First day of TEFL Class

Today was the first day of our TEFL class!

The course doesn't start everyday until 10 am Monday through Friday which is really nice, but this morning I had a hard time getting up and out of bed before 9 am. (I think that my body was still tired and sore from the past weekend's festivities.)

We grabbed seats at the front of the class and waited for the teacher to show. Without any idea of what to expect on our first day, a man suddenly burst through the classroom door and started speaking Czech to the whole class, "Dobry den!", and proceeded into a formal dialogue.

We repated the dialogue over and over and over, practicing pronunciation of different letters and syallables, all without the teacher speaking any English the entire time.

Jak se menuijete  = What is your name?
Jmenuji se Courtney =  My name is Courtney
Jak se máte = How are you doing?
dobře (dob-rzh)= well
špatně (sh-pat-ney) = bad
Nashledanou! (nas-let-a-no) = Goodbye!

We figured out what he was saying by his gestures and happy/sad faces he drew on the whiteboard.

Then then we got into pairs and practiced the dialogue with each other in different ways; reading off the whiteboard, filling in blanks on a worksheet, practicing reading it off the worksheet, putting cut outs of the words in order, and practicing with everyone at a pretend party.

Our instructor then began speaking in English asked us questions about the Czech lesson that had just happened so abruptly. It was a ton of fun!
Next he went into an hour long demonstration reading comprehension lesson. Once it was over, we went over in detail all of the parts of the lesson and how to write a lesson plan.

After a short break, we split into groups of 3 and worked on our own lesson plans for our first REAL teaching session tomorrow in front of real students!  It is only a fifteen minute lesson and should be easy, although we are not sure how much English they really know so it should be interesting/challenging. Surprisingly I am not nervous, just excited!

The first day of class was awesome! Our TEFL course instructor is an incredible teacher with so much enthusiasm and a hugely engaging personality and sense of humor.The eight hours flew by (partly because we got an hour and a half lunch) and before I knew it it was six o'clock. I sincerely loved every minute of it.  I feel like I am meant to be here and am so excited for everything!!! 

After class, Stu and I took a walk across the street from our apartment and found a bike/walking path similiar to the Boise greenbelt that goes along a small river/stream. I'm not sure how far it goes. Tomorrow we plan on going for a run on it in the morning.

On our evening walk, we cut off the path and found ourselves in a small Vietnamese grocery store with all different fresh fruits, vegetables, and rice noodles.Choosing not to buy anything there, we headed up along the street to the main shopping mall and bought some groceries we needed, including a beer we split on our walk back to our apartment. You can walk practically anywher in Prague  with a beer or mug of mulled wine (or whatever your drink of choice is) since there is no open container law. Pretty neat!

When we got home, I opened up what I thought were chicken breasts, that turned out to be chicken legs... the only meat I could find that looked like chicken breasts... I still have a lot of work to do on my Prague vocabulary! :)

Nashledanou!


xoxo,

Courtney