Au revoir, Paris. Dobry den, Prague!

I wouldn't say reality caught up with me, as I pretty much knew this would happen as soon as I arrived in Paris. But, I'm flying back to Prague tomorrow. 

I'm bummed but happy and excited and relieved all at the same time. Bummed because I really, really enjoy Paris and could totally see myself living here and teaching and getting better at French and all that. Happy and excited because I do love Prague and I have a few friends back there from Oxford TEFL I'm excited to hang out with again. Relieved because I won't be on my own anymore (especially because evenings in a big city can get really lonely when you don't know anyone), and because there are better job opportunities for a non-EU in Prague.

So, that's that. I've been pondering it all week and consulting with my parents and siblings and friends. I've even said a few prayers and lit a few candles in several churches in Paris (Notre Dame included — that's gotta count for something, right?). 

And thanks to those reading for sending good thoughts and prayers my way. I appreciate it, and I'm thinking things will turn out much better in Prague.

Yada, yada, stay tuned.

As light as feathered hair

So, how come I never knew what my last name means in French? I knew it had to mean SOMETHING (and I guess maybe someone told me before), but I just never really sought out the answer.

And then it snuck up on me. There's a hip little grocery store down the street from my hotel – I say "hip" because it's got a section of readymade, organic sandwiches and stuff. A lot of them say "léger" on the label. 

First clue.

Then, the hotel manager the other day, when I told him my last name, says, "Eet meanz, uh ... what eez zee oppozeet of 'heaveee'?" I almost said "Not heavy?" but then produced "Light?"

"Yezz, light!" I didn't know if I was correct or he just didn't feel like playing a guessing game with me. And so, I thought back to the sandwiches and figured maybe it had something to do with "diet" or "fat free" or "pretentious organic food that I buy anyway." Or maybe he meant heavy versus skinny.

Which brings us to today. I finally went to a coiffure and got a haircut. Hurray! And the woman cutting my hair, when I told her my last name, did a little dance and flapped her arms saying, "Leger, like light! Light azz uh feazzair."

OK, maybe I'm overdoing it with my French interpretation, but I kind of giggled. She was incredibly nice and, since I was the only one in the shop, we spent quite a bit of time trying to talk to each other in my bad French and her bad English. I did manage to ask for "just a little off the top and the sides" in French and she seemed impressed. Then she tried to do a vocabulary lesson with different salon items in French and it all went downhill.

Still enjoyable, though. And now I have a haircut, which she styled kind of funky and wavy and feathery. Whatevs. No one who's ever cut my hair has ever styled it in a way I approve of, anyway.

PS – Yesterday, I went to the Cimetiere du Pére Lachaise, where tons of dead famous people live (like Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, etc.). But there's also quite a few Legers and Prevosts (my mother's maiden name). There was even a Leger grave right next to Edith Piaf. Cool!

I'll post pictures soon (I know I've been bad about that lately).

How do you know you've been in the Louvre too long?

When you are halfway through a wing (of many, many wings) of the museum, and you realize you've already seen all of this before. What helped me figure it out was the guy working in this particular wing looked familiar. I don't know if you can call them curators — the people who sit in the lonely chairs in a big gallery and yell at you in French if you take a picture with a flash or touch a marble statue. Most of them looked bored with life, one was actually passed out in his chair, and this one ... this one I knew I had seen before.

So I've been enjoying the art museums so far.

Yesterday, I went to the Pompidou, which is the crazy looking modern art museum that appears to be turned inside out, with all the pipes and stairs on the outside. I could've stayed there forever, as I'm a big fan of modern art and there were quite a few pieces by Chagall and Matisse (two of my favorites). Also, I got to see some works by Fernand Léger and wondered if we're perhaps related — minus the accent. There was a quote from him where he said, "I abhor discreet paintings" or something to that effect, and I kind of laughed to myself because I don't think Legers can be discreet. So maybe he is family. Not so much a fan of his work, though (nor was I previously when I hadn't connected the name to the paintings I had seen of his before), but the Pompidou seems to like him.

Then, of course, I went to the Louvre today. It was overwhelming, but in a good way. I kept coming across paintings that I remembered from when I was a kid, thumbing through my grandmother's and my parents' old encyclopedias. I wanted to wander and wander, but it was when I realized I was wandering through the same place I had been in earlier that I knew it was time to go.

Tomorrow, I'm heading to the Musee d'Orsay, which I think is supposed to fill the periods of time between what the Louvre covers and what the Pompidou covers. I love museums.

Edit — Oh, and I managed to at least get my resume through the door at three different schools Friday morning. And I talked to the director of one of the schools, who reiterated the mantra of "French working papers are a must" but was extremely nice and helpful. She suggested I apply to take a few courses at a local university, which would give me a student visa, which would allow me to work part-time in France.

From what I gather, I could barely get by in Paris on a full-time teacher's salary, much less part-time. So that's a no on that one.

Also, a girl I met on the metro tonight (she asked for some gum in French and I somehow understood her) suggested I talk to the local U.S. Embassy. I've considered that already (and researched on their Web site, which is shockingly out-of-date in several areas), but she put the idea back in my head. Maybe I'll put that on the agenda for Monday morning ...

Happy Birthday Big Brotha!

It's my brother's birthday today, and though I'm fairly sure he can't find this blog without the help of an adult, I just wanted to say Happy Birthday! I'm sure someone will let him know (ahem, Christy, ahem, Mom). He is two years older than me, which helps sometimes when I can't remember how old I am (this happens frequently). So he turns 29 today (yikes!), which means I'm turning 27 in July (double yikes!). Hope you're enjoying the day, Scott!

Now, off to hand in my resume at a few more schools, then maybe the Louvre if my feet aren't already tired.

PS - Sorry for the crazy-long post that's below this one. It was late and I was bummed out from a long day of fruitless job hunting. I'm still not very positive about finding a job here, but I'm still going to try.

Working papers/striking workers

So, while I’m writing this – sitting in my hotel room in Paris, taking a break from sightseeing and job-hunting – French transit workers are on strike, marching in the streets in protest of job cuts, economic turmoil, the end of days, et al.

And here I am trying to get a job in their city. Hoo … rah.

Rest assured I haven’t seen much chaos today outside of hordes of tourists and people enjoying the nice spring weather. I took the metro all day and it ran fine. I can’t recognize the streets shown on CNN International well enough to find the action, though. Bummer. I was hoping to take some pictures of the protest marches and submit them to a few papers back home, maybe make enough to pay for a few nights in my hotel room. Riiiiigght.

But the fact that people in France are on strike (though not an uncommon thing to happen here), does put some nice, ominous background music to my heartwarming story of hopping a flight to Paris from Prague to search for a job teaching English, all wide-eyed and bushy tailed and naive.

Alas, I need working papers.

That’s all I’ve been hearing lately. If you want to work in Paris, or anywhere in France for that matter, you need French working papers. From what I’ve been told, I’d have needed to get that sorted out before I even left the states, back when I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in Prague after the course or go somewhere else.

Now, it seems that if I want a job in Paris, I need to return to the U.S., file for French working papers (and possibly a long-term visa, too – tourist visas are only three months), then come back to Paris and look for a job. Never mind that France and most Westernized European countries only want to hire EU citizens on top of that.

Hoo … rah.

Basically, this would work out if I turn back time, get born into a British family and start applying for French working papers before I begin grade school.

Part of this is my own fault for not doing enough research on France and its immigrant work laws (which are even more ridiculously stringent than other European countries). The other problem is that, for all the great things Oxford TEFL provided for me, accurate, updated, American-catered information about job searches was not one of them. They mostly knew how to get jobs as Brits.

I went in believing I could get a job anywhere once the program was done and I achieved certification. And to a large extent, that’s true. I can go nearly anywhere to get a job, easy. It’s just the places that are easiest (Eastern Europe, most Asian countries and parts of South America) are not where I’d particularly like to be. In places like Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece and, yes, France, I’d end up working illegally or not at all.

If a language school is willing to sponsor you for a work visa, you’re pretty much set. Your tourist visa could run out, but as long as you are in the process of acquiring a work visa, you can stay in Europe legally.

Some language schools are willing to hire you, but they’re not willing to go through the process of sponsoring you for a work visa, mainly because it’s a lot of paperwork, time and money. That and they have to do a good job proving why no one else in Europe could do this job better than you.

I’m not particularly interested in working illegally. Even for the chance to be in a place like Paris, amazing and right-up-my-alley as it is. Our teachers at Oxford tend to think illegal teachers are becoming the norm in many major European cities where competition is tough and the market is saturated. They assured us English teachers without proper work visas are not atop the list of problems customs officials are tackling.

And with everything the Schengen laws have done to make Europe more streamlined from country to country, they’ve also made it easier for someone with an expired tourist visa to move around within the EU – they’ve eliminated most border control posts across the continent. When I was here in early 2005, we got our passports stamped crossing every country border by train and by plane. Now, I’ve traveled by plane from Munich to Prague and Prague to Paris and by train from Prague to Vienna and Bratislava without getting my passport checked once other than to see if the photo matches my face.

The point is, as one of my teachers at Oxford noted, I’d have to be extremely unlucky to get in trouble. That and if I try to leave Europe. Yeah, the other aspect of the law is that once my three-month tourist visa is up, I have to leave Europe for three months before I could come back.

Hoo ... rah No. 3.

So, with that lengthy explanation out of the way, what does this all mean for me? As of now, I think I'm sticking around Paris for the next few days, at least until the middle of next week. See how many more times I get the shaft for not having working papers, and if nothing fantastic comes of it, I'll saunter off back to Prague.

At least in Prague, schools really, really want you and they're willing to help with the work visas. The other plus is that it's, y'know, Prague — really gorgeous city, cheap and I already know my way around a bit (plus some friends from school are still there).

And at least I get to see Paris. Yes, we'll always have Paris.

Who's a teacher?

I'm now officially certified to teach English as a foreign language. Woo-woo! Just got the e-mail saying I passed both the Oxford TEFL School in Prague's certification and that of the moderating school, Trinity in London.

Now comes the hard part. Job Hunt '09.

The home stretch

By that, I mean, tomorrow is my last day of class. And my last day teaching as a student teacher. Jeez, this went by fast.

I apologize again (I did already apologize, didn't I?) for the lack of posts as of late. These last two weeks have been a hectic time of hectic-ness as I finished up all my projects and pulled all-nighters to turn them in on time (with a few days of weekend sightseeing and pub crawls thrown in for good measure). 

Today, I turned in my Teaching Practice Log, which was a mammoth collection of all my lesson plans, materials, self-evaluations, peer observations and such. Then, we took a sorta final exam (who got an "A"? That's right, me!).

Tomorrow (today), I have one more assignment to turn in, the materials assignment, which is the most important. This is because Wednesday (tomorrow/two days from now), I have to present this to the moderator from Trinity (the mother school in London) in an interview. I'll get to show off the original materials I created for my classes and explain why they worked so well. 

I'm using two things. The first is a map I drew for the pre-intermediate class where they each had a different route and had to sit back to back and describe their route to a partner using directional terms. The other material had to do with form filling (like on an application) for the upper-intermediate class. I came up with three profiles of characters and they had to fill out forms for them based on the information and extract more information based on their comprehension of the profiles.

These things are interesting to me, but I'm not sure how this will register with any of you non-teachers (Ha! Listen to me! All teachery.)

Anyway, that's my schedule for the next few days. Don't ask me about after that because then I'll get anxious and squirm in my seat and tousle my hair and say "ummm" and "uhhh" a lot.

I have no idea what comes after that, actually. (Imagine that I just took a deep breath after writing this – cuz I did.) We have to be out of our flat by Friday and so I've been in a rush to figure things out.

I've applied to a few places in Prague (and even interviewed at a school last week, fingers crossed because it went pretty well). I even sent my resume to The Prague Post, an English-language newspaper here.

I've also sent resumes to English schools and English-language publications in Paris and Barcelona – the two places I would like to be outside of Prague. I'm looking at flights now to both places and trying to decide if I should go to one/the other/both and for how long to look for jobs.

Prague is great and all (and inexpensive and somewhat familiar), but I want to go somewhere I haven't been. Plus, even though Prague is a big city by my terms, I feel like there's more opportunity in a bigger city like Paris or Barcelona. 

These might seem like cliche pipe dreams, but they aren't. Barcelona is home to a sister school to Oxford TEFL Prague, which may offer some help. Plus the city has a ton of English teaching schools. Paris has a ton as well, but I also have a desire to teach while also learning French. 

The good thing is, if both of those fail, I could always come back to Prague. The Prague Post already said they'd be willing to use me as a freelance writer. So I could do that while teaching. As I say, we'll see.

Dang, this post was way longer than I expected it to be.

Art and statue and graffiti in the city

I'm thinking this weekend might be made for some serious modern art hunting in Prague.

Why I love street vendors

This evening, I'm leaving school. It's after 7. I have a huge project due tomorrow that I need to finish, and all I'm thinking about is what I should eat for dinner to keep the energy going for an almost-all-nighter. In my hand is my standard leftover bag from TESCO consisting of one bagel and a little hunk of cheese.

I know for sure there's not much left in the flat for me to make a decent dinner. So then, the question is: Should I go to the store on the way home? But that'll take too much time and the security guard always follows me around when I have my satchel over my shoulder like I'm going to steal something even though I go there twice a week anyway.

Then, I remember! Ever since Carnevale, there've been food vendors set up in Old Town Square. They're open nearly every day selling kebabs, sausages in buns and cinnamon roll-type things. It's like the Czech people have decided it should suddenly be springtime even though it's still friggin' cold out. They've started to assemble chairs and tables outside cafes and such -- well, OK, some of the more touristy places have been doing that already. It's just they come equipped with space heaters.

Anyway, so I skip through Old Town Square and find a vendor who is still turning kebabs and sausages on a grill, order what's basically a kielbasa hot dog and walk home happily, hurriedly trying to eat it before the bread gets soggy in the misty, drizzly night.

That's probably why I think I have second-degree burns on the roof of my mouth now. Ah well, my stomach is full. 

It's a gorgeous thing to see, though, as strange as it sounds. All these wooden booths with smoke stacks and sizzling grills, situated in some kind of a circle in the center of the square, all connected by strings of hanging lights, the Tyn Church looming in the background, lit up like the evil twin of Cinderella's Castle (but in a good way), bar tables scattered about so people can stand and eat the street food, talking and laughing. 

It makes one feel like he's in a small, Bohemian village. Not such a big city. It also makes one remember tourist season isn't that far away.