Since nothing of any significance is happening in the current news cycle and I am falling asleep on my keyboard, I am going to , just this once, write a filler blog and just tell you about my day.
near Bratři Synku
I like Mondays, basically, because I love my job and look forward to it, most of the time. Weekends are fun, too. I enjoy mornings and evenings. Afternoons can be pretty good too, sometimes.
Monday is my crazy day, though, as far as my schedule goes. Just 4 classes, but they are scattered all over town. Normally, I see my son to school and then hustle back to Prague 8 for an 8 o’clock lesson, but I’d forgotten to renew my open card on the weekend. Helena did it on the internet this morning, but the little verifying machine at the Metro entrance didn’t have it in the system yet, so i sent Sam off to school by himself, picked up the Metro paper for the Sudoku puzzle, and ambled over to the park to sit down on a bench and kill time before my class. The benches were all still covered with dew so I just wandered around and took note of the opening buds, we have arrived at the time of year when every day is different than the day before and the application of a keen eye will be rewarded with an inside glance at the universal cycle of life.
That class is in a nice office, I get coffee, complimentary pens and notebooks, an hour of idle conversation with a seriously attractive opposite sex person, and I’m on my way. I go straight from there to the Metro and I get popped out at Stodulky, right about 9:35. We’ve never been able to be exact about when that lesson is supposed to start and stop. It’s a married couple, one of them picks me up at the station and drives me to their office, where we have 3 hours of non-stop, rapid fire conversation, first one of them, then the other, they are a power couple, ambitious and eager students of the language. Which can make things difficult.
But then comes the frantic part. I have to be at Smíchovské Nádraží by 1:10, and she’s not keen to end the lesson before 12:45, at which point we head out and she drives me (she’s a pretty fast driver) back to Stoned dull key where I run down the stairs, ride the 7 stops to Smirkoffski, run up the stairs, up two escalators, out the door and down the street and, if I’m lucky, I make the bus with a couple of minutes to spare. Panting and sweating, but I’m there. Then it’s a 16 minute bus ride. A couple of minutes in, it’s rather scenic, crossing the river, wide and unsplit here in the south of the city, but mostly it’s not. There was a ticket inspector on the bus so I felt pretty darned smug with my new open card. Then I change to another bus, there’s actually enough time to grab a sandwich (this is lunch), then ride the 3 stops to my next lesson, which is at a school. 8th and 9th graders. One girl who doesn’t want to talk, one girl who won’t shut up, and the rest of the class somewhere along that continuum. They’re a good bunch of kids, but more interested in fooling around than learning English. Fair enough.
From there, it’s a short bus ride to Chodov and I’m back on the Metro. I get off at Vyšehrad, exit on the non-tourist side and I have a beautiful 20 minute walk from there to my next lesson, near Naměsti Bratři Synku. From 4 to 5, I teach 3 six year old girls, who frequently interrupt the lessons to hide behind the couch or run into the bedroom and hide. If I go in after them, I get pelted with plush toys.
That’s it. Then I’m done. By the time I get home, about 45 minutes later, I am beat, and it’s not from the teaching so much as the travel time.
The best thing about Mondays, though, is this: Monday is my hump day. Wednesdays can be a bit complex but, really, it’s all smooth sailing from here.
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