End of a Semster

My first semester teaching at the Amazon Gymnasium and McNeilus Language School, which are two companies run by the same people, the former is a high school, the latter, a pre-college course, came to an end yesterday. To finish the semester, we were fortunate enough to have a school Christmas party at the National Theater. Each class gave a twenty to thirty minute presentation and created an information booth on an assigned country or region. The students worked very hard on this and their effort showed. Highlights included a debate amongst the French parliament featuring the prominent leaders of French history, from Napoleon to Nicolas Sarkozy, a demonstration of Japanese martial arts, and a dancing Barak Obama. The information booths were rich with cleverly presented facts and local food. The students even dressed like people from their country or region. The Americans dressed like modern teenage youth, the Chinese wore tradition Chinese garb, and the Italians, in this respect my personal favorite, were dressed to the nines. I addition, the Christmas party was the first day of snow in Prague. It was truly a memorable experience.

While the Christmas symbolically marked the end of the semester, it did not actually occur on the last day of the semester, but rather, six days earlier. The last few days were filled with the final tests of the semester and Christmas themed lessons. On the final day of class, yesterday, Tuesday the 23rd, my class was watching, and learning vocabulary from, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which my students loved. Next door, in the low level class, however, two of the students were playing acoustic guitars and leading their class in Christmas carols, some in English some in Czech, and System of a Down covers. There is nothing quite like hearing System of a Down covered by two high school students with strong, Czech accents. I paused the video my class was watching, gathered my entire class around the door, which opens directly into the next room, and waited for the song “Roulette” to end. As soon as it ended, I opened the door and my entire class gave a round of applause to the performers.

I have a week and a half off, so I’ll be taking some pictures of Prague at Christmas time and commenting on the local activities a bit more often than I have been. It’s been particularly busy lately, but most of that has come to end at least for the rest of the year. Until then, enjoy the pictures of the aforementioned activities.

The Russian Information Booth

The Australian Booth

The Chinese Booth

 The Canadian Booth

The American Booth

The British Booth

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The Italian Table (Setting Up)

The South American Booth

A Handout From the American Group

Two of my fellow teachers, Gart (South Africa) and Steffen (Oregon).

Team USA's Presentation

The French Presentation

The Canadian Presentation