A Taste of Spring

After digging deep and planning my lessons for the week, I was looking forward to a leisurely Thursday of studying at a cafe, reading, and exploring. That plan was scrapped on Tuesday, when a visit to Caledonian landed me back-to-back subbing gigs. I don't need the extra hours, but the course manager insisted, stopping just short of forcing the course sheets into my folders. I came home to an email from a private student of mine (not through Caledonian) requesting a lesson Thursday afternoon. That turned my one-class day into a four-class day, plus working with Jan at the bar (it's officially a routine) on his social English. Moreover, this meant I spent a good few hours after dinner scrambling to assemble lesson plans for these surprise classes.

Wednesday morning I arrived to work at the Proctor & Gamble plant, went through the usual security routing, and made my way across the campus to the building that houses my classroom. Despite the morning snow, the door to the building was wide open. I found this odd until I was hit with a nauseating blast of sulfur. Now, this is only guesswork, but I think that a large container of sulfur was overturned in the lab on my floor. My evidence: the egregious smell, and the small army of workers in full decontamination coats running in and out of the building. One of them, a student of mine, plucked off his mask long enough to tell me that the building was safe to enter. Right.

I braved the stench, like spent fireworks and the bathroom at White Castle, up to my room where, thankfully, the smell hadn't enveloped. That's not to say it wasn't present, but it wasn't overpowering. This was a mixed blessing, becuase while I didn't have to bury my nose in a cloth, my roomed smelled of flatulence as each of my students entered and gave me a knowing look of raised eyebrows. However, by lunchtime, my room smelled like the rest of the building. Headache, thy name is a room filled with sulfur.

In response to this, I was expecting a system of fans to turn on (at least). I was surprised when the height of technology in this response was propping all of the windows and doors open in the building, many of the props being collapsed cardboard boxes. This in turn made my room temperature hover somewhere around 48 degrees. By the time I left, I was cold, stinky, and nursing one hell of a headache.

I woke up early Thursday to load up on coffee and prepare for what I was predicting would be a day to give Wednesday a run for the money. My class with Jan went smoothly. From there, I trammed it over to Prague 5 for the subs. The pair of subs turned out to be a one-on-one, which went well, and a CA. (CA, the two most wonderful letters in this job, stand for Cancelled on Arrival, which means we don't need to teach, but we get paid. The only catch is that we usually need to remain at the classroom for 45 minutes in order to make sure nobody's going to show.) So, after the CA, I headed to Caledonian to inform them and grab a quick lunch. This gave me an hour and a half to head home, drop off some of the textbooks I'd been shlepping around, and try to enjoy the day.

I stepped out of Caledonian into one of those "pinch me, I'm in Prague!" afternoons. The sun was out. It was in the high forties. The passages between Mustek and Starometska Namesti weren't clogged with tourists. Out on the square a man was playing saxophone while some of the locals were shrugging off any suggestion of winter and were basking in the sun on their lunch breaks. I even got to spend a few minutes with Lindsey.

My private lesson lasted for nearly an extra hour, as we practiced the use and nonuse of articles. There are numerous rules governing this in English, and there's even more exceptions that rules.

After the lesson, I had time of a mad run (9 miles at 6:30 a mile) some grub, and I was off to meet Jan. Alex joined us this time, and Lindsey, when she'd finished her class, came and had a drink with us as well. Our walk back to the metro was a nice cap to a day that made up for the week.