Czech'd Out: dveře se zavírají...

You know how you get a song stuck in your head sometimes? Well, this weekend I've had a phrase stuck in my head: Ukončete, prosím, výstup a nástup, dveře se zavírají. It's what the voice on the metro says when the doors are closing, followed by "Příští stanice ........" All that translates to: "Please stop loading and unloading. Doors are closing. Next station....." But I feel practically fluent in Czech because I can pronounce it all. I've also finally figured out how to say good-bye, which is "nashledanou." I can basically carry a conversation if I want to order something (always a Sprite, though one of these days I should get a beer or hard liquor just because I can) from one of the convenience stands, saying "Dobrý den, Sprite prosím? Dekuju. Nashledanou!" (Literally: "Hello, Sprite please? Thank-you. Good-bye!")

Anyway, this past week was quite similar to the last. And the one before that. The weeks are starting to run together, but I do feel like I'm learning more and more every time I'm in front of the class. Just when I feel like I've got a handle on one class, I'm struggling to keep control of another or finish planning a lesson for the next. It's a never-ending cycle, but I figure that's basically going to be my life for at least the next two years, until I'm finally settled somewhere and have a repertoire built up. But for now, I'm mostly concentrating on classroom management and figuring out what works for each class and each grade level.

There are moments here where I feel like I could really stay in Prague for the long-haul. Moments when I'm just walking somewhere in the city and I look up and am just taken aback by the streets laden in history. The city is gorgeous, and the longer I'm here and the more I do, the more I realize I could never get through everything in the short time I'm here - or even if I was to stay here! There's still so much I want to do, and I keep adding things to my "Prague Bucket List" if you will, even strange things like seeing the communist propaganda that has been preserved in the Andel metro.

And that's not even to mention the places I want to go outside of Prague, outside of the Czech Republic. I plan to come back again and again to Europe, but I also find myself wanting to do it all right now. But I'm trying to limit myself, both for time and money's sake. I have half-term holiday coming up in two weeks, and I'm going to buy a train ticket to Krakow and spend a couple days in Poland, and go see Auschwitz while I'm there. I feel like if there's one thing I have to do while I'm here, especially since I'm in eastern Europe, it's visiting Auschwitz.

Tonight I had a great night hanging out with some folks at Cafe Louvre. We discovered that they charge for the use of napkins and cutlery! For such a nice restaurant, you'd think they would let you use those for free... When we were leaving, this girl who had been sitting in the table next to us started chatting with me and Jen (one of the teachers from my school) and told us she thought they probably charged us that because we're foreigners. This girl has lived in Prague for 13 years and her father's a professor at Charles University here in Prague. She invited us to a movie night he hosts every week for expats, so I have her number and if any of us want to do that, we can just ring her. So that might be a random but neat thing to do before I leave.

Since I actually got my planning done for tomorrow before I even went out for dinner, I can call it an early night. Before I go, I'll leave you with some photos I took yesterday when I explored some parts of Prague I hadn't seen yet:

The JZP / Prague / Baby Tower. It dominates the Prague skyline, but is completely out of place in this city.

A close-up of the JZP tower, complete with creepy, face-less babies crawling up the side.

The Museum of Young Art near Charles Bridge is full of random modern art. Like this one, in the courtyard of the museum (the building itself is an old palace that has a rich history of its own).