Things I Have Come to Notice About Prague:

1. Everything here is absolutely beautiful.  The architeture is spectacular and all of the buildings are unique and colored.  It's funny because you will see a spectacular building and realize that the bottom floor is like, a convenience store.  There are also carvings and statues all over the buildings. 

2. My Czech Professor is fantastic. Her name is Zdenka and she is a native Czech, but used to teach Czech as a college in Ohio on a Fullbright so she speaks very good English.  We have had intensive Czech for 4 hours a day for the past 5 days, and on the last day instead of having class we went to the grocery store so we could ask her questions abou all of the different Czech foods and try and figure out what things were.  Then she took us to a cafe that used to be frequented by Vaclav Havel (the ex-president) and we sat and drank coffee and talked about all things Czech.  It was great.

3. The Czech language is hard.  There are no two ways about it.  The words have way fewer vowels on the whole than English words, and are just downright confusing to attempt to pronounce.  For example:
Strč prst skrz krk. Okay, so I am not really going to need to tell people to 'Stick a Finger Through Your Throat' all that often, but stil.... its a little ridiculous.  I have a Czech test tomorrow and I have no idea how I am going to memorize all of these crazy words!   

4. People do not clean up after thier dogs.  The dogs just go to the bathroom all over the sidewalks, hence there is dog shit everywhere.  You always have to watch where you are walking... Also, dogs are strangely well behaved here.  They don't wear leashes and I rarely see them stray from the sides of their owners... Jess and Nick, you should come and learn how the Czech people discipline their dogs.  Harper would be the best behaved dog in America.

5. The tram system here is fantastic.  I have only had to wait more than 10 minutes for a tram once, which is super convenient.  They also don't shut down for the night like busses do in DC.  There are night trams (numbered in the 50s) that run every 30 minutes from 12am to 5am when the day trams pick back up.  We have 4 or 5 night trams that stop by our apartment, so we have never really  had to wait long for one of those either.  DC should take note!

6. Almost everyone under the age of 50 here speaks some level of English.  This is great when you are trying to ask for directions or order in a restaurant, but also kind of frustrating when you want to try and bumble through an interaction with your limited Czech and they automatically switch over to English...

7. It is way easier than I though it would be to keep vegetarian here.  Every restaurant has vegetarian options, which is nice.  We also found a fantastic vegetarian restaurant off of Old Town Square which will definitely be my new favorite place to eat.  Anywhere when I can order guacamole is allright with me!

8. You need to bring your own shopping bag with you to every store.  The American stores around here will give you bags, but no one else will.  Especially at grocery stores, not having your own bag creates issues.  The cashirs just expect you to have one, and don't take kindly when you try to buy one/get confused and take too long to bag up your groceries.  Luckily, Jess gave me a little shopping bag that rolls up as a present which I have taken to carrying around with me everywhere, so it hasn't really been an issue for me yet!

9. American coffee here is a completely non-existant concept.  You can only order espresso or cappucinos in shops here.  If you try to order American coffee, you will end up with an Americano.  Not the same thing.  Also, coffee comes only in really small cups (like 6oz or so).  For someone who loves coffee as much as me, that my be an issue. 

10. You can't get American coffee, but you can get KFC.  It will forever amaze me that the two restaurants that foreigners have chosen to export from America are KFC and McDonalds. They are everywhere here!  Also everywhere are Chinese restaurants and Italian restaurants/pizza places.  I am definitely not complaining about those though!

11. Most of my internet has switched over the Czech and I can't figure out how to get it back to English... All of the ads on Facebook, all of google, and all of the buttons on blogspot have all switched over.  Google has also started to place results in Czech above results in English.  I really need to figure out how to fix this...

Classes start tomorrow, and I am actually pretty excited about them.  I have 3 classes tomorrow, one of which is the Czech class that I have a test in.  I don't know how that is going to go, but I am excited to have my first Czech Republic in Transition class and my Nationalism class.  Those are two of the classes that I have been looking forward to most, so we'll see how they go!

P.S. pictures soon to follow on Facebook!

Krásné Praha

This past Sunday, we went on a huge 7 hour scavenger hunt all over Prague that was put on by our school.  It was freezing cold, but actually really fun at the same time.  We had to find a whole bunch of things, take pictures in front of specific places in Prague, and ask random Czech people for various facts about the Czech Republic.  It was a good way to start to learn our way around the city, and to make our way around to see some of the more touristy places in Prague.  Here are a few pictures that I took in different places:



The Astronomical Clock



My crazy coffee creation from Kava Kava Kava.  The waitress here was also super nice and answered like, half of our scavenger hunt question for us!



The famous Dancing House



View of the city from up near the castle

As you can see, pretty much everything about Prague is picture worthy and absolutely gorgeous! 

Day 1: Complete(ish)

Today I got my first real look at Prague, and it is beautiful!  I made my first trip down to the CET center in Wenchesless (sp?) Square.  We had orientation for about 5 hours today, getting our IDs, learning about classes, health care, and all of the other rules and policies and such.  The center is in a really strange location, in what is essentially a huge office building with an entrance in an open air shopping mall like the ones on boardwalks.  Strange.  The area down there is really fun though, with lots of cafes and shops and such.  We also got to see the more picturesque side of Prague when we ventured over towards Old Town Square to get our IDs at Charles University.  This was definitely the Prague that you see in guide books, and every bit as gorgeous as the pictures!

To back up a little.... I landed in Prague at about 13:30 yesterday after leaving Philadelphia at about 18:10 the night before (yes, everything is on a 24hour clock here, get used to it because I will be!).  We took a shuttle bus to our apartment, which is absolutely gorgeous!  The apartment is huge, with a living room, kitchen/dining area, 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms!  I am in a bedroom with 2 other girls, and I have two other roommates who share the other room.  After getting to the apartments, we unpacked and headed out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near the CET center.  Dinner was really nice, and afterwards we were all super tired so we headed back to the apartments to hang out for a while and then went to bed around 20:00. 

Right now I am just hanging out in my apartment, waiting for one of my roommates so we can venture out to the grocery store.  This should be quite the adventure, seeing as we a) don't know how to get to the store, and b) can't read the Czech labels on any of the products.   After the store and dinner and such, I think we are going to head out to a bar that one of my roommates found this afternoon.  Time to sample some of this famous Czech beer that I have been hearing so much about....

PS. sorry if there are a ton of misspellings... anyone who is reading this probably knows that I am terrible at spelling, and my spell check has somehow set itself to Czech, so that's not really very helpful.

A not so love letter to Germany...

Composed at the Frankfurt Airport this morning:

Dear Germany,

You may think that it is 8am, but you are sadly misinformed and it is actually only 2am.  I don't appreciate all of the sunlight at this hour of the morning.  Its rude and infringing on my ability to sleep.  Thanks.

Love,
A jetlagged traveler

Sitting in the Airport

I am currently sitting in the airport waiting to get on my plane.  Finally on my way to Prague with a short pit stop in Germany!  Well.... sort of on my way.  I may have given myself a little too much leeway, considering that I got here about 3 hours before my flight and it only took me about 30 min to get my ticket and go through security.  Well, if there is one thing that never changes, it's definitely my chronic earliness. At least I am well stocked with snacks and trashy magazines to keep me entertained!

It hasn't really hit me yet that I am going to be in Prague in less than 24 hours!  Its kind of hard to thing that far ahead, when I am more concerned with making sure I have everything packed that I need and that I don't miss a flight/get lost trying to find my connecting flight, etc.  Maybe it will actually hit me when I get on the plane after my layover in Germany?  Right now all I can think about is how nice it is going to be to be able to nap on the plane!

On another note, I am not a huge fan of the working title of this blog, so suggestions are welcome!  I will keep brainstorming for the next 2 hours while I wait for my flight....

And so it begins....

Countdown to Prague: 8 DAYS!

So.... I started packing today and promptly gave myself a serious headache.  According to US Airways and whatever else I am flying, I can check 1 bag for free that weighs up to 50lbs, and a second bag for $50 each way.  I was originally planning to just take one large bag and a carry-on, but apparently it is something like a $150 fee if my bag is overweight , as opposed to just paying the $50 charge for a second bag? Doesn't really make sense to me, and means that I now have to weigh my luggage religiously to ensure it is not over 50lbs.  Not so easy on my bathroom scale....

Luckily my mother has been super helpful with the whole packing thing.  We made a list and started laying everything out on my sister's bed this morning.  We are having trouble sticking to the list though, as she keeps trying to add practical things like q-tips and hand sanitizer, while I keep trying to add more pairs of shoes.  Typical.  With the range of different weather in Prague, I am lucky that my parents are coming to visit in April and will be lugging an extra bag of my shit with them each way.  That way they can bring me warm weather clothes and take home some of my cold weather ones.  Lucky them!

On a brighter note, I am headed down to DC this weekend to see everybody one last time and to celebrate Madison's 21st b-day.  Woooh!  I am super excited about this because since everybody has already gone back to school, I have been slowly dying of boredom in my house.  I think I have watched every movie I own and left the house a grand total of about 2 times this week.  Going to the gym has become the highlight of my day because it gives me an excuse to get out of the house.  Sad, I know.

About this whole blogging thing

I have never been much of a blogger. I can never get behind the whole putting every little thought out there for people to see thing.  It just feels weird, like people don't need to know that much about me.  And some thoughts are just better kept to yourself, you know?  Come to think of it, maybe this explains why I am such a failure at twitter as well....

Despite this, I have decided to give blogging a try while I am abroad, mostly because I really like reading other people's blogs when they are abroad and feeding my insatiable wanderlust.  No promises though.