a frightening Czech lesson

I'm spending some dedicated time this summer learning Czech. We've lived here for three years, and as I wrote a few weeks ago, I've got to learn this language. I often describe myself as a turtle when it comes to learning Czech. I'm going slowly, but I keep moving forward. Since we moved here, I've been pretty faithful about going to Czech lessons once a week. However, this summer, for several weeks, I'm going four times a week. I'm not expecting to be speaking Czech fluently by the end of the summer, but hopefully, I'll get over a hump. That is if I don't get scared half-to-death before then.

Today, during my lesson, I had to use the bathroom. I even know how to say that in Czech (Musim jit na zachod). So, I went downstairs and went into this little bathroom. One interesting thing about most Czech houses is that they don't have screens on the window. As you can see this bathroom window is wide open.

Well . . . I'm sitting there on the zachod, and all the sudden, I see something out of the corner of my eye. You know how your brain doesn't always catch up to your reaction. An animal is crawling through the window. It turns out to be my tutor's cat, but it scares me so much, I scream. (Here's where I could insert a lot of great jokes about bodily functions and being scared; I was in the right place at the right time, I guess.)

When I got back upstairs, I had to then explain myself. The good thing is that learned the phrase, lekla jsem se, which means, I was frightened! Talk about experiential learning!