Midnight notes

It is midnight and as on most days recently, I am still sitting in front of my comp working. I am too tired to write a continuous article. Let me put down just a few notes.

- 1st of August is the first official day of my work for Lauder school. In practice, it doesn’t mean much as my obligation to physically be in the school starts on 28th August and the real school year starts only on 4th September. Nevertheless, I do have heaps of work already now. Since I had come back from France, I have spent most of my days in the school library browsing through the local resources, putting down ideas for the next year of teaching and discussing them with Shmil, my boss. The more I dive into the preparations the more mixed feelings I have – it is reassuring to see I have at least part of the plan (sort of) done, but it is scary to keep discovering how much more I still have to do. The part that makes me the most uncomfortable is the fact that I keep developing a study program for kids I have hardly seen. It is not easy to guess what will work and what won’t. Well, I guess I will find out soon.
- I continue to „move in“ my flat. Recently, the moving in got on a new dimension. I finally bought several bookshelves and thus started to unpack boxes with my books, papers, letters and notebooks. Some of these were packed by my brother during the last year when I was gone. Therefore, opening each box is a surprise – it was moving to notice that the boxes had scents of my teenage age (actually except for one particular box that contained a doll perfume I was given as a child - the flacon was broken - I still can´t get the smell off my hands, the smell is obnoxious, I cannot believe such a thing is legal ….and a toy for kids.) Other than that, I found several treasures - a library card I had been looking for for three years now, a log of lime wood I was given by my work colleague as a 20 year old when I hoped to learn to sculpt, a letter in which my friend Reuven told me he was engaged, an unopened letter from a girl from New Zealand who wanted to be my pen friend from 15 years ago, a great poem called "I know Exactly the Sort of Woman I´d Fall in Love If I were a Man" on a ruffled copy.
- Recently, I grew closer to my neighbors Jana and Lukas, who live in the flat below me. They are my age, they like wine and keep inviting me for a little chat in the evenings. They have a huge wolfhound (a kind of dog as big as an 8-year old child – no kidding) called Hamlet. I like them. Their dog likes me. I like the dog too.
- Being in the process of moving, I discovered I had all different kinds of skils I never knew I had. Also, I discovered I don’t have many I thought I did have (see the photo).
- According to a recent Czech child-birth research, an average Czech woman gives birth to her first child at the age of 26. An average Czech woman living in Prague gives birth to her first child at the age of 29. An average university educated Czech woman living in Prague gives birth to her first child in her early thirties. Great, a couple of more years to go:-)