Gettin' Crazy

This weekend was one of my most fun this year and I honestly didn't even really do anything. I basically spent the weekend acting like I was in university again. (Yes, I say things like university and flat now. Don't judge me.)


Friday I only had one class but I spent the afternoon being responsible and getting my time sheets and things in order so that I can turn them all in this week. I love that February has gone by so quickly! It's scary how quickly time flies when you're living abroad though.

Coffee Makes My World Go Round.

Seriously.


I finally bought a coffee thermos so I can take coffee with me in the morning. Let me tell you, even just by the time I'm standing on the metro (not even a five minute walk from my flat) taking the four stops to school, my day is going infinitely better than it was a week ago, especially on the three days per week I have class starting between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. (7:15 on Tuesday, 7 on Wednesday and 7:30 on Thursday, yuck). 

Two Truths and a Lie

So every time I start a new class I try to make them feel comfortable by telling them a few random things about me. Sure I could tell them how old I am, how long I've been teaching and why I live in Prague, but the idea is to remind them that I'm human too. (Setting the bar a little low is good. It means you impress them pretty quickly.)


So most of my classes, I play Two Truths and a Lie for the first game. Yes, I first played this as a drinking game. (Note for teachers, nearly every drinking game you've ever played can be a teaching tool. Simply replace the 'Drink alcohol' consequence with something appropriately related to your subject e.g. ask a question using present perfect tense, do a math problem, tell me the theory of relativity, etc.)

Signing Blindly

One thing that still kind of makes me uneasy about living abroad is signing things. Honestly, anything of a legal nature makes me nervous but especially when I'm abroad. Nine times out of ten, there's no English version of the paperwork you're signing because for it to the legally binding here, it has to be in Czech.


It's one of those situations where you have to hope like hell that the person behind the counter isn't going to screw you over, is just doing their job, treating you like any Czech person that walks through the door and hasn't left out any important information when telling you, "Sign these documents" and giving you a basic rundown of what they say.

Nemluvím česky... But I do sing karaoke.

So I'm really glad that my new friends taught me how to say, "I don't speak Czech," last week because I've definitely used it like 900 thousand (yeah...) times this week. I guess I'm starting to look like I feel comfortable enough for people to mistake me as Czech. 


Funny how disappointed people look when I open my mouth and start speaking. 

But what makes me uncomfortable is my karaoke video this month. If you'll remember last month's karaoke blog ring edition was themed "fuck." Well as a tribute to the only holiday anyone seems to give a crap about in February, my mom's birthday.


Wait, no, that's not right... Oh Valentine's Day. Right. 


Anyway, we went with Love or Anti-Love songs. (All the Single Ladies?)


However, I am super excited to post Lorraine's karaoke video (not Roxanne's... whoops). She's amazing and I really loved her video last month. When I found out I get to host her this month I felt like I hit the jackpot.


Then I saw her video and saw she's singing Rilo Kiley's "Breaking Up." Uhm, I <3 Rilo Kiley. Also, I'm glad I'm not posting some super lovey dovey song because I'm seriously not feeling it. However, I did get a near marriage proposal this week so we'll see how things go. But back to Lorraine. She's amazing. Watch her video. Visit her blog and tell her how awesome she is. 


Give the lady some love for her anti-love song. 







You can go hunt for my video over at Matt's blog. I say hunt because I kind of secretly hope it's difficult to find. I definitely chose out of my range, but I looooooove the song I chose so don't hate.


If you're interested in seeing anyone else's video (because I know this is exactly what you look forward to each month) check out Sara's blog for the list.

Sight-seeing and Other Busy-ness

So about a million things have happened in the last week and I can't even begin to talk about them all so I'll go through the major highlights.


Thursday was Lunar New Year (and a Vietnamese girl that some of my friends know (who is now my friend, I love how that works) made us dinner. It was deeeelicious. I miss Asian food so much.


Today I was trying to explain to one of my students what the Chinese version of a dumpling is because here dumplings are basically bread or potato bread of some sort. It's totally different though also delicious and I love them as much as I love the Chinese dumplings.


I think I might be addicted to food. But I digress.

Let's Get Opinionated

The great thing about living abroad and being American is that I still have the option to tell Congress what I think and to exercise my voting rights, etc.


The great thing about having a blog is that I can tell other people (people I don't even know) what I think and why. (Even better, they can tell me if they agree or not. Sometimes it doesn't take much to start an intelligent dialogue. Though please be respectful.)


Now I know as a journalism major (journalist?) and someone who might like to get into journalism again one day, it might not be the wisest of ideas to go airing my opinions on the Internets. But I'm pretty sure I crossed that line awhile back. Maybe I'll just have to become an op-ed writer or columnist or something.


Sorry, sometimes I get a little amped up but I will move on to my point now.