Working our tails off

Carol is working harder than ever before, Jerry well not as much, but we are both learning a lot.  We have been teaching classes for two weeks now and it is getting a little more comfortable.  This is our school director working with Carol to plan her next lesson while I went out for a walk on a gorgeous spring  day .  Kenny Arnold is really doing a fine job and the rest of the team here is also very helpful, Lukas and Vanda.  Then I came back to teach my class, Marie, Iva, Vanda and Milan.  We all learned a lot and had fun. 

It was nice to hear from home today also, Carol got a Skype call from Cecelia Northcutt at about 3 pm here.  Cecelia said see saw Carol was working online and thought she would give it a try.  We are starting our bigggg course assignment today, interviewing and building a lesson plan for a single student based on their specific requirements.  Then we write a paper about the entire experience.  It will be very challenging.

Classmates

Tle classes are actually kind of fun.  The teacher, kenny is fabulous, but the information is certainly something I’ve never done before. There was a woman from Slovakia that spent the day in our class.  She teaches high school English and is a pretty good speaker.  We had a chance to chat and she didn’t know what a social service agency was.  Went on to describe a friend who had a mental illness but was getting very poor treatment.  She was surprised when I told her a lot of people with mental illnesses work and have very normal lives.  The word blog was also a new word for her.  We also had a guy from Turkey and they have very modern equipment in their schools.  Kenny told us that they teach us using the barest of equipment, because most of the places we might go don’t have money for computers.

Out of the 6 people in our regular class there is one other American, two people from the Czech Republic and one Polish lady.  Two are not what I would call fluent in English but they feel they can get much better jobs after the Teaching English as a Foreign Language trainning.  Their advantage over us is that they had grammar in school when they learned English.  I haven’t had any grammar lessons for 40+ years.

news stations

Would you believe that the only news we hear and only English stations on our 72 channel cable tv is Aljazeera and Bloomberg.  Aljazeera is actually a very good station. They give news from all over the world and seem to be pretty straight news with no opinions.  Bloomberg is a 24 hour financial channel run by Bloomberg of the New York Bloomberg.  Can’t say I find it very interesting but we haven’t had a lot of tv time.  It is amazing what you can do on the web.  Hulu is a web site where you can watch American tv and we couldn’t get it outside the US; however, for $6.50 a month we subscribed to a VNP (don’t ask me what that is).  Jerry can probably tell you if you really want to know but now we can get Hulu and last night watched a recent episode of Castle! It has a lot of really old shows and some recent ones.  I’m sure now that we have the VNP we’ll find more if we wanted to.  Don’t think we’ll have much time to explore but it’s another one of those things that may come in handy some day.  We’ve really been fortunate and had beautiful weather.  Already a bunch (a big bunch) of tourists in Prague

I get the Washington Post and the Daily Beast on my e-mails.  Imagine our surprise when we see Arizona as the top story.  Only in Arizona!!

The weekend in Prague

We had a big week at school.  It is going to be a lot of work, but mostly fun so far.  We got our big term assignment and it is a must do to pass situation.  However, now it is Sat. and we are out and about with fab. weather.  Metro is wonderful.  It is fast and easy to get anywhere so far.  We have been trying to get the Garmin to help us, but it was a no go up until we let it load satellites for about two hours and finally it is now been cooperative.  Here is a little sample of the city.

   We are both coming down from the whole rush of adrenalin and settling in our apartment after a shopping trip to a food market about 2 blocks for home.  Going to take it easy tonight.

Prague “tidbits” of information

Some interesting tidbits of info that we’ve heard since being in Prague is that this is mostly an atheist country.  They apparently decided religion created too many problems.  Poland on the other hand is mostly Catholic and supplies most of the European priests.  Great public transportation system and easy to use.  You get a pass that allows you to get on any of the trams, metro or buses and it is great. We get to school in 10 min.   The tram broke down this morning and Jerry was able to get us to school on the metro.  That normally shouldn’t be that big a deal but if you saw the street and metro names you would be impressed!!!   Tomorrow and Sunday we spend some time seeing the sites before it all starts again.

first teaching experience

This is hard stuff.  I prepared all day for my 30 minute teaching lesson and I felt like I didn’t teach them anything.  Our teacher assured me that wasn’t the case but talking to 3 people that only understand a few words of what you say is challenging!  I don’t think I wrote about our 60 minute emersion Czech lesson to help us understand how difficult it is for people who who don’t understand what you are saying.  I ended up being able to say “good day” in Czech and then I don’t say it very well.  Oh well, that’s what we came for. 

We had our first look at the city today and it is beautiful!!

peanut butter

Jerry made a solo shopping trip and found it! Meanwhile, I’m taking a quick break and then back to my lesson plan for today!!!!!!

Study,Study,Study

The new Carol is hard at it with a lesson plan for today.  Up early to get ready for the students.  We are in the fourth day of training (our 3rd) and are already going to teach a 30 lesson this afternoon.  Lesson planning will be about 4-6 to 1 on the time spent for each lesson in the early part of a teaching job.  Everything is going very well for a change.  We really have a great teacher and a small class so conditions are good for even “older learners”.  Got to get to school, but here is your first look at the new Carol.

Also our sleeping environment, one end of our living room,very nice and cozy.

Other end.

school!!!

This is going to be hard!!  It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a classroom.  We give our first lesson tomorrow to real students.  We haven’t seen anything of Prague yet.  It also seems like we’ve spent any free time figuring out how to use all the electronics.  My computer needed a different adapter, we bought a cheap phone, figured out we can download pictures to my computer but haven’t had time to take any pictures yet!! 

the neighborhood stores don’t have peanut butter, can you imagine.  There is a big store close by but we haven’t been home early enough to shop there.  I wasn’t this busy when I was working full time. 

we made it

I’s now Wed am in Prague and we made it in yesterday about 11:00.  We went directly from the train station to our apartment to drop off luggage and then to class to try to catch up on what we missed. 

First the train ride, wow, another adventure!  The overnight had 6 bunk beds in one room. Fortunately for me I didn’t drink much water so I didn’t have to get up to the bathroom.  Our bunkmates left at 4:00 in the morning so that helped when we actually got up at 7:00.

Class is just 6 people, only one other American.  Too early to tell anything but yesterday was fun.  We made it back to our apartment which was the first challenge. We also figured out how to use the internet in our apartment so we’re making progress.

Posting Comments

We would love to have your comments, but you need to sign up with a tool such as Windows live writer or Google writer or one of several others please just try posting and you will see the list of options.   It is very easy to get the tool and we would love to here from you so good luck on signing up.

P.S.

We haven’t taken any pictures yet and the one of me in the rain gear is from a different experience.  The weather is still beautiful here.  We will add pictures soon.

the rest of the story

Yes, it is beautiful in Paris in the springtime; however, the ride on the chunnel from London to Paris was over 300 pounds, the 4 stops (and an overnight) it will take us on the train to Prague is another 500 euros!  We think we’ll get there Tuesday morning at 9:00.  Believe it not I’m not complaining just commenting.  So many people are stranded without money etc that I consider us very very lucky.  We will miss the first day of training but I don’t think they will fail us since it’s “really not our fault.”

We had a nice evening walking around Paris but would you believe, not many people speak English!! We had a leisurely dinner in a sidewalk cafe, shared a pizza and had a 4.50euro diet coke!  Even with the exchange rate getting better for the U.S. it’s not cheap in Paris.  Carol

Ah Paris in the spring time

We are now in beautiful Paris waiting for the train.

Another day another Eruption

Well I don’t really know what to tell you, because no one will tell us anything. The Volcano is having all the fun.  It is warm and sunny in London and I have never been here with out rain so that is a big plus, but no firm date to leave in a big minus.  We have met some great people Susan from Key West and Ian and Joann from Prince Edward Island Canada. We have been having fun with lot of laughs.  On the train last night back from the play, Joann said “ If I have ashed you once I have ashed you a million times stop talking about the volcano. We all cracked up.  Jerry

While Jerry was writing I was waiting for American Airlines and now have a confirmed flight for Wed AM, right!!!  So tomorrow we are going to start the process of seeing if we can get to Prague by train.  We’ll keep you posted on where in the world we are! Carol p.s. Believe it or not we are really having fun with our new friends so it could be a lot worse.

We didn’t call it the Big Adventure for Nothing

If you have been watching TV you know that Iceland Blew Big Time and it has closed the airports in much of Europe.  Well, guess who is caught in that wild and crazy plume of ash?  Jerry and Carol are stuck in London waiting for airlines to fly again.  Some of you remember we were in another “mother nature” event a few years ago.  We can add a volcanic eruption to our tsunami experience!  Anyway, the airport closed right after our landing in London.  Fortunately, we connected with three other strangers who are now friends. We found a hotel about an hour from the airport so we spent Friday walking around London and plan on a play tonight (Oliver).  The saga continues since we still don’t know when the flights will resume.  We had a flight for Saturday morning which is now cancelled and rebooked for Sunday.  School starts Monday so hopefully we will get there! 

At the Airport

We are all checked in and waiting for our flight to Dallas.  We have boarding passes all the way to Prague, so I guess we are really going to do this. WOW. Now am starting to worry about what we are going to eat for the next 30 hours.  Lots of power bars will at least keep us alive.  Carol is more excited than I have ever seen  her, so I guess this a good idea and the start of something really new and wonderful.

The adventure begins

Today is our travel day.  Joann Schultz is picking us up at 12:00 noon and we arrive in Prague Thursday evening at 6P.M.  We have lots of audible books and my kindle is loaded thanks to the wonderful gift certificates from SAMHC.  We’re finishing the packing and getting the house ready so our realtor can do open houses.  If it isn’t sold by the time we get back we’ll start the rental process. We’ve had some terrific good by dinners and lunches with friends.  We will miss everyone and all the creature comforts of home but we’re looking forward to the challenges that school will bring and new opportunities.  Once we get settled we plan to write more often and will include some pictures.  Stay in touch and let us know what you are doing.  My new e-mail is clittle1946@gmail.com

Homework

We got our homework  yesterday  and now need to refresh our memories (40 + years later) on verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.  Some of it is actually coming  back but we can already tell this will be a challenging new experience.  We’ve bought our universal plugs, bigger suitcase, ‘and all the other “toys” I already mentioned.  The SAMHC staff gave me an Amazon gift certificate for my Kindle downloads and also a spa certificate which I will use gratefully use before I leave.

My last day at work was last Tues.  I left at the end of the day with a good by e-mail.  It would have been too emotional for me to see everyone at an event.  I will miss all my colleagues but I know I‘ve left the agency in very capable hands.  SAMHC has the strongest staff ever!!  Chuck, Laura, Larry and Michele took me to lunch Friday for my birthday. 

I have lunches  scheduled just about everyday until we leave.  While we don’t have any long range plans as yet, we do know we will be  back in Tucson May 16th and decide what to do next!