damn you, efl.

yesterday, i mulled over a single sentence in my head 3 or 4 times before figuring out the grammatically correct way of saying it. i'm well-aware that it's a side-effect of teaching. and i am clearly living alone right now.
"i'll ask him to tell me what is the move-in date. wait. i'll ask him to tell me what the move-in date is. what is the move-in date. what the move-in date is. what is. what it is..." you get the idea. this went on for almost a minute before i decided on the latter. the former is just a bad czech habit that i'm starting to pick up. other charming features of being a teacher include miming almost everything i say, failure to use proper intonation, frequent written spelling and grammatical errors, lack of variation in vocabulary and sentence structure, and, of course, epic mispronunciation. that englishman points it out to me everytime, too.

i even had to proof-read the e-mail i sent to jim last night, because, apparently, i think it's the best of idea's to throw s'poradic apostrophe's anywhere... 's.

it's only going to get worse.

i am

terrible with goodbyes.

it's only the first, and it's all gonna snowball from here.

the prague made me do it!

i had the weirdest week ever, and i'm exhausted. so bad, in fact, that i had those crazy moments when i'm standing on the platform of the metro, and i can hear it coming and the wind tunnel blowing my hair, and i think for a split second about simply stumbling over the edge; that that has to be better than feeling like my head is going to explode. those moments, of course, always pass.

and things ended fairly well. i say "fairly" because we did abysmally on the pub quiz. all that aside, friday made up for a lot of things that the rest of the week lacked. severely.

and today is a new day.
well, today is almost over, but right now is new, and i'll take it.

a thought or two or three.

i haven't heard anything. to be honest, i find this surprising. but, you know, it's only monday.

i do, however, have to find a way to retrieve my earrings; i love those earrings. this could be problematic.



somehow, i find it deeply bothersome that the brothers bloom is trying to pass prague off as st. petersburg. it's clearly prague. no question. are they really expecting that we won't notice?
it seems so.
and strangely, nobody else finds this as obnoxious as i do.

whatever you like, james. whatever you like.

oh, i probably give him a much harder time than he deserves.

my past few weekends have been a conglomeration of a lot of things, most of which were medieval, dependent on trains, near the nature, and included some alcohol.












i even got some smiling for the camera; without need for prompting or begging. oh snap.

cesky krumlov might go on the list of favorite memories. and that's a pretty exclusive list.

what dreams may come.

i'm going through another one of my dream phases. occasionally, i'll have days or weeks of dreams that consolidate all the things i think about, and sometimes the images are truly horrifying. they're vivid, realistic, applicable, but, unfortunately, are a manifestation of the things that frighten me most.

i told him that he probably doesn't realize how many things i think about but don't say. the truth is, i want to be talking all the time, about everything i see and hear and especially about how it makes me feel. so my challenge is, i told him, that i know that most people don't want to hear about it. so i restrain myself, filter my stream-of-consciousness narrative. i strive to be as bearable as possible by deciding where to draw the line.



with the swine flus and obama's speech about nuclear arms and north korea and moving away from home swirling around in my mind, last night's was much worse than usual. i dreamed that we were anticipating a nuclear attack in the states. we'd gotten the report while i was at home, and people were unsure about what to do. we were considering going somewhere less likely to be attacked, when i suggested a few options outside the country. at which point, my mother turned to me and told me that this is what i've always wanted. i hate america, which is why i don't live there. and i hate my family, otherwise i wouldn't be moving to other countries all the time. when i said that that wasn't true, i would be devastated if anything ever happened to the people i love or to my country, all she said was "5 years," which is apparently how long i had been living outside the states in my dream. i woke up in a cold sweat, trying to remember where i was and whether or not it was being bombed.

for the record, i don't hate america, and i certainly don't hate the people there.


side notes: cesky krumlov, pay day (hey-o), 2nd interview with park lane (i typically blow interviews because i get so nervous), bowling (most people don't realize how much i love this... i must get it from my grandma), meeting pamska and miri, and a boy-whatever-you-call-it.

i totally win.

the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

or so socrates once said, they say.

now that my second tour in the czech republic has commenced, i would like to share with you little pieces of my life as an ex-pat. part of the excitement-slash-frustration of living in a foreign place is that you spend a lot of time steeped in what feels like absolute ignorance. if you let it, this can really get to you. i'd gotten used to only understanding fragments of my world in taiwan, but i also found that, a few months in, i'd essentially figured things out.

but after finally readjusting to america last summer and fall, this little stint abroad has been a little harder than expected. i find that i often think about how much easier the little tasks would be if i were back home. for example, i tried to vacuum our living room rug today, but the cleaner kept overheating. why, God, why???? i repeated inside my head. it's only about 10x6; is it so much to ask that i be granted 30 seconds to sweep the rug before either the damn thing overheats or i blow a fuse AGAIN? as i cursed under my breath, i caught myself thinking fondly on my vacuum at home - the one that doesn't overheat and actually sucks things up. of course, i can't dwell on these things; you see, if you do, that's where the madness begins. you give yourself time to be frustrated, but you have to let it go, or you'll never be okay with being away from home. my life now is just a matter of being used to unpredictability. it seems that the same method doesn't always work, and i'm never quite sure what's going to happen. i feel like i live in extremes: things go exactly as i'd planned or they go very badly. people are uncommonly, unwaveringly kind and patient with me, or they just want me to get the hell out of there.

you'd be surprised by how such mundane things can make you feel like an idiot. what i fully don't understand:
-how to use my washing machine. i just press lots of buttons and wait for it to start churning. sometimes it makes scary noises, but i try to push through those moments.

-how to work the dishwasher. i'm great at loading and unloading it, though.

-tipping culture. i just leave money and hope it works. nobody really has a clear answer on this, either.

-why tesco doesn't carry medications or have a pharmacy

-how to use cabs. okay, i suppose i could technically use one, but i'm too cheap and they never understand what i'm saying.

-what signs on doors say. occasionally, i get terrible premonitions that they'll be demolishing the building that day.

-why czech people give such poor directions. they might just rival the british. perhaps it's a european thing, but i've never gotten used to it. i felt the same way while trying to get to my various jobs around london. you know that scene in pirates of the caribbean where they talk about how nobody knows how to get to some island except those who have been there before? okay, now take that, and apply it to every single place in prague, particularly places where you need to be at work in the next 2 minutes.

-the post office. it seems to be impossible to get into the correct line the first time, and the people are really mean! they just keep pointing me to different windows, when all i want to do is pick up my mail. eventually, i find a lady, who resentfully takes my passport, fishes through some mail that appears to be in no particular order, and then returns with my letter a minute later. she hands me a receipt of sorts and then glares at me until i leave. i would leave sooner, but i'm never sure if i'm done or if she wants a signature. you'd think it would kill these people to smile once in a while, too.

things i sort of understand:
-what the automated voice on trams and subways is saying. something about which station it is and what the next one is. however, i haven't yet picked up the language of detours, as i have been caught in them a few times. lucky for me, i also knew how to find my way home.

-those random text messages i get all written in czech. usually, they're to tell me someone tried to call me while i was on the subway. the others, i mostly ignore.

-the general location of prague's landmarks and how to get to them
-and also what those landmarks mean

-how food is categorized in tesco. though i haven't yet figured out where they draw the line between yogurt, milk, sour cream, and that stuff in between.

-the night tram. mostly because i'm just too impatient to wait for it.

things i do understand, because there are a few:
-opening doors here. it's harder and more counter-intuitive than it looks.

-ordering beer, cigarettes, coffee, and english menus.

-how a pharmacy works

-trams and subways; where to connect, where to get on and off, and what you have time to do while you wait for the next one.




it's okay. every day is a miniature adventure.