Monday, October 12, 2009

Fall Update

Greetings again!

The school year has started and I am back in Slovakia for one more year. This year, I am teaching three different subjects with five classes total. I am teaching Reading and Writing to first-year students, Introduction to Literature to second-year students, and British Literature for fourth-year students. I am pleased with the progress of my first-year students, who did not know much English coming into the year. They are getting very excited about learning English and the learning curve is quite steep, but they are doing well so far.

I have moved into an new apartment. I am living with two guys now, Jon and Carsten. They are both teaching at the same school as me. I knew both of them before we moved in, and we get along quite well together. To start the year, we had a grill that we borrowed from one of the other school apartments that no one was using. We grilled for three straight evenings. However, this did not make the neighbors very happy.



Last week, a student asked me to record something for Slovak Television. They wanted me to do a voice recording to gather support to host a congress in 2013 in Bratislava. So, I said that I would do the recording and went to a recording studio. It was quite an experience. They had me read from a script and whenever I made a mistake, the man recording it would have me start back from wherever I hadn't made a mistake and I would do it again. My voice might be heard all over Europe, imagine that. And I thought I was the quiet one of the family.

Another interesting part of being in Slovakia has been the World Cup qualifying matches. Slovakia is one win away from going to the World Cup in soccer (some of my students would not be happy with me for calling it soccer). However, there is only one game left. They were only one win away for the last two games, and they lost one game and they tied another. The fans are starting to get nervous. It reminds me of a certain team from Detroit that nearly maybe should the playoffs.

Well, that's all for the update from me. I hope all is well with you wherever you are!

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