week 2.5

So I don't even know where to pick up.

The last few weeks have felt like months. This one included.

I made it through my first week of classes. Three more to go. They weren't kidding when they said it was intensive. I've already taught for two 15 minute sessions and one 45 minute session. I've got two 45 minute sessions every week until it's over. School is fascinating. Teaching language is both a science and an extremely delicate art. There's a lot more psychology and theater involved than i thought. I've got two excellent teachers/trainers, one of whom co-founded the school. His name is Terry and I do a mean impression of him. Watching him teach us is like taking that first bite of some good tuna tataki or having a really good kiss (i'm not trying to sexualize him, he's just THAT good at teaching).

My classmates are a fascinating bunch. Anyone who's willing to drop everything and move to a foreign country has got to have at least one good story to tell. My roommate is a Bostonian basketball player named Ray who has a penchant for electronic music and can drink almost anyone I know under the table. He and I have come to the agreement that our apartment used to belong to an old lady who recently passed away. There's a china cabinet taking up an entire wall in my bedroom. I also forgot to tell you that you have to hold the knob down to keep the oven on, so when i want the bread on my egg and cheese sandwiches to be toasted, the whole thing turns into a fairly amusing acrobatic act. I've been doing pilates almost every day and i can almost touch my toes without bending my knees. i'm very excited about this fact.

At nights, I've been meeting fairly regularly at a teahouse with a Czech friend that I've made named Josef. He responded to an ad I posted on craigslist about a czech/english language swap. He speaks English very well, but he's out of practice and has forgotten a lot, so I'm providing him with some good English conversation and he's teaching me Czech. He speaks Czech, Russian, Polish, French, English, and some Chinese and Spanish and works as a yoga instructor/tour guide all over Europe. Our last lesson wasn't much of a lesson, but he invited me over to his awesome apartment. he's aparrently an amateur photographer and he showed me a bunch of beautiful pictures he's taken of prague and other wonderful european sights. His girlfriend came over and we drank fancy Thai tea and chatted about random stuff. They're both very kind people. At our next meeting we're going to watch Easy Rider and I'm going help him out with the parts he doesn't understand. He's very excited about it. Every time he brings up the movie he tries to explain to me what he loves about it and talks about a freedom that doesn't exist anymore and eventually gazes off into the distance with a smile on his face.

Friday night I dragged some of my classmates out to see My Name Is Ann, who are the only czech band that i know of that I really take a liking to. They played in the basement of the Chapeau Rouge, which ended up feeling like some bizarre combination of Spellcaster Lodge and castle greyskull. The music was great, though of course being the stickler I am, I spent half of it dancing and half of it thinking about all of the things that could've been done better. I also found that the bathroom waiting area is about the easiest place to buy drugs in the world. Not that I'm looking, but i guess it's nice to be in-the-know. I got a little sad at one point in the night and wandered away from my friends/the bar and took a nice refreshing walk around the area (which is the heart of the inspiring Stare Mesto) before drunkenly hopping onto Tram 54, which is a godsend. It was like a magical fairy who picked me up from the heart of the city and dropped me off at my doorstep. I passed out for the entirety of the 45 minute ride and only woke up a stop before mine. Funny how the fates shine so brightly sometimes.

Saturday night I dragged almost the whole class out to this place called "the pub" where you sit at a table with 4 taps in the middle, so everyone can pour their own drinks. They keep a tally of all of the drinks (a half a liter counting as a drink) and you compete with other tables at the bar, and other tables at other bars in the franchise, which are scattered all over central Europe. We did our best to compete, but being in one of the beer capitals of the world, we were under-equipped merely by the virtue of our being American. The 54 took me home that night, too.

I'm finally starting to figure out what it is about this place that moves me so much. Part of it is what it has in common with New Orleans, my eternal home (though i don't know when i'll ever return and currently have no desire to do so beyond to see those who i love and to eat crawfish again). It's a place where higher art meets the average guy. For years under communism the artists, poets, writers, musicians, and intellectuals in general were forced into jobs as street sweepers, barrel rollers, trash compactors, etc. in order to keep them out of positions of influence at all costs. This brought about a bizarre connection between the intellectual and working class, which i feel like is an important aspect in the heart of new orleans. i'm a big fan of the idea that the greatest thinkers and most creative people in a zeitgeist should be searched out in dive bars. Prague and New Orleans are the greatest examples of this that i can think of. The defining difference being that New Orleans as a city is stuck in its past (though it is indeed a beautiful, beautiful past) to such an extent that it will only stifle its future unless something changes drastically. Prague on the other hand, though it has an amazingly deep pride in its rich and storied history (far beyond anything i ever saw in New Orleans), is extremely forward thinking, both politically and artistically. They've got the presidency of the EU right now and they fund the arts more than any place in america ever has. It doesn't hurt that all you ever have to do around here to lift your spirits is take a walk around town. There's just so much beauty here.

Going to an expat Obama inauguration party at some restaurant right off Vaclavske Namesti tomorrow night. Feel sorry for those of you back home who will be at work during the speech and not drinking with friends. I'll dedicate a drink to all of y'all back home.

Gonna go take a midnight walk around the neighborhood right now to try to find this massive mural painted in remembrance of Bohumil Hrabal, my favorite author, who apparently lived in the same area of this internet cafe/bar I'm at right now. Wow. I mean really, fucking wow.

hope everyone is doing well and has love filling their lives.

-k