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Published: March 13th 2013
I woke up this morning at 6 because I thought it would take a while to get to the English department. However, it only took about 10 minutes by bus and therefore I was able to type a bit of a blog post. Today, I was at the University English Department because I gave a presentation to two classes on American holidays and traditions. Michal, the Czech instructor, warned me that the students didn’t interact with each other much and wouldn’t answer questions unless I chose a specific student to answer the question. With that in mind, I wasn’t too upset when I had to choose students to answer a majority of the questions. I led them through a paired brainstorming activity that I thought might help them feel more comfortable when it was time to answer the questions as a group. Overall, it went pretty well. Michal was happy and I had a nice chat with him and Pavla afterwards. From now on, my Tuesdays will consist of morning meetings with Pavla at the English Department and the rest of the day free. So, I will teach about 10 hours each week, spread out on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I think this is a great schedule!
I got home from the meeting and informed mom that I needed to go to the city bus office to have my bus card processed and that we should also go to the Student Agency Bus office to buy tickets for our weekend vacations. I’m happy to say that I was able to find the office without a problem using the city bus system. However, the lady behind the desk was unhappy with my application and spoke no English. So, I turned helplessly to the other women in the line and asked if any of them spoke English. One lady came forward and interpreted for me. The problem was that I was too old for a student card. The cutoff was 26 (What I wouldn’t give to be 26 again!). Apparently, I can get some other sort of discount card, and need to come back next week to get the card and pay more money depending on which ticket package I want.
So, Mom, Ava, and I headed to the Student Agency Bus Office for our next task. We found the station quickly after a short walk and I watched Ava while mom purchased the tickets. We felt like we were doing really well, and just needed to hop on another bus that would take us to the mall for some dinner. I realized that the bus stop we were at did not have buses that went to the mall. Darn! I looked at the map and that there was a bus stop with the right bus just a few blocks away. We started walking, and then walked some more. And… we were lost. And… it was really cold. And… we all had to use the bathroom. Things had taken a turn for the worst. We ended up walking over two miles before we found our way to the main station. We were cold, exhausted, and happy to have a bathroom at that point, but decided to go to the mall anyway because we were too tired to cook dinner. While we were there, mom bought a hat and gloves. Ava decided to have an impromptu dance party. The video link is included below.
After we were finished with dinner, we decided it was too cold and we were too tired to walk the few bus stops to the apartment and instead took a bus. It let us off at our bus stop but I was disoriented. We asked a young guy how to find our apartment. He walked next to us because he also lived here. When we got into our apartment, I thought about all the things I needed to do, and then decided to just go to sleep. By 9p.m., Ava and I were out for the night.
