Crazy Jane:

A Little Detail...

So, FYI, there have been big changes in the Czech tax code and state medical insurance scheme. Firstly, we're going from a progressive tax rate to a flat tax of 15% for everyone, and secondly, from now on, we all have to pay 30 crowns when we visit the doctor. In case you're wondering, that translates to a little less than two dollars.

The money goes to the doctor, and is a new revenue stream for Czech medical professionals who, to put in mildly, are incredibly underpaid by American standards. Fair enough, right? I mean, when I go to the doctor around here and pay my pittance, no matter what my problem might be, I feel like I'm getting away with crime after years of having NO insurance, and paying my doctor in Los Angeles nearly $200 to let me sit in her examining room. 30 crowns? NO PROBLEM.

So, the other day, I was in a lesson with a student who will have her first child in April, and who is appalled -- APPALLED! -- that she will have to pay 90 crowns when she goes into the hospital to give birth. That's right people. Here in the Czech Republic, it costs the citizenry a grand total of less than SIX DOLLARS TO GIVE BIRTH TO A CHILD IN THE HOSPITAL (and, for the record, that includes a week's stay with full nursery support), and they are PISSED!

I know it's a bit of a non-sequitur, but I just thought I'd share that flabbergasting little detail.

More Haikus on the Usual Topic

Something nice happened
to me; since then, I have been
looking for words

to talk about a
thing too new for much talk, but
so sweet that I can't

not want to tell it.
It's fall in Prague, and the streets
are dark and wet. I

kick through the fallen
leaves when I walk to the bus,
and feel like singing.

Czech Boyfriends, et al.

So, I may not have mentioned this before, but Prague just might be the Public Display of Affection Capital of the Universe. Everywhere you go, people are making out, handling each other playfully or affectionately, or just grabbing ass, and I have to say that from my vantage point, which is admittedly (and sadly) that of an outside observer looking in, the boyfriends of the Czech Republic strike me as especially charming.

Today on the train, there was this very young couple; the girl was dressed from head-to-toe in pink -- she had on bejeweled, pink strappy sandals, tan nylons, a very short pink plaid skirt, a pink jacket over a pink top, pink lipstick and a pink scrunchie in her hair -- she had very pretty legs, but other than that, I don't think she really was much of a beauty. Be that as it may, it didn't stop her beardless young squire from gazing rapturously at her face, as if her charms were so mesmerizing that he could barely comprehend his good fortune. Meanwhile, the fair lady seemed entirely insensible of the way his admiration was pegged at 11, despite the way he kept trying to kiss her at 30 second intervals.

The day before, I sat next to a couple that simply could not keep their hands off one another. It was AMAZING. They were laughing and fondling each other for the entire massive metro journey to the end of the earth where the Czechs like to keep their IKEAs. After that ride, I went to a garden party where I met several lovely Czech boyfriends, whose charming attentions and obvious affection for their ladies was truly touching and made me feel especially wistful about my sad fate as a spinster.

I've heard that Czech men are domineering, conservative, and not particularly faithful. I've known them to call a girl in the middle of the night and propose all manner of surprising and randy things from out of the clear blue that must obviously be declined. I've also known them to be lovely, sweet-natured creatures with beautiful, well cared-for families. Additionally, many of them are tall and handsome.

You may be wondering, at this point, how my chances for Czech romance are faring, and I will just have to say that the mystery continues, and I am going to keep quiet about it. In haiku form:

Patience and silence
the better part of valor
outlook good. Shut up.

No amount of haranguing from you people will squeeze any further (public) comment out of me at this time, so don't bother.

In other news, Matt and I visited this castle:

Where Matt was gross. After that, we attempted to engage in the Czech national sport of picking mushrooms in the forest, but since our knowledge of edible mushrooms is rather small, we failed to recognise the delicious ones.

DAMN.

Finally, here's what happened the other night: Matt and I went out to return a video. On the way, we saw that the festival of young (half-fermented) wine, or Burčák, was underway, so we decided to detour through it on our way home. Before we knew it, we were slightly drunk on the dangerously sweet, fizzy elixir of the evening, and bought all manner of little hand-made trinkets and jewelry, before going on to another scene of revellry in another part of the city, where we saw a CAMEL of all things.

Oh, Prague.

A Couple of Anecdotes & A Mullet

So, lately, I've been teaching a veritable ARMY of people English. I have about 44 teaching hours per week -- and don't ask me why, but one "teaching hour" means 45 minutes, so it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds, until you add in all the planning and traveling between lessons. The upshot is that I am really pretty worn out at the end of every day. I like it, though, and since my monkey has gone back to LA, I feel the need to keep myself busy.

I had a thought the other day, while I was talking to one of my students, that the reason I don't write much here lately is that my job of blabbering on and on for a living means that I no longer think, in interesting situations "oh, man! I'm SO gonna blog this!" because by the time I get around to that kind of thing, I've probably told whatever story about 20 times in the week, and everything's gotten used up in all the non-stop conversating that I am required to do in the service of my employment (and yes, I know "conversating" isn't a real word).

I guess could hold forth about my teaching experiences -- and since I am currently teaching every minute of my waking hours, I haven't got much else to report -- but I don't want to always be using my students as blog-fodder, it just seems wrong, and anyway, most of the ones I especially like know about my website, and I don't think that even those ones are on a need-to-know basis regarding all my thoughts about them, really.

So, with that in mind, here's what's of interest this week so far:

• Matt and I went out last night to see one of his students, who plays guitar and sings in a band, play some songs at a lovely little Literarni Kavarna. They played lots of bluesy/folksy numbers in Czech, and some English and American songs as well, including a very creepily jaunty "Delia's Gone", by Johnny Cash. Matt's student was deeply charming, and made brilliant rock faces while he played. We really enjoyed he and his partner's obvious joy in their music. I also loved the way English lyrics sounded in their Czech mouths. It was as if the words were less weighed down by the responsibility to mean, and more purely musical. I hope we'll have another chance to see him play -- it was lovely.

• Last night, on the anniversary of 9/11, while I was enjoying the aforementioned musical stylings, most of my students, it seems, were at home watching Fahrenheit 9/11 on Czech TV. Many of them hadn't seen it before, and reported that they'd had no idea our awesome president was as awesome as all that. Weirdly, I found myself trying to dial down their outrage by pointing out the fact that much of what's being presented there as a "documentary" is actually kind of unfortunately coercive demagoguery (yes, that is a word! I looked it up!), and even though I agree that the current U.S. administration is incompetent, shamelessly venal, morally revolting, war-mongering, and aiming its appeals squarely at the reptilian brains of people who don't want to think complicated thoughts or engage with any kind of otherness, I just couldn't let Fahrenheit 9/11 stand, uncontested, perpetrating similar sins. Strange day.

• One of my students told me, this morning, about how he first engaged the English language seriously when he reprogammed the computer game "Civilization" to speak to him in Czech after school with a friend. He told me it took them months, working everyday on it, and their English wasn't so good, so when they were finished it said things to them like "if you want something for build, go in wood and kill some trees," and "in the beginning, there was nothing, and then appeared PETR!" He also told me that the Czech equivalent of the English idiom "barking up the wrong tree" is "crying on the wrong grave." Awesome. He rules.

Plus, this is a guy I saw on TV not long ago. He's a leader of the Czech Communist Party, and I thought you all might enjoy his SPECTACULAR MULLET.

Magnificent, no?

Greetings From Fairy Princess Land!

So, it's our second long weekend in a row, here in the CZ, and Monkey and I decided to take a little trip with our dearly beloved friend Gross Matt and his charming Venetian pal with the beautiful corkscrew curls, Ben, to a little place called Český Krumlov.

Yesterday, we took a long, lovely ride on a train through a countryside full of blossoming trees and fields of Dandelions, which I've always thought of as weeds, but which are, in fact, BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS, to arrive at a town that is so ridiculously picturesque that all we can do all day is say "Goddamn, this place is HORRIBLE!" and "Why did we come here? Whose idea was this? Matt? Was this your idea? God, I hate you!" Before having another one of those ice creams where they grind black currants, or whatever, right into your vanilla to make it a fruity, soft-serve masterpiece that you can lick contemplatively as you wander through another narrow, cobbled passageway towards some painted Rennaissance facade.

Here in Český Krumlov, they have a painted castle tower that looks like a wedding cake, and the Vltava River winding through what may be the most perfect little valley and town in the universe. On top of that, the sun is shinging, the birds are singing, and I've taken loads of pretty pictures, and the grossest picture EVER of Matt...

...Unfortunately, my computer is in the shop, so you won't get to see any of them for awhile. Oh well. Shit happens.

Spring At Last!

After a seemingly interminable winter, it looks as if Spring is upon us, here in the CZ.

Yesterday afternoon, I actually felt the warmth of the sun on my face, and nearly died of the pleasure. I think we'll see some rain in the weeks to come, but the worst of the cold is past, and now that it has, Monkey and I will be burning all our warm clothes and partying in the streets.

Saving Graces

It's been a pretty exhausting week for more reasons than I have mentioned here, but can we talk? It's about my darling friend, Matt:

I love the BEJESUS out of him.

Forewarned is Forearmed

You know, I really need to post more stuff to my blog, just so that it doesn't seem like everytime I log in to send y'all a message, I'm not waxing lyrical over how great Trent Reznor is (fucking great, fyi), or complaining about my thwarted romances. I'll spare you both of those topics (FOR NOW!), even though, believe me, I could let one rip, hardcore, on either one of those topics, if I were so inclined.

Instead, I'll just limit myself to telling you that Monkey and I watched some of the world's most ponce-ridden sport on the Olympics, and while all those pimply-faced boys were smiling their big fake ice-capades smiles while their chiffon wings flew out behind them during their awesome triple salchows and adorable dance moves and what not, I noticed that Russian nancy-boy supreme, Evgeni Plushenko (please, please, PLEASE click that link!), bears a striking resemblance to THE GRODE.

Check it out:

In other news, I have a new student who is a member of the Order of the Knights of Malta, and Mr. Johnso was here in Praha, which was absolutely the coolest. Hi, Rian!

Also, Tricky/Locutus, if you're reading, I JUST NOW saw your really nice post to my prior episode of angst-ridden complaining, and want to acknowledge that you rule. How's things, man? Did your book get published yet?

Coffee & Cake Happy Hour

Party, 80's Style