Work Before Play

I have no time in the mornings to record my dreams. I still dream, but I lose them somewhere along my walk to class, down the steepest pedestrian walkway I could imagine. I feel no sense of loss however, because Prague is a town where dreams have become real: solid, monumental, these castles and cathedrals are built with stone and the stones are made of dreams.

I don’t exaggerate when I say I have never worked this hard in my life. TEFL Worldwide is essentially a solid month of finals week. I attend class 40 hours a week and spend my evenings on assignments. In college, I at least had a job that let my mind take a backseat for a few hours. Here, those hours are spent in the classroom. And I must confess I am grateful. I have learned more than I thought possible. The work pays off. And though everyone is at their edge—such a sustained push tests our emotional stability, our mental endurance, right down to our very heart of courage—everyone also seems to be pulling this off, so we push through one more day. Can I handle two more weeks of this? Well, I’ve already handled two weeks of it, and I suppose I can do it again.

The teachers are fantastic. I’ve taken some education classes before, and my profit on it was a lot of theory and developmental psychology. The teachers at TEFL Worldwide clearly know what we need and how to get it to us. This is my second week of classes, and I have already prepared and presented three full lessons. I am learning by doing, and they are giving me all the tools I need.

Play, play! cries my heart; write about the play! Yes, there is indeed no life without play, and I am most definitely alive in Prague. On Monday, I had to prepare a lesson for the next day: it was a race against the clock. That night, a free jazz concert would play in Old Town Square. But I couldn’t go to the concert if I didn’t complete my lesson plan. I sat at the park next to the metro and feverishly invented a lesson. I finished at 7:45 pm. I jumped on the metro, and by 8:15 pm I was standing in Old Town Square in the most gorgeous concert venue listening to Latin jazz. People were dancing, drinking Pilsner, and fulfilling the promise of life.

Even the beer: you figure at a concert, the beer stands are bound to rip you off, and do it with beer flavored water. But in Prague, the beer stands serve Pilsner Urquell, which is now at least my second favorite beer. Ok, you think, so maybe you don’t get watered down, sorority party beer, but it must be expensive. Not true. Even though it was twice the price of a beer in a regular bar, it still only came to $2.50 for a huge glass of great beer.