tefl certified – Adventurings

it’s been an intense four weeks but both alex and myself, and our sixteen other peers are TEFL certified now, meaning we are qualified to teach english as a foreign language anywhere in the world. we’ve planned nine class lessons, planned two individual lessons, given two grammar presentations to the class, and the other day, took a grueling grammar examination. we have words like concept checking questions, focus question, lexis, warmer, scene setting, and many more teachery expressions drilled into us every day. the course was rigorous but manageable and i have learned SO much, especially about teaching adults since i have done it so frequently lately.

now, we have this certificate we can take with us anywhere to hopefully get a job. we have seen these people (below) about six days a week for four weeks. they are quite the crazy lot. vitamin C’s “graduation song” was the joke of the day yesterday. we all celebrated (teachers came along too) with a champagne celebration at school and all went out to dinner at cortez restaurant, a czech restaurant right next door the school that is a favorite with most students. i splurged on duck leg with cabbage and dumplings with a pilsner urquell, and was delicious. by splurge, i mean pay like $7.50.

now we have no more homework and lesson planning and the christmas season can begin….. as does the “season of uncertainty”.

one thing that IS certain is that we have found a great flat to live in and will be moving out of this kolbenova apartment tomorrow and going across the river to the mala strana district– THE most beautiful area of the city that i have seen so far. the location is absolute tops: imagine a winding cobblestone road straight out of the 19th century. if you walk down the street, you can see prague castle. wow! i am looking forward to it because this is the place where we will be living perhaps as long as we live here in prague. no more moving from place to place, it’ll be our new home. we’ll have a roomie who is also a TEFL teacher certified this past summer. more to come very soon on this development, and certainly plenty of photos.

although we have an apartment to live in, there is still much uncertainty to deal with that makes me really miss the carefree days we had in working around scotland. getting our zivno, or business license and all the paperwork that we need to track down that goes with it…. and a trip to a czech embassy in a different country JUST to apply for it! (weird, i know) and most importantly and nerve-wrackingly, the fact that we need to find teaching jobs within the next month or paying our rent may be extremely difficult, if not impossible. i have heard many jobs start up in january after the christmas season, so in the coming week before christmas, alex and i will be very diligent in our hunt.

for all the uncertainties and worries that have plagued us this week, it was SO WONDERFUL to receive a christmas parcel from alex’s mom, diane. it was christmas in a box! food goodies from the states– cookies, tea, candy, warm clothing, socks, elf hats with jinglebells, and all kinds of other fun stuff. huge morale boost in the last and possibly toughest week of the course.

which brings me to the institution that is known as CZECH POST OFFICES, or the ceska posta. an extremely backwards way of doing things that requires someone picking up a parcel to go to wait in line at one room, go to the second room and wait in line there, then back to the first room to wait in line some more, then to a smaller line in the first room to wait in line a little more. back and forth, and absolutely no english instructions. it is a scary thing, making u.s. post offices look like dave and busters. i went with alex for moral support.

here are a couple photos from the past two weeks….. this week we’ve had a cold snap and SNOW almost every day– mostly just the pretty little flurries… fun to walk around in and always make prague look so beautiful. it’s starting to warm up a bit now, and from out the window i can see the snow starting to turn into drips and puddles.