¿Qué?

Oh the joy of having two grown men in my room, standing around and looking at me, expecting me to communicate efficiently in Czech...

Yet again, my flat has had to be invaded by more strangers - this time it was a cleaner, a guy who looked a bit like an old and worn-down version of Manuel from Fawlty Towers, but with no trace of a Spanish accent.  He came with his pimp, sorry, I mean, 'agency supervisor' who attempted to hold a conversation with me while 'Manuel' seized a moment of extra sunshine to see if it would be possible to clean the windows on the outside without them freezing.  (If you saw the photos of the view through my window that was as murky as the window itself, you can imagine the grime that came off it as it was cleaned...I felt supremely embarrassed.)  When it was done, they were so clean you hardly knew there was a window there.  All I could say was:

„Ty jo!”

„¿Qué?”

Oh sorry, that means:

"Wow!"

The other shock to the system that took hold today, is that it's bloody freezing outside!  The temperatures have finally dropped to what a normal Prague winter would dole out, and they are meant to drop even more.  So I must prepare myself for -10 degrees celsius by the end of the week. (¡Qué va!)  Which is all well and good, but I just feel there should be some kind of winter bonus for people like me who have to traipse across town on foot at 6.30am.  

I'm so close to quitting that particular meet-ee...Except I can't afford to.  I absolutely have to find a way to save up enough money for airfare to the US.  The architect has decided he definitely wants to do the 'road trip across America' thing, meaning a 3000 kilometre car ride from Chicago to San Francisco in three weeks.  Or maybe a month.  Which begs the question, how the hell am I to save up about £600 in the space of two months, and then take a whole month off and manage to pay the rent?  Are you kidding me?

„¿Qué?”

I don't see any Princes or Sheikhs offering to pay me to write my own travel guide, all expenses paid, so I'm not sure how this miracle is supposed to happen.  [Note automatic conversion to US English already there.  In Britain we say 'can't see'...]  Especially when I really had wanted to save money to set up my own sparkly new website and I wanted to hang back on the 'taking on tonnes of meet-ees' thing, to see if some writing work would fill the space....

So perhaps I'll cling to the hope that if I manage to find the money to go, maybe there'll be a surge of demand for the travel writing that comes out of it.  Let's go with that scenario for now.  I'll give Simon Winchester a run for his money yet.  And if that doesn't materialise, I'm going to learn Spanish from Sesame Street, emigrate to Mexico and live a life of crime for the rest of my days.  

¡Qué va!

*Disclaimer:  Please note that the very limited usage of Spanish in this blog post was in no way intended to offend, rebuke, displease or humiliate anyone from a Hispanic background, or any resting comedic actors who happen to have an affinity with playing characters who speak Spanish.  No implication of linguistic ability with regard to Spanish should be derived from this, as I am about as Spanish as Jonathan Ross.  Unfortunately.