Praha, Pivo, Prosim

Per Jayne’s request I’m posting something today.

In my defense I do usually try & post weekly but I’ve had some extra stuff going on in the last few weeks. And also I should note that nothing hugely exciting has occurred therefore no interesting post. I have extra work as of late so that’s tied up my schedule a bit more. TEFL power!

As for what I’m doing right now well, I’ll spare you the details of my early morning laundry duties as somehow I seem to be washing clothes every Saturday morning. It’s kind of pathetic and nerdy but since I’m up anyway, I figure I might as well take advantage of the washing machine availability. Ah yes, the priorities of adulthood.

Last Sunday a bunch of people headed to Zlute Lazne Sorry, the page cannot be rolled over to English. But I’ll try & explain… ZL is an artificial beach on the Vltava that has sand volleyball courts, a sauna/spa area & of course the requisite klobasa and beer stands. Let me explain the photos I’ve posted.

1. While at ZL I should tell all of you that there were plenty of dudes (usually older) parading around in their Euro thongs. As an American, seeing this is very funny. Yes, it is. Anyway, there was also a man (probably 70 years old or so) who clearly LOVES the sun. This cat lives outside, I am convinced of this fact. He is about the color of a grilled klobasa. To further explain for anyone unfamiliar with what said food item looks like, imagine a walking, talking, breathing ‘burnt sienna’ Crayola crayon. It’s a very unnatural color to say the least. We decided to name him Sausage Man. I really don’t even think this picture captures his truly burnt sienna essence. It was kind of horrifying.

2. Naked Euro baby was running around for a good 20 minutes or so with his little plastic toy.

3. It’s not really a ‘beach’ as there is minimal sand but alas, people sun themselves here and generally have a jolly good time. I’ll also say people will swim in the Vltava which frankly sounds like a questionable move on their part. No, it’s not the Ganges and I wouldn’t expect to see the rotting corpses of recently deceased lepers bobbing downstream but there’s probably a fair amount of chemical runoff from somewhere. Not so sure I’d go for a swim in the mighty Vltava.

4. You’d think I asked this dude to pose this way.

5. On the way home from ZL…. There are plenty of occasions of ‘old meeting new’ in this town so here is just one of them.

Random I… what am I listening to right now? I’ll tell you. Since I’m about 5-7 minutes from Old Town Square, there’s still a fair amount of ‘tourists’ in my small neighborhood. In OTS you can hire someone to tote you around via horse and carriage. The streets here are cobblestone so whenever the horses come around I can hear the rhythmic ‘clopping’ of the hooves as they walk down the street. I like that. It’s pretty cool to be able to sit in front of an open double door in Old Town Prague and hear the horses going by.

Random II… something interesting I’m doing tomorrow. Testing for a voiceover for a documentary–a documentary about Mauritius. It’s really random how this kind of fell into my lap but the short story is that the voice of the person they hired apparently didn’t match the male voice therefore they need someone new. We’ll see how it goes. It really doesn’t even seem like it’s an audition so it might already be a done deal. Cha-ching! This would be a great little add-on to my resume. My speaking voice is usually pretty decent and/or pleasant so hopefully they’ll like me.

Random III…Dobra Mama is a brand of yogurt. It’s delicious. I found a few new flavors last week so like the nerd I am I Googled the company. There isn’t an English version of the page but there IS an official yogurt ‘family’ complete with a son and daughter. There are videos of said family that include the following scenarios….

1. Family meditation– and rather than chanting OMMMM they channel all their energy into chanting YOOOOGUURRRRRT

2. The family playing some kind of ‘memory’ game with yogurt containers

3. At some point the Dad gets pissed at the teenage daughter and calls her a stupid bitch. (Ha kidding–I don’t speak Czech so therefore I was projecting that last bit. ‘I am your father and you are a whore. By the way, eat your yogurt!’)

4. Little brother broke his arm. Boo. It’s in a sling. But nice older sister feeds him. Cue violins.

If you navigate to their site you’ll get a freebie two-fer of bad acting and Czech audio.

)

12:34 56s 7/8/9A bottle of Becherovka, shots & a one second party under the horse’s ass of the King Wenceslas statue at Vaclavske Namesti. Check. Done.

More Becherovka. This time add Wii, shake & stir. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. James Lipton & Lou Gossett Jr. play baseball.

Workshops, Visas, & Zivnostensky lists OH MY! *Note: it was ’suggested’ that I present some kind of timeline for getting a work permit/zivno/visa. I tried to explain that’s nearly impossible due to the government bureaucracy but alas, they think I’m an idiot and just making this more complicated. They’ll realize soon enough that it’s a nebulous process and there is no speedy and painless route. You’re welcome in advance before you even realize it. Just be thankful you didn’t have to deal with R.J. on this one. It’s neither easy nor cheap. Remember I told you this.

Rain rain go away, why won’t you bring summer weather with you to this fine city?

1) Awake at 7:30am on a Sunday morning. 2) Laundry done by 9. 3) Hang laundry out window to dry. 4) Grocery shopping by 9:30. 5) Wait, WTF to #3?

I like public holidays although I don’t get paid. Good or bad. I can’t decide. Both?

Chili cookoff round 2. I’m the only competitor. I win & so does my stomach. Close race. Ahh. All mine!

I broke my quasi-good headphones last week. I stepped on them. The cheap replacement is such an inferior piece of shit. I miss the old ones.

FOOD and FOOD

I enjoy cooking. No mistake about this; I blog about it often. Anyway, I’m a ‘cook what you have’ kind of person. What do I mean by that? Well firstly, I do follow recipes. However, I don’t follow recipes all the time. I think the idea of a recipe is to have a base. If you know how to make some basic things, you can riff off the tenets of what to do and ingredients and various quantities. If you cook for yourself, you know what you like. So, if you think something will ‘go’ together in a dish, fuck it, throw it in. In other words, if it’s in the kitchen, for God’s sake use it! You aren’t a restaurant critic, you can always toss it and start anew.

1) Budget shopping. As much as it sucks, it must be done. I’m on a shoestring budget here and I’ve learned what to buy and what is cheap. Certain staples are key. Potatoes and onions are always on the cheap. Loaves of bread are usually a good deal. Eggs are fairly inexpensive too.

2) Unless you are boring and just love bland and flavorless food, you need to buy some herbs/seasonings. Fresh herbs are a bit harder to find here but there’s a fair amount of individually portioned/bagged dried herbs & seasonings readily available. They’re a good deal, too. Well-flavored food can make an otherwise lifeless meal a bit more interesting.

3) Fresh fruits & vegetables… the selection isn’t what it is in the U.S. but generally speaking, carrots, cabbage and occasionally tomatoes are on the less expensive side.

I love breakfast food. Always have. This will not change. Lately, I’ve been making larger ‘American style’ breakfasts on the weekends.

Why did I just mention all this stuff? So I can share with you my most recent morning treats! Keeping in mind the points I just covered, here’s what I made last week:roasted potatoes & onions with misc. herbs, omelette with ham, cheese & tomatoes, and some nice hearty thick-sliced Czech bread.Vitamins!

Today’s meal: toast, roasted potatoes & red pepper with thyme, oregano, basil, paprika, salt/pepper, olive oil, three cheese omelette (Hermelin, bleu cheese cream cheese & Moravian cheese–similar to Parm), a nice sliced fresh tomato…. sprinkle more fresh cheese atop and voila! I wouldn’t normally use those kinds of cheese in an omelette but it follows my ‘use what you have’ mentality. Cheese, eggs, potatoes, bread & butter are some of my favorite things!

Some random images from iPhoto!

a) Fine wine of the week. A well-spent 49Kc at Albert. b) I spilled Ranch on the floor. In a land where it’s unavailable, this pretty much went down as the following–Oh shit! Man down! c)Let’s call this the slicer of death. I was at a party at a colleague’s flat in Zizkov a few nights ago and this rusty old Eastern Bloc instrument of torture is about 3 feet from the front door and in plain view of anyone in the kitchen. I inquired about said death tool. It looks like an antiquated meat slicer; you know the kind that the guys in the deli would use. No, this is a bread slicer. Or so I was told. According to my colleague (flatmate of the proprietor of said device), this was affixed to the counter in this spot so when slicing bread, the crumbs will just fall into the sink. Our query, ‘Who the fuck slices bread like this?’ Buy a knife, dude.

And the workshops are under way…

Add bullet point #3 to my curriculum vitae. In addition to doing ‘regular’ classes for Glossa & Skrivanek, I also do some workshops with TEFL classes at The Language House. I’m fairly new at this and so far my lessons have not been structured as proper TEFL lessons. But, in my defense, I’m not teaching a foreign language to these people. I’m talking to native speakers. The goal isn’t to teach 8-10 new words and incorporate them into an activity. There is though a set list of information that I’m required to dissect and if I planned out the material as a traditional TEFL lesson, the lesson would be far longer than it needs to be. If I attempted to elicit all the necessary points, we’d be in a classroom for hours. And when there’s beer to be had, this process impedes on the consumption of said potent potable.

I gave nearly a 3 hour ‘tour’ to the new class on Monday. It really shouldn’t be called a ‘tour’ because that’s not really what it is. Yes, they follow me around and I remark about appropriate things such as banking, post offices, markets, and perhaps a bit of history. But as I’m not an official tour guide nor do I have a brain full of historical data regarding this city, the ‘tours’ aren’t really that informative. I suppose the tour is just a quick way to let new students see a bit more of the famous landmarks here in Prague and I’m happy to be the one to do that. However, being the nerd I am I still scripted out some points to cover during said tour and even carried notes. Yes, really.

The new TEFL class seems like a cool bunch. Is that a premature statement? I hate to say it but they’re probably cooler than my class. Of course, I still have my peeps from my class but the age range in our unit was more varied and, well, we also had Ian.

Let me tell you about Ian. Ian is a guy originally from Rhodesia (and he made frequent reference to himself being Rhodesian) but had been living in the UK for years. Ian also claimed to be 43 years old. I use word claimed as well, if you saw him you’d doubt said figure, too. To be kind he appeared to have lived a rough life and I know he enjoyed the bottle quite a bit. In addition to his questionable age, Ian also had 7 children. Yes, that’s certainly higher than the average bloke but if you saw this chap, you’d perhaps be surprised at the amount of sex that is required to manufacture said quantity of offspring. Oy vey. It was rumored also that Ian, in large part, came to Prague so that his ex-wives could not locate him and thus force him to pay for child support. Oh yes, what an upstanding fellow. Additionally, Ian also claimed (again, claimed) that he had a Russian doctor as a fiance. Upon hearing this I was convinced that she was a mail-order bride as no self-respecting female of the medical community would shack up with (and desire sex from) an old and hardened drunken child abandoner. Supposedly this woman also supported him financially and sent him money with frequency.

I feel I should also mention that about half-way through our course one of his baby Momma supposedly attempted suicide. (I’m not trying to make light of a failed suicide attempt but this guy frankly is/was full of shit so I say all of this with speculation as what the real truth might be….) Although this woman was his ex, he was all torn up over the news and just stopped coming to our classes. By the way, attendance is mandatory; you are required not only to be present but also create and teach real lessons to real people every day. If you can’t do those things, you ain’t gonna get yo paper. So, in the middle of his depressed state he then basically locked himself in his shitty room above a local brothel (yes, true) and apparently just festered in his own Rhodesian filth while chain smoking and accumulating empty vodka bottles that became strewn about the room. I know, I’m providing quite a romantic image of this lovely man.

In the end, Ian officially dropped out of our class and continued to fester away in his rather expensive room for a few more weeks. But Ian wasn’t going to bow out completely just yet…..Ian re-enrolled in the next TEFL class (and again, paying more money). I saw him once in the building and I can report he appeared sobert. But, I was later informed that the mysterious Russian doctor was again financing him. At some point it was rumored that during his second course he & Dr. Svetlana Boginskaya (I hope someone will get that reference) got hitched and for a second time he dropped out of the course.I suppose now Ian is just a legend; the kind of person that TEFL classes will hear about in the hallways of The Language House. Perhaps he’ll gain the status of being ‘that guy’ and providing a beacon of disappointment and failure by which all future TEFLers shall avoid whilst passing in the night.

All this said though, Ian isn’t a jerk or an asshole. I feel obligated to say I liked the guy and he was always very nice to me. However, it was quite apparent to me and everyone else that due has/had some issues and is probably also guilty of stretching the truth a bit if not being a full-blown pathological liar.But anyway, back to the new TEFL class… in Language House ‘tradition’ it’s known that the most recent TEFL class takes out the new class. But, there were only 3 people in the June class and well, the proportion of new to old would be horrible skewed. Instead, Dita & I put out a bowling & pivo invite via Facebook. It was an evening of cheap beer which in my book is always a good thing. We were at some ‘nonstop’ (an English word that Czechs like to use) place in Vrsovice. The bowling was a mere 2 lanes. Yes, a big and fancy place! Aside from not having the requisite stinky bowling shoe rental, the lanes in this place are also much shorter than the standard. The pins are also on strings. Yes, strings. They are like marionette pins just bouncing about.

At this point I’ll also mention that all the marionette dolls here kind of creep me out. I don’t get it. Their creepy little painted faces and dancing limbs are just plain wrong. I don’t want a replica Pinocchio with tiny wooden feet clopping away on the floor of my flat. Ick. No thanks. Next.

 Random pic of the week…

My parents were here last week and since my Mom loves me, she fulfilled my requests of bringing over some Frank’s Red Hot and Kraft Mac & Cheese. I’ve expounded on my love of FRH before but since it’s 100% unavailable here and I love it so, I had to have it. Thanks to airline restrictions, Mom had to split up a bottle into the ‘appropriate-sized travel containers’ therefore I received 4 small squeeze bottles of Frank’s. I don’t need the bottle to know there’s crack inside. The mac & cheese… ok yes, this stuff is delicious. I can live without it but simply because it’s also 100% unavailable here, I had to have it. Lastly, Mom brought some powder packets of Hidden Valley Ranch. Ranch is the shit. No arguing. My sister would probably even argue that there is some unknown lifeforce contained within the Ranch. All that said, here’s my dinner of chicken with FRH, Ranch and a big GD pile of Kraft Mac & Cheese. I certainly didn’t make this meal for the purposes of photography or aesthetics. I just wanted some tasty vittles.

While M&D were here, we did a day trip to Karlovy Vary. KV is a spa town in W. Bohemia. It’s quite a picturesque little town with lots of cute shops and the like. KV is also the home of Becherovka. Becherovka is pretty much the Czech national spirit. It’s described as an herbal liquor made of 30+ herbs. When I first heard this I equated Becherovka with Jagermeister which is fucking nasty. Jag is herbal so I was making a natural assumption. I was wrong. While Jag tastes like the medicine you Mom made you choke down as a kid, Becherovka tastes like Christmas. At the Becherovka museum shop, they sell the regular stuff along with Lemond (readily available here) as well as a cordial variety and something called KV 14. I had never seen the latter two nor has a friend of mine who is from KV. The KV 14 isn’t as sweet or syrupy as the regular variety and the KV 14 is also made with 10% red wine. It’s certainly more ‘alcoholic’ tasting than the standard but I will confirm it’s pretty good. Recommended serving: very chilled either straight or with orange juice.

It’s been raining like a mother bitch lately. Gorgeous day today, though. What’s a girl to do on a sunny summer day in Prague?

Me and some new TEFL peeps. p.s. Happy Birthday America now go drink a PBR!

First, I’ll mention that I am now TEFL certified. Woo hoo! This is a good thing. Bad thing is the job market is shitty and it’s not going to be as easy/quick to find a job here as I initially thought. New friends in Prague are confirming this so um, yeah, that pretty much sucks. I’m moving into a new place tomorrow but am now 100% officially unemployed. Damn.

On a good note, Chris threw us a party at his place last night (good ‘power move’ on his part) and there was far too much alcohol. He also cooked dinner which was super nice of him to do and I think we were all more than appreciative of his efforts. A party that was supposed to end at 10 ended much later and most of us have strange/humorous stories about our evenings. I went to Old Town with a few people but when I got on a tram to head back, I chose the wrong one and it took me across the river. Let’s just say that I needed to go east and well, the tram went west. The public transportation here in Prague is great. It is very reliable and easy to use. However, the regular tram schedule changes after midnight as do the tram numbers. The frequency of stops drops to about 1 every 30 minutes and often you need to get transfers to get to where you need to go. So I knew I was up a creek when the tram was headed across the Vltava. I had a series of expletives going through my internal dialogue as I knew it was going to be a pain in the ass to get back. I walked back across the river and got a tram at the Narodni Trida station. That took me to Namesti Miru where I got a second tram. Tram 3 was at Olsanske Hrbitovy. Hooray. My dumbass move cost me 90 minutes of my life. ACK!

Since today has been my first official day of freedom, I wanted to get out of the flat and check some things out. None of us have really seen much of Prague yet so I’m anxious to do what I can when possible.Initially, I wanted to go to Petrin hill and I thought that tram 22 would take me there. I was sure I had read that but alas, it did not. When I doubled back, I walked around the grounds of Prague Castle but being that it is a Saturday, it was very crowded so that was a short side trip. I headed down the hill and went by foot into Josefov and Old Town. There is some kind of regional European festival in Old Town this weekend so in Old Town Square there were food and beverage vendors set up. Good times. A Gambrinus was 40Kc (a bit overpriced but everything is in that area of town) and although it was a bit cold, beer is never a bad thing. I contemplated a visit to a Salvador Dali exhibit but canned that and ate lunch instead. Amos is just down the street from my new crib so I noshed there. I had some rather interesting pork ragout in pancakes and little potato croquettes that were basically Peanut M&M sized fried balls of doughy goodness.

There is an underground Albert super close to the new place and being one who likes markets and grocery stores, I browsed a bit. This Albert is a decent-sized store (bigger than the Lidl’s we’ve been going to) and its also 2 levels. Because it is multi-level and a grocery store, there is a moving sidewalk that is tilted at probably a 20 degree angle. Check that off my list as something I had never seen before.

After Albert I walked around Palladium because it’s awesome and so very close. Sorry, I keep going on about the amazing location of my new apartment but it seriously is the shit. On the food court level they were having some kind of presentation. And here’s one more thing I can check off my list….. what kind of presentation was it? Well, there were lights and a stage set up for a……Czech deaf teen fashion show. Yes, you read that right. The emcee was flanked by 2 women who were signing and then the ’show’ started with a girl coming out and signing to a Frank Sinatra song It reminded me of the Helping Hands kids from Napoleon Dynamite. The second bit was a funky R&B number with hip teens strutting their high fashion shit around the stage. Random side note…do you know how deaf people ‘clap?’ I did not until today. They put their hands in the air and essentially just wave them around. So, rather than give audible appreciation to the participants, there was just a sea of waving arms in front of me. *I saw a super cute baby at the show and snapped some pics.

I was finally able to get out with the ‘good’ camera so I snapped most of these today. They’re kind of random. The first pic was taken in this apartment building. I wanted to finally use the tripod that Omar bought me so…..

Well, it’s week two and the TEFL Gods have wasted no time throwing us to the wolves! Ok, that’s being dramatic; the TGs aren’t wolves, they are perfectly normal adults who just speak very little English. Shit.

We did a brief bit of classroom instruction (to real students–no, not children either) last week and then prepared a full lesson plan for today’s class. Now we’re in the thick of things and pretty much doing new lesson plans everyday. Today’s plan was a lexis (look it up, it will be ironic), and tomorrow’s plan is a listening exercise/lesson. Although the content isn’t terribly confusing, it’s devising efficient and well-structured lessons that the students ‘get.’ Of course the easy thing would be to just write down words and definitions on the board and ask if the class understands. The problem with that is people will usually say that they DO understand even when they do not. Also, admitting you don’t understand something is a confidence crusher as well as a bit embarrassing. That said, we are required to continually CCQ (concept check question) the material without blatantly saying a definition of a word. Synonyms were my friend today. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to instruct some abstract idea. Shit. Oh well, hopefully that will be for advanced students. The level I’m at this week is pre-intermediate (just above beginner) and it’s rather difficult to ‘dumb down’ your way of speaking and also noting what kind of verbal structure you are using. Eh…. All in all though, today’s lesson went well and I was told so and that makes me feel pretty pleased. Our actual ‘observation’ period has been next to nothing so cranking out lesson plans that ‘work’ has been a challenge. I supposed unless I drop my pants and take a shit on a Czech-English dictionary, it will probably be alright.

On the food front since I know some of you are interested…..

Food update… I have seen some very interesting meat-like items in the refrigerated case of the local grocery. I’ll get to that in a minute….

Again, I picked up a couple things to eat. (Keeping with my theme of getting a few unknown and known items, by the way.) I bought a small plastic container of what I thought was tuna salad. Not even owning a Czech-English dictionary, I can only go on pictures; also, the fact that I know about 10 Czech words doesn’t help in any shopping experience. So, since this container was clear, I examined the contents and the photo on the packaging and deduced that it was probably a rather innocuous tuna salad. Harmless, right?So, I’m back at the flat after class today wanting something to eat…Ah-ha! The tuna! I peeled the top back and it still totally looked like tuna salad. Ok, that’s good. Phew. Problem averted. Hungry stomach satiated.Ok, let’s try this thing…. with fork in hand, I freely took a bite and well, it wasn’t tuna. It was never tuna. Even if I close my eyes and click my heels three times, this shit is never going to be tuna. It’s basically a mayonnaise-y fish puree that is kept chilled probably to discourage any funky Euro bacteria invasion. Damn, I really need to get a friggin’ translating dictionary.

Ok, back to the other weird stuff I saw in the refrigerated case. In the same area as the non-tuna, there are several containers of various meats in various states of um…..suspension? (In the near future–I’ll buy one just to see how ‘interesting’ it is. Yes, of course–photos!) One (I don’t know what it’s called) of these items looks to be sliced deli meat (pork or chicken? The jury is out on that). Oh no, it’s not plain and boring deli meat. This thing is sliced meat wrapped around what could possibly be cream cheese? I am guessing on this. It’s white and looks rather thick. I’m a cream cheese girl but this uh….no thanks. Maybe this was the same stuff on my random sandwich from last week? Perhaps–just making associations here. So, we have the meat wrapped around white stuff and it’s encased in a clear gelatinous matter. I refuse to call it liquid as it is not. I think this particulate is the fourth state of matter also known as plasma. So, the meat rolls are sitting at the bottom of a clear solidified goo. The presentation is questionable at best and I also don’t understand the function of the solidified clear stuff. Is it for preservation? Is it just damn delicious? I believe it is used for the purpose of the former rather than truly being the latter. No way. Impossible. When I picked up a container of this stuff and turned it over, nothing inside moved. At all. Didn’t even budge. Maybe if I experimented with various temperatures the contents would shift and I could use the gelatinous hellspawn as some kind of household glue? It certainly appears to possess the properties of a commercial adhesive or maybe even a solvent.

INFOMERIAL!!!! Got paint on your favorite blouse? Need to clean up the boat for the Missus this weekend? Fuck Sham-Wow–this is the new shizz!! Why go ahead and bust out your pork cheese rolls and keep the clear stuff for miscellaneous chemical stains removal! Buy Mom a tube today!