First Lesson!

Things have been moving quickly around here. Sunday we had our group orientation in the afternoon. I ended up sleeping in beforehand so I didn't get to another museum, but for our orientation we went to Prague Castle and walked around and back down to Old Town Square. Prague Castle is the biggest castle in the world. I hadn't realized that I'd actually walked up to the castle the previous day in my wanderings; I had been right outside the gate. After the orientation we all went to a little pub and had a bite to eat. I shared an apple strudel with Alex P, which was divine. Our group is a really interesting mix of people. In addition to our group of US Citizens and Brits we also have an Australian, a Romanian, a Czech, a Canadian and a Finn. Sasha and I went to Tesco on the way home to pick up some more odds and ends we needed, then headed home to get a good night of sleep.

The group

St. Vitus Cathedral

Sasha, Mary Beth, me, and Marissa

Statues at the front gate

From the Charles Bridge

Monday was our first day of class. It was a long day. We started off with a survival Czech lesson, which served both to introduce us to some basic Czech and to give us the experience of being on the student side of a foreign language lesson. We spent the rest of the day talking about lesson planning and going over how to conduct a reading lesson. This came in handy because we were expected to teach our first lesson the very next day. We broke up into groups of two or three who would share a 45 minute lesson.

Today we actually taught our first lesson. There are several classes of adult students who come to our school to take inexpensive English lessons. They range from Elementary to Advanced in level. I am partnered with Sasha and Aiden, who is from Canada. Our class today was an Elementary level group. We were given the reading we were to cover in the class. We had composed our lesson plan and decided how to divide it up in class the previous day, and fine-tuned our parts that night. We had designed activities to get the students participating and talking. For our first class, it went very well. Our group was all women, and they were all friendly and having fun. We felt that the reading we had been assigned was a bit difficult for Elementary level learners, but I think we did a pretty good job of getting everyone to understand its meaning. Tomorrow we will teach a writing lesson. Today and tomorrow are meant to introduce us to teaching and help us become comfortable with being in front of the class, but we are not being evaluated yet. On Thursday and Friday, however, we will each be teaching a 45 minute class on our own and will be observed and evaluated.

We were done as soon as we finished teaching our class from 2:45-3:15 today, and I'm using the time to cook, blog, go over my part of tomorrow's lesson and work on my resume. I soaked some kidney beans overnight, and now I'm cooking them up with some brown rice. I'll be eating beans and rice with veggies and siracha sauce for the next few days. Yum.

First Day in Prague

I arrived at the airport in Prague at 2pm yesterday. I had been worried about my checked bags arriving, and waited at the carousel nervously as many people claimed their bags. Eventually, there mine were, and what a relief it was. Customs was no problem. Nobody even asked me any questions or looked at any of my things except for my passport. As soon as I walked out of the baggage claim area, I spotted the booth for the cab company I was directed to go to. They had a sign up at the booth with my name on it. It couldn't have been easier. I took cash from the ATM to pay for my apartment and hopped in the cab. The driver took me to the Hotel Pivovar. This hotel is in the same building as the school where I'll be studying for the next month. In the lobby I met one of the students at the school and she gave me an orientation packet and rode with me in another cab to my apartment (or villa, really...it's a big house full of mostly students). The villa is very close to the school, a five or ten minute walk. It's very nice, I was surprised by how much room we have and very happy to learn that we have wireless internet.

Most of the students in my course (there are 19) had been corresponding for the last couple of weeks, so we had already planned on meeting for dinner at 6. Before dinner I set up my computer and got online and ended up having my first Skype conversation with my friend Jesse who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Later I called John who didn't answer and my mom who did and was very excited to hear from me. Skype is great. I used it to call my mom's cell phone and talked to her for over 20 minutes which cost about 40 cents. I can definitely afford that.

I met one of my flatmates, Sasha, almost as soon as I got to the villa and another, Marissa, before we left for dinner. We joined a couple of the other girls who live in the villa and headed down to the Hotel Pivovar to meet the other students who were coming to eat with us. We went to a pizza place nearby and ate dinner and chatted. Everyone from the program that I've met so far has been been very friendly and fun. Some of us are American and some of us are English. There will also be an Australian and a native Czech joining us. After dinner I was extremely tired after traveling for so long with little sleep, so after dinner I came back and put my things away and after talking to mom on Skype I went to sleep.

Marissa's picture of the group at dinner

This morning I slept in a little, then got up and started the day with some Sun Salutations and a cup of tea. I got dressed and headed out to explore. First I wandered around aimlessly at a mall right by our metro stop. I was looking for the grocery store but I couldn't seem to find it. Then I ran into Marissa and Mary Beth from my program and we rode the subway to the city center together. They were going shopping since they had already been exploring the day before. I got off before them and came out of the subway and into the center of the old part of the city. First I went into a big mall right next to the subway and grabbed some food from a grocery for lunch. I ate lunch in a beautiful square. The buildings here are gorgeous, and the streets are narrow and winding with so much to explore.

While I was finishing my lunch, the bells at the church next to me started ringing, and trumpets were playing. I heard people cheering and people from all around started running over to the other side of the church. I thought maybe it was like the Rathaus-Glockenspiel in Munich or something. I followed the crowd over to the other side and looked around. The church has a beautiful clock, and there were men playing trumpets up in the tower high above. It took me a minute to realize what the commotion was: someone had just gotten married. I walked right next to the car that carried the couple. The bride looked beautiful.

I spent the day wandering through the streets. I crossed the Charles Bridge. I had coffee at a little cafe and read some of my book, which currently is The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  It's actually a coincidence that I ended up choosing a Czech author to start reading before my trip. I was looking through Jared's books and nothing was jumping out at me until I came across that book. I had always wanted to read it because I've heard it's a good book, but I've never read any Milan Kundera and didn't even remember that he was Czech until I had chosen it and laid down in bed to look through it. I love coincidences like that. It makes me feel like everything is in line.

In my wanderings I came across the MuMo which is a modern art museum and walked through their exhibition there. They currently have a show of Pavla Aubrechtova and Vladimir Gebauer, who are a married pair of Czech artists that came of age during the mid-70's when freedom of speech was very limited here. I really enjoyed the show. I can't wait to visit more of Prague's museums.

Later in the evening before I got on the subway to head back to the villa I stopped at the grocery store. I am happy that food is very inexpensive here. I was worried that produce would be more expensive, but I think it is about the same or less expensive and everything else is definitely less expensive. I got a lot of food and the bill was under $25. I think at home for the same items it would have been about $40-$45. When I got back to my apartment, I cooked up some pasta with fresh spinach, fresh tomatoes, olive oil and parmesan cheese. I made extra to take for lunch for the next couple of days. I'm planning on trying to cook for myself as much as possible, and I wanted to get off to a good start. It's been an awesome first day. Tomorrow we have the orientation for our program in the afternoon, and I might see about going to another museum beforehand. I've also got to do some research about the music scene here. But now to bed...

Cooking my first meal in the new digs

In transit

It is really hard to say goodbye. It's hard to say goodbye to friends. It's harder to say goodbye to brothers and fathers and boyfriends. It's even harder to say goodbye to grandmas and sisters and mothers. It's especially hard to say goodbye to a little baby who doesn't even know what goodbye means and won't even remember you the next time you see her.

But here I am. I'm in London, waiting to board my plane to Prague. I'm in that weird place where my body thinks it's the middle of the night but here it's 8:30 in the morning. It's been 14 hours since I left Columbus for Chicago.

As the plane took off for Chicago, I was looking out the window (thanks mom for giving those mean airline people hell so I could choose my seats) and thinking how rural land looks like a huge quilt, with patches of all different colors and textures. I'm not a quilter, but if I were I would want to make a quilt that looks like a view of farmland from the window of an airplane ascending.

I think I'm going to break down right now and buy a little luggage cart with the rest of my US dollars. They have one over in the duty free shop; it's just a little wheel thing that folds up. I love this vintage Samsonite suitcase I brought for a carry-on, but stuffed with all of my jewelry supplies and my laptop it is really heavy. I need some wheels! It's a great suitcase, though. One of the flight attendants on my flight even complimented me on it, and I'm sure she sees her share of bags! Plus it's bright orange, and this is my orange year. (Ava got me hooked on Louise Hay's Colors and Numbers book). I made an orange necklace for myself for this year. It has orange spinels and carnelian and an antique St. Christopher medal that's really cool. St. Christopher is the patron saint of travel. 

Waiting at Heathrow (see aforementioned necklace)

Down to the wire

First of all, here are some pictures of things I referred to in my last post but had not yet photographed.  First, my tattoo. My sister took these nice pictures for me:

I use a lot of antique botanical illustrations in my jewelry, and I wanted that look to carry over to the tattoo. I think Miller did a very good job of doing that. Also, here is a picture of all of the rings I've made... the two biggest ones have stones and glass from my Erie trip with Bianca.

So, on to what's happened in the last couple of days... I've been busy packing, organizing, last-minute shopping and errand running, and also saying goodbyes. I've said goodbye to a lot of friends. It was especially sad to pack up all of my things from Ava's (the jewelry store where I work) and say goodbye to everyone there. I'll miss them a lot. Yesterday I actually said a couple of hello's as well as goodbyes. My friend Chris Monday (check out his comix at flyingweevil.com) came to Lancaster with his daughter Mabel and I got to meet his friend Heather for the first time. We all went to our friends Sam and Andrew's house and met their new baby, Lena. She is almost a month old and is absolutely beautiful. When I got home later that night, I had another baby to play with because Shelley and David were back from Cleveland with Emma. They are going to stay until I leave on Thursday.

Goodbye to Ava, Binks, Amelia and Corinne

Goodbye to Tonya, Chloe and Stella

Goodbye to Sam, Andrew and Lena

  

I've surprised myself by being more organized and farther along with my packing than I thought I would be. I've got everything all packed up. All of my jewelry supplies and tools, all of my clothes, my documents, it's all ready to go. My bags are both under the weight limit with room to spare. All I have to do tomorrow is pack up my studio and organize things that I'm leaving here. The only thing I regret not having time to do is making handmade journals to take with me. I have some beautiful paper and bookbinding supplies, but I never had time to get to it. I'll cut my losses, though. I feel really good.

Today was a good day for photo-shoots. I wanted to get some good pictures with Emma, and Shelley was happy to oblige. She is such a talented photographer, and good with photoshop, too! Thanks sister!

The past three months, a brief overview

I know I’ve been a terrible blogger. I haven’t written a word in almost three months, and it hasn’t been for lack of things to write about. Hopefully that’s all about to change... I leave for Prague in a few days, and my goal is to keep a detailed record of my life there so that my friends and family feel like they know what I’m thinking and experiencing even if they can’t be there with me.

I suppose I should catch up by summarizing the past three months. A lot has happened. It went by so quickly. First of all, I accidentally fell in love. I wasn’t even looking for a date, let alone a relationship. I guess we don’t get to plan everything. Anyway, it’s been a huge blessing to spend the past few months with John. We’ve had lots of great dates and shared a lot of memories. We had a beautiful autumn this year, and it was so fun to introduce John to Ohio (he’d just moved here from Phoenix, AZ) and take him to my favorite places. 

John working on his motorcycle

One of our first dates

Pictures from a beautiful fall day at the Indian Mounds in Newark

John's kitty, Sid

I will miss this smile.

Another thing that I did over the past three months was get some tattoo work done. I had been wanting to do this for a long time, and knew I wanted to do it before I left. I got in touch with my friend Miller who I know from Athens but now works at Short North Tattoo in Columbus, and we talked about what I wanted to do. I brought a couple of pictures, and he drew up a sketch. We modified it slightly and then started working on it. It took 8 grueling hours, but I am pleased with how it turned out. It was a cover-up of an old tattoo I’d gotten 7 years ago. I hadn’t taken good care of it so it didn’t look very good and I had been wanting to modify it for quite some time. Thanks to Miller for great work and to John for being there for me every painful step of the way.

These are the pictures I used for inspiration

(I'll post a picture of the actual tattoo next time)

Another highlight of the past few months was a trip I took with Bianca to Lake Erie. We got a hot tip from  the stonecarving teacher at CAC about a spot on the lake where beach glass can be found. I suppose I should begin by explaining that Bianca is Ava’s sister. She has lived in England for over ten years, but she has made extensive visits a couple of times this year, so I’ve gotten to know her and pal around with her. She’s been taking the metal classes at CAC with me and working at the store since September. 

Anyway, we made the trip up to Erie, and had a great time beachcombing. I’ve decided that I’ve been greatly underrating the Great Lakes for all of these years. It was beautiful and full of treasures, and our only regret was that we hadn’t made it an overnight trip so we could have had more time on the beach. Although we didn’t find a lot of glass (I did find a few nice pieces), we found lots of gorgeous things. I’ve used pieces from our trip to make a couple of my first rings, and Bianca has used some of hers to make gifts for Ava and a beautiful pair of earrings she gave to me as a going away gift. She also purchased a mini drill press which she let me use to drill some of my other stones and glass pieces so I will be able to use them in future pieces.

Binky scoops up a treasure

My precious booty

The holidays were really special this year. Having a baby in the family makes everything so much more fun. It was also great having John to share the holidays with. We went to Shelley’s house in Indiana for Thanksgiving. The boys couldn’t be there, but we were able to Skype with them while we were all there. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was pretty much a huge blur. I was so busy with work and jewelry classes and volunteering and preparing for the trip and making Christmas presents (I made a lot of commissioned pieces in addition to things for the store and my own gifts for people).  I’ve also been trying to see all of my friends before I leave, although it’s really impossible to see everyone.

John's dad's Thanksgiving pie

Christmas this year was great. It was so good to have all of the family together. It doesn’t happen very often anymore, and it was really the first time we’d ALL been together, since Jared hadn’t even met Emma yet. I’m glad I got to be here for his first time meeting her and that we all got to spend Christmas together. We even got family portraits taken. Two days after Christmas Jared was on a plane heading for Melbourne, Australia. Shan returned to Madison a couple of days later. Shelley and David and Emma headed up to Cleveland on Christmas Day, but they will be coming back through for a few days so I’ll get to see them one last time before I go. One of the hardest parts of leaving like this is knowing how much I’ll miss with Emma. It’s so amazing how fast she changes and how many new things she can do every time I see her. I’ve been able to spend time with her a couple of times a month since she was born, but I guess I’ll have to get by with digital interactions for a while. At least my sister is an amazing photographer and keeps us all updated on Emma’s new tricks and milestones. Sigh...

Emma and I

The whole family

Sibs

IT's REally HaPPenING!!!

I know I haven't been writing as much as I want myself to... sorry about that, self.  I did just want to take this opportunity to say that I AM REALLY EXCITED.

A).  New, renewed passport arrived last month
B).  Diploma is notarized, soon to be apostilled
C).  Plane ticket is purchased
D). Rad boots have been acquired
E). Car has been SOLD!
F).  I have more money in my bank account than I have ever had in my life
G). I have a growing stockpile of cute, professional-ish attire which I am forcing myself to not wear (yet)                     
H). I have a really nice laptop (thanks, big brother!)
I).  My birthday is in two days
J).  My sister is coming this weekend, and I'll get to see my baby niece, Emma Jean. I can't wait.

I feel super blessed.