Well, first of all, it snowed last night and it's still snowing right now! (That's actually a reason why I am writing, because I took a picture from my bedroom window and wanted to share it immediately). And since we're talking about current events, I should also mention that the president of Czech Republic, who was the last president of Czechoslovakia, just died. His funeral procession was just shown live on the news..loads of people following a black car through the streets of Prague. (no snow there this morning)Back to busy and distracted... for the last 4 weeks I've been teaching week-long intensive courses for groups of about twelve 9-10 year olds. It was challenging..some groups were more challenging than others. The biggest difficulty was that we were trying to organize a performance for their parents, but the kids didn't speak a lot of English, and I don't really speak Slovak. Basically, by the end of the week, they knew an array of circus nouns, some present continuous verbs, can/can't, has got/hasn't got, animal body part vocabulary, and words to show exclamation, like "Wow!" "Fantastic!" "Amazing!" At times I wondered, "Who is this course supposed to be intensive for? Me or them?" Some of the kids insisted on saying everything to me first in Slovak before piecing it together in broken English and gestures and pictures. It was a little stressful for me because I didn't know if they were ever trying to communicate something important to me that I wouldn't be able to understand in Slovak, such as, "I forgot my lunch, can I call my mom?" or "My appendix is about to burst," or if they were just asking questions that I was about to answer anyway. Anyway, we made it through the month with relatively few tears :)
As for being distracted... There's no other way to say it than just plainly: I have a boyfriend now! Of course there are details about how we met and why we like each other and how we came to this stage in our relationship... and those details aren't secret, but I feel like a public blog isn't the place to publish them. If you're dying to know, send me an email or ask my mom ;)
But the general details: his name is Erik, he's Slovak, but he speaks extremely fluent British English. He's a Christian, he plays guitar, he's a Chef, he likes mountains, and loves Slovakia... Not to sound unromantic or anything, but in addition to
The pictures above... The top one is of course the snow outside my window. The center and bottom ones are from Thanksgiving weekend.. Those are my very first pumpkin pies from scratch (puree from a pumpkin, not from a can), they turned out pretty well considering how much I modified the recipe. The bottom picture is of Erik, Heather, Georgina, and me. Heather is the tall one- she's our good (and enduring and patient ;) ) friend who I think I've mentioned before. Georgina is the one with green hair.
