Recent photos... (just for you, Shan!)

Advertisement in a tram.

In a church's garden.

I don't know what is better: the AGE OF CHAOZZ folder or the notebook with the puppy rockin' on his iPod.

One of the many beautiful synagogues near where I live in Old Town.

Felix!! Stencil-graffiti is pretty common here.

Prague ambulance. Just chillin' on the sidewalk.

Slivovice, pronounced "slih-voh-vee-tseh", is a local alcohol made from plums. A lot of Czechs have a home-made bottle fermenting somewhere in their kitchen... It's like taking a shot of straight rubbing alcohol, in case you were curious.

Finally, an update.

Hi friends. What a crazy month... Since my last post in the first week of September, quite a lot has happened. As most of you know, I am now jobless again and weighing prospects of returning to Seattle, staying in Prague for the rest of the academic year (or maybe only until December), or taking off to another country to start over again.

I'll explain.

If your eyes are already glazing over, just scroll down to the last paragraph - I will summarize. :)

***

Things were going great at Meridian. Well, maybe not great. I will say good, only because of how disorganized the school is (I still didn't have textbooks for my 3rd and 4th grade when they had to let me go last week). But my kids were loving me and were finally starting to behave more like children and not wild animals. Though I had to plan all my lessons from scratch every evening (with the help of the internet: thank you, world wide web!) and was generally pretty sleep-deprived, I loved every minute of teaching those kids. Even my Kindergarteners were starting to get used to me and listen when I would attempt to communicate with them (despite most of them refusing to try to speak English with me).

Last week, the principal told me there was a "problem" with my work permit. It turns out that because of the type of accreditation the school holds (newly granted for this 09-10 school year), they can't employ teachers that don't have a university degree, for full-time positions. I asked if I could stay on part-time, or just work with Kindergarten (which this requirement did not apply to), or if it would work to be enrolled in college courses to complete my degree, so I could work at Meridian in the meantime as a work-study... But my suggestions weren't even fully heard, let alone taken seriously. It was just simply, "We are sorry, you have to leave. Right now. You can't return tomorrow; here is your pay in cash."

Needless to say my kids were totally devastated, other faculty members were totally confused, and overall I was (and still am) very sad about the whole situation working out like this. My last day there was Thursday.

And of course, I am now looking for work again... But here's the rub: Meridian kept me employed just long enough for my tourist Visa to expire - they had my papers 'in process' and then stopped them last week, after I had passed the 90-day mark of being in Prague. So now, no one wants to hire me. No one wants to start work permit papers after a person's tourist Visa has expired.

So... the general situation is that I'm screwed for work. Believe you me, I have been job-hunting like crazy, gone on a few interviews already, and am back in FIND WORK!! mode. This also means I'm stressed out again, super paranoid about being caught, and generally not-so-positive feeling...

I'm still trying to push through. In light of these recent events, I'm now forced to seriously reconsider my plan for the next 6 months. If I can't find work here in Praha, I only have enough money to scrape by until December. (Another thing that makes me unattractive to potential employers - I may only be abe to stay until December if I can't make enough money to stay past then.)

Plus, it means a lot to me to stay here and finish out all of my part-time jobs. The places I'm teaching dance at, a collective few hours a week, all have performances in mid-December that I'm choreographing pieces for. These classes bring in a little money but not enough to solely survive on here. So I think I should stay until December because I would feel like a total jerk if I left these schools high and dry just a few weeks into the semester.

BUT... I have to survive until December! I have a feeling I won't be able to find a 'big' job like Meridian to take its place, but will have to have a ton of smaller gigs to make it through. I suppose that's ok, I will just be super poor and paranoid about getting deported.

The plan for after December is starting to become really open-ended. I don't want to go back to Seattle. I don't want to go back to the U.S. for quite some time, actually, if at all possible. I do want to start working on my degree again, either via online college, or college in Europe, or something. That means I need to have a little money saved to pay for my classes... which would be nearly impossible to do in Praha.

Making Czech koruns (their currency) can be sustainable if you stay in the Czech Republic, don't plan on traveling much, and just live cheaply. But converting koruns to dollars or euros? Forget it. The exchange rate is super messed up and it would NOT work to try and save money here. Besides, here I was just talking about not even having one full-time job and only having a bunch of part-time gigs! How can I even dream of saving money in that state?? So, if I stay in Prague, the chance of me being able to actually save a little money every month is very small. If I have no money, I can't start on my degree again in fall.

So I'm considering trying to Aupair for the last half of the school year. I would love to find a family in Europe that would keep me at least from December to June, and after that, who knows what will happen. If the pay is good and I can actually save a little, I would consider Aupairing for another year while working on college courses online when I had hours off. I signed up last week with an Aupair agency online and have already been getting quite a few responses. My target country at the moment is Greece, second on the list is Italy. We will see where I land up... I'm just trying to stay really open to the Universe and whatever it brings my way.

Like I said before, I've been really stressed out and pessimistic about the whole Meridian/work/Visa-situation. But I don't want it to cloud the rest of my experience in Praha or abroad. Hopefully I will phase out of this funk soon enough and find a few more little jobs to bring in some money so I can EAT!! That said, I am re-posting the "Donate" button.




I've now become a charity-case... If there is anything you can spare, any small amount helps - the conversion rate from dollars to koruns is much kinder than the other way around. :P Funds I receive will be going straight to things like food, my monthly credit card bill (since I've been buying all my food on my credit card), and keeping credit in my phone so I can keep calling about jobs.

***

Slackers that couldn't read the whole thing, here is your summary:

• I lost my job at Meridian and now am looking for more work.
• If I can't find more work (which seems very likely), I will only stay in Praha until December.
• After December, I will try to be an Aupair somewhere in Europe until next June and then re-assess.
• By next fall, I want to start on my degree again.
  
• In the meantime, I'm super poor and need money so help me out if you can! (See "Donate" button above)

- Nova.

1st week of school...

This is the first week back to school in Prague!!

My *main* job at Meridian International (http://meridianedu.cz/, if you're curious) started on Tuesday with a half-day, and Wednesday was the first full day. So far, things have been super busy...

At Meridian I am teaching English to Kindergarten, 3rd and 4th grade. In Kindergarten, half of the children have no exposure to English at all, and don't know their abc's. The other half have been enrolled at English-speaking preschools for at least a year, and already know abs's. In third grade I have a student who could easily be in a fourth or fifth grade English class and do well, two students who can't read the sentence "can fish swim?," and the rest fill in the gap (though today, most still didn't know what an "adjective" was). In fourth grade there is a student who doesn't speak any Czech or English (super hard for this kid because all subjects are taught in English, and they will obviously need private tutoring to get up to speed with the rest of their class). So I'm planning English lessons (that they sometimes have three seperate hours of, depending on the day - the schedule is really weird) that have to engage all levels of kids, for the duration of the class.

My main concern: I have no textbooks. The English textbooks have still not arrived at the school (were ordered this week) and I have no direction for the order of my curriculum for the year, for each grade (mostly 3rd & 4th; I will probably just be figuring Kindergarten out as I go along). This is a positive and a negative -- I have a ton of freedom to do what I want with my classes, but I am feeling shaky starting out without a foundation to jump off of.

In the meantime, this means I need to spend much more time than I normally would planning lessons. Thankfully, there are a lot of great resources online... But I'm tired of spending four hours a night browsing the web for ideas/worksheets/homework packets/etc. I'm completely exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed... And the week isn't even over yet. And it wasn't even a full week. I'm worried about my energy levels.

I didn't realize was how much more difficulty the language barrier adds. Obviously I had a good idea of what I was up against, teaching English to non-native speakers means you start from square one (duh). I have plenty of past experience working with children, in long-term settings, teaching a variety of subjects. I have had to discipline kids, manage my classroom, test retention levels (making quizzes, homework, tests, etc.), all that stuff. But something I've competely taken for granted: teaching basic grammar to non-native speaking kids at their age is a long process - it takes a long time to really "stick." With native speakers, children sort of pick up the basic building blocks of grammar as they learn more vocabulary, listen to adults talking, talk with their friends, etc., naturally... And they don't have to work really hard to remember basic things, like always using an article with a noun (a pencil, the tree, an orange), etc.

But I don't want it to sound like I'm not enjoying myself! It feels so good to be working at a proper school again, and I love those small moments throughout the day when a kid is suddenly very sweet or says something super adorable or nice to you. It makes all the yelling to-please-stop-running-on-the-hall-for-the-seventeenth-time-in-three-minutes totally worth it. :) A few of the younger children are super adorable and periodically attach themselves to my hips/hands/legs. And in terms of not having supplies or a not-completely-crazy schedule... Well, this is becoming an good test of patience and letting-go. Every school has its crazy first few weeks, every teacher works an ungodly amount of hours more than they get paid for, and kids are always extra rowdy the first few days back from summer break, regardless of which country you're in or what kind of school you work at.

In the meantime, my other jobs haven't started yet. One of them starts next Thursday, around after-school time. I'm choreographing movement for a few songs and at least one full-on dance piece for International Choir of Prague's (http://www.praguechoir.cz/) older group of kids (ages 9-15). That will just be once a week, for about an hour.

Then there is StageStars (http://stagestars.cz/), which starts Saturday after next. This might be my favorite one. :) I get to teach my favorite thing to teach: DRAMA!! I will be the acting coach for this acting/singing/dancing program for kids ages 6-18 (broken up in three age groups). All age groups do all three performance genres, for about three hours on Saturday mornings.

And the last job which I'm waiting for confirmation of full classes for, is with Christian International School of Prague (http://www.cisprague.org/). If this one goes through, I will be teaching dance on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school, to grades 5-7 and 8-12. This would start in the third week of September and would be for about an hour each day.

So that's all for now... A picture-post will follow shortly. I miss Seattle more and more every day... Especially good Thai food & cheap sushi. ;)

- Nova.

P.S. I'm still super poor, so if anyone is feeling generous I would appreciate anything you want to give. I don't get paid for any of these jobs until mid-October... And even then, it actually doesn't add up to much. Thankfully, living in the Czech Republic is much cheaper than in the U.S. - I will be making roughly about $1000US a month here, and will actually be able to live on that... Unlike actually trying to live on a thousand bucks a month back in the states... I'm sure it's easier in the South, but it's not really doable in the Northwest.