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So I've been here nearly three weeks. It actually feels shorter than that. This last week has been so crazy I can hardly even remember what happened.
I finished my first week of official teaching! I was so nervous the first day. I was shaking, and it's a good thing I had written a list of things I needed to talk about, because I would have completely forgotten. But it's much better now, after teaching every single morning (and some afternoons) for a week.
I'm still a bit nervous before each class, but it's getting better. I teach conversation to fairly advanced students. That's nice, because they know most of what I'm saying. They're also well-behaved. I teach history to beginners and intermediate students. That's fun too, although my beginners tend to be rather talkative. The intermediate students don't say a thing. They pretty much don't respond at all, to anything. It's a struggle to get them involved.
This last week, I've been putting all my energy and creativity into my classes. I have to act very enthusiastic and even crazy in my classes to get a point across. I do that for the beginners so they know what I'm talking about - if I act out falling, they get it better than if I just tell them what it means to fall. I act for my intermediate students just to get them interested.
So today I'm making many many more lesson plans, because we're beginning more classes for the post office workers. So all in all, I've got at least 7 classes that I'm teaching, most of which meet at least twice a week, some three times. That's in addition to taking Czech classes myself. And as for that, I'm getting a little better in pronunciation. I mostly practice by repeating the words after the announcer says each stop on the tram or metro. Hey, it's how the little kids do it here! I've seen little kids repeat the stop names while on the metro. I thought "that's a good idea!" But I'm sure it's strange to hear some American wandering around and mangling Czech words. The word for the number 4 in Czech is "čtyři", which is pronounced something along the lines of "chturzhi" and it's very difficult to say. So I try my luck on that word a lot, thinking how strange it would be to see someone walking around repeating "four, four" in my language.
I miss everyone back home, but I'm getting used to all the little quirks about living here. Just keep praying that I can stand all the stress! One other thing - I've got a bit of a cold, and my voice is very scratchy. I teach four 90 minute classes tomorrow, and I'm not sure if my voice is going to hold out. We'll see!