Big City, Little Town

I hope you all enjoyed Andrea’s Blog. I know I sure did. It explained everything better and was much better written than my own. But, I have to leave you in disappointment. I am going to be writing the large portion of the blog. I am the one trying to become a writer not Andrea and I am the one who needs practice. Andrea has informed me she took the time to go through and edit her post. I apologize I do not. I simply write my thoughts and post. No editing or revision. If it makes the reading difficult, I do apologize.
I have just arrived in Andrea’s city, which has a population of over 100,000, nothing huge, but in comparison to the three different towns I teach in it is quite a difference. The town I live in and teach the majority of my lessons, Novy Bydzov, has a population of 7,000. The other towns I teach in are Smidary and Chlumec, which have populations of 1,000 and about 10,000, respectively.
The reason I bring forth all this about population and size of cities is during our last trip to Prague, which is immensely populated and filled to the brim with tourists, a lot from the US, I had with myself an inner debate. For as long as I can remember I could never picture myself living in a small town, especially a town of 7,000 people with nothing surrounding it for kilometers, as we say over here, or miles, but farm land. However, I have grown to love Novy Bydzov, it is cozy and although I do not speak the language, each and every person I encounter possesses an inviting personality. I have even grown to accept and, even, not notice the stench of cow manure used for fertilizer. The children of each of the towns I teach in are eager to understand other cultures and, often, as I pass them on the street, remember it is a very small town and I see them a lot, always yell across the street, “Hello,” with huge smile plastered on their face.
I got somewhat off topic, well, being in Prague with its massive population and abundance of tourists I think I actually came to the conclusion I may enjoy small towns over big cities. This is something I never thought I would write nor say, as I have always pictures myself living back in Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or some other metropolis. I know my mind may change back and forth a million times, but although the visit to Prague was spectacular as Andrea wrote, there were a few occasions that made me miss my quite, cozy little town. I will just list some of the detractors, which may have opened my eyes to the beauty of a small town.
Sitting at dinner, the same dinner we met the nice English couple, we also were near three women from the US and they irrelevant, annoying conversation nearly made my ears bleed. Remember, these three women are sitting at beautiful restaurant in the center of one of the most gorgeous city’s on the planet and their conversation consisted of shopping at Macy’s back in the US and their major concern of whether or not it was going to go out of business. Sorry, if I offend anyone, but have a conversation about culture or the comparisons between Europe and the US, something other than American shopping. Next was that very same night, also, as Andrea mentioned, we ran into a bar crawl of nearly 50 young adults, all English speaking. They were drunk loud, obnoxious, and had no care for anyone around them, that is all I am going to say about that, besides you don’t find too many bar crawls in a town of 7,000. The last thing I will mention, which is similar to my complaint about New York City, sorry Chris, it is just too damn crowded. As we searched for a nice place to eat dinner that very same night, I felt like a running back in the NFL trying to avoid tackles. I weaved in and out of the crowd all while trying to keep my eye on Andrea or a hold of Andrea. How are you supposed to enjoy yourself if you spending more time looking and trying to avoid the people you are walking amongst than looking up at the amazing, as most perfectly quoted from a English young lady, “a fairytale?”
I will leave it at that for now. Still completely undecided on, which particular atmosphere I enjoy better. I am sure I will have a wonderful time in Andrea’s city as always, maybe it is a city of her size that is perfect, not too big not too small.