how the hell people did long distant moves before the internet and telephones? Now when I get homesick I can call my mom on skype, check facebook, email a friend and usually get a response in a few hours, but it makes me think about how people survived during, say the Irish migration to America (I know, shocking I would use this as an example) or when the only way of getting in touch with people was the mail, which, let's face it, is hardly reliable and one often waited for weeks or months for a letter from a loved one. I can't even begin to imagine what it would have been like to live in a strange place with out friends or family and having to wait for a letter (if they could read and write), anything to feel that connectedness one gets from home. I understand many people did it out of necessity, and in someways I think that would have been worse, having to leave all that is familiar in order to survive, not because they felt like a change of scenery.
As happy as I am here, and as much as I know this was the right choice, there is a strange sort of loneliness that comes with it. In Prague it really isn't bad. There are place, refuges, I can head off to and surround myself with things I could find at home: books, familiar sounding words, hell even music. However, here in Ceske Budejovice, I don't have that luxury. I spend most of time explaining in very broken German, thank heavens for being so close to the Austrian boarder, that I don't speak Czech or German really for that matter. There are very few people who speak English and even less who speak it with any sort of fluency. Those I have found, with the exception of my boss and the lovely lady at the British Center (a library for people wanting to learning English, consisting mainly of language workbooks) just want to practice their English and I feel like I am spending all of my time here being a teacher, which I suppose wouldn't be so bad if I was getting paid for it instead of feeling like a dancing monkey.
As happy as I am here, and as much as I know this was the right choice, there is a strange sort of loneliness that comes with it. In Prague it really isn't bad. There are place, refuges, I can head off to and surround myself with things I could find at home: books, familiar sounding words, hell even music. However, here in Ceske Budejovice, I don't have that luxury. I spend most of time explaining in very broken German, thank heavens for being so close to the Austrian boarder, that I don't speak Czech or German really for that matter. There are very few people who speak English and even less who speak it with any sort of fluency. Those I have found, with the exception of my boss and the lovely lady at the British Center (a library for people wanting to learning English, consisting mainly of language workbooks) just want to practice their English and I feel like I am spending all of my time here being a teacher, which I suppose wouldn't be so bad if I was getting paid for it instead of feeling like a dancing monkey.
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