Ahoj, friends! I have seriously dropped the ball on this whole blogging deal - sorry! By now I have actually obtained my TEFL certification so I have about 4 weeks to catch you all up on. September went 10x faster than I thought it would, and I was 10,000x more busy than I had anticipated what with classes, job searching, apartment hunting and trying to explore the city. It's going to be difficult to highlight EVERYTHING I've done over the past 4 weeks, so I will just try and touch on the most important/interesting events in my life thus far:)
I landed in Prague on the 4th around 2pm and was greeted by a guy in his mid-20s named Martin. Martin is the son of the woman who runs my training program, so sometimes he helps out by picking up students from the airport. He drove me to my apartment which is located in Podoli (Prague 4). Prague is divided by districts, which are indicated as Prague __(#). I'm about 20 minutes from the city center ("Centrum"), which isn't AWFUL, but I'd prefer being a little closer. My area is safe and residential so it feels more like the suburbs than an actual city, even though I'm only 20m outside.
Martin suggested that my roommate and I try this waterfont bar (O2 žluté lázně) because it was where many locals like to go during the summer months. It's located on the waterfront of the Vltava River and is about a 10min walk from my apt. This turned out to be a fantastic recommendation because not only did we experience some off-the-beaten-path culture, we ended up meeting a group of locals who befriended us (or maybe vice versa, can't really be too sure after a few beers;)) who were eager to share tips, phrases, and stories with their new Amurrican friends. We ended up exchanging information with one of them who I've actually been in contact with since to set up a night to go out for drinks or dinner. I am deeming her my first Czech friend :) The remainder of the weekend was spent unpacking, getting settled, wandering, etc...
On Monday (the 7th), I started my first day of TEFL training. There were 8 of us in the class - myself included. Everyone was from the US except for this one girl Shaz who is half American/half Belgian, yet she has an English-sometimes South African/Australian sounding accent, her parents live in Dubai and she goes to school in the UK so we're still not sure what to call her. All but 1 of us were in our early 20's - the exception being a man named Don who is probably the coolest 78 year old man I have ever met. His resume includes such things like retired NATO war pilot (nbd), PhD in social work, professor, badass, world traveler, etc etc.... I'm pretty sure he is actually younger than we were because many times we'd get out of class and he'd be trying to convince us to go get one of the 30kc ($1.72) .5L beers at this beer garden next to our school (Letenske Sady Beer Garden in Letna Park) and we'd have to be like 'Don, I'm sorry, but we really have to go home and take a nap'. So, needless to say, he has been a pleasure having around and it was sad to see him go the other day when he took off to back to Wisconsin where he's from.
The class itself was alright - not extremely exciting since we were discussing grammar a lot of the time, but not extremely boring because I obviously wouldn't be here if I found this stuff really painful. Having my certification feels pretty cool because I am now certified to do this for the rest of my life. Some certifications expire, but the TEFL last forrrreeevvveerrrrr.... so when I am old an rickety and am tired of the daily grind, I can just drag my family with me to Bali or somewhere exotic and use this a backup plan in case I get bored during retirement. Always thinking ahead.
In my free time - which hasn't been much - I've visited a couple castles and old fortresses (naturally), gone to a couple beer garden and have just wandered around the city. Below are some pics from Křivoklát castle( http://www.krivoklat.cz/en). The website will give you a better description of it than I can, but in short - It's a 12th Century castle, still in tact, about an hour away from Prague. The End!
About two Saturdays ago I decided to designate the greater portion of my day to catching up on e-mails, updating this blog, uploading pictures, etc...and I had imagined that this would all be taking place in a quaint, European cafe that would sell cheap (but good) cappuccinos and would have free wi-fi. I figured all I needed to do was wander around and perhaps have to try a couple of different places in case wi-fi wasn't free, but that it WOULD happen and it would be found. WELL - let me just tell you what 9 cafes will do to you : 1)You will spend roughly 200kc on 8 cappuccinos; 2) you will not find free wi-fi; 3) you will feel sick after drinking 8 cappuccinos. My mistake was in sitting down before I pulled out my computer to check the signal because those waiters are quick and will absolutely make you feel like you need to buy something. I ended up just going to the apartment of 4 of my classmates to use their internet, which was free and didn't require my to buy anything. On the bright side though, I discovered some places that I probably wouldn't have seen had I not been wandering around, so that was nice:)
On Friday's, the 8 of us have tried to do dinner somewhere around town. The first Friday we went to a place that had unbelievable food - Czech and non-czech food, as well as a good selection of cheap beer. My favorite so far has been this place called Pivovarský Klub, which is a brewery/beer garden that claims to have the biggest beer menu in the Czech Republic. With 200+ beers in stock, I would not be surprised. I tried some wheat beer that was 35 kc ($2.50) for half a pint and it was preeeeetty preetty tasty. I'm pretty sure the Czech Republic runs on beer!
