Hello, hello, heloo?

Hello? I am coming home, soon. August 30th, that is. Call me! 203 221 1523

Gah!

Um, what's a blog? I'm such a loser.

So em, I don't really have anything to report. But here's some stuff some students have said this past month:

Me, to student: "How was your weekend?"
Student, pointing to self: "I?"

Student, to me, about boyfriend's bad behavior. "He really crossed the border. He went abroad."

Student, to friend, showing her his spreadsheets at work, "Not bad for a white guy."

Student, drawing a stick figure of a (gypsy) man on a piece of paper, running in a circle aroudn what looks like a giant fog horn but is actuallya generator of some kind. "This man," pointing to stick figure, "YOu cannot educate him." Circling hand gesture. "We have electricity problem in Prague. He runs around this generator to..." power it? "To power it". This was his half-joking solution to the "gypsy problem" in Prague. All said with a cheeky grin. Egads, ha ha, shudder shudder. Diabolical Czech humor...

Oh, students. YOu say the darnedest things.

Prague Spring

Its balmy here in good old Praha. It was just like this back in 86, says my student... right after the nuclear reactor exploded in Chernobyl. Everyone was sunning themselves outside, where a fine nuclear dust had covered everything and made it warm...

I was wearing sandals! and shorts! the other day, thinking how glorious it all was (75, cloudless), when I got a message from the boyfriend type: "me suffering. weather appalling." His delicate English constitution wilts in "the heat". An exceptionally fine and strange human being, that one.

Prague, New York, Prague, New York

Berlin?

scribbling or, what is wrong with me?

I was sitting here in the bookshop today feeling grim, listening to Cat Power, and scribbling gothic teenage angst things like "I want out. This despair is a luxury" on the back of a piece of paper, you know, and these Israeli girls came in asking for recommendations and where was good to eat? I didn't know but turned the paper over and started scribbling down names of cafes and clubs I've never been to, meanwhile the little one is copying information out of one of the guidebooks, and then I give the piece of paper to the bigger one and she turns it round and says eh, did you want this? and so I just take it and scribble it out and give it back to her. And then I think bloody Israelis, they want something but don't want to pay. Oh god, I actually think this. Maybe I should take this post down.

Last night I was having a drink with my friend Helen at Shakespeare's, the bar/cafe wing of the bookstore where I work, and this older fellow came up and asked us if we were American. Ye, we said. So he starts asking us about US geography, and what are the states in the middle here, near the lakes? I sort of just started listing things I knew to be in that area--Wisconsin, Michigan, etc--but I didn't really know what I was talking about. Neither did Helen. So then his other friend walks up, and we start talking about Montana. This other fellow says he went there, and there was lots of speed there and oh! it was a great time. And then so he says his band is playing tomorrow night and do we want to come? So what is this band anyway? Well, it turns out it is Plastic People of the Universe. This is a big deal apparently! They're something of a legend, involved in Charter 77 and all this anti-communist stuff.

Then, I let my class go almost 15 minutes early this morning. God, I'm a lout. But I"m really beginning to enjoy this place.

sloth

Oh my god, I am a retard. I couldn't even remember the password to my blogger account. Oh! the rusty wheels of a brain churning, slowly, slowly.

So. I still live here in the CZR. Its grim and gay by turns, even as it seems everyone is jumping ship. The latest victim: my lunatic but lovely Aussie roommate Rowan, who plans to head to Romania and Morocco (geographical links notwithstanding) and then home "to commit suicide," because its cheaper than sending the body back. This IS the kind of thing that seems funny after so many months in this place. Humor here is gruesome.

I am considering taking up smoking. Its disgusting and glamorous. I need more props to suspend me!

Gah! Everything is good, really. I don't even hate teaching that much (christ on a cross, I think I enjoyed two of the lessons I had yesterday, even as the third was a new nightmare manufactured in some sinister TEFL factory somewhere). The weather here is puzzlingly good. My brother is coming to visit in a week's time. Paris for the weekend. La di da, etc.

Ok, little darlings. The cogs have screeched to a halt. Don't be strangers (I think that means you, Heather).

Read this

the slavery of teaching english
Oh god, its morbidly funny, and painfully true. Well, what do I know, really. I can't even figure out how to make this a link.