First Day of School

On Friday, I set out with plenty of time to get to my 1pm orientation in Andel. I get to Andel, only to learn that the location of class has changed to a place back across town and that as the school has my wrong email (again), I missed about 2938923 emails over the past few days. Hop back on the tram, retrace my route back and show up to class flustered and a bit tardy - late enough to miss all the important info about lockers and books and, oh, you know, VISAS. Not a very good start. 


We get a bit of background info on how hellish the next four weeks will be, full of lectures and lessons and lots and lots of work, before departing on a tour of the city. This tour consisted of walking through Old Town Square, over Charles Bridge, into a park, over Charles Bridge again, down the river and then hopping the Metro back to Andel, where pivo and a much needed piece of cake is waiting. 


There are 16 of us in my TEFL group - all different ages, from all over the place (well, all over the US. There's one Canadian woman and a Czech guy), with one very interesting thing between them all... most of them were philosophy majors in school. Who knew that four years spent studying Idealism, Pragmatism, Comte, Kant and Marx would prepare you for teaching English? If that's the case, then I am in serious trouble, as the only reason I passed philosophy was because our professor gave us the test questions ahead of time. I am trying to be very open minded and withhold passing judgement until I get to know everyone a bit better, because right now it seems like I am with a bunch of people trying to be their idea of the stereotypical expat, which is code for pretentious. 


To wash away the first day jitters, the roomies and I went out to a bar called the Big Lebowski, in Žižkov. I fear my heels are not going to get a lot of use in this city, what with all the big hills and cobblestones. Learned very well that pivo + an empty stomach is not a good idea, so while everyone was guzzling beer, I was chowing down on a grilled cheese at the bar. The Big Lebowski is apparently the only bar in Prague that let's you decide how much you want to pay... I do not understand the business model behind this other than they're hoping everyone gets drunk enough to feel really generous. 


It's been an otherwise very lazy weekend. Spent the day doing years of reading and prepping my first group lesson - How to Write a Thank You Note. Tomorrow kicks off the first of four weeks of intense TEFL training, so I am off to figure out how to get my EU passport in case this all doesn't work out. :)