The Final Day of Teaching

Our final day of work—Friday, June 14^th—was a bit of a blur. Under the stipulations of the itinerary we had built for ourselves. Our plan was to skip lunch, leave school, catch a bus from Benešov to the nearby town of Senohraby (everything else afterward resting on the fact that this bus wouldn’t be late), and then catch a train to Bratislava. In Bratislava, we were to rush to the other side of town and make it to the only Tatra Bank we knew of that would be open later than 5:00. Once there, we were going to close our bank accounts, hurry back across town, find some food and then catch the last train to Budapest—where we had already booked a hostel for the night.

This was our plan. And it went mostly as expected, too.

Except, in Bratislava, the train to Budapest was 70 minutes late.

And then it was 140 minutes late.

Then 160…170…and finally 180.

And the Rains Began to Fall…

North of Bratislava, close to the Austrian border, is a town called Malacky (pronounced: Mah-lat-ski.) After our weekend in Brno, Lisa and I met up with several other teachers for a week of teaching in this location. With less than 20,000 people, it’s not a big place, but serves as a central hub for a number of surrounding villages.

Re-encounters: Nitra & Brno

When we arrived back in Europe for our second round of teaching in March, Nitra was the first town in which we taught (check out my post “Nice To Meet Ya, Nitra” to read about my first visit.) Back in March, they told us that some teachers would be returning for a workshop in May—as it turned out, we were to fulfill that duty.

Good Ol’ Olomouc

We left the faux-beach town of Senec and headed west; Lisa and I wanted to check out the city of Olomouc, Czech Republic. Olomouc has been on our list of places to see for quite some time now (we actually applied to some jobs there back in the day, if my memory serves me correctly.)

As we travel, we constantly run across the names of certain hostels—the places that are accepted as being some of the hippest, most enjoyable hostels for backpackers. Names that quickly come to mind in that list are the Ginger Monkey in Ždiar, Hostel Blues in Bratislava, The Loft in Budapest, Hostel ELF in Prague, and countless others. In Olomouc, there is a hostel known as Poet’s Corner that has a large amount of credibility within the backpacking subculture—it’s a name you hear as often as any of the other big ones out there.

So, needless to say, we made a reservation.

It’s Sometimes Sunny in Czech Republic

After our trip to Ukraine, it was time to hit the schools again. I guess that is why I’m here. Honestly, the week off was nice, but when you’re in these minor towns time starts to drag a little bit without something to do. Bank accounts start to drag, too. More so because of the latter reason, I was definitely ready to get back in the classroom.

This past week was the first time that Lisa and I were split up. She hung around Košice and did some private lessons and lesson planning while I went to Jaromer, Czech Republic (pronounced: Yar-oh-mee-esh) with our new comrade, Kevin. He’s an Irish guy who also works for our company. His new obsession is the song “Gangnam Style”—I haven’t been home so I’m not sure if this is a European thing or a worldwide phenomenon. If it isn’t yet, it will be soon. Show your friends the music video now so that they will think you’re ahead of the musical loop when it gets popular. It’s probably already famous, though. I know how Yanks love their Korean pop…

Mushrooms & Communism

This past week, we were teaching in a small village called Naĉeradec (pronounced: Nuh-chair-uh-ditz.) It’s a little place that is about two hours south of Prague by bus. There are approximately 600 people that live there and, surprisingly, it is one of the bigger villages in the area. It has a proper town square, a couple little grocery stores, a church (the original foundation of the building is from the 12^th century) & even a pub. Still—it’s very tiny, though. As far as teaching goes, the students here didn’t speak as good of English for two reasons: they were slightly younger than the students we usually teach and their English teachers don’t actually speak that good of English. So, we had to work a little bit harder to get any sort of worthwhile response from them for five straight days. But that will happen, I guess. Their school lunches were more than adequate, at least.