ESL Blogs

Prague which is the capital of Czech republic has a wonderful and classic views and scenes, the people are nice around here, but there only one thing missing they can’t speak English, last weekend we were lost in the downtown Prague, we started to take a train in the city to get us where we wanted to get, in fact that train was going to the opposite side of the city which we were not aware of; we started looking for help and there was one lady with her son onboard with we asked her son for help by asking “Do you speak English?” he didn’t reply any word, I think her mother later on notice that we needed help so she came over to us asking “Do you need help” surprisingly we said “Yes please!”, Then she started to help us out by what we needed, she showed us how to take a train to the right direction and position on downtown (even though she couldn’t speak English and I could see her trying to find out about the words in English and repeating words in her language).

One weird thing though is when you ask someone “If they can speak English” their reply would be “NO” without any thinking, what make is funny and curious for me is that how do you understand the “Do you speak English” then.

Anyways the city that I live in is called Pardubice, It’s a nice city just two hours’ drive from Prague International Airport, again very limited English speakers. I was thinking that learning English would help me everywhere around the world; not noticing that there are people that still don’t know, want to know or speak English. We have been told that most of the young generation around her talks and understands English, which in some cases doesn’t apply or if even apply with limited understanding of English. That has been said we were asking a young lady where the grocery store was by starting “Do you speak English” she replied back “Very small” uh very funny for me but at least helpful.

The season is fall, which the weather is most likely like spring, one of my favorite seasons of the year except getting colder during fall, and the weather is just awesome now! It’s been like six days that I’ve been here and haven’t seen the sun yet, and it’s not pleasant for some of my colleagues here. I like the trees with their yellow leaves falling to the ground and make a really romantic scene.

Czech Republic has better transportation system compared to US; I think this system applies to all European countries. Trains are the most convenient way of traveling to in Europe. Last week we traveled from Pardubice to Prague and it took us like one hour to get there and I think it’s like one and a half or two hours by car. My first experience of riding a train was in New York in Dec 2010, and it’s mostly underground metros or subways. I think that there are two types of trains in Europe, one is fast and the other one is just a regular one.