On Czech and Moving

Dear Readers,

I recently got off of the bus to go to work and the bus driver spoke to me. I don't know what he told me, so I had to make the the monologue up in my head.

"Please help me, I'm frightened of oranges."
"Last night I dreamt the color blue was attacking me."
"I find skeleton keys rather offensive."

Pretending to understand is quite useful, and often as long as you don't open your mouth or at least execute a well pronounced greeting or acknowledgement, the illusion of appearing to be a native speaker, or at least someone well versed in the Slavic tongue, is carried out perfectly or nearly so.

A friend of mine and I both decided to get a tea at 10.30 in the pm, but open entering a building with a blazing neon "Open" (in English) sign, we were informed the building was in fact closed. A few buildings down we saw a lit up pub. Thus deciding that my tea would have to be slightly colder and slightly more alcoholic than I originally had in mind, I suggested we proceed inwards and onwards.

Once in, the bartender came to us and let off a string of Czech that neither of us comprehended. Taking my best guess I assumed he probably said they were going to close soon, so I simply made as if I were weighing what he just said and then asked for a beer. Since his reaction gave no indication that I had misfired and that he had something along the lines of "Jumping Jesus, how many people will we have to turn away at this late hour? Can't they read the sign?" he simply asked my friend if she wanted one too.

Czech is by far the most difficult language I have ever studied in my life.

I say this with a caveat though: Kaqchikel and Coptic are probably more difficult, but I never got very in-depth with either of those.

Made most difficult is that it's hard to find people to speak with. This might seems strange, and it rather is actually, but often people just want to speak English and it's easy to lose sight of why I came here. Nevertheless, I've started reading "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown in Czech. I do so by lugging around both the Czech and English versions of the book and reading them side-by-side. I chose this book because I like the story and am already familiar with it, the language isn't too difficult (unlike reading an older or classical piece of literature). I've decided that the Czech grammar is too difficult to take on by itself. I need more context and I need to get used to the language, to wade into it instead of just trying to memorize it. If it goes well, I expect I'll be using this for other languages.

Teaching is getting better and better. I make mistakes all the time, but it's helping me get better for following classes, especially when I recycle lessons, which I am doing more and more of since a) I get better at teaching the material and b) there's not always time to prepare fresh material. Teaching is not nearly as scary as I thought it would be, but I need to get private students and I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing that. My living expenses are few, but they are very real.

And finally, I moved flats. I am now in the city instead of just looking at it from a window far, far away. We'll see how I'll adjust, but so far so good. One thing that surprised me is there are far more tourists here where I live now than where I lived out yonder in the cut. It should have come as null surprise, but for some oddball reason I didn't even think about it.

The flat doesn't have an oven which really made me hesitate. I'm not much of a baker, but ovens do help with the cooking I do, such as a nice dead chicken or something like that. But we'll see how I manage. It might be the universe's way of weening me off of frozen pizzas that I so enjoy.

Anyway, no special or profound message tonight. Just an update.

Kindly,
Tristan Foy