Wow. I'd say I've done as much lesson planning in the last few days as humanly possibly if I didn't know there was more to come. Last night I put together what I think will be a pretty fun lesson on phrasal verbs using Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up". I recently had the realization that working music into my lessons, a) makes the time when students are working and I'm walking around monitoring significantly less awkward for me (and maybe them? silence = awk), b) makes my life happier, c) puts a good use to the 18+ GB of music sitting on my hard drive. Just finished my lesson plan for my second one-to-one meeting with Mila on the Amish and I feel significantly less stressed. My first session with her went really well. I got to know a lot about her and she's quite lovely. We talked about her job, travels, kids, Prague, etc. and she bought me tea! It's been a good experience and I definitely think I prefer one-to-one sessions in some ways.
I went on my first job interview today out in the suburbs of Prague at an English-speaking preschool. Well sorta, apparently it was still Prague 9, but I had to take the metro to the end of the line and then a bus to get there. There were farms! It went relatively well, the main issue was that I have a lot of experience supervising older kids, but not much with babies. It seems like a great place, though it may be a bit far for me and in all honesty I may indeed prefer to work with older kids. Good practice though! I have another job interview scheduled the day before the end of the course and hopefully another sometime once I write the lesson plans for the application this weekend. Ah!
Right now I am stressing out about flats and jobs like whoa. I just want to find a place and a job so I can get settled, but this is no simple task. Most of the jobs I'm applying for ask for detailed lesson plans that I have to do on top of my seemingly insurmountable pile of work. The thing is, I need to have this sorted by the time my tourist visa runs out or I have to apply for a short-term stay visa or leave lest I get deported. Not to mention it apparently takes about a month for all the visa paperwork to go through. No pressure!
I'm looking at my first flat in Letna on Saturday and have been purusing some other ones online. There's a chance of living with people from my course, but since it's only the second week a lot of people aren't quite sure if they're staying here or already have sweet flat connections. I figure it's scarier to live with people I don't already know, but if I find a great place it's probably worth it and will potentially increase my social network, which is good as I don't know many people here yet. We'll see how this goes!
As it is 12:44, it is officially Friday. Even though I have a lesson to teach "today", TGIF. Halfway done.
The stuff you're doing just seems really exciting. It must be incredible to just up and start a new life in a faraway place, I'm wishing you all the best as your time there begins!
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