Out and About - Day 12

April 2, 2013

Masaryk University

Tuesday marked the day of our first teaching stint here in Brno. 

In the morning, Paja showed us how to get to the universities we'll be teaching at from our dorm. Honestly, I don't really know the exact names of the universities we'll be teaching at, as we're only given their acronyms. But if I'm not mistaken, we'll be spending the next five weeks holding conversation classes at the University of Technology, Mendel University, and Masaryk University.

They really have nice universities here. Some are modern-looking, while some others have traditional architectural designs. In fact, Brno is like Czech Republic's version of Oxford. Students from all over Czech, Slovakia, and even the other parts of the world flock here for higher education.

My Tuesday class is in the evening, which runs from 7:10-8:40 at Masaryk University. I had eight people in my class, and they were really nice. Their ages range from 21-25, which is quite intimidating, as I just turned 18. In front of all these tall people, I feel like a baby!

But then again, I wasn't there to be "babied" for my size, height, or my capabilities. My agenda was to help them improve their English speaking skills, and maybe, if I'm lucky enough, be their friend.

I started by telling them something about the Philippines through pictures. However, I had to stop at some point, as it's them who really has to do the talking, so to get them into the mood, I let them play a guessing game.

I gave them pieces of paper, paired them with the person behind/in front of them, let them write a person, a place, a thing, an animal - whatever - on the paper for their partner to guess. For Filipinos, this game is called "Pinoy Henyo", but they play it here too, so the Pinoys can't really take credit for that! Haha!

I then paired them again with a different partner for an activity. As the goal here is to make them speak, I made them speak by making them pretend that they're in a talk show, and they had to interview each other. It was really funny, as they created their own TV show titles, greetings, and some even changed their tone a bit. The activity was also helpful for me and for them to get to know each other.

Most questions are about their favourites. From movies to books to food, it was like a slam book TV show, but better, cos they were able to expound as to why the things they said are their favourite things.

The final activity we had was a Taboo game. They found this kind of challenging, as they felt very limited. But as the game went on, they just played through it.

Before time ran out, I gave them samples of dried mangoes. I don't know how they really found its taste, but they told me that they liked it and that it's sweet. 

At the end of the day, I felt really happy. I enjoyed the conversation class with them, and I wish they did too.

When we returned to our dorm, we did the laundry again, but this time, we were able to use the washing machine, as we finally had access to it! It took us some time to figure out how the washing machine and the dryer work (I know, stupid), but we turned out fine, even though our clothes almost turned into ashes in the dryer if we didn't check on it earlier.

I love Subway!

♥Andz