Wind it up for another weekend

It's Friday, and as of 10:30 today I was finished with my teaching obligations. My Friday class, at the Komercni Banka headquarters, is usually a class of two, however one of my students was out of town for the day. That cleared the way for some interesting conversation about the headlining piece of news in the Czech Republic. Controversial artist David Cerny has struck again, this time at the EU HQ in Brussels. For those of you who don't want to read more, here's a quick summary: Cerny was hired by the EU along with 27 other artists to create a sculpture for their building in Brussels. The artists turned out to be made-up by Cerny, who created a sculpture depicting (often hilariously negative) stereotypes of the 27 EU nations. For instance, Romania is depicted as Dracula's castle and Sweden is in the form of an Ikea box.

Now, Cerny has made a name for himself with bizarre and humorous sculptures around Prague. He was the brain behind the alien infants crawling over the TV Tower, Jesus on the still rings, Wenceslas riding an upside-down horse, and my personal favorite, the peeing fountain , called simply "Piss", where you can text messages to be peed into the pool. He has also drawn criticism for breaking into the national gallery here and leaving a dump on the floor to protest the standards of the curators. So my point for those offended, particularly the brain trust that hired him, is what did you expect?

Personally, I find the whole thing pretty funny, as did my student. However, that goes to show you that many countries are not quite ready to laugh at themselves. This led to a discussion of countries that are willing to mock themselves. America is certainly not one of those, and neither, as my student pointed out, is Russia. His theory was that the larger the country, the less humor it has about itself. Not sure if I entirely buy that, but the Czechs and Irish seem pretty open to satirizing themselves, so he could be onto something there.

After an hour and a half of self-deprecating humor and stereotype jokes, I was in a pretty good mood heading home. I had the entire weekend ahead of me. Except not really. Not at all.

To understand, it's important to rewind to last night, when I met my student, Jan, at a restaurant to help him with his social English. As an "intermediate" learner, Jan's speaking skills are well above anyone else at that level, although he still needs quite a lot of practice. I helped his pronunciation, sentence construction, and we built up his vocabulary for a good three hours over more than one beer. Jan is currently the sales manager for Ratiopharm and reports to work in Prague during the week. Unfortunately, he is doing Ph.D work in medical policy in Brno and his wife lives in Brno as well. Thus he lives in a hotel Monday through Friday and then commutes home to spend time with his wife, write his thesis, and take his exams. His doctoral work seems pretty interesting, as he is working to establish a better model for geriatric treatment, which is sorely lacking in the Czech Republic. When the topic of his wife came up, his usually bright face turned into shadows. While he's been doing this juggling act for a year already, he seems pretty frustrated by the whole thing. And that is when he confided in me that one reason he needs English lessons so that he can get promoted (he's hit the ceiling at Ratiopharm without English) and spend more time in Brno, although the successful completion of his thesis might help that as well. That prompted me to promise him a package of listening activities and podcasts he can use when he's making the long drive between cities. That seemed pretty appealing to him, and when we left I realized two things. One, I think that our meeting last night was less about English and more about him being lonely in Prague. And two, that I had just talked myself into hours of work.

So walking back from the metro on a balmy day (the cold snap is over) with actual blue skies, I was making a to-do list in my head that read something like this: "Write lesson plans for Monday and Tuesday, study for the SOA exam, listen to podcasts for Jan, study more, write exercises for Jan, study more, and then look out the window to see that the sun has set on the nicest day we've had in weeks". And that is where I am now. My brain is throbbing from probability equations (it's been so long since I've done any of this), grammatical terms, and enough coffee to kill a midget or a large child.

With the womens heading out for a girls night, this officially clears the stage for a men's night in filled with meat, beer, talking about our feelings, and probably some hugging and crying. Maybe later we'll braid each other's hair. Did somebody say pillow fight?