January 28

It has been a long time since I wrote something for this Web site.  I could say that things have been really busy, but that would be a lie, and lying is wrong.  Things have been busy, but not more busy than usual, and I had been doing pretty well with the updates until December.

Anyway, enough with the apologies.  Here’s what happened, starting with the Thursday before Christmas:

I found out that fateful Thursday that I would no longer be able to teach at the school where I had been teaching.  There were visa problems, (probably) resulting from a typo on my passport.  I can’t talk much more about it.  You never know what kind of secret government operatives are checking this Web site regularly for information.

So starting from just a little before Christmas, I was out of a job.  I didn’t know how I would put food on the table, or pay for little Timmy’s operation, but I still tried to have a good attitude about it.  If God sees fit to relieve me of one job, then by all means bring on what is next.

During the first part of the Christmas vacation, I stayed in Prague.  Very few of us teachers were here, so we banded together and had a gift exchange.  I have found that living abroad reduces the commercialism that one faces in one’s life, but I have also found that it is just best not to go into any major department stores anywhere on earth during the week before Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, Nicole, another teacher, and I celebrated Christmas with a couple that we know from church.  Their three young kids were there, and a few of their other friends.  It was a lot of fun to play with their children, to eat and talk.  I still missed my own family, but it was a great time.

Christmas Day, the five teachers who were in Prague at the time exchanged gifts in the apartment at Nad Aleji.  Then, we went to the apartment of our fearless leader, ESI Regional Director Kelly Kuest, for a party and another gift exchange.  The next morning, I hopped onto the early train to Berlin to meet my dad, who was flying in the same day.  I found the hotel all right, after walking in the wrong direction down the street for two blocks, but I had all kinds of difficulties with the U-Bahn ticket machines, and ended up having to ride without one.

In Berlin, we saw just about all the things that good tourists ought to see.  The Berlin Cathedral, the Reichstag, the Pergamonmuseum, the Gemaldegalerie, Checkpoint Charlie, The Triumphal Column, Schloss Charlottenburg. . .  We saw them all, and we have the pictures to prove it.  The two things that made the biggest impression on me were the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche (a bombed cathedral which was left in its bombed state as a reminder of the horrors of war) and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, northeast of the city.

We also took a train to Wittenburg, but we meant to go to Wittenberg.  Boy, were we embarrassed after making such an obvious mistake.  So we got back on the train to Berlin and got the next train to Prague.

In Prague, we went to the castle, which I paid money to go through for the first time.  On New Year’s Eve, we joined Jesse, Stacy, Hope and her friend Robbie from home for dinner at Buffalo Bill’s (American food!  American prices!  Americans!)  and then we all staggered up Petrin Hill (it was icy) to watch the fireworks all over the city.

A few more things my dad and I did: went to a New Year’s concert at the Rudolfinum, the swankiest place to listen to classical music in town, went to Kutna Hora and Sedlec (home of the famed Bone Church), went up in the Old Town Hall tower, wandered into a score of churches, and saw The Cunning Little Vixen (which is really about a fox) at the National Theater.

Dad left on the fifth, the day before school started again.  I had agreed to finish the semester at the gymnazium, which gave me two weeks left.

A replacement had already been found for me, and he began to observe my classes on that Monday.  On Thursday, I started to tell the students that I was leaving.  I was sad to disappoint them so much, but it could have been worse: they could have been happy (and I’m not going to lie; some of them may have been).  The 4As gave me a box of chocolates and a board game as a parting gift.  The 06As stood up and sang, “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” to me on my last day.  And the 08As threw a party for me, which conveniently got them out of class.  I was glad to know that the students enjoyed having me as a teacher, and I hope that I will still have opportunities to hang out with them while I am here.

As for what I will be doing from now on, that is slowly becoming clear.  It will most likely be a mix of individual tutoring and teaching adult classes.  I already started my first adult class, teaching every Friday at a nuclear research facility north of town.  The students there seem fun, and they are at an advanced level, so we will be able to discuss topics and articles with little difficulty.

This weekend (Jan. 24-26) I went to Budapest for the second time.  The reason was that I had been invited to attend a conference given by the operators of Global Hand (http://www.globalhand.org), an organization which seeks to connect those with resources in the developing world with those without them in the developing world.  I took the night train down at 11:22 on Friday, went to the conference on Saturday, and hung out with the Hungarian teachers at their potluck that night.  The next day I went to church with Neal, the teacher who was gracious enough to let me stay with him (still at http://www.wheresneal.com.  Don’t know how long it’s been since he updated it, though), and a few other teachers.  That afternoon, I met with the Global Hand folks once again, then took a train to Dunaujvaros to visit two other teachers there.

I had not seen them since training, and I was interested in finding out how they were doing.  They knew at training that they would be teaching mostly boys (some at an athletic school) in a Stalinist town from the ‘50s.  When I talked to them, they said that things were going well.  School was pretty difficult sometimes, but they had a wealth of stories about it.  One of them, Amy, just got engaged to a guy back in America not long ago.  I got a chance on Monday to see the other one, Johanna, teach Afro Man’s soon-to-be-classic “Because I Get High” to a class of students who enjoyed it immensely.  You could see why by the fact that one of them, called Psycho, had a silver marijuana leaf dangling from his left ear.

I had train troubles getting back to Budapest and, therefore, back to Prague, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.  It’s late, and I need to finish.  The way that I’ve rendered the previous month leaves much to be desired, but I’m just glad that I’ve managed to write it down before any more time goes by.