a bit of a whirlwind

Since our last episode of Dave's Adventures, a flurry of activity has engulfed our curly-haired hero.

A TEFL certification. A move away from the famous sex-shop district to a more centrally-located area. And then real, actual work.

The end of the TEFL training class was exactly how it sounds. I took some tests, passed, and am now certified to teach English as a foriegn language, anywhere in the world. Not bad for 20 days of class.

Here is our class (plus a couple significant others):
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For those of you who care, starting from me, going clockwise, there's Piia (former roommate), Audra, Heather (aka Fozzy, new roommate), Billy (who did the course in August), Courtney, Ben (head on table), Kyle, Gabrielle, and Ben's girlfriend Ellie.

After many calls with potential Czech landlords (who spoke less English than I do Czech), metro, tram, and bus trips all over the city, and many beers had out of frustration, my new roommate Heather (who reminds me of Kermit's friend Fozzy) and I finally landed a flat. And it's a great one. 2 blocks from the river. 2 blocks from a tram stop, and 2 from a metro. A teahouse is in our basement, a bar across the street. And if we want to venture out from Záhořanskeho (the name of our block), there are only two dozen or so more pubs, restaurants and tea houses in a 3-block radius. Pictures of the new place shall be posted soon.

And I've started teaching. After 2 months of just having out-go, I now have started gaining some income. Working for a couple language schools (2 so far, likely to be 3 or 4 in a couple days), I have amassed several hours of work a week. The hours are both good and bad. I'm teaching adults, and they choose to be taught at the beginning, and end, of their workdays. So my hours are from about 7-10 in the AM, and 6-8 in the PM. Which is nice, having a big chunk of the day open to myself, but that 7AM start time is a bit of a killer. Only gonna get worse as the season latens, too, since I'll be up and out before dawn. Thank goodness our bathroom floor is heated.

I have also realized there are some other things Czechs like:
1. Big Brother
Yes, reality TV has finally hit the Czech Republic. And they can't get enough of it. Big Brother is the country's newest passion, with bars blasting the program much the way dance clubs and rock concerts do. Fortunately, they give us reality tv-hating patrons a break when the commercials come on, and they turn on regular music. But 2 or 3 minutes later, they're back with the volume turned up loud enough that we get distortion, and can hear the entire TV set vibrate. Good times.

2. Hair Styles
Ah yes, the Praguers love their hair. Generally speaking, we see normal hair styles, much the way you'd see in the US. But many Praguers are not afraid to don the mullet. Or the hair dye. And not just any hair dye - pink and purple hair dye. Guys, girls, goth or not... it's quite prevalent. and amusing.

3. Graffiti
For the most part, graffiti in Prague is not very obtrusive. Downtown, you don't see it that much. But when you do, you see some funny postings. My favorites are: "ATM", "JFK", "Redhead" and "PBS". I really wonder if the artists beleive they're writing something really dirty or offensive in English when they scribble "PBS" on the wall. Being an English teacher now, I think that's one I'm gonna let them believe is something dirty.

To close, I feel obliged to share some of the language barrier with all those of you comfortably surrounded by native English speakers. First, if you want ice cream here, the word is zmrzlina. "How do you pronounce that?" one might ask. Just as it's spelled. Also, I saw a sign warning people that construction was going on nearby, and thought all you native speakers could appreciate it.


Walking around this weekend, we came across the Charles Bridge right after sundown. A great view of the castle got me to take this picture:


It's good to start feeling like this is home. Have found my favorite bar and teahouse. Once internet is up in our new place, game on.

Things Czechs Like

1. Dogs
Dogs are everywhere. Along the streets. In the parks. In restaurants and bars. It really is great. The most remarkable thing about them is that they are rarely leashed. They may wander from their owner from time to time, but never too far. And they certainly catch up quickly if they stray to sniff another dog's butt, or mark their territory.
Yet as the saying goes, "where there's smoke, there's fire," well, "where there are dogs, there is dog poop." This week, during one lesson, I talked about Aesop's fables. The moral to this tale (tail? har har) is clear: watch your step.

2. Meat (vegetarians, skip to #3)
Yes, the Czechs have a fascination with meat. The meat section in the supermarkets is quite extensive - sausages upon sausages upon klobasas and kidneys and hearts and intestines. You name a body part, there's a section for it in the store.
Yet the couple times I've had sausages from vendors on the side of the road, I have not been disappointed. Deeeelish.
Still staying away from the raw ground beef, though... and speaking of raw meat, the other day Kyle got a sandwich which listed "prosciutto ham" as one of its ingredients. Well, "prosciutto ham" apparently meant raw bacon. Quite humorous it is to see someone pull a sandwich away from his mouth, and, much like a good cheesy pizza in the US, see some food stretch from the sandwich several inches to his clenched teeth. Yet unlike cheesy pizza, when the food finally rips through, it snaps back and slaps the eater in the face.
In addition, two nights ago, we dined at a local Czech eatery, and a "meat skewer" was ordered. The menu listed the skewer's contents to be: chicken, sirloin, cabbage, and bacon. Sounds good, right? Well... we never could positively identify the bacon on the skewer, though there was a layer of an unidentifiable substance around which the chicken and sirloin (yes, the sirloin was cooked) was wrapped... was it pure fat? was it a vegetable soaked in fat? was that the bacon? no one knows for sure... Moral of that story: Beware of things called "bacon."

3. Beer
Apparently there's been a price explosion in Prague over the last few years - so we're now up to a whole four dollars for a dinner entree. But I've been told a law was passed prohibiting increasing the price of beer. Hence Praguers washing down their egg breakfast with a Pilsener. Stunningly cheaper than water. In any case, I haven't had a bad beer since I've been here.
Given the quality, quantity and price of the beer here, I wonder about the Czech who visits America. Wanting to take in some American culture, he visits a stadium for a Major League Baseball or an NBA game. To wet his whistle, he meanders to the concession stand to find that beer is 7 dollars (which equals ~175 crowns. for comparison, beer here is 15-30 crowns). Upon emptying his wallet, he takes his first sip of the light-yellow, watered-down liquid he was handed, and finds that he spent a hearty dinner's worth on some incredibly tasteless beer. Take me out to the ballgame? hmmm.. no wonder the song doesn't include beer in it's "buy me some..." line.
No moral here. Cheers! (Na zdrave!)

4. Roller blading
It's quite the fad here. It's hard to be in the park without seeing dozens of people blading. More than one path in a park nearby even has painted lanes directing the roller blade traffic. More roller bladers than bikers.

5. Sex
Yes, for a quiet, humble people, they sure love their sex. The walk from our flat to the tram stop we take each morning for the TEFL training class, we pass 3 sex shops and one strip club. And these sex shops aren't your little hole-in-the-wall, back-room-of-Blockbuster size shops. These are supermarkets. With large, bright yellow signs out front.
"SEX SHOP" "Erotica Centrum" "U Vibratory"
They're like Starbucks - the same chain has stores four blocks away from each other. And I live in a very non-touristy area. There is no doubt these stores are for locals. What amuses me the most is that for all their bright yellow signs and very non-discreet window advertisements, they have tinted windows, or the shades pulled.
We were talking about the prevalence of these shops, and we reasoned that the open display, and exploration, of sex was probably taboo during the country's Communist control. As to why the proliferation hasn't calmed, as it's been 16 years since the Velvet Revolution, to quote Kyle, "some things, well, they don't stick so much. others, they stick."


A real interesting side note, I was talking with some people about Czech culture and how Czechs see themselves in the world. The country is small, and has been occupied many times (Russia, Germany...). It is only in the past 15 years they have had control over their own politics, and in that time, claims of corruption have been prevalent. Their language is one of the toughest in the world to learn, and it is not readily spoken anywhere else in the world. The country's size and location in the center of Europe are not conducive to being an influential player in the world stage.
While I haven't experienced any real anti-American sentiment here, at times I feel its presence with regards to our garish ways, loud voices, and lack of knowledge of Czech. "Yea, we're in your country, but you have to speak our language." In the older generations this attitude is certainly stronger than with the youth - they have been brought up in the post-Communist era, and have learned English in school from a young age (their parents were taught Russian). In any case, I found that pretty fascinating.

I'll close by saying that listening to the Newark-based jazz station WBGO over the internet the other day, I smiled that I'm not in the east coast summer time heat and humidity. I'm enjoying crisp fall weather - mornings in the 40s or 50s, with highs in the upper 60s. Truly gorgeous.

tp x3 and autumn

Some stunningly gorgeous weather this weekend in ol' Praha. It's getting a bit cold though - lows in the 40s at night. yes, that's Fahrenheit. That time of year where the temperature in the sun is far warmer than the shade. Definitely sidling up with that cup of soup for lunch.

Speaking of sidling up, I think I may have finally had my toilet tissue woes absolved. Wandering the aisles of a different supermarket, the big bold word "SOFT" struck my eye. I knew then I had to have it. I'm not saying it was love at first sight, given my (dis-)harmony experience. But it was well worth a shot. Advertised as 4 times the softness and thickness of regular toilet paper, I thought this might bring me almost back up to the standards my arse is used to. And boy howdy, I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe it was the 2 weeks of sandpaper butt, but this SOFT toilet tissue was like silk. Wonderful. Now if I could just find breadcrumbs and grated cheese...

So it turns out the Czech word for "to mean" is also their word for "to think." I like that. There's no disparity between what one thinks and what they mean.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

tp and the irish

so in an effort to save my behind from its daily scraping at the hands of the toilet paper here, which can best be described as a braille newspaper, i ventured to the local store and bought some t.p. with the product name "harmony", hoping my days of scrapage were over. well, what i have to say about "harmony" is that it is definitely not harmony. in fact, a more appropriate product name would be "discord". it is a step up from the braille newspaper, but still leaves a lot to be desired. definitely will be raiding that section of the local store looking for the most expensive toilet tissue money can buy.

on a brighter note, a few of us decided to go out for some beers last night after class, as we took survey of our time here thusfar, and our post-tefl training course plans. after sitting in a bar which sold beers for 15 crowns (about 60 cents) each, which we most definitely will be frequenting, we meandered to another bar which, according to the open hours sign posted, and the locked door handle, was closed. but, having made friends with some czechs earlier in the night, they spoke to the waitress when she opened the door, and we were allowed in.

what we found was loads of english speakers. mainly from england and ireland, but what a wonderful sound to hear - the english language. in a country where the number 4 is ctyri, and thursday is ctvrtek, hearing english was most welcome.

upon sitting down, we noticed one of the louder irishmen was holding a guitar, which he played the entire time we were at the pub (2 or 3 hours). songs ranged from bob marley and the beatles to tupac shakur to traditional irish tales. nothing like belting out, incredibly off-key, the lyrics to marley's no woman no cry, and the eagles' hotel california, and tupac's changes.

needless to say, making class this morning was a tall order.


The least-sober looking one (with long hair and striped shirt) was the guitar player, john.

desperately seeking breadcrumbs and grated parmesan cheese. some friends here have suggested i just use bread, bake (or toast) it, and then break that up for bread crumbs. for those of you who know of my previous attempt at doing that, you may commence your laughing now. for those of you who don't, let's just say that when you create a fire in your kitchen, you're not too eager to repeat the same fire-causing steps again.

ahoj

Fun Times in the City

Friday night a whole lot of us TEFL-ers went out on the town. We took full advantage of the lack of open container laws here as we bought, and then consumed, beers in a public park, while locals played bocci, all with the night Prague skyline as the background. Good times, however low-key.

From left to right: Kyle (roommate, from Seattle), Gabrielle (Canadian TEFL'er, who can be best described as quite a character), some random Czech girl (who upon seeing that her friend was taking pictures for us, decided to jump in to the photo, then said "thank you" and ran off), yours truly, Ellie and Ben (Ben is a TEFL'er, Ellie is his girlfriend, they're from Memphis), and Heather (TEFL'er from DC, who's really cool, but doesn't she remind you of a muppet?).

The night consisted of us stopping for gyros and felafel, served out of a store front at 2am. The felafel was the best I've had since leaving Egypt and Israel, but the most interesting part of that experience was hearing Arabic - a bum was wandering around the store-front, and one of the guys behind the counter shouted at him "Yallah!" and then some more indecipherable words... (in Arabic? Czech? whatever, it's all Greek to me...)

Saturday night, we decided to broaden our social circle outside of the TEFL'ers, so we decided to give some Americans we met on the tram the other morning a call, and meet up with them downtown. Well... apparently we did not have the right phone number. After several amusing (and confusing) attempts at figuring out how to use a pay phone here, I finally successfully dialed the number I had written down. A message came on, in Czech, and I let it play through, hoping it would be repeated in English. It was. The message, verbatim, was:
"Sorry, but the number you dialed does not exist. If you feel like swearing, go ahead. We won't tell." So, I did.

Later that night, as Kyle and I are trying to find a supposed expat bar in the Little Quarter, we pass a fountain. At first glance, it looks like a couple of old Roman statuettes, but upon closer inspection, it was actually moving.
(you can click on it for a larger version)
The hips swivelled, and even the penises rose and fell from time to time. We were hoping they would gradually stop the stream, and then have the statues shake out a couple more drops, before repeating the process. No such luck.

They sure love their public art in the city. Most of it is pretty interesting. And a fair portion of it is pretty sexual in nature. And yes, there is an overlap of those two groups.

So there ya have it... the first full weekend in Prague. Tune in again next time... same bat time, same bat channel...

Skype is up and running

So for the last few weeks I have talked up the wonder that is Skype. Skype is a program which acts as an Instant Messaging program, but for your voice. Essentially, it turns your computer into a phone, with the sound speakers acting as the earpiece, and a microphone acting as the mouthpiece of the phone. It is free to download, install, and use. You can get set up with it at http://www.skype.com. If you need detailed instructions on how to set it up, you may check out the instructions I have posted. If these are not clear, or you have problems, please let me know.

My Skype user name is zeneye1129.

You will probably need a high-speed internet connection, as the quality of communication over a dial-up modem line is going to be pretty poor. At the very lease, you will, naturally, need a sound card, speakers (or headphones) and a microphone.

Hope to talk to you soon.

Despite my plans to get a cell phone today, I instead lazed and lounged around the apartment all day, so I am still phone-less. But, like I said, Skype is free. Hook it up!

the culture of prague

hours after each posting, i've realized there are some basic things about the city and its people i have neglected to mention.

the people here - and the entire culture, really - are very humble. they are very nice, and it is very common to hear "dobry den" when entering a store, no matter who's in there, and "ahoj" when leaving. in addition, drivers are pretty considerate when letting people cross the street at cross-walks (granted, i'm coming from a new york city and a washington dc point of view).

tax and tip are included in the price of most every menu selection. what a nice, smart thing to do.

and there sure are a lot of casinos. everywhere. they're called "hernas", but we like to call them "hernias".

two quick stories:
kyle and i went to the grocery yesterday, and bought lots of food... including some onions. apparently there's a scale next to the produce section for people to weigh their fruits and veggies, which we totally missed. the cashier babbled something indecipherable in czech to us, and then, with a disgusted look on her face, ended up going to the scale on the other side of the store and printing out the appropriate price sticker. that ended up pissing off not just the cashier, but all the locals in line behind us. whoops. that's a mistake you only make once.

we also completely blew out the electricity last night... for a couple of engineers, you'd think that we'd know that you need to convert the voltage from the european system to the states' version. well, yea, not so much. ended up killing electricity to the entire apartment. fortunately, no other apartments in the building were affected, and the landlord (who's super cool) was able to turn our electricity back on... only for us to kill the electricity again, and have him turn it back on... again.

but now we have onions in our fridge, electricity (and internet!) in our apartment, and 25-cent beers in the fridge. it's an odd thing to walk into a store tonight, and not buy beers because they were too expensive, at a dollar each.

tak ahoj

quick update

Just a quick note to say internet access in the apartment tomorrow... so Skype will be the word of the day. I will post detailed instructions on how to set up Skype and talk with me through the Internet.

Also, the best "your dog can't pee here" sign I have ever seen:


Cell phone access is still a work in progress. More details to come on that.

food and drink

the most recent meals i've had: sushi (in the states), a british beef and potatoes meal on virgin atlantic, then, since arriving in prague, italian-style pizza, chinese (run by actual chinese women, fluent in mandarin and czech), and some tex-mex (twice, at 2 different places). after all that, i decided it was about time to try some czech food. so i ordered steak tartar, listed as a czech specialty.
now, when i ordered a steak, i imagined, well, a steak. what came was slightly different. i received a platter with spices and sauces around the edge, and a patty of raw ground beef, topped with an egg yolk, in the center. yep. raw meat. czech it out (har har) - click on the images for a full view:

   

actually, it was pretty good. and, my stomach had no problem with it. i figure if i can handle raw beef and egg, and make it without praying to the porcelain god, and without finding myself randomly biting my mates' legs, i think i can handle just about any food that comes my way.

speaking of food, the czechs love their meat. and when i say love it, i mean, it's hard to find a meal without it. sure, in the age of westernization and uber-health conscious nuts, vegetarian dishes are available at most places i've been. but i imagine many a restaurant owner raised his upper lip in disgust when forcefully adding that section to his menu, much as i raised my upper lip upon receiving the platter of raw meat.

drink is especially amusing. beer costs about one-third to one-half of water in many restaurants. yes, that's right, 33 - 50%. so while it first caught us off-guard that czechs decided to drink beer at 10am, now it makes much sense. why spend so much money on water? also, we found that happy hour runs for a pretty wide range of hours here. at one establishment, it was from 11am until 6pm. yep, a 7-hour happy hour. makes lunch pretty cheap, and enjoyable.

but oh yea, i'm here to learn how to teach. today was our first day of class, and it was a long one. in at 8:30am, out at about 9pm. we had breaks in there, but none that long. there are 8 people in the class, all of whom seem really likeable. all are yanks, save one finn, who happens to be one of my roommates, piia, and one canad, but she's practically american. so in the first hour of our first day, one of the organizers of the training institute spoke to us in czech. and only czech. not one word of english. it was quite an amusing, and sometimes frustrating, hour. but given that kyle and i entered a local grocer tonight, and successfully dealt with shopkeepers who exclusively spoke czech, i think we did alright.

i taught my first lesson tonight. i began by teaching "she sells seashells by the sea shore." the czechs didn't have that much trouble with that one, as their language contains many ch, sh, and s sounds. they then had me try a czech tongue twister, which referred to a queen named karina playing the clarinet. but all things considered, it was a smooth and successful first lesson.

and as promised, here are some images of where i've been (you can click on them to get bigger versions):
         



aim to have a mobile phone later this week or this weekend, along with internet access from the apartment.

dobry den!

dobry den z praha! (hello from prague)

so i've been in prague for about 40 hours, and i've had some interesting experiences, quite naturally. let's, for the moment, look past the 3 currencies in my wallet at one time (american dollars, british pounds, and czech crowns), the menus in 4 languages (chinese, czech, english and german), and trying to pronounce such ridiculous consonant combinations as "zdr", "vrb", or even "chvr", or words such as "s", "z", or "k". but let's not look past the man who approached me and my roommate kyle and invited us to a strip club, and when we declined, asked us with a heavy accent, "well, are you afraid of the poonany?"

the city is amazingly picturesque - cobblestone streets and intricate medievil architecture. the people are very friendly, but most shockingly - the city is so very quiet. rarely a car horn or siren is heard. even locals speak in moderate volumes - when a foreigner lets out a loud laugh or comment (no, of course not me, never...), people's heads turn to see who caused such a ruckus.

the food is quite tasty, and the beer excellent. last night, kyle and i shared 4 beers for a grand total of 120 crowns, which is just under 5 dollars US.

other notes:
- for those of you who know of them, the guys from american chopper were on my flight from newark to london, as they were apparently doing a show in the UK.

- a special thank you to mark for suggesting bringing toilet paper from the states - while i wouldn't call the toilet paper here abrasive, i also wouldn't call it absorbant.

- after finding an atm (bankomat), i made my way to a store labelled "pizzerea" for my first meal in the c.r. after spending about 10 minutes struggling with the menu written in czech, vainly searching my english-to-czech (one way, not reverse) phrase book for what the hell i could order, the waitress asked if i'd like the menu in english. *cough* and even then, what i received what the item on the menu appearing above what i had wanted.

- we get about 50 channels of television, only 2 of which are in english - cnn and mtv. speaking of which, we have found a new definition of music television - regular tv broadcasts (news, commercials, even women's shotput) with the normal soundtrack removed, and music dubbed in over top. but that's alright, it's not as if we're going to understand what's being said anyways.

- our shower is not a shower, but more so a bath with a detachable hose. pretty hard not to soak the entire bathroom with water when cleaning oneself.

- nothing like having to buy a snickers just so that we have change to pay for the public toilets...

we hope to have internet in our apartment later this week, which is most likely when this will be posted, and email checked. until then...

will post pictures soon too. including the best sign of "your dog can't pee here" - which is just a dog, with one of its hind legs raised, and a circle and a line through it.

ahoj (pronounced ahoy)

Last Day, First Post

This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been a real post, you would see some real interesting shit here.