June 3, 2010

June 3, 2010
I, once again, must confess, with my apologies, I am writing this the next day after the sun has already set and risen again for me. Please excuse if my tenses get confused. It was interesting today however. Thursdays are my day of traveling. I start out the morning at 6 a.m. So, I can be at the bus stop to take me to the village of Smidary by 7:10. I am normally there, at the bus stop, a little early, which brings about a slight bit of awkwardness. Two of my students who attend Smidary are typically at the bus stop when I arrive and for the 5 to 10 minutes we wait on the bus to arrive they both look at me with blank stares. Both of them stand there with those blank stares wishing to say something or another to me, beside good morning. I have tried in the past to start simple conversations, asking “How they are doing?” or “What have they been doing this week? However, neither of the students speak English well enough to respond. They just continue to stare at me and fumble for words becoming shyer by the second. I have given up on my attempts to indulge them in light conversation, which has lead to the point we are now, standing in silence and they silently search their minds for one word or another to say to me. On this particular morning, however, neither of the children were at the bus stop. I found this particularly unusual, sometimes one would be missing, but never during the entire year had both children been missing from our morning awkwardness.

So, the bus arrives and I get on it with none of my students, strange, but the bus route comes across other stops where students who attend the school get on. We are travelling along and the first stop where one more student usually, but sometimes takes her bike to school, doesn’t get on the bus. I thinking this even more particular, but I chalk it up to the fact that this student probably choose to ride her bike to school. We get to the next stop and this is a stop where normally 10-12 students from the school normally get on the bus. Two students got on. They were younger students, students I do not teach at the school in Smidary. I only teach the higher grades, 6-9. Now I am getting a little worried, did all my classes get cancelled and no one informed me of it. Another bus stop, and yet another student of mine does not get on to the bus. As I walking from the bus stop to the school all I am thinking is that I will be upset if I woke up, walked to the bus stop, walked to the school, just to turn around again. To add to my frustrations of the chances my classes being cancelled and no one telling me, I thought about the fact the bus rarely travels between Smidary and Novy Bydzov, which means I would be stuck in Smidary for at least two or three hours and this is a town of maybe a thousand people. I would have nothing to do.

Anyway, I walk into the school and I start to see some of my students, not the majority of the one’s I typically see and shout out, “Hello,” but at least a few of them and I am relieved. I figure with all the rain we have had this week many of the students have fallen ill and I will just have smaller class sizes, which is nice, not nice in the fact students are ill, but nice in the fact my classes will be more manageable. After walking past the student’s I did recognize and did yell out, “Hello” and “Good morning,” I walked into the teacher’s lounge and of course the English speaking teacher, actually the only English speaking person, beside myself, in the entire building was gone and I was not able to discern what was happening, why all the student’s were missing.

Well, I actually have the first period at that school off and I was left alone in the teacher’s lounge to try to figure out the puzzling situation. On top of that, put together plans for the four classes I expected to teach.

The bell rang, all the teachers came back to the teacher’s lounge, and as I said none of them know any English, so I just waited and when the bell rang again I headed to my first class, a sixth grade class. To my surprise, it was fuller than usual and then I noticed an eighth grader in the class. I thought he was just goofing off. I told him to get out. He didn’t move. I looked around the room and the sixth grade class had about seven or eight eighth graders in the class. Plus, a few of seventh graders and it was these students I had to rely on for an explanation. It took them a moment to stammer out in English what was going on, but I found out the majority of the Seventh and Eighth classes were on a school trip and they were to be sitting in with the sixth graders for the day.

After the full, rowdy class, trying to teach three different levels of English to one class is difficult; I went straight to my most reliable source here in the Czech Republic, Google Translate. I typed out all my questions and came to the discovery, after the teachers had passed around my note from the translator; I was not to have my eighth or seventh classes for the day. Lucky for me those two classes are my final two classes of the day. I finished at the school in Smidary after teaching the ninth class. The problem, the buses, if I wanted to take a bus I would have to wait about two hours. I made the choice to walk the nearly two miles to the train station to get back to Novy Bydzov earlier. It gave me a good excuse to get some exercise. Plus, the country side is like nothing I have ever seen before.

I spent the afternoon doing pretty much nothing. I ate some lunch and then headed to my class in Chlumec, another class in which I have to take the bus. Getting on to the bus at around three in the afternoon and arriving in Chlumec about 3:30, when my class is scheduled to start. Well, I turned the corner from the street the bus stop is on and onto the school’s street. It was then I noticed it was just a single child sitting, waiting for me to start class. She looks as though she is nearly in tears. Something had happened during the day. Even as I asked her where the other students were, she nearly broke down. If figured I would have another cancelled class, a wasted bus trip, and wasted money spent on the bus. I was going to tell the assistant headmaster of the school that the class should be cancelled. However, when I walked in her office with this sad sight of a girl, she is only maybe eleven years old, the assistant headmaster told the little girl, the assistant headmaster doesn’t speak any English, to go up stairs with me and have class just the two of us.

Now what was I to do, I had a girl who was by herself, at a very beginner level of English, and about two wrong words from myself away from crying. I decided I could not pursue trying to have an English lesson with her. I know this is bad, but I wanted to try and cheer her up. I turned on the computer and told her she could do whatever she liked. We were up in the classroom for about an hour. I tried throughout the hour to ask her questions every once in a while, but every time I asked anything she looked up at me as though she was about to start crying and gave me a short, sad response. Finally, as I did not want to have to go through the explanation of why a girl came running out of my class crying, I ended the class. I told the girl to call her Mother to be picked and I told the assistant head master the class was over. I received no argument from anyone. And I was on a bus back to Novy Bydzov in a matter of minutes.

For the night I had made plans to hang out with one of the friends I have made since moving here. He is a Czech and speaks English fluently enough that we can carry on conversations pretty well. Plus, he and his friends had purchased turntables over the winter. We had been trying to plan a time for me to come over to show him a few tricks for a while, we finally had the chance. I went over to his parent’s place, where he lives while not attending school in Prague and keeps his turntables, at about 6:30. For about an hour and half we played around on his turntables. I showed him a few tricks for mixing records, but I was so out of practice I don’t think I taught him much. On top of my being out of practice, the only records he owns are techno-type music, which I have never played in my life. Regardless, it was fun.
Eventually, though, I told him I must leave. I wanted to stop by the school and try to call Andrea. I had talked with her earlier, but it was only for a short while and I wanted to speak with her again. I had no luck with that, but I did have luck in another way. When I walked into the teacher’s lounge at my school in Novy Bydzov I found a care package my parents had sent me, full of licorice, other snacks, and a few movies. I love the assorted snacks, but more than that, the movies were a particular bonus. I do spend a lot of time reading and have finished many great books, but it is nice to just lie in bed and watch a movie every once in a while, they were greatly appreciated.

I wanted to watch one of the movies that night, but it was too late and I had to be up early the next morning to teach my basketball class.