One of Them Weeks...

Have you ever had one of those weeks where previously things were just going along great, life was going by with not a care in the world...well maybe a couple of minor issues here and there...then all of sudden...BAM!! Everything is going wrong all once and you’re like...what happened?

Well, this past week has been like that for me. Where do I start...hum...first off I’ll start with DHL. My mom sent me a package, about three weeks ago through DHL and I still have not received it yet. The kicker being that it has been in Prague for 2 of those weeks stuck at the customs office. My mom did receive a message saying that customs had opened the package, taken everything out, and made a list of all the items in it. They then wanted her to email back with a value on all the items in there...probably for tax reasons. Okay well this happened two weeks ago. Two days after my mom sends them the list I call the DHL office here in Prague wondering why I haven’t received it yet? Oh yes, well you have to fax me a copy of your passport in order to claim it, and then we’ll send out your package. Great...when were you going to tell me this? I fax a copy of my passport out that day. Two days later...no package...I call again...what’s the status of my package? Oh well we have to send you a copy of a power of attorney statement that you need to sign, give the power of attorney to DHL so they can get the package from customs. Okay...great why didn’t you tell this to me on the phone two days ago? So I receive the email from the lady with the documents, call her the next day as I had some questions regarding it. Okay I’ll have my colleague call you back in two hours. It’s the next day and I still haven’t talked to him. I did end up sending in those documents to them yesterday so in a perfect world I should be receiving my package today...but that probably won’t happen. Moral of the story, I would caution anyone from using DHL when sending packages to the Czech Republic as their office here is not exactly the swiftest that I have seen.

Next up...my job. First thing that went wrong was that I started working this past month without a contract. I did get hired two days before school started so I understand a slight delay in the contract. And I did ask what my pay was going to be but they kept saying that they had to write up a job description for me first. Okay well, the waiting is over and I just received my contract on Tuesday, and let’s just say it’s less than stellar. Basically if I had known I was going to be paid so low I would have not have accepted the job and would have looked elsewhere. I realize the pay scales are lower here than they would be back in Canada, but when I was making slightly more per hour last year working at a Czech daycare with little responsibilities at a job that requires hardly any qualification, I feel we have a problem. The work I’m doing now requires a bit of planning and a ton of responsibility as I am working with Special Education Needs students in pull out sessions and am working on their IEP and am writing assessments at the end of it. On Wednesday I had a talk with my principal regarding a raise and she was going to take it back to the finance board. So we’ll see where that goes, and if it goes nowhere I think I’ll be moving back to my old job or finding babysitting jobs where the pay is just as good. Really disappointing to say the least!

Then there’s the whole fact that we still haven’t gotten our furniture or internet yet for our apartment. We really do appreciate living in a lovely big apartment, but we honestly need furniture and more importantly internet. We have been lucky enough to be able to steal a very weak wireless signal when we are in Chelsa’s room. This has been our saving grace as we are at least able to check internet once or twice a day depending on how strong the signal is, otherwise we would be spending tons of money on internet cafes. We feel like we’ve been super patient in regards to waiting for our furniture but on the other hand we have a contract that both parties have signed stating that we are provided with a furnished flat that includes internet. The hard part about everything too is that we’re always told that it will be coming soon. As in two weeks ago we were told that the stuff will be there that weekend, well that never happened. Then we’re told that everything is waiting for us in a warehouse but they’re just waiting to find a time when our manager can come bring it to our house. Then talking to our manager he said he was never told this information. So it’s been frustrating for sure. We’ll be taking our contract with us to practice tonight and showing it to our coach to see if he can have any pull as we think we’ll be starting to give them deadlines as we have been upholding our end of the contract by producing on the ice!

So as you can see it’s been a frustrating week for me, but I’m hoping things will get better. It’s Jeni’s birthday on Sunday so we’re looking forward to that as we’re having a bit of a party at our apartment after the game that day. But granted life isn’t all that bad as I’m still living in Prague and playing hockey!