October 27, 2019

I haven’t had much time to process this past week, to be perfectly honest. It’s been intense, to say the least.

I’ve already passed my grammar test, but nevertheless I’m rolling on with this theme because just like present perfect simple, time may pass but it’s never truly complete. Oh, and grammar is still important too, I guess.

One of the functions of the present perfect is to describe actions in the past taking place in an unfinished time period. I’ve taught three English lessons so far in Prague, but am only halfway through my course. I still have six more classes to teach, a one-on-one lesson to organize and a variety of other homework assignments and workshops to attend.

Teaching new English learners has been quite a bit of fun so far, even though there are plenty of challenges and frustrations. So far, I’ve taught three 45-minute lessons. One covered a vocabulary selection of my choice, another was an assigned grammar point and the third was a listening class. 

With each lesson, I put a lot of effort into engaging introductions, which I enjoyed but am also slightly regretting. For my lesson on birthday celebration lexis, I pretended it was one of the student’s birthdays and gave out party supplies and then presented them with a cake. When I taught a listening lesson on the rules of soccer, I dressed as a referee, tossed a ball to one of the students and then pulled out a yellow card on them for a hand ball.

It was fun but I don’t think I can afford to spend money on props every lesson.

The lesson focusing on grammar was by far the most difficult. I was assigned the zero conditional which is a tense that native speakers rarely if ever use in everyday speech. I was supposed to create a lesson that, by the end, would have them using zero conditional naturally which seemed like an impossible task.

To make matters worse, within a minute of starting my lesson, my observer informed me and the rest of the class that I had written on the whiteboard in a permanent marker. ‘I’ve made a huge mistake’ was my thought after that immediate past action. Wearing a beret that I constructed out of paper for my ‘art’ theme, I felt pretty embarrassed.

The rest of the lesson felt like a disaster. I forgot a lot of the steps I had been taught and had to backtrack, but by the end, they were actually using the zero conditional without my help. They said really weird sentences like ‘when I see that painting, I buy it’ but overall my lesson actually worked, and afterward my teaching observer said that zero conditional using the method were being taught (including a theme and everything) would probably never be something I actually did in the real world.

After my final A2 lesson, we were given feedback cards filled out by the students. I had three 10/10s and one 9/10. One of the 10/10 slip’s only comment was ‘Ok’. Apparently that’s a Czech term of endearment.

I’ve made it through half the course and I’m not sure how I’ll be able to keep going. That’s an action in the past, where the emphasis is on the action’s effect on the present time. I’m afraid that I may have lost my spark, but am hopeful that it’s just a blip and by the end of the day I’ll be excited about a new lesson plan. I teach a slightly more advanced group (B1) this week and have already been assigned my first lesson topic.

I’m still not sure if teaching is really for me. Well, I think I’ve actually always been sure that teaching isn’t my goal in life. But could I do it for awhile as a means to make money while I pursue my writing and artistic ambitions? Am I good enough and can I tolerate it? 

I can’t think about that now. All I need to focus on is that I’ve taught three English lessons in the Czech Republic and they went well. Those are now my life experiences and just little pieces of my past, which is taking place in an unfinished time period with unlimited potential.

Friday, October 18, 2019

This time last year I was just starting a new job, but in a familiar place. In a lot of ways, I was going back to a previous life — going up to my old university, living at home — which I had never expected to do. 

Those are few examples of the past continuous, a tense used to describe events that were in progress at a specific time in the past. My present situation is quite a bit different. While my latest step doesn’t have the benefits included in my move to a communications role within the Simon Fraser University Athletics department (namely, more money and a step up on the career ladder), it has something much more valuable: freedom.

Now, I’m not talking about being able to do whatever I want, when I want. I just finished my first week of training to become a certified English as a Foreign Language instructor and I have been insanely busy and that will only pick up from here. No, it’s the freedom to look at the world without just trying to hustle to a goal.

I’m just learning and accepting that I’m not perfect. I’m not upset to see other classmates succeed because we’re all on the same team. In the teaching world, there’s no upper echelon that I want to reach. I am simply curious about everything and want to do the best that I can.

So far, it’s been a very interesting experience at The Language House in Prague. Another situation in which we use the past continuous is for when there are two events in progress at the same (past) time. So far, I’ve done a lot of multi-tasking. In addition to learning the basics of teaching, we’re immersed in a number of classes and practicing in the field already.

On Thursday, I both experienced being a beginner language learner with a Czech-only lesson on the basics of the Czech language and later instructed an icebreaker with some local A2 level students.

Trying to learn Czech was an eye-opener. I’ve dabbled in other languages in my life and have a pretty good grasp on French thanks to my early Canadian schooling experience, but the speed and sheer volume of vocabulary that we learned… it was intense. It was a lot of fun though as well and really made me appreciate how lost my future students will be at times because I definitely felt completely out of it multiple times.

The icebreaker turned out to be a strange experience as well. The third function of the past continuous tense is to describe ongoing past action interrupted by another event. Well, for my activity, I had planned for 10 or 11 students. When there were only two, I was pretty thrown. My opening activity for the class was to come in talking on a banana as if it were a phone and act like the person on the other end wanted the answers to a series of personal questions from the students

I had to add some more questions on the fly to make up for only having two of them, but I was happy that they were willing to go along with my silly game and that I was able to elicit some English from them. They seemed to have quite a bit of fun pretending the banana was a real phone as well.

Tomorrow is a day off but I’m taking an optional grammar test and if I pass it, I won’t have to worry about it at the end of the course. We also start teaching 45-minute lessons on Monday, which I’m actually sort of excited for. It’ll be a lot of work but it should be worth it for sure (that sentence uses future simple with will [subject + will + bare infinitive] and present simple [subject + present simple form] with the modal verb ‘should’ which adds the mood of advice to the main verb “to be”… okay, I think I’m ready for this test).

Orientation weekend was a lot of fun.

It’s hard to be too introspective or share deep thoughts using the past simple tense. Past simple is used to describe completed actions in the past, usually linked to a specific point in time. 

I don’t think it’s a tense that I use regularly. I seem to prefer to use the present simple or using the present continuous (see?). I guess it’s because I’m a pretty sentimental person. When I find myself in an enjoyable situation, I never want it to end and I’ll always look back on it hoping that it will come back again.

I even feel a little upset after getting out of a traffic jam and going my separate way from the car that I was stuck behind for an hour.

But it’s probably healthy for me to think of some memories in the past simple. Just accept that something was a great experience and helped me grow, but it happened and now it’s over. Plain and simple.

That’s the attitude I need for this past orientation weekend, so that I can focus on my course. Today was the first day of classes and I can tell that I’ll be very busy for the next month. So, let me just use this one opportunity to remember my introduction to Prague.

The highlight of Saturday was a walking history tour of the city which ended at a really cool pub that has been around since 1375 called U krále Brabantského. Apparently, famous past guests have included everyone from Mozart to Einstein.

I had a duck meal with some delicious dumplings and a couple of Pilsner beers. Our table was way down in the basement where the walls and ceiling are lined with skulls. For entertainment, there were a few dancers who performed progressively more dangerous routines, starting with ribbons, advancing to swordplay and fire torches, and ending the night with a firebreather.

On Sunday, our orientation ended with beer tasting at a place called the Beer Museum. It was very different to what we have at home. Instead of small samplers, they were full glasses that came fast and furious. Our table of four was also given five of each, so needless to say a good time was had by all.

So far, I’ve met a lot of really nice and interesting people from across the United States (and a couple from Canada, Hong Kong and the UK as well).

I’m pretty tired now though, so time to put the past simple (and myself) to bed. What’s done is done, and I’m excited for the next chapter.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

I’m lying in bed. I’m trying not to think too much.

This is the present continuous, what’s happening right now.

I’ve been in Prague for two days now and it’s already been quite the experience. My flight was pretty uneventful though. I had a whole row to myself from Vancouver to Frankfurt which was nice, and I set the high score on my seat’s inflight quiz game. 

That was actually probably the most stressful part of the journey. We were landing as I was in the middle of my best performance of the trip and was nervous that the messages from the cabin crew would mess things up or that I would have to get off the plane before I could type my name into Air Canada Trivia Tournament glory.

Luckily, Brad: 164045 made it into the annals of history and after a quick transfer, I was touching down in the beautiful city of Prague.

The apartment that I’m staying in (that’s a temporary situation) is pretty nice for being in a building that was apparently slated for demolition this month. I’m sharing a flat with four other guys around my age, with one also sharing my room. The place has a fridge, oven, washing machine, everything you would need.

Sure, I locked myself out for a half-hour within a few minutes of arriving because the lock is weird. And the power went out in the middle of the night yesterday. And the light switch in our room broke and we had to unscrew the bulb to get some sleep, but that’s all part of the experience.

I’m just trying not to think too much. Be like the present continuous and live in the moment. Don’t dwell on the past or think about the future, this is the here and now, and it truly is amazing.

I’m trying very hard to avoid my annoying habit of worrying incessantly. I spent a good chunk of my first day concerned about meeting people and making good first impressions. Today I attended my first informal class session where I met two of my flatmates and a few others. They were all very nice and I despite my anxiety, I managed to make conversation and join in with the group.

After a ‘Grammar Bootcamp’ session, I joined a few others for a beer tasting session and explored Prague a bit. It’s a really beautiful city and I’m excited to see more of it in the coming weeks. Seems like a cool place that’s up on the latest trends (sorry, wasn’t sure how to work that situation example in).

I have future plans with arrangements. Tomorrow is a day off, but then Saturday is orientation and from there the course will get going and I’m sure I’ll be extremely busy. It’s going to be intense and there’s a lot I could worry about but I’ll keep things in this tense. It’s exciting.

Monday, October 7, 2019

My flight leaves at 1:30 pm tomorrow. I’m nervous. I’m excited. I’m trying to write every sentence of this post in the present simple. Oops, that didn’t last long.

Okay, let me explain. I’m about to start a new adventure, traveling to Prague in the Czech Republic to take a four-week course on how to teach English as a foreign language. In preparation, it was recommended that we brush up on our English grammar skills. So over the past few weeks, I’ve been furiously trying to comprehend what I normally do without thinking. 

To get a better grasp on it, I thought it might be helpful to start a travel blog and frame my experience around the grammar points that I need to master.

As it turns out, the present simple isn’t all that simple. The online training listed five separate situations in which we use it and none of them are what’s happening right now.

The first is permanent situations and part of the reason I’m going to Prague is that I find myself lacking in that area right now. For the first time since I was in high school, I don’t have a job. After spending most of my adult life consumed by my professional development, last year I decided that I wanted to focus on other areas of my life.

At my most recent job, I still worked hard but tried not to be too obsessive about it and take some time to explore other interests. Trying new things, making friends, traveling… I was attempting to have my career only be a part of my identity.

And then I lost my job. I wasn’t fired and there is no possible way that they could legitimately say that I wasn’t doing good work, but in August my contract wasn’t renewed. The way that it all went down was upsetting, to say the least.

Frightened at the prospect of not having a steady paycheck and purpose in life, I immediately set out to find a new job. That’s another situation in which we use the present simple, for routines and habits, and for a long time I’ve set my life worth solely on being able to say: I have a job.

It didn’t matter that I was often unhappy at my last job, surrounded by negativity and toxic attitudes — I just wanted people to see that I was doing something with my life. I was following what I thought you had to do. Rules or laws of life. You go to school, get a job, climb that career ladder, buy a house etc. etc.

But another situation for the present simple is state verbs. State verbs aren’t actions but states of being. In my own present, simple life, I’ve realized that I don’t need to be so focused on my actions, my accomplishments. I need to find happiness that doesn’t rely on pointing to a career. I need to just be.

So I put a pause on my job search.

Teaching English doesn’t have anything to do with my current career aspirations. It isn’t a step towards a higher paying gig. It’s just a potential avenue for adventure, a chance to meet new interesting people and maybe get a clearer idea of what truly makes me feel content.

The fifth situation in which we use the present simple is for the future with a timetable. There isn’t a specific date on a calendar when I’m guaranteed to be fulfilled in life, but I do know that my flight leaves at 1:30 pm tomorrow.