By Day/By Night

My life by day: mild mannered preschool teacher, prone to saying "goodness gracious!"

By night: after the mosh pit at a concert not fit to be written about here in any way.

This weekend, I went to Prague to visit my friend Nicole. It's amazing to have someone I have known for seven years so close by. She's one $4/45 minute train ride away, which is significantly closer than she was when we were both on Long Island many years ago. We went dancing on Friday night, got one expensive sushi lunch on Saturday afternoon, then spent Saturday night at a show. It's good to know that I don't have to do all the touristy Prague things in one go. Nevertheless, I wish I had taken a few more pictures. I kept thinking all weekend about normalization. How quickly does anything in your life become normal? In Korea, the garlic truck that woke me up every morning with it's dulcet cry through a loud speaker of what I can only assume was "garlic, garlic, get'cher garlic here!" became a party of my daily ritual in a matter of days. Here, it's things like crossing a river and following a winding path through a park as being part of my morning commute. In Prague, it was running to catch street cars. If you do things regularly, you stop thinking about them. I am determined to keep at least a slightly objective eye for these kinds of things, though I know I won't be able to keep the same level of novelty and amusement.

School started on Monday with three children--two girls (the Czech teacher's daughters) and one boy. This is important to note because the boy is not only really the only male in the school, he's also such an outsider because we're all so involved in the creation of the school. I feel bad for the little one but we are doing a good job of including him. Hopefully, we will get more and more children soon. As far as teaching goes, I'm still hesitant because they know so little English and are prone to running away when I speak. I think that as I get more confident and they become adjusted to me, it might be like an average preschool teaching job. I got sent home by my boss yesterday for having a cold and woke up today still running a fever, so I've missed two days in the first week! But again, the school is still a work in progress so it's better to be sick now than later.



I'm learning to balance the two major extremes of my personality and this version of "Daisy Bell" pretty accurately represents it. I want to sing nursery rhymes but also continue to feel comfortable in a mosh pit. But I did learn one thing this weekend, when someone you're dancing with asks you what you do and you reply, "I teach preschool" the reaction of shock and amusement is pretty much universal.