around 1pm, which is like 7am EST. So I have been up for 24 hours. It took another couple of hours to settle in. The apartment is not terrible but not nice at the same time. The rooms are pretty small but the living area is a good size and we have a balcony with pigeons living on it. The kitchen is really small with a gas stove that we have to light. It took me a while to figure out why the stove would not work and then they told me I had to light the thing, who does that anymore. Then Korben and I took a power nap of about 3 or 4 hours. After we woke up we went to the grocery store, Kaufland, and picked up some corn flakes, milk, bread, tomato sauce, and spaghetti. We had no Kc at that time so we could not rent a buggy. Yeah they make you pay for a buggy but you get your money back if you return the buggy. The wheels on the buggy are all messed up, it is hard to explain without seeing it. After we ate it was about time to go to bed again so we did. If you want pictures of anything I described that did not make it onto the website feel free to email me about it and I will try and get it on the website. End of day one!