So, We're Here

I've been meaning to blog for a month but my stupid iPad won't let me so I had to wait until we got our new laptop. This has been quite the month and a half, let me tell you. I spent months and months trying to picture what it would be like to move here and nothing even came close to what it is. There are so many things that I want to talk about to be able to look back on later, I could write a short book. But I won't.
The first few days were really, dreadfully hard. The time change hit us like a truck. We were not expecting 85% of all signs, directions, labels, etc to be in Czech. It made it super hard to navigate, buy food, and read signs. It didn't help that our school was out in the boonies so there was a bit less English spoken than in the center city where they are used to tourists. Everything was hard, and we got lost for a really long time. I couldn't even really enjoy the scenery at first because when you're lost and it's raining and you're walking on cobble stones the buildings around you are the least of your concerns.
We started school two days after arriving and that was, well, kinda lame. I learned a lot from the lessons, but overall I'd rate the school a 6 out of 10. Not impressed with anything about it except for the fact that they had really great instructors who are amazing at what they do. Two weeks into the course I was given the info about a job opening at a preschool. I decided to respond and just see what happens. The director of the school responded within 3 hours and set up an interview for the following day. It was so amazing how it all came together, we were lost and running really late but somehow I arrived at my interview two minutes early. Of course, God is so good. I took the job based on my gut feeling that this was the right thing to do. I knew that I was jeopardizing my TEFL certificate, the whole reason we came here, to accept the position. I signed a year contract and decided that I was in this no matter what. Afterward, I found out that this was the best decision I could have made. The school is highly desired, the pay is great, and I was able to still pass my TEFL course.
Adjusting to life and culture is going to be a process. It's absolutely beautiful here. The architecture, furniture, and landscape is just amazing. The public transportation is super nice, but navigating through the streets is a challenge. Everything has a street name, even if it looks like just a breezeway or a hallway. The roads are crazy. They are all winding and narrow, and Czech drivers are f-ing insane. They will run you over, they don't even care. I was very nearly hit full on by a car the second week here. Interesting fact- the Czech Republic has the highest rate of accidents and hitting pedestrians than any other country in Europe. The cobblestone streets are a bit insane on your feet. Anything but flats is pretty much out of the question.
I'm a bit bummed about my clothing situation. I started losing some weight as soon as we left California. Walking uphill and basically using my legs as transportation has made me drop some pounds. There's a part of me that's stoked, and then there's a part where it really sucks. Clothing is really expensive here, and I don't have much clothing here with me. We need to go into Germany to do some shopping for winter gear here pretty soon. The fashion here is strange, the rich people look really good (but don't they always?) and the regular people are really casual. Half of them look ok, and the other are just straight weird. Capri pants on men, mullets, socks with sandals, etc.
I really love our new flat. It was the first and only place that we looked at. It's located in the heart of Old Town, which has all of the historical monuments and major things in Prague. The owners were amazing, and they were really genuine people. I made the call during our first viewing that we should take it, and Jay agreed. After we'd already signed the lease they made some major renovations to get it in great condition for us. They installed a brand new flat range-top stove and new cabinets in the kitchen. She also bought us new duvets and pillows. And yes, duvets plural because...we have separate beds. I hear this is normal here? Apparently they just push two twins together if you are married. Very strange.
My job is pretty cool. I'm a teacher's assistant at this fancy preschool for rich kids. The school is at the top of, you guessed it, another big hill. It's about a 20 minute walk from the metro station and I hear it's quite fun in the winter time with the snow. Yeah, not so much. It's a huge adjustment to work with such small kids, especially since 13 out of 14 of the kids were not English speakers. It's kinda crazy how it works. We basically just speak English to them and they look at us like we are crazy and babble in Czech. The head teacher speaks to them in Czech about 20% of the time so that they know important stuff like "the soup is hot" and "we are going outside." It's amazing how quickly some of them are picking up English words though. Most say a few short phrases and words and are learning more each day. It's kinda frustrating at times because I really want to be able to interact with them like normal but I think that the system definitely works.
As for how we are adjusting now, I'm a bit hesitant to share. Mostly because a bunch of people
talked so much crap about how we would hate it here even though they knew nothing about this place and probably couldn't find it on a map. But I refuse to lie, so I will share about how we are currently doing.
It's been really hard for the past couple of weeks. The school/class in the first month was super hard because it took all of our time. Now it's hard because we are more settled and have some routine and are suddenly feeling super isolated. I really wish that we would have chosen a Spanish-speaking country so that we could make friends and conduct day to day business in a language we were familiar with. I'm missing home a lot. I think the greatest desire is for something familiar. When I see ingredients or instructions on packaging in Spanish it makes my day cause I feel like I kinda know what's going on. We hear many unintelligible languages everyday and Spanish is like a breath of fresh air.
Our visas are still completely up in the air so who knows? As a backup, we have decided that if either, or both, of our visas don't go through we will go back home for a couple months and save money and then try again in a Spanish-speaking country. Buenos Aires would be our first choice. There's 3 steps to a visa, and I am in my first step. Unfortunately Jay can't begin his first step until the October 6 as his work required a 30 day trial before signing an official contract. So he's just over a full month behind me in the process which is a bit scary. If his does not go through I will definitely not being staying alone for 3 months while he goes home before he can enter the Schengen zone again. Not happening.
We are definitely in make it work mode. We knew that some parts would be hard, but walking it out in real life is a whole other story. I still believe that we made the right choice to come out here. 1) We got our TEFL certificates which are a great asset to our future travel/teaching. 2) We actually put our money where our mouth was and made it happen.3) It broke up the monotony of routine and gave us an opportunity to see parts of the world that we may never have seen.
I don't believe that everything in life comes easy, so this is no different. We just started looking at tickets to Paris in the end of October and we might go to Austria in October as well. Going to Paris would pretty make my year so I'm looking forward to that. Juliana told me that she heard in a yoga class that "the key to peace is to maintain joy and sadness at the same time." I think about this every single day. It's so much easier to focus on the sadness, and shouldn't it be the other way around?
As far as food goes, it's really not much more of a problem here than it is at home. In some ways it's a bit easier. We have three great vegan restaurants within 1.5 miles. One is directly across from our flat which is pretty awesome. Vegan food is a bit different. They don't really use the processed veggie meats like we have in the states. It's all based on tofu, legumes, and whole grains. I think that this has helped both of us to trim down too. Of course there's a lot of places that don't have vegan food, but not really much more than back home. We eat loads of bread, just tons. They have freshly baked mostly dark breads here that are fantastic. They aren't super processed and always have nuts and whole grains in them. We eat so much bread and potatoes you would think we would be giant by now.
I already talked about some of the language issues. A really cool aspect about the languages spoken here is that it's truly a huge mixture of a ton of different ones. We are getting better at distinguishing between which ones we are hearing.
The public transportation is wonderful. The metro/subway takes us in all directions of the main parts of Prague. There's also trams that take us other places but you have to really know where you are going for that. Finding places can be a total nightmare sometimes. Their addresses don't go in numerical like we are used to (or the logical way). On any street you can have number 264, 5, 13, and 49. How they do this I have no idea.
There's so much more to say about this place and our experiences here, but I think this is the gist of it.