The next generation...

One of the joys for me in teaching at SGO is that of meeting the siblings of previous students whom I have taught...sometimes, I can teach up to 3 siblings from one family in a year - if 'suplovani' (deputising) allows, as in the case of the Kourilovi family last year! (Stepan for Maturita, Klara in the English Club, and Adam in suplovani...not forgetting that I taught their elder sister, Tereza, a couple of years ago too!! :-) Even this year,   it continues...

But it was a very pleasant surprise to meet Adam Kluka today & to discover that his brother is Alexander (Sasha) Christomidis, who I taught in my raw first year at SGO, way back in 2005! I recalled one seminar when we had some fun with some wigs...

We had a little 'peace & love' moment as we were looking a bit 'hippy-ish' :-)

And many people thought that I looked a little like Mrs Pavelkova here...and I didn't know her at that time!

Yes, the good thing about meeting the next generation is that they are also interesting young people in their own right...and for that, I'm glad. But, it also does bring back memories of some truly spontaneous moments...

Creating new words

We were examining a student the other day, and during the course of the exam I was sure that, even though he meant to say 'agricultural', he said 'uglycultural'!! Perhaps it was just my hearing, as neither of the other teachers seemed to have picked it up...but having read '1984' by George Orwell recently, and learning about 'Newspeak' - the word suddenly seemed to make sense :-)

I'm sure that there are a lot of things that we would consider to be 'uglicultural' :-) Certain music, art, films, buildings, behaviour...

OK, so I'm claiming this word.
Just like I did with 'flakating'!! :-)