Authenticity

It's been a pretty good week. Several quickly prepared lessons went off rather well, as did some planned ones that I wasn't so sure about. It's still tiring and time-consuming and frustrating, but it's getting easier and I'm starting to really like some of my students. Plus I'm getting to the point where sometimes they recharge me and I actually leave a lesson feeling happier and more energetic than when I went in. This feels good.

It's been quite the international fun fest of activities lately. Last Saturday I watched the Ukraine-Scotland qualifying match for the championships with a bunch of the other teachers and Scots and Irish in a pub called Henry VIII. Wednesday it was the Czech Republic vs. Germany with a Dutch guy, Andre from Louisiana, Lilly-Anne, and a couple Czechs. CR scored a total coup with a final tally of 3-0. The crowd went nuts. Lilly-Anne moaned and nursed her beer 'cuz Scotland had just been knocked out, 2-0, by GEORGIA. That's like the Cubs trouncing the Yankees.

Friday I hung out with a bunch of teachers from school and a bunch of IBMers in a Greek place. Nationality roll call: 2 Bulgarians, 1 Tunisian (roommate), 1 Welshman, 1 Russo-Amer-Israeli, 2 standard Czechs, moi, 1 Greek-aligned Czech, and 1 Greek-aligned English girl. Was fun, lots of laughter, eventually a couple of Greek dancing lessons.

Last night I had a very Authentic Experience. Ahmed, Chris, and I had been out for coffee and dinner when we wound up at Desert. It's literally a hole in the ground, walking down into a basement bar, which you go further down into to sit at a table. Very cool, college bar atmosphere. It was 10ish and there was a Scot/Irish birthday party going on, but they'd sequestered themselves in the back and were already pretty cross-eyed. Wound up with Anthony from Australia and his friend Phil. They went to high school together, but Phil is Czech and his family left when he was a kid. Upshot is that he has a Czech birth certificate and has to get a visa to teach English 80 kilometers from where he was born. Was cool, there aren't too many people I can hang with who feel like people I would know back home. Anthony and Phil do. We played foosball, Anthony and I kicked tail three games in a row. (A first for me.) Went back to where we were, wedged into a large corner table sort of overlapping this group of Czechs who'd spread out from a 2 seater next door. Not very communicative types either. At about 1:30 Anthony & Phil caught the bus, leaving Chris, me, and Ahmed. Some Viking proportioned Czech hipster girl showed a few minutes later, started talking to Chris and I mentally titled her “The World's Most Stoned Human Being.” Was amusing for about 5 minutes and it took her another 5 minutes to muddle through a conversation and decide she needed a pipe.

An aside here: I really like Chris (real name: Krzysztof). He's about 28, very quiet and thinks before he speaks. He's a project manager for IBM, a couple rungs higher than Ahmed and most of the others I know. Goes out sometimes, stays in others, is often the only sober one b/c he has to drive home (another anomalous quality). He's got a very good vibe, which it took me a while to catch onto. I mean he's obviously a very good boy in some ways and disapproves of some things his friends do, but he's very non-judgmental and can be really funny and intense when you finally get him speaking. Plus he was a long-haired stoner about 10 years ago, while he's a somewhat suave clean-looking office type now. This deviation will be slightly important in a few moments.

About this point someone decided to start talking to the Czechs who'd been there all night and who finally seemed enthused about talking back. However, they understood only a little English and our Czech was, collectively, even smaller. So we pidgined for a couple minutes and were laughing at each other whenever someone tried a whole sentence. Then this blond-dreaded kefiyah wearing Czech girl named Hana showed up and her English was pretty good. So an actual conversation started where we all introduced ourselves and learned what people did. There was English speaking Hana, who's some sort of flunking education major. Alishka, who's a ?travel agent? A couple who we'd been referring to as Hollywood and Longhair all night. Hana the other teaching major, who the boys had collectively admired from across the way. A guy who worked at the bar.

The great thing about being an English speaker is that most everyone knows some, even if they think they don't, especially young people. Once someone who can translate shows up, everyone starts to gabble back and forth, sometimes speaking directly, sometimes using the intermediary, sometimes just checking and referencing to find the right language. You get to hear everything at least twice. And everyone is saying silly things, so nobody else cares about looking stupid, which they did 5 minutes ago. Add some normal hormones plus a few beers and you have yourselves a party. Which we did. We shut down Desert and wandered over to a place sort of called 'Blue' below my school.

It was great, we were all pretty toasted or getting there fast and everyone was in that happy-fun place. So there was much discussion of differences between Czech life and American life and lots of how-what-who talk that meandered between actual discussion and explanation needed for something that was just said. Hana 2 was very cutely tipsy and obviously eying Chris. A nice bartender and one of the barbacks from Desert joined after a little. Eventually we decided we had to go, but not before getting invited to Hana1's birthday next week and Hana2's phone number for Chris. I'm occasionally embarrassed to be seen in public with Ahmed, but he does make me look good by comparison. Chris, however, has a very good people vibe and I was glad that he'd decided to stick around rather than go home and study like he'd threatened to earlier.

In all it was probably the most satisfying, unstructured, random, and 'real' feeling experience I've had with the people who actually live here. Despite not waking up 'til early afternoon, having thunderous beer farts, and smelling like cigarettes mixed with mold, I'm rather cheery this afternoon.