My name is Jiří Borč. I am 44 years old. Already when I was 11, I was studying an English–Czech dictionary in the forest. I started with the word “abandon.” Later, I read my first book in English, The Hobbit. Then, at the Californian Sun School summer camp, I met an American named Roger (see link 1). He liked running, and I talked with him for 14 days. To this day, he is still a family friend. 25 years ago, I came to a vocational school for cooks and waiters, the Hotel School in Klánovice. The local headmaster mistook me in the hallway for a student — I was 18 — and told me, “Get to class, the bell has rung.” I replied, “I’m the new English teacher,” and he said, “Sorry, professor, the staff room is that way.” Then I found my cooking/waiter students playing cards on the table. It took me half a year to gain proper authority, and after that, they only played under the table. In the end, I was the chief examiner for their graduation exams. I was 18, and so were they. To this day, when I go to the Hilton or the Pupp Hotel, the head waiter greets me: “Good evening, professor,” and I get dinner for free. After that, I began teaching for big schools such as James Cook, Glossa, Skřivánek, Presto, but also small agencies like Hermes, Kulička, Britannica, Lingua Sandy, and others — mostly company courses at Česká spořitelna, Vodafone, and other corporations. I learned how to make long-term plans and report hours in the Mycat system. Later, as part of my studies at CZU in Prague, I went abroad on an internship with AIESEC (see link 3) to Turkey, to teach English to little children as part of a development project. I had my own young teaching assistant, Esra, wearing a turban, and I lived in a small Islamic town in the middle of the country. But the children were amazing. When I first entered the classroom, they stood up and recited: “How are you, teacher, thank you, and you? We are fine,” in one breath. It took me twelve months to teach them to say the same pre-learned sentence in two parts — to ask and then wait for the answer.