A sugarplum dream

The holiday season is in full swing here in Prague. The city is completely decked out for the holidays and looks like a sugarplum dream. The "vanoce trhy" (Czech Christmas markets) are up in Wenceslas Square, Old Town Square and Andel. Vendors are hawking ornaments, decorated gingerbread (which is incredible), crafts, toys, hot wine and roasted chestnuts. I finally get to see the legendary holiday morsels really DO exist and weren't just made up for the carol. It'd be nice to say that Europeans are somehow less commercial about the holiday than Americans, but sadly, that's not true.

As is the case in many European cities, St. Nicholas gets his own special day here, instead of being carelessly drafted into the Christmas holiday like in the U.S. That's next Tuesday evening.

Speaking of sugarplums, the first meeting of my gay Prague ex-pats' group is this coming Friday evening. So, I've gotten about 5 responses -- guys from the U.S., Spain, Britian and the Czech Republic! We'll see how it goes!

In the meantime, enjoy some photos:

Old Town Square:




And Vysehrad:

And then there were none...

So as of today, I am officially one of two Americans remaining from Oxford TEFL's September/October class in the Czech Republic. I was under the impression that most foreigners came over here for the same reason: get certified to teach English, and then live abroad for an indefinite amount of time. Apparently, that's not everyone's agenda...some people just do the program and then go home. Not that one option is better or worse than the other, but it just surprises me that people would cough up almost two grand for a certificate that is recognized the world over and then opt to not even try to get anything out of it. Several classmates talked about how they couldn't bear to be away from their families, friends and significant others and what not. One guy even said that he felt that being so far away was "completely selfish."

I beg to differ. Certainly, being 3000 miles away from home during the holidays isn't going to be easy, but then again, who wants 'easy'? 'Easy' doesn't make you learn, it doesn't make you think. I have to thank the Powers that Be to finally find myself in a situation that makes me think.

Speaking of holidays, Thanksgiving turned out to be a lot of fun. We actually had two celebrations instead of just one...my friend Mark hosted dinner at his flat on Friday night, and then Beth and her friends organized a second dinner on Saturday at Ian's flat. While some of the basics were there (turkey and stuffing, natch), both meals had a distinct European flair. Kurt made a Serbian potato casserole, and Scott made an Italian dish involving steak stuffed with ricotta. The Saturday dinner involved a few more of the traditional holiday dishes: mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and salad, but due to the lack of American ingredients, we often had to find Czech substitutions that made the final products a bit more 'unique,' for lack of a better word. I was able to justify inhaling everything in sight by making note of the fact that I wasn't able to eat anything for almost an entire week while I was sick. Noticeably absent from Feedbag Weekend, part 1 and 2: no pumpkin pie (pumpkins are quite exotic over here) or traditional desserts! We had to make do with some chocolate wafers.

A word to the wise: if you decide to purge yourself all day prior to a Thanksgiving meal, don't attempt to start drinking without ingesting at least a little bit of food first. At Feedbag part 2, I wound up passing out BEFORE the meal was served. Lots of photos were taken. Egad.

On a slightly irritating note: all of the ex-pats here find my musical tastes and admiration for Madonna a source of great comedy. I honestly wish it didn't get brought up every time, but despite my best efforts, somehow it always gets mentioned (typically in the same sentence as "crap" or other choice words). Even Death Cab for Cutie is considered a sell-out. Apparently, an ex-pat's soundtrack should consist only of Bob Dylan and other shoe-gazer moody rock poet types from decades past. Sigh! We've found some common grounds (Ben Folds, Manu Chou, Patti Griffin for example) but they are few and far between.

Pictures of Kutna Hora

Below are some photos of my ventures to Kutna Hora with Erica, Mark and Dara. Apparently, a Czech monk with an apparently twisted sense of interior decorating found a new use for the remains of Black Plague victims. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a church in Kutna Hora was constructed, with its sanctuary created entirely out of skeletons. Definitely appeals to my fascination with the macabre...

Eerie doppelganger

A glimpse of one's fate in waiting for the perfect man...



You must ignore the super-gay, limp-wristed pose I'm making in this photo -- everyone told me I resemembled the painting on the wall of this pub so I decided to strike the same pose to show the resemblence.

Happy Madonna Day!

Happy Madonna Day everyone!

Today is the release of "Confessions on a Dancefloor," the album that is apparently going to remove Mrs. Ritchie from the trappings of her Kabballah soap box, childrens' libraries and affected accents of late to bring her right back where she belongs...grooving and gyrating under the mirrorball with all the boys!

Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen. Of course I will be purchasing this disc in just a few short moments; I hope you didn't think that being overseas was going to stop me from doing so. As you all know, you can't take my opinion on said matters with any shred of seriousness. She could release an album of her reading aloud from the Yellow Pages while a polka band accompanies her in the background and I'd STILL be first in line to purchase it (and probably purchasing a pair of lederhosen on the way home so that I could choreograph dances to it in my living room).

Work -- and 20Something Prague (?)

So this blog is well overdue for an update, but I wanted to make sure I had news to report before I took the time to write something.

As of last week, I am now officially employed. I am working not one, not two, but three part-time jobs here in Prague! I work for: Active Languages, Lexis Language Agency and Ulyrch Language Studio. I'm starting up with 6 English classes this week. All are one-on-one, like private lessons. I am hoping I get some groups, though, since I prefer teaching small groups. Here in Prague, they have a lot of English language agencies where adults can get tutored in English and what not. I am teaching at 3 of the agencies and I have to travel out to different offices to teach employees of different companies. Most are at the upper-intermediate level, although I do have one pre-intermediate student.

Most of my classes will involve intricacies of the English language, such as refining grammar and new vocabulary and what not. They will hopefully give me more classes next week or later. But for now, I am content that this is a decent start. One of my students is a heart surgeon, so he wants to know a lot of English medical terminology. I'll be starting with him next Monday. To celebrate my gainful employment, I bought myself a new winter jacket finally :-)

For now, I have a good deal of downtime before I add more classes to my schedule; it's a bit nerve-wracking trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself. Now that I am working, it's become difficult to meet new people other than my Czech students. My TEFL group, most of which I hung out with for the past month, has kind of disbanded, with some of my classmates going to Asia and elsewhere in Europe. So I had this crazy idea to start a gay/lesbian/bisexual/questioning social club, a Prague version of 20Something in New York, if you will. Of course, it would be a lot more grassroots, a lot less structured than 20Something is, since I don't have the motivation to organize formal meetings with topics and the like - it'll be like, "Oh, you're gay/lesbian and an ex-pat, come out with us to Friends [a Czech gay pub not far from my school] tomorrow night!"

We'll see what happens. But I've decided I need to meet some people to obsess about "Confessions on a Dancefloor" with, and who might want to check out the "Sound of Music" tour in Salzburg with me sometime!