Thursday, April 7, 2011
Completely Unrelated to Anything....
I have found the best blog ever. Trashy TV+Great Books= Slaughterhouse 90210. Whoever made this blog is my soulmate.
A Thought About 15-year-olds and the Czech Education System
So I know I said my next post would be about my traveling seminar, and I will get to that.
But first: this morning, I was over at Mikulandska, the school where I volunteer as an English teacher twice a week. Normally, I work with a beginning English class on Tuesdays and a more advanced class on Wendesdays. This week however, my friend Maarja, who also volunteers at the school, wasn't able to make her normal Thrusday class so I volunteered to cover it for her. This class is much more advanced than the other classes, and also made up mostly of 15 year olds, who are on the older end of the spectrum of kids that we work with. Today's topic for the class was 'hobbies' and each kid had to do a 1 minute presentation in English on their favorite hobbies. I really enjoyed listening to them, partly because the level of their English was amazing, and partly because they sounded so much like American kids. They listed all of the typical pastimes: listening to music, shopping, traveling, reading, etc. For a little while, it felt just like I was back in the USA.
The class that I was in today was much more rowdy than the normal classes that I teach. Hanka, the English teacher at Mikulandska, explained to me that this is because they are taking their leaving certificates in less than a month and don't care as much about school. In the Czech Republic, you take your leaving exams at 16 and then choose whether or not you will continue on to high school. Apparently, it is not as common for kids to keep going to school, and especially in the more rural areas, many of them choose not to continue. Hanka told me that all of the students in this class would be going on to high school, which is good. I have such a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that you can choose whether or not to end your education at such a young age. I know that in the US you can technically drop out of high school when you are 16 as well, but I think it is a lot less common. I feel like the typical point for many American students to choose not to continue on in school is after high school when they are deciding whether or not to go to college. I can't imaging making the choice when you are just 16 years old... it just seems so young to me!
On anothe note, we are having a fashion show with my beginner class next week so they can practice their clothing vocabularly. Anyone have any good suggestions for American songs that are relatively clean but still upbeat enough for a fashion show? I am trying to avoid having curse words pop up in the middle of the song!
But first: this morning, I was over at Mikulandska, the school where I volunteer as an English teacher twice a week. Normally, I work with a beginning English class on Tuesdays and a more advanced class on Wendesdays. This week however, my friend Maarja, who also volunteers at the school, wasn't able to make her normal Thrusday class so I volunteered to cover it for her. This class is much more advanced than the other classes, and also made up mostly of 15 year olds, who are on the older end of the spectrum of kids that we work with. Today's topic for the class was 'hobbies' and each kid had to do a 1 minute presentation in English on their favorite hobbies. I really enjoyed listening to them, partly because the level of their English was amazing, and partly because they sounded so much like American kids. They listed all of the typical pastimes: listening to music, shopping, traveling, reading, etc. For a little while, it felt just like I was back in the USA.
The class that I was in today was much more rowdy than the normal classes that I teach. Hanka, the English teacher at Mikulandska, explained to me that this is because they are taking their leaving certificates in less than a month and don't care as much about school. In the Czech Republic, you take your leaving exams at 16 and then choose whether or not you will continue on to high school. Apparently, it is not as common for kids to keep going to school, and especially in the more rural areas, many of them choose not to continue. Hanka told me that all of the students in this class would be going on to high school, which is good. I have such a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that you can choose whether or not to end your education at such a young age. I know that in the US you can technically drop out of high school when you are 16 as well, but I think it is a lot less common. I feel like the typical point for many American students to choose not to continue on in school is after high school when they are deciding whether or not to go to college. I can't imaging making the choice when you are just 16 years old... it just seems so young to me!
On anothe note, we are having a fashion show with my beginner class next week so they can practice their clothing vocabularly. Anyone have any good suggestions for American songs that are relatively clean but still upbeat enough for a fashion show? I am trying to avoid having curse words pop up in the middle of the song!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Attempting to Play Catch-Up
So it turns out that I am kind of a failure at this whole blogging thing... but I am going to try and make up for some of that now. I guess I should go back to where I left off, although quite a lot has happened since. First up, my trip to Serbia and Bosnia from March 17-20th:
For those of you who don't know, last fall turned me into a big of a Balkan dork, as it were. I took one class on Balkan Politics and became completely hooked on the region. Therefore, visiting the Balkans was at the top of my list for my semester in Central Europe. Luckily, I found some like-minded and equally adventurous friends who were willing and eagre to make the trek with me, so off we went to make all of my dreams come true!
We started our journey by flying from Prague to Belgrade after classes on the 17th, with an unnecessarily long layover in Munich on the way. I have never been so overwhelmed as when I passed through the gates in the Belgrade airport and was completely surrounded by taxi drivers yelling in broken English attempting to get our fare. Luckily, we found a taxi stand with someone behind it who looked mildly official, and she helped us to procure a cab to our hostel at a reasonable rate. Unfortunately, our cabby didn't speak any English, so we had to just trust that he was in fact taking us to our hostel in Belgrade. Note to self: never ever book a flight to a strange country that gets in at 11pm. Things look much scarrier at this time of night. Thankfully, we made it to our hostel in one piece, and our hostel, which turned out to be extra rooms in someone's apartment, was actually amazing.
The next morning, we headed out to explore Belgrade. I am not sure what I was expected after studying the history of the country and life under Milosevic, but my expectations were definitely wrong. The city itself is absolutely beautiful. The people are so nice and friendly, and everything is so modern.
Despite that, we could still see the remnants of the war that had occured not too long ago. There were still some bombed out buildings and other reminders all over the city.
Becca had family friends that are currently living in Belgrade, and they were gracious enough to invite us over for dinner that night. We hopped on public transportation out to Nove Beograd, or the outskirts of the city that were errected during communist times. The block flats and shanty towns made me feel just like I was back in Prague. We had a delicious dinner of vegetable lasagna, salad and wine prepared by Becca's friends Holly and Ruth. Talking to them about life in Belgrade was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The family had been living there during the NATO bombings and under Milosevic, and hearing their insights was really really interseting. After dinner, they gave us a ride to their cafe, where we had some delicious Serbian vodka, tirimisu and coffee while waiting for it to be late enough for us to catch our overnight bus to Sarajevo.
It would be a lie if we said that we weren't at least a little bit nervous about the prospect of taking an overnight bus through the Serbian countryside and over the border into Bosnia. We were reassured by Ruth that the bus would be quite safe, and she was definitely right.
The bus itself was just like any American Megabus, and after 7 restless but uneventful hours, we disembarked in the outskirts of Sarajevo at the early hour of 6am. Unfortunately, we decided to wait until 8am, when the ticket was supposed to open, to buy our tickets back to Belgrade for that night. Here, we had our first lesson in the workings of Sarajevo. Namely, the ticket window didn't actually open until closer to 9:30, and the man spoke 0 words of English. Despite our best attempts at charades, after 20 minutes we were forced to rely on google translate in order to purchase our tickets.
Tickets safely procured, we then headed into Sarajevo proper to explore. Our first stop was the Latin Bridge, which is the place where Franz Ferdinand was assasinated and WWI effectively began. That was pretty awesome. We then ducked into a cafe, where we had our first taste of Bosnian coffee:
We explored Old Town Sarajevo for a while, which was really beautiful. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty steadily for the entire day, and we were not quite prepared clothes wise. We explored the modern end of Sarajevo for a while where we saw many many buildings that had been razed by bombs and other buildings still riddled with bullett holes. The remnants of the 1995 war were definitely plentiful. Unfortunately, the rain ended up getting the best of us, and at about 3pm we headed out to the bus station to catch an earlier bus back to Belgrade. This ended up being an awesome idea, because we got to see some of the beautiful Bosnian countryside by daylight.
When we got back to Belgrade, we promptly checked into our new hostel (props to CiCi for finding the closest hostel to the bus station!) and passed out. The next morning, it was still drizzling in Belgrade but we decided to try and see a few more of the sights before we had to fly back to Prague. We go to see the state house where Milosevic was outsted during a massive public protest, which was pretty much the best thing ever.
We also attempted to get some lunch, which was quite the experience in and of itself. After wandering around in the rain for about 1/2 an hour looking for a restaurant that was reccomended by the hostel, we finally found it only to discover it was closed. We ducked into the nearest pub we could find and attempted to order food there for lunch. No shebang. No matter what we pointed at on the menu, the answer was simply 'ne' or no. Thwarted, we finished our beers and headed for the closest place we cound find that we knew would have food: McDonalds. After our lunch, we hopped on a bus out to the airport and headed back to Prague.
Next up: an epic post about our 10 day traveling seminar to Krakow, Brno, Mikulov and Vienna!
For those of you who don't know, last fall turned me into a big of a Balkan dork, as it were. I took one class on Balkan Politics and became completely hooked on the region. Therefore, visiting the Balkans was at the top of my list for my semester in Central Europe. Luckily, I found some like-minded and equally adventurous friends who were willing and eagre to make the trek with me, so off we went to make all of my dreams come true!
We started our journey by flying from Prague to Belgrade after classes on the 17th, with an unnecessarily long layover in Munich on the way. I have never been so overwhelmed as when I passed through the gates in the Belgrade airport and was completely surrounded by taxi drivers yelling in broken English attempting to get our fare. Luckily, we found a taxi stand with someone behind it who looked mildly official, and she helped us to procure a cab to our hostel at a reasonable rate. Unfortunately, our cabby didn't speak any English, so we had to just trust that he was in fact taking us to our hostel in Belgrade. Note to self: never ever book a flight to a strange country that gets in at 11pm. Things look much scarrier at this time of night. Thankfully, we made it to our hostel in one piece, and our hostel, which turned out to be extra rooms in someone's apartment, was actually amazing.
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| St. Patricks Day in Belgrade: Baileys and Socialist Monopoly |
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| Becca and I at lunch in the Bohemian Quarter |
Despite that, we could still see the remnants of the war that had occured not too long ago. There were still some bombed out buildings and other reminders all over the city.
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| One of the many buildings that bears the scars of the war |
Becca had family friends that are currently living in Belgrade, and they were gracious enough to invite us over for dinner that night. We hopped on public transportation out to Nove Beograd, or the outskirts of the city that were errected during communist times. The block flats and shanty towns made me feel just like I was back in Prague. We had a delicious dinner of vegetable lasagna, salad and wine prepared by Becca's friends Holly and Ruth. Talking to them about life in Belgrade was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The family had been living there during the NATO bombings and under Milosevic, and hearing their insights was really really interseting. After dinner, they gave us a ride to their cafe, where we had some delicious Serbian vodka, tirimisu and coffee while waiting for it to be late enough for us to catch our overnight bus to Sarajevo.
It would be a lie if we said that we weren't at least a little bit nervous about the prospect of taking an overnight bus through the Serbian countryside and over the border into Bosnia. We were reassured by Ruth that the bus would be quite safe, and she was definitely right.
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| In the bus station, I encountered my first Turkish toilet. Needless to say, I was perplexed. |
Tickets safely procured, we then headed into Sarajevo proper to explore. Our first stop was the Latin Bridge, which is the place where Franz Ferdinand was assasinated and WWI effectively began. That was pretty awesome. We then ducked into a cafe, where we had our first taste of Bosnian coffee:
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| Heaven in a cup. |
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| View of the hills surrounding Sarajevo from the bus |
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| Me geeking out in front of the state house in Serbia! |
Next up: an epic post about our 10 day traveling seminar to Krakow, Brno, Mikulov and Vienna!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Things I Have Become Addicted to While in Prague:
1. My roomate Jana's electric tea kettle: You can make tea in like, 2 minutes flat. Also, it shuts itself off automatically, so if I get distracted and forget about it, it doesn't even matter! For a person like me, who has extreme paranoia about forgetting to turn things off when I leave the house in the morning, it is absolutely perfect. Needless to say, I have also become addicted to tea. Mom and dad, you can expect one of these to turn up in your kitchen as soon as I get back!
2. Nutella: Now, I know that you can get this in the states, but for some reason it just tastes so much better in Europe! Also, they have this awesome nutella mix here, which combines the origninal chocolate hazlenut with white chocolate. Amazing!
3. Trams that run on time: DC, you need to take serious note of this. Never in my month and a half here have I ever seen a tram that is more than 2 minutes late. When you share a track/electircal wires with other trams, one tran cannot be late without throwing everything else off, hence no trams are ever late. I can leave 15 minutes before class to get a tram that takes 12 minutes to get to school, and I will never be late!
4. Buying a week worth of groceries for less than $15: Everything in Prague is incredibly cheap, including food. I can buy a large amount of groceries, including a bottle of wine for super super cheap. The produce here is especially cheap, so I eat healthier too! I never want to go grocery shopping in the US again! It is going to be so painful to come home and pay for anything. On the topic of cheap food, you can also eat out at a nice restaurant for the equivalent of what a meal at z-burger costs in DC.
2. Nutella: Now, I know that you can get this in the states, but for some reason it just tastes so much better in Europe! Also, they have this awesome nutella mix here, which combines the origninal chocolate hazlenut with white chocolate. Amazing!
3. Trams that run on time: DC, you need to take serious note of this. Never in my month and a half here have I ever seen a tram that is more than 2 minutes late. When you share a track/electircal wires with other trams, one tran cannot be late without throwing everything else off, hence no trams are ever late. I can leave 15 minutes before class to get a tram that takes 12 minutes to get to school, and I will never be late!
4. Buying a week worth of groceries for less than $15: Everything in Prague is incredibly cheap, including food. I can buy a large amount of groceries, including a bottle of wine for super super cheap. The produce here is especially cheap, so I eat healthier too! I never want to go grocery shopping in the US again! It is going to be so painful to come home and pay for anything. On the topic of cheap food, you can also eat out at a nice restaurant for the equivalent of what a meal at z-burger costs in DC.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Adventures in Dresden
This past weekend, my friends Ilana, Cici, Mattie, Becca, Kelsey and I decided to get out of Prague for a bit and head over to Dresden, Germany. Eurolines, a cheap bus company that leaves from Prague, was running a special of buy one get one free tickets, so we all made it to Dresden for about $20 each, round trip! We got to Dresden around 11am on Friday, and thanks to Cici's awesome German language skills, figured out the tram system without too much trouble and headed to our hostel. We got a little turned around, but made it there without too much trouble, only to find out that we couldn't check in until 3pm. It wasn't all bad though, because they let us leave our bags there and we headed back into the city to do some sight seeing.
We had a packed day, seeing everything from the castle complex to the Frauenkirche, to the new synagogue (which was closed... lame!) We even stopped at the old town market to get some delicious crepes, and ended up making friends with the vendors there (props to Ilana for that one!) Luckily Dresden is a pretty small city, but we still definitely got our workout in walking around it. My favorite part was definitely the chruch, which had one of the most spectacular interiors that I had ever seen. We couldn't take pictures inside, but here is a picture of it that I stole from google:
After a slightly longer than anticipated cat nap at the hostel, we once again headed back to the city, this time to grab some dinner at a vegetarian restaurant that we had found via the internet on Cici's phone. The food there was amazing! We had a cream of corn soup with pomegranite pips in it, which sounds really strange but was actually the best thing I have ever tasted. We also had some gnocci with pears and gorgonzola cheese, which was also very good. My favorite part might have been the apfelbier, which was essentially hard cider crossed with beer. Yum! Here is a picture of me with my apfelbier (ps. sorry for totally butchering that word Cici!)
The next morning, we woke up bright and early to take a train out to Bad Schandau, a National Park that spans the border of Germany and the Czech Republic for some fresh air and hill walking, as they call it here. The park was only about 45 minutes away by train, and absolutely gorgeous! It was snowing all morning, but by the time we made it out there the snow had stopped and everything was all pretty and snow covered. On our way out of Dresden, we had stopped at a grocery store and picked up bread and cheese and chocolate, all of the essentials for a picnic. Here are some pictures from the hike:
After our hike, we hopped on the train back to Dresden in order to catch our bus back to Prague that night. As we pulled up to the station, we could see smoke coming from different areas of the city, and large crowds of people dressed all in black crowding around the station. Looks like the rumored neo-Nazi rally was taking place in Dresden after all (check out BBC's coverage of it here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14854947,00.html). Luckily, the protest itself was pretty peaceful, if not slightly unnerving having that many people yelling in a language you can't understand.
The issues started when we tried to get back into the train station to retrieve our luggage, which we had locked in a locker prior to heading out for our hike that morning. By this time, the police had barracaded the entereance to the station, which seemed to be a part of the dividing line between the neo-Nazis and the anarchists (thankfully, we ended up being on the anarchist side and were therefore very safe and removed from the majority of the action described in the BBC article). They were still letting some people enter however, so we decided to try our luck. After being yelled at in German, some young woman took pity on us and explained that the guards though that we looked like 'the left' and were not going to let us into the station. They had assumed that we were part of the protest, despite our lack of knowledge of German and our clearly very commercial and westernized clothes (North Face jackets anyone?).
Not sure what to do, we moved to the side to regroup. At this exact point, two very interesting things happened simultaneously. First the bus company called to tell us that the train station was barricaded (yep, we got that part) and that they could not get the bus into the city so they were now picking up at a location on the outskirts, all the way accross town. Did I mention that this was 30 minutes before the bus was to leave and all public transportation in the city had been shut down? awesome. Second, the neo-Nazi and anarchist factions met at the barricade and the yelling began to intensify. We quickly decided that it was time for us to vamoose, but we still had the issue of our luggage locked in the train station.
Luckily, our fearless leader Cici was able to use her awesome German skills and finagle her way into the station and carry all 6 of our stuff back out to us. We promptly grabbed the duffles and took off, map in hand, for what was to be a 20 minute sprint on foot accross the whole city of Dresden. After running our little hearts out and finding a street that was off of our map, we made it to the bus just as its doors were closing. Luckily, the super nice driver opened them for us and let us on. Despite the adrenaline rush, I managed to sleep the entire way back to Prauge. Overall, it was quite the weekend and it will always make a good story to tell that I hiked in a German National park and got caught in a neo-Nazi rally...
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Cesky Krumlov and Snow
So I realize it has been a little while since I have updated the blog, but things have been pretty calm here. I feel like I am finally getting into the swing of things here and classes are starting to pick up so they are begining to occupy a lot of my time. There is one trip that I took that hasn't made an apperance on this blog yet, and that was my trip to Cesky Krumlov.
Cesky Krumlov is a little town in the southern part of the Czech Republic. It, like many other Czech towns, is built around an old chateau (ie small castle) and is incredibly beautiful. We were there from Sunday-Monday of last week with our entire program of about 90 kids just to get out of Prague for a little while. To give you a sense of how small the town is, I think that our group temporarily doubled its population. The town's primary purpose is as a tourist destination, and so the majority of it is dedicated to restaurants and souvenier shops. Here are some pictures:
Other than Cesky Krumlov, not a whole lot has been happening around here. The weather has been really cold (snow forecasted for the next few days). I am currenlty sitting in the Globe, an awesome English language bookstore in the middle of Prague blogging and pretending to do my reading for class tomorrow....
On a final, more exciting note though I just booked a trip to Rome and Paris for after my semester ends adn I cound't be more excited about it! If anyone has any suggestions about either place, I would love to hear them!
Cesky Krumlov is a little town in the southern part of the Czech Republic. It, like many other Czech towns, is built around an old chateau (ie small castle) and is incredibly beautiful. We were there from Sunday-Monday of last week with our entire program of about 90 kids just to get out of Prague for a little while. To give you a sense of how small the town is, I think that our group temporarily doubled its population. The town's primary purpose is as a tourist destination, and so the majority of it is dedicated to restaurants and souvenier shops. Here are some pictures:
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| Down one of the side streets off of the main town square |
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| My roomate Hannah and I on top of the tower |
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| view of Cesky Krumlov from the top of the tower |
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| The Chateau spire |
On a final, more exciting note though I just booked a trip to Rome and Paris for after my semester ends adn I cound't be more excited about it! If anyone has any suggestions about either place, I would love to hear them!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
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!
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!
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