Friday, July 29, 2005
Little Jimmy's Off to Camp
hello all, just to tell you really quickly, im leaving for a summer camp gig tomorrow and probably wont be able to do much internet stuff for the month of august. but i will, however, be able to do some fun stuff in what i like to call "Nature". busby and his buddies stayed with me this past weekend and it was debaucherous as always. im not talkin'. anyways, hope all is well with yall and i may still be able to receive txts at this place so feel free to make fun of me and keep me up on gossip all at the same time. Peace and Love, Matt
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Quick update
Howdy, wanderers, ponderers; computer geeks, office tweaks; thespians, lesbians. Been about a month since I've posted anything. Sorry, no excuse, just nothing to say really. So here's whats been going on. I've been living and working, though not much of the latter, since I last talked to you. Class is fun, I've got one guy, Vaclav that is a lot of fun to work with. He's not very advanced so I am able to see improvement almost immediately which is rather satisfying. We go through picture games and easy news reports and its a lot of fun to see him light up when he gets something. There's another group of women that I teach who work at Philips. I teach at 8 in the morning on Thursdays which means I have to get up at 6 to do the hour or so commute. I hate it. The faces on the metro in the morning make me want to jam a lead-filled pencil in my ear. Everyone looks so sullen and unexcited about their lives. They especially look down-trodden when we are at the stations in the center because all the tourists get on and are about to have a day of fun and they are about to have another day of the grind. That's only on Thursdays. I couldn't imagine seeing that five days in a row.
Anyways, these chicks are not happy with their jobs and they are obligated to better their English, which they resent. In turn, they resent me. Usually only one or two show up and are always late. They don't give me any feedback as to whether I am doing a good or bad job; I am always excited when the lesson is over. But on the whole, I am enjoying teaching, although not full-time yet. I have acquired a summer camp job for August. I will be leaving on July 30 to work in the mountains in Moravia, east Czech Republic. I am quite excited. The deal is this: the first two weeks I will be teaching adolescents and teen-agers English in the morning and then doing summer camp activities with them in the afternoon. Sports, canoeing, kayaking, archery, campfires, the whole nine yards. I'll be living in a cabin with a group of them, I believe and I am going to make it as much like Wet Hot American Summer as is humanly possible. I will make out with a fellow counselor with barbeque sauce all over our faces. The next two weeks will be teaching adults for 3 or 4 hours a day and then I have the rest of the day off to do what I want, which will most probably entail hiking and backpacking in the mountains. I'm pumped.
What else has been going on? I saw the White Stripes on 3 July at a 700 person venue and it rocked. I left drenched. They only played for a little over an hour, but it was ridiculous. At one point I was front row, which kicked ass. Jack White can work a crowd into a frenzy, and the electricity in the place was rivaled only by 'you know who'.
Kevin Phillips and his sister stopped by right the week of the fourth, so I hung out with them. Of course, their sight-seeing day was the rainiest and coldest I've experienced since I've been here. But we suffered through it and accomplished a lot. We randomly ran into Jason Outlaw and Tom Conners who were in town for a baseball tournament. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hang out with them, but it was crazy running into someone out of the blue on a random street halfway across the world.
Speaking of baseball, I went to the European Baseball Championships last weekend. It was a lot of fun. The Czech team played like high schoolers, the Italians played just below SHC level ball. The Spaniards were about the same level, but the Dutch kicked ass. It was great watching The Netherlands dominate Spain. It was 10-0 after the 4th. It felt so good to see baseball so far away from home. Some interesting tidbits, the trivia question between one of the innings: Which city do the Yankees play in? Much murmuring and hypotheses were being exchanged in the bleachers. When the answer was "New York" and not Washington DC, a collective "OH!" came from the grandstands. In other ramblings, I found a place that plays baseball here about a week ago and I've already caught three games. I am so pissed that I hadn't found it earlier, but nonetheless I'm excited to finally see some professional ball.
Busby is coming into town this weekend, which should be a blast. I can't wait to show him around and see what he thinks of the women. He is the ultimate acid test for that kind of thing. My roommate is gone for the weekend, so lets see if the round bed gets some extracurricular use. I'll hopefully update more often in the future. Hope everyone is doing well. Send my regards to Broadway.
Anyways, these chicks are not happy with their jobs and they are obligated to better their English, which they resent. In turn, they resent me. Usually only one or two show up and are always late. They don't give me any feedback as to whether I am doing a good or bad job; I am always excited when the lesson is over. But on the whole, I am enjoying teaching, although not full-time yet. I have acquired a summer camp job for August. I will be leaving on July 30 to work in the mountains in Moravia, east Czech Republic. I am quite excited. The deal is this: the first two weeks I will be teaching adolescents and teen-agers English in the morning and then doing summer camp activities with them in the afternoon. Sports, canoeing, kayaking, archery, campfires, the whole nine yards. I'll be living in a cabin with a group of them, I believe and I am going to make it as much like Wet Hot American Summer as is humanly possible. I will make out with a fellow counselor with barbeque sauce all over our faces. The next two weeks will be teaching adults for 3 or 4 hours a day and then I have the rest of the day off to do what I want, which will most probably entail hiking and backpacking in the mountains. I'm pumped.
What else has been going on? I saw the White Stripes on 3 July at a 700 person venue and it rocked. I left drenched. They only played for a little over an hour, but it was ridiculous. At one point I was front row, which kicked ass. Jack White can work a crowd into a frenzy, and the electricity in the place was rivaled only by 'you know who'.
Kevin Phillips and his sister stopped by right the week of the fourth, so I hung out with them. Of course, their sight-seeing day was the rainiest and coldest I've experienced since I've been here. But we suffered through it and accomplished a lot. We randomly ran into Jason Outlaw and Tom Conners who were in town for a baseball tournament. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hang out with them, but it was crazy running into someone out of the blue on a random street halfway across the world.
Speaking of baseball, I went to the European Baseball Championships last weekend. It was a lot of fun. The Czech team played like high schoolers, the Italians played just below SHC level ball. The Spaniards were about the same level, but the Dutch kicked ass. It was great watching The Netherlands dominate Spain. It was 10-0 after the 4th. It felt so good to see baseball so far away from home. Some interesting tidbits, the trivia question between one of the innings: Which city do the Yankees play in? Much murmuring and hypotheses were being exchanged in the bleachers. When the answer was "New York" and not Washington DC, a collective "OH!" came from the grandstands. In other ramblings, I found a place that plays baseball here about a week ago and I've already caught three games. I am so pissed that I hadn't found it earlier, but nonetheless I'm excited to finally see some professional ball.
Busby is coming into town this weekend, which should be a blast. I can't wait to show him around and see what he thinks of the women. He is the ultimate acid test for that kind of thing. My roommate is gone for the weekend, so lets see if the round bed gets some extracurricular use. I'll hopefully update more often in the future. Hope everyone is doing well. Send my regards to Broadway.
