Phonination

---- got locked out of my email/blog fer a couple days, but now we're back. this woulda been posted on friday afternoon.---

Guess, what!? I got a phone. I bought it in Czech, which I'm kind of proud of, but it's the easiest phone purchase I've ever been part of. I walked into the shop, looked at the butt-tons of phones, picked out the one I wanted, got it powered up, looked at it and said, “Yes, gimmie this one and a card for 500 crown SIM card.” Funny things about phones here: they either retain their value reaaalllly well or the phone shops are making a KILLING. Several of the newer models cost more than twice the monthly rent on my room. However, there are plenty of little cheapies that you can buy for about $40 dollars, which is what I got. It's about 4 inches long, a little over an inch wide, and about half as thick as the Nextel folding brick I had back home. It has a color screen and can send text messages, both firsts for me. Guess I'm a little behind the times. All the images that came preloaded on it are ridiculously expensive sports cars and fuzzy animal shots, seriously. The ringtones are mostly cheap midi files of things like 50 Cent, Gwen Stefani, and Eiffel 65. I don't know why that last one is on there. That's behind the times, even for Czech pop culture, which seems to import old properties that have no further resale value in America.

Things are looking good. I may have whined and moped to a few of you in the last week or so, but I guess I just was going through several days of deep blue lassitude. I'm thinking Brno, is kind of a small city for me, or maybe it's just not wired enough. That's important, more so now that the only English speakers I seem to come into contact with are at work. Anyway, unless the money is awesome I don't think I'll be staying here. Both of my trainers are of the quiet but firm opinion that there is better money to be made in the former SovBloc countries, like Ukraine, Poland, and Russia. Alisa, the one who was off defending her thesis and who is now much more with it, tells me that her school in Krakow will be desperate to replace her when she tells them she's not coming back for the new term. And zlotis spend much better than koruna. However, I've also been looking at some postings in Peru and Chile, and I see that there are several openings for places that might take me in Indonesia, but I think that I'm gonna hold off on even trying that side of the Pacific until I've got some more experience under my belt. On the other hand, who knows.....?

There's another teacher at the school, Sam, who's just teaching a one on one class in the mornings. Turns out he's from Bremerton (yes, our Bremerton), and is working here while waiting for U.S. papers to come through for his Czech wife. He's hosting some kinda BBQ this weekend, with badminton, so it'll be cool to get to know him and hang out a little.
The weather here has been beautiful and terrible. It's been 34 degrees plus for the last week (that's 94 to you guys). My house is normally ok, something about stone row-housing and a shaded backside, but the school just school just swelters, all day long. It's also pretty humid, the consolation being that the breeze picks up a bit around three in the afternoon and actually moves at sunset.

Oh yeah, the large reason that I'm more positive in my out look: I not only passed, but really did well, on a section of my exams that's very heavily weighted. I've had several teaching sessions with real Czechs who were there to learn English. The first couple were so terrible that I felt bad they'd paid money to be there. It seems that it was the usual Nick Short problem of needing to screw-up spectacularly before finding a path to success, because I did pretty well with the total beginner class I did on Monday and then I had the intermediate class on Wednesday that went great. It helped that they're basically fluent, and understand anything I say as long as it's in proper English (No slang, very few phrasal verbs). Hell, one of them, Martin, is a veterinarian who spent a year at Purdue! By that level they're pretty much all professionals and educators. A couple are teachers, there's Martin, some business types, and a couple I haven't been able to get a handle on. This is end of year 3 for them. It went really well in terms of correcting things (major points) and explaining the reasoning (also a big deal). Alisa said that I would be a good person to teach exam courses (for the people aiming at a CPE or TOEFL). That makes me happier than I was before.