Some things ...

Came to the realization I haven't shared a lot of basic information about this course I'm taking.

Here's a link to the school:
Oxford TEFL Prague

The course runs from Feb. 9-March 11. It has sister programs in Barcelona and Cadiz and is accredited through Trinity College of London. I've even checked to make sure it's listed with the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic.

The school sets us up with accommodations. I have my own private bedroom in a four-bedroom flat I'm sharing with other students in the course just a few blocks from Old Town Square and a 10-minute walk to the school (I'll be cutting through the square every day to get to it). We also have Internet access in the rooms, sweet.

We go to the school for about eight hours a day, five days a week, and will clock in about 10 hours actually teaching a class and getting an evaluation before the course is through.

I'll also be set up with a counselor at the beginning of the course to help me figure out where I'd like to work and in what capacity (teaching children or adults in school, continuing education courses, business professionals, etc.). They'll help set up the contacts and get my resume in order.

For those who, like some people in my family, keep asking where exactly Prague is, here's a link to Lonely Planet's Prague page. Click on the gallery on the right for some really nice photos.

Oh, and this is what the weather will be like when I get there. Scroll down to Friday, Feb. 6. Brrrr.

(PS -- I apologize if any of the previous posts have been kinda dull as I wax poetic about traveling and The Journey and such. You will have to wait until I actually leave at the end of next week for anything interesting to happen on this blog, is what I'm saying.)

Me, then, there, now

I was fresh out of college the first time I traveled abroad. It was sort of a cliche -- graduate college, go off and see the world before you get a job and face reality. Except I had just accepted a job before I went to Europe. The day before I left, more precisely. As soon as I'd come back from the trip, I would pack up to move across the country. It was a weird time for me, hopping around Europe and seeing amazing things while, at the same time, in the back of my head, wondering about all the things I'd need to do once I got home.

Above and below are pictures from that trip in March and April of 2005, during a few days spent in Prague. I'm looking out across the Vltava River from Old Town. That's the Charles Bridge in the background with its rows of dark, sooty-looking statues. In the second, you can see the Mala Strana neighborhood across the river, where the castle and St. Vitus Cathedral are perched on a hill.

I was also the happiest person in the world that day because I just had ice cream -- gelato at that. And I was in Prague.

Will and I were there at Easter time and we spent Easter morning buying chocolate at a grocery store and eating it on the bridge, watching the tourists and a procession of people dressed in biblical costumes, acting out a Passion play. There was a blind woman nearby, singing arias and operatic pieces with a music book, in braille, open and facing outward, pressed flat against her waist.

Now, it's strange because, when I pulled out the photo album again, I found myself remembering things other than that. Not so much images, but feelings and smells and textures. The cold chill and musty smell inside a cavernous Gothic church. Stumbling along cobblestone. The sounds in the distance of tourists crowded in the Old Town square, echoing and reverberating through a narrow alleyway, telling us we were almost there. You catch yourself in a moment, something reminds you of something else. It all just flickers quickly in your head and you try to place it before it disappears.

Months ago, when I decided I was going to do this, I felt myself split in half. The part of me that's here, planning and organizing and preparing and saying goodbyes, and the part of me that already glided off to Europe and is waiting for me.

When you are about to start a job in a new place, you play it all out in your head -- what your office will be like, where you'll sit, what your coworkers will be like (see the post below), what you'll do on your days off. I'm going through that right now, but rebuilding a place inside my head. I'm imagining what alleys I turn down if I'm coming from the Charles Bridge and want to get to the square. I'm remembering that to get to the castle hill, you pass St. Nicholas Cathedral and walk, almost clawing your way, up a steep road.

Or maybe this is just because of all the time I've spent on Google Earth recently, studying the streets and trying to remember where everything is. Whatever, my obsession with maps always comes in handy.

You'd do it, too

Is it weird that I've already cyberstalked the other students in the course? (Is it also weird that I'm already finding "cyber-anything" to be sooo outdated and unhip? I imagine Atari and pixelated imagery when I think of the word "cyber." Cringe.)

Anyway, I got an e-mail from the school last week and it was the first sent to everyone in the February course. And there it was -- a list of my future classmates' e-mail addresses. It was just too easy. I mean, if your e-mail is myfullname@schoolIgoto.edu or @placewhereIwork.com, you are pretty much a Google search waiting to happen (or Facebook, or MySpace).

But that's as far as I took it, honest. No reverse phone number searches or advanced searches and the like. I just wanted to see where they were from, jeez!

And so the guilty will speak, er, write.

Edit -- I'm remembering why I think "cyber" annoys me. There's a clip of Jennifer Connelly using the term "cyberstalk" in the trailer for that "We're Just Not That Into You, Jennifer Aniston" movie. It officially became outdated then.

The things I try to carry

I'm horrible at packing. Even after all this time and all the traveling I do. I still overpack, and it's kind of shameful when you meet up with your co-traveller(s) and see how they've managed to get a month's worth of needs into an old Jansport booksack from high school while you've got on a huge, pricey backpack you've been personally fitted for at an outdoors store (can that be considered a bespoke backpack?) and you're strapped into it with so many clasps and belts you'd swear it's a jetpack. And they say, "Dang, what have you got in there?" And you smile sheepishly and think of how you've dedicated so much time to pulling out and considering all the things you really wanted to bring, had your own internal committee narrow it down to what you think you can get away with and then brought in an external auditor to analyze the contents and tell you that no, you really don't need all that.

I suck at this part of the planning stage, obvs. But the good news is I know what books to bring! (Pictured above) I've got the textbook for the Teaching English as a Foreign Language course, hereby referred to as TEFL course, two travel guides of Prague and outlying areas with cool pictures and illustrations n' stuff, and a phrasebook.

I've decided against any leisure reading as the last two times I've ventured abroad, they only took up space. I never even cracked 'em open. And really, there's all kinds of pretty scenery to take in anyway. I figure travel info and useful phrases are enough reading for me right now.

Interesting bit I discovered in the phrasebook: A "c" does not make the same sound in Czech as it does in English. It makes a "ts" sound. So "cats" would sound like "tsats" in Czech. Now, add a couple of strange accent marks to that "c" and everything you know about how your tongue and lips make sounds just fails you from then on.

Prague. The world. New chapters. All that ...

(This is from I note I posted on Facebook a few weeks ago. Just thought it helpful to post it here, too, as an explanation of what's going on.)

The year that just left was a strange one for me. It began with the last few months at my most recent job. I was writing and designing, meeting interesting people, working on big projects and had great coworkers who've become great friends. All this despite the creaking walls of a crumbling news industry around us. But I decided on a whim to step out of it for a while, partially because y'know, newspapers! Sheesh! And also just because I had saved up some money living at home and wanted to travel.

So in April, I did, and the traveling was ridiculously good fun and life-changing and stuff.

Summer brought reality, the gloomy job search and the many omens of an impending economic downturn. I was beginning to wonder if I made the right decision to leave one job without the security of another. I told myself if there were no job prospects by the end of the summer, I'd do something drastic. Move to a big city and hope for the best. Join a monastery (job security!). But I kept sending out resumes and clips and checking job sites and writing follow-up e-mails — feeling for the first time what it was like to wait. And wait, and wait.

It was around August that things shifted. The job search was proving fruitless and I needed to decide what could work if journalism wouldn't. At the urging of my former editor (and sometimes life coach), I started looking into teaching English abroad. It was always swimming around deep in the back of my head, along with joining the Peace Corps and what all. I just needed someone to point out that occasional shimmer down there in the darkness and tell me what it was we were actually seeing.

I applied to a school in Prague. They accepted me. It felt incredibly quick and almost too easy. I got worried and started doing more extensive research, finding programs with better credentials. I found another school in Prague that was accredited through a London college. I applied and they sent me a writing test. I sent it back and they scheduled a phone interview. I took a verbal test over the phone and we traded a few questions.

This was all done while I was on vacation with my family in Florida. In the midst of those end-of-summer days on the beach, the school sent me an acceptance e-mail.

The same day, sitting right below the acceptance letter in my inbox were responses from two job applications I had sent out months before. I read them with a mixture of surprise and dread. I had just made such a huge decision and now I was getting inquiries about a career I decided to leave for a while.

And then (Oooooh and then!), only a few minutes later, the phone rang. Another job inquiry. They wanted to see more clips. I nearly crumpled and stuttered my way through the call. So, for those counting at home, that's one acceptance letter to an English teaching program in Europe, two responses on job applications I'd been waiting for all summer and one phone call. All in the same morning.

I didn't know if God was playing a practical joke or trying to steer me away from Prague. Now, I'm starting to see it as all to help me figure out if my heart was really in it — and also 'cause he probably just likes to watch me squirm, too.

At the time, though, I was completely torn. I took a chance and followed up the job inquiries. I sent more clips and one of them set up an interview in September. I contacted the school and asked if I could hold off on the program until the jobs pan out. To my amazement, they told me to consider it an open invitation as they were so impressed with me. That struck hard: Here I was putting off such a huge experience for the potential comfort of a job in a place I'm used to, going through much of the same motions I was trying to move myself away from. In months of job searches with little to no response, I was shrugging off the one opportunity that wanted me as much as I wanted it.

Needless to say, those other jobs never panned out. It was a lot more waiting. For two months. I learned for the first time that even a good interview doesn't mean it's necessarily in the bag. Still, rejection letters just made it that much easier to make up my mind. And I pointed myself back toward Prague.

Now, I'm nearly set to head to Europe at the beginning of February for four-and-a-half weeks of training. I've paid my deposit and bought my plane tickets. I'll learn to teach English as a foreign language and get tons of practice in the classroom. Plus, I'll be paired with a counselor to help me determine where I'd like to teach and help me set up job interviews while I finish the course. I realize I'll be back to the ruthless job search again, but I'll feel better armed with a new job skill and facing a different industry.

I'm excited to return to Prague, but really, it's just an added bonus to this whole adventure. I know I want to stay in Europe, preferably teaching in a larger city, so it's what comes after Prague I'm most excited about. Living and working in Europe has always been a dream of mine. It's going to be difficult and it's going to be amazing. I'm excited and scared shitless at the same time.

And I won't abandon writing. It's still the only thing that comes naturally to me, after breathing. I plan to freelance, perhaps even become a travel writer. I hope to find some English-language publication in wherever I end up that wants a part-time copy editor or writer.

(According to a palm reader in the French Quarter this weekend, I will also find love in Europe. I am not sure I don't not disagree.)

I'll also, obviously, use this blog to continue writing. There'll be posts and stories and updates and pictures and maybe even video. And I promise they'll be more succinct than this — it's just the culmination of a lot of thinking and months of planning.