Home!

Aaaaaaaaaand now I'm in America. And I miss Prague. A lot. Fulbright scholarship here I come-- I hope Prague is ready for a year of me!
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Emily

I'm so ronrrreey

Well, the rest of my program has gone home. There are a few of us who are still hanging around waiting for our parents and various family members to come tour our "home" as we play tour guide. This last week as been a rush of final classes, final papers, final exams and final opportunities for the younger crowd to drink at bars. Most of our crew went out either every night or close to, but I just couldn't justify going out to bars until 5am with final exams at 9am. Sure, I'm a little lame, but I'm used to it. A lot of the crew is also going to be returning to the prude, overzealous alcohol laws of America where they can't drink anywhere but their dorm rooms from alcohol that has been purchased for them with cash. I am one of the few 21-year-olds here, and all of us have lost the rush to rage every night. We may not be wiser, but we're sure as hell more tired. C'est la vie. Today and tomorrow I will be writing my last paper that is due July 1. I wish that this program had been a bit more "abroad" and a little less "study", but I guess that isn't up to me. I just gotta get my paper done!

As for that so-called Thesis research that you've been hearing SO much about, it has been getting done. I spent an entire day at Terezin taking photos of everything in site (haha get it...site) and I've visited the Holocaust Memorial in Prague twice, once with official permission to take photographs. I wish I had been given a name tag or something instead of just a piece of paper to show the guard-Babushkas because the tourists gave me the dirtiest looks. My thesis has kinda morphed though. I am faced with 2 memorials here, and a museum back home that I will be comparing. I'm thinking I'm just going to cut out the museum side of USHMM and focus on it's ability to act as a memorial. I don't know. I guess that is something I'll have to discuss with my professor/advisor when I get home. I have time.

The bottom line, for this trip, is that I have decided that I belong here. I have fallen in love. I am now considering applying for a Fulbright scholarship to live/research/maybe teach in Eastern Europe. What can I say? I'm a sucker for Slavonic. I mean, how could you not love a place like this:

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Emily

So Much Barcelona!

Oh my gosh. There is so much to say about Barcelona that I don't even write it all. I'm sure I'll forget something, but I'll try to get it all in. This is going to be a looooong post.

SO. The weekend started Thursday evening when we flew to Barcelona on a very sketchy, hot pink airplane. Seeing as I speak no Spanish, when we arrived I was linguistically useless for the first time this trip. We wandered around in an attempt to find our hostel for about an hour. We finally found Sea Point, and it was right on the beach!


The hostel itself had nothing going for it besides it's location, but we made the best of it. All 7 of us piled into a hallway-like room and attempted the art of making up bunk beds when a liiiiiiiiittle tipsy. We may have found a cheap market on our way to the hostel....In Spain they stop selling alcohol in stores at 11pm! It's worse than Connecticut! That night, we found our way to a club called Shoka, which was literally right on the beach. It was all sorts of hot and sweaty and they were playing the usual 90s re-mixed rap/techno that Europeans seem to love. Since we had 4 girls and 3 guys, we made the best use of our pairing resources and danced in a giant amoeba of arms and legs. We were all having such a great time that it didn't matter who was dancing with whom. The craziest part of the night was when 2 of the guys emerged from the men's room claiming that they'd just met a WM '09 grad who was in one of their frats! We ended up hanging out with him for the next day or two as he finished up his year of teaching English in Spain. Small world, eh?

Friday morning we got up early (free breakfast ended at 10 and we're poor) and headed out to do some good old fashioned sight seeing. We walked up and down La Ramba street, which is the big main tourist avenue and took some snap shots of pretty buildings that housed who knows what. We meandered and talked and took stupid pictures, stopped and ate, meandered. We didn't have what you would call a specific goal in mind for the day, but we saw lots of things anyway. That afternoon we suited up (and I slathered Eastern European sunscreen "for the sun intolerant" alllll over) and we hit the beach. We lay there on the sand, getting sun and not worrying about the Holocaust for the first time in weeks. With all the readings, walking, tours and lectures we'd been doing, it had been on our minds, and at least for me it had started to get into my mood. I really needed this break. As we lay dosing, people kept walking around offering to sell anything from massages to coconuts to dresses. I kept having to wake up and tell them "No Gracias!" which is pretty much the extent of my Spanish. Later, we showered up and headed out for a night on the town. We went to a Spanish sea food restaurant on the water and sat outside next to the marina. It was gorgeous out, the weather could not have been better. I tried my first authentic paella. Though I'm not usually one for food that still has a face (though thanks to Kevin, mine didn't look at me for long--he ripped the heads right off mine for me) I loved it because it was so fresh and so obviously real. I can't promise that I will order something that has muscles, prawns, crawfish and squid in it ever again, but I'm glad I did then. For the record, the rice was the best part anyway! Also on the authentic menu: Sangria. It was just "DeleeCHus" as Kevin said, which became a running joke.

Saturday we rolled out of bed at a very late 9:30 (trying to get 7 people in and out of 1 shower in 25 minutes before check out--horrible) and started our day extremely....tired and sensitive to light or food...We made it to a market where we nursed ourselves with donuts, Spanish olive oil chips and giant bottles of water. Oddly enough, we saw a lot more sights that day! Our first stop was the huge Sagrada Familie. It's been under construction for over 200 years and they estimate another 40-80. WHAT. It's massive. MASSive. We're talking like 10 stories at least, with huge facades on every side. Check out my pictures on facebook to see what I'm talking about, the link will be at the end of this post. Next, we wandered (hiked) up to the Guell Gardens constructed by Antoni Gaudi. And was it gaudy! It was benches and houses and iguanas made of thousands, maybe millions, of tiny tiles to make up a huge mosaic complex. The view is gorgeous and the mosaics are just amazing. Again, check out the pictures.

After wandering around the city gardens, finding an Arc d'Triumph and a huge golden fountain, we headed for the airport. Even though what followed was a 5 hour saga of travel, 2 of which were spent trying to navigate the nighttime tram and bus system in Prague, none of us could deny that it was a weekend of a lifetime.
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Emily

P.S. Click Here for the link to my pictures of Barcelona!!

Beads and off to Barcelona!

This week has been pretty hectic. In addition to our normal classes, the World Cup has been going on, which draws us to Old Town Square every night at 8:30. This is last years, but it looks about the same- everyone comes out! Trying to balance school, site seeing, and the 2 papers and a final I have in the next week has been, and is going to be, a challenge. I'm trying to get more "abroad" into my "study", but we'll see.

Today we spent the afternoon making glass bead jewelry! Laugh if you will, but it was better than kindergarten. We used authentic Czech Glass and strung together several different strands as we saw fit. I'm no artist, but I hope they came out alright. It was a lot of fun, if nothing else. A bunch of the girls got together and did it and we enjoyed cheering each other on and making color suggestions.

Tomorrow evening I leave for Barcelona!! About 7 of us decided that we wanted to use our last weekend to travel somewhere fun, so we looked online of the cheapest tickets and Barcelona was it, so off we go. I'm really looking forward to it, I've never been to Spain before! Check that into my passport stamp collection :)

On Sunday our program is going to Terezin, so next post will be about that to. Since I'm doing some of the research for my thesis I'll have to be bright eyed and bushy tailed, but I'll hopefully be heading back there with my family later in the trip too. I don't think they know that...but I kinda have to go to get all the research I need. We'll see how this weekend goes. Seguro viajes!
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Emily

Maxi Mojitos and More

This weekend was the strangest mish mash of places to visit. We started on Saturday morning at the Shishkov Castle, which is lacking a ceiling or two, didn't house anyone important, and isn't the largest or the oldest of it's kind. Sooo...it was nice? I mean, it was a good example of a medieval castle and had some interesting preserved frescos. Since it hasn't been inhabited since about 1648, I don't really know what we were looking at a lot of the time. The tour guide didn't speak English wso we were relying on the translations of the tour guide given to us by the university, who was awful. She was a mean Czech woman with no patience for students (or intellectuals who read captions), no concept of who we were or what we already knew (or would want to know) and no great love for our professor either.

From the castle we went to a forgotten Jewish cemetery. Literally, forgotten. It was over grown and several of our shorts-and-flipflops-wearing crew were immediately fallen upon by hoards of hungry bugs. Scratchy ankles were had by all. Otherwise, the cemetery was simply that, a cemetery. In addition to dead people underground, we also were privy to several "naturally mummified" corpses on display in glass caskets in the cellar of an old Jesuit church. I think the people must have died in like 1500 but it was still awful. I don't think anyone appreciated looking at someone's Mother or sister or cousin or Great-Grandfather all dried up like an apricot. Egyptian Mummies are all wrapped up, intentionally stored for viewing the after-life and having the after-life view them. These people were buried for good and just happened to be placed in an air-tight, humidity controlled cellar for 500 years and forgotten until they were discovered during a church renovation in the 1970s. These people did not consent to being put on view and trotted out like a beaded lady at a circus for several koruna a pop. There are too many beautiful things in this world to spend your time looking at that.

We also took a tour of the second oldest Baroque Pharmacy in the world (1 of 3 surviving) from the 1500s. Not much to say about it, besides there were a lot of gross looking powders, 2 live leeches and a narwal/unicorn horn on the wall that I realllllllly wanted to own.

Really the two best things of the weekend both involved drinks. At the Mexican restaurant (or rather, Czechican-Czech/Mexican) we had dinner at we ordered a mysterious sounding "Maxi Mojito" which turned out to be a BUCKET of mojito. Glorious. We shared it between a few of us and raucous times were had by all. The evening we all stayed in the hotel and drank beerz, played cards and watched the World Cup on our microscopic tv. It was nice to all just relax together with no pressure to learn or shout over music or even look good (after you see Jesuit mummies, you're a lot less picky about wearing PJs in public).

Today we started at an old synagogue, which was beautiful. I love old holy buildings (to a certain extent, I mean, after 100 ancient celtic buildings they're all just old rocks--am I right??) so we wandered through the old, the oldest and the auxiliary to the oldest/current holocaust memorial in Pilsen.

We ended our weekend at the Pilsen brewery. WOO! We had lunch (and beer, obviously) and then went on a tour of their works and stuffs. It was pretty interesting really, I know nothing about beer. At the end we tasted un-pasterized, recently fermented beer which was actually pretty good. A lot of our group thought it was too bitter, but I actually liked it. We have a bunch of great photos so make sure to czech those out.

And now, on to stream the world cup and read about concentration camps! What a life.
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Emily

Churches of Bones and Public Futball

Today we (Christina, Megan, The Drake and I) travelled outside Prague for an hour on the sweatiest train ever. We were on a quest to see....THE BONE CHURCH. The history is all there, but basically it's a church that is decorated with the bones of about 40,000 skeletons. It's really really creepy, but it's awesome. We had a great time wandering around looking at chandeliers and pyramids made totally of bones. Totally worth the gross train ride.

Prague has been experiencing a miserable heat wave for the last week. Granted, it's only been in the 80s, but nowhere here has AC because they usually don't need it. We've been choosing between the rock of sweating through our sleep and the hard place of having bugs flying around our heads. Since our only modes of transportation here are public and feet, it's been quite a sweaty few days. Needless to say, the amount of showering and napping that has been going on is just ridiculous.

This evening the world cup began! The city (with huge help from Hyundai) set up a huge tv screen to watch the game, with stands of beer and sausages all around the edges. Some 200 people (at least!) gathered in the city center to cheer France or Uruguay on to glory. Though neither ended up scoring (booooo) it was a lot of fun just to be surrounded by the whole town. Everyone had a Budwar (the Czech version of Budweiser), a big ol' sausage and lots to say to the refs and players hundreds of miles away.

Tomorrow morning at o'dark thirty we're again boarding our bus to travel. We're going to a castle, a few Jewish synagogues and cemeteries then off to the Pilsen brewery. It will hopefully be another fab weekend. Check back in on Sunday!
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Emily

sometimes, you're just grateful

Today we were on the tram, riding home from the grocery store. Three students in my group were sitting more or less in a triangle, with an older woman we didn't know sitting between us. We've been told to be quiet on the tram by older people before, so when she started looking between us expectantly I thought she was going to shush us. Instead, in heavily accented English, she asked where we were from. Surprised, we told her we were from the US and we were here studying. She asked what. We told her we were studying the Holocaust. Calming she points herself, "I was in that." Like it was a movie we knew. We must have displayed our shock on our faces because she clarified, "Yes. I was in Auschwitz." WHAT. I GOT ON A TRAM WITH GROCERIES AND WALKED OFF HAVING CHATTED WITH A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR.
We chatted further. She was very proud of the fact that she now is a great-grandmother. After being the liberated when she was 15, she mothered 2 sons, 4 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. She talked of them proudly, as if knowing that those 12 human beings that she clearly loved so dearly were close to never being born. She glowed as she talked of her 4-year-old great-grandson who is already speaking English. Fierce pride in America lives within those liberated by the American army. Her response to a pause in the conversation was "Yes, my life has been hard" and shrugged. Hard? Psh. That makes my life look like a glowing beacon of joy and bon bons.
When we inquired about her life, she told of us her youth in Hungary, and then her later life as a scientist. She travelled all over Europe working with microscopes (that's all we could tell, as I said, it was heavily accented--though 100% better than my Czech). She inquired about our lives, and seemed as interested in us as we were in her. As we travelled through the city towards our dorm she pointed out nice parks and wanted to know what we had toured so far, how long we would be there, etc. We left the tram feeling awed and grateful.

Eastern Europe is an amazing place, you never know who you'll meet on the train, or what they've lived through.
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Emily

Österreicher Zeiten- Wien (Austrian Times - Vienna)

Well, this is going to be a long post. It was a long weekend! On Friday morning we piled into a huge red bus and travelled the 4 1/2 hours to Vienna. That's where it all began....
Friday we had a basic tour of the old city (which is not like the old city of Prague. It's just the center + some rando old things popping up in the middle) by this odd hippy with blue glasses, greasy hair and a historic sense of humor that I don't think anyone else in the group appreciated. We ate dinner as a group (and on the group budget!) at an old monastery in the Vienna Woods. I got a steak--glorious.

Saturday started early with a tour of the Belvedere Art Museum nee Prince Eugen palace. We saw Klimt's "The Kiss". Look it up on google images--it's gorgeous. There are hundreds of other beautiful paintings there, but that was the one that is heavily advertised, and is well worth it. I was supposed to head to an exhibit on controversial photographs, but I got horribly lost....So instead I wandered around Vienna for 2 hours. It wasn't all bad, I finally figured out the metro system and got home. I also spent some of that time inspecting what an Austrian ladies pharmacy looks like. I don't know why, I think I got it from my Mom, but I really like to wander through the "real life" of the people I am visiting. I especially love grocery stores. It is really so interesting to see what people need everyday, how it's packaged, how it's different and how it's so similar to my own needs in life.

That night we all went out together (a rarity in a group of 24) to the area of Vienna called the "Bermuda Triangle" and it's where all the hoppin bars are. So we bar hopped through it. We had such a good time drinking whatever we could afford on the menu, dancing in a mass, avoiding the creepy locals and other tourists and trying to corral all of us for every bar change. Though exhausted the next morning, it was totally worth it to hang out with the whole group.

Sunday, we started the morning at Maria Theresa's palace. It's huge! It reminded me so much of the palaces I saw all over the Russian countryside outside of Petersburg. We didn't get to go in because there had "just been a Russian invasion of tourists and the palace is packed. Ironic." (Ironic because the Russians had a bad habit of invading palaces and destroying them so no one else could enjoy them once they left....) So we wandered around through the gorgeous palace gardens. They had a zoo, a master garden, several green houses and a maze. We choose to get lost repeatedly in the master gardens and pop back out around the green houses. We went in and it was like a scene from Jurassic Park! There were all sorts of crazy green tropical plants and flowers. We saw all sorts of strange, exotic plants and even some giant slugs. So obviously we took the opportunity to take several dinosaur photos all over this poor green house. I pity the fool tourist who met us in the middle of this tirade. Needless to say, we had a ball.

We finished the afternoon with a visit to an art exhibit of an Auschwitz survivor run by his son. All the paintings were about his experiences in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. He was really quite talented. His paintings were abstract but haunting. His website is: http://www.artforum.judenplatz.at/index.html
After giving us the run down of his fathers life and paintings, he took us out for ice cream. An odd thing for a curator to do, but he was an eccentric gentleman, and absolutely adorable. He must be in his 70s or so (He escaped Auschwitz when his Mother told the guard that she wasn't Jewish, and she was just at the train stop to pick up her husband who wasn't either. When the guard insisted that they take her husband, she told them that she would be back for him and quickly walked off the platform with her children. They hid for the remainder of the war. Only by his mother's quick thinking and the grace of God, or the stupidity of the guard, was he saved.)
On the whole, I think I like Prague better than Vienna. I didn't dislike Vienna, I just didn't get the feeling of it's soul the way I can feel Prague's. Maybe I needed more time there. I don't know. It was very similar to so many cities--a city of people moving and churning, with some of their history just laying out to be remembered on the street. I never got the sense that they were still living their history the way the Praguers are. Maybe it's because they were on the "good" side of the Iron Curtain and developed where Prague could not. Maybe they didn't suffer the way Prague did (but don't tell them that!) I can't place it, but I have to say, my heart will always be in the Red side of the Iron Curtain. This trip has confirmed what I suspected when I was in Russia--I belong over here. Sorry Mom.
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Emily


**Pics from Austria: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042175&id=1562730054&l=8e053822c8

Hot buttered Rollz

Today I broke off from the group for just long enough to feel like I live here. I ran off to go buy the rest of my postcards for everyone and used my sweet Czech skillz to purchase some sexy new tights (my ripped today in the rain), several postcards and some other essentials from an adorable little "Papery". It is horrible, cold and rainy here. It's more like Seattle than Prague weather here-- today it scrapped by at 11 degrees Celsius (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit).

To amend the damp, depressing weather that was starting to effect my mood, I ducked into a little bakery called the Rembrandt. And it deserves it's name-- the place is a masterpiece of hot buttered rollz of every shape, size, style and flavor. You can smell the butter coaxing you in from a block away. So now here I sit, enjoying a cup of tea and a chocolate croissant, about to snuggle down under my covers and read depressing Czech Soviet-era literature on this rainy afternoon. Cheers!

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Emily

HELLO POLAND.

First reaction of Poland, by the entire group: Wow. Poland doesn't suck? This is awesome! As American students, we were really quite prepared for the dreary, sad country that is always presented to us as the down-trodden, borderless little brother of Europe. I mean, can Poland ever keep a strong border? Sorryyyyy. But the landscape is beautiful (see pictures), the people are relatively nice, and the sites of medieval Krakow were gorgeous. More on that later.

After quite a stressful night* we got there at a horrifying 6:30am and immediately realized that we had no idea how to get to our hostel. Whoops. We did finally get there after some very kind English speakers in an upscale hotel gave us the 411. Our hostel was soooo cool! The decoration was like spray paint on the walls, all peace love and Lenin. Obviously a post-soviet era hostel. They fed us breakfast and were able to get us in early, into our summer camp room of 12 bunkbeds. Needless to say, we all immediately passed out.

Our say in Krakow was full on tourist. Maps out in the street and everything. We saw the old Jewish quarter, which consisted of several beautiful synagogues, as well as the Old Town which still has the fortification walls from medieval times--the Florian Gate is the center attraction there. The most beautiful thing, the "must see" of Krakow is Wawel Castle. There is a gorgeous cathedral there with a bunch of royal tombs and such. The Castle is the typical Polish Catholic, over the top cathedral, but it is so pretty. I'm not a huge fan of all the silver gilded crap, but their were several royal tombs from the 1300s that were painted in the old Slovanic style that reminded me so much of Russia and were so beautiful. I like the simpler one's so much better.

The next morning we all rose at o' dark thirty to take the bus to Auschwitz. Our tour guide was this little woman named Anya who grew up in the town of Auschwitz and had been leading tours there for 3 years after working at the museum while she was in school (sound familiar?) and she was fantastic. We started at Auschwitz proper and went through several buildings were they had exhibits. We saw 2 tons of real human hair, hundreds of shoes and several other devastating exhibits. We were all nauseous from the shear inhumanity of it all. We ended that half of the tour with a walk through the first crematorium. Like we walked through the room where people actually died from being gassed with cyanide. I was devastated. It took several minutes for us all to compose ourselves after that. Next we went over to Birkineau, or Auschwitz II. That is where most people lived and where the other 4 gas chambers were. Two buildings have been reconstructed by the museum, and we walked through where the victims slept and bathed, and often died. There are hundreds of chimneys all over the grounds marking were wooden housing barracks used to stand. It was just mind-blowing.

I credit my group greatly for pulling themselves through that with the most mature, respectful attitudes I could imagine. One of the most striking things for me, was how my group, intelligent and snarky as we all are, were so able to continue our lives and our conversations that evening without ever offending anyone's reaction to the mornings tour. We were able to maintain the rest of the day without jolting anyone from the little dark cloud that necessarily follows a person for a few hours after that experience, but also without ever discrediting that dark cloud--it was appropriate. We needed that dark cloud to make it real, but we needed life to go on as well. As we walked out of Birkineau, as so many were unable to do, we quietly and slowly resumed our conversational habits: talking about food, sibling rivalry, clothes. We had to continue to live our lives, and not dwell on the fact that we had just walked through the most emotionally draining experience together. Needless to say, I think this weekend was one of the most important tours of my life, and will influence me for years to come. My day there will never be forgotten, and I hope that I will be able to share my experience in order to enrich my own teaching of their stories.

We used our evening in Krakow to celebrate the birthday of one of our girls, who anti-climatically turned 21 in a country she could already drink in. We bought her an individual sized bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake, which we enjoyed trying to force on each other on the train ride home. After a serious nap, I am now ready to power through the paper I have to write this afternoon, and check on my laundry that is currently being spun around an Eastern European washing machine at approximately 600 miles an hour.

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Emily

*One of our number, a loner who always seems just 3 seconds behind the ball and 2 inches from normal missed the train to Krakow. Knowing how excited he had been to join us, we were all a little concerned. We had no way to get in touch with him and our professor wasn't answering his phone so we had to resort to calling the program director from Charles University and trying to get her to contact her. He was eventually found, though the only real reasoning we got out of him was that he had "gotten lost. really lost" which made no sense since we had all gone to the train station together only 24 hours before. Ah well. He made it to Poland and found his way to Auschwitz were he found us, miraculously. It was all quite strange.

LIVE from....Versailles?

So I met my first peacock yesterday. Christina, Jen and I stumbled into a garden full of them! Just strutting around, acting like they own the place. Oh the wonders of Prague. I asked my professor today where we might have been and he said we found our way into the Senate gardens. That's right. The Senate keeps a flock of free range peacocks. In their own garden. The SENATE. Oh, Eastern Europe, how I love thee.

The last few days have been otherwise uneventful. I purchased the tickets for Krakow this weekend today, which was quite an interesting venture. Eleven of us will be venturing to Krakow tomorrow evening on the sleeper train (it's an 8.5 hour train ride straight from Prague to Krakow). We'll spend Friday touring Krakow and attempting to get around without knowing any Polish. Friday night we're staying in the "Good Bye Lenin-Let's Rock!" Hostel/Pub/Garden. Yup. NBD. Their front door has a picture of Lenin in peace glasses. Note: LENIN, not LENNON, who peace glasses would be appropriate on. Hilarious? I think so. Saturday morning we are going to Auschwitz-Birkineau Concentration and Death Camp. Though their website looks like it was designed by a 5th grader, the tour should prove to be interesting. I booked the tour for all of us through the official Auschwitz people, so hopefully the guide will be knowledgeable. Unfortunately, it is also one of our girls birthdays...As Billy Madison would say, "That's craptastic."

We're taking the sleeper train back to Prague on Saturday night and we'll get to Prague on Sunday morning around 6am (ew). I can only assume I will sleep through most of Sunday. I will upload pictures and blog all of our adventures in Poland when I get back!
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Emily

Mailing Address

Anyone who wants to send me mail may send it to this address:
Emily Sample, 216B
Kolej Komenskeho
Parleřova 6 160 00 Prague 6
Czech Republic


I don't know how fast the mail is, and I'll be czeching out of here June 26th. Anything is welcome if you want to send it my way!
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Emily

Sparkle on, you crazy diamond

Today was our first day of class! We started the day early with a class about the literature and cultural history of Prague (I thought our Holocaust class was first of the day, apparently not. oops) Ou professor is from the Czech Republic and works for the University, which makes is sometimes interesting to understand him....But the class looks like it's going to be really interesting. He has us reading several older texts and we have a paper (booooo) at the end of the semester comparing fact to fiction.

The Holocaust class is going to be difficult for me. I have a bad habit of playing the peanut gallery when I know something extra about the subject matter, so I think I'm going to sequester myself in the back row and struggle to keep my mouth shut. The Professor (this is the one we brought with us from WM) knows that I'm pretty well versed in Holocaust history, so he told me to relax in the back and "take a little snooze" if the class was on something I knew. While I think I'll try to avoid that, it's nice to know that I don't have to pretend like I'm learning this for the first time.

The highlight of my day was at a little tourist shop. We were just kind of poking around and we said hello, etc to the shop keeper. She asked if we spoke Czech and the girls I was with both said no and I just smiled. I said something else in Czech to her, and she told me that she would be willing to negotiate prices. I thanked her and she asked if I was Czech! When I said no she told me I spoke perfectly! I mean, I think I hardly strung together more than 3 or 4 words, but it's nice to know I have the accent. It was quite compliment.
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Emily

Fakt, yo? (oh really?)

This weekend was quite adventurous.

Friday morning we had another Czech class, which several of us were late for because we were lost in the city buying cell phones. Who knew that would take 3 hours? I mean, really. After class, we went on a tour of Prague castle and the surrounding areas. The entire 700 or so years of history can be summed up in: All their politicians live in this castle. They don't have much power, but they do have several mistresses. When the political situation gets rocky, some people get thrown out the windows, this happens often. Inside the castle they have 2 churches, take that separation of church and state.

Friday night, we hit the bar scene for the first time (oooooooooh jetlag!) and found quite and interesting array. Almost all bars close around 11pm (or 23 as they say here) because they are weird. But the clubs stay open all night. Literally. We met a very intoxicated gentleman who was peeing as he walked down the street. *shudder* As three of us tried to find our way home, we discovered that not only do the tram numbers and tracks change at night, but we had no idea what stop our home would be. SURPRISE! So we rode the tram to the end of the line to try to see if we saw anything familiar. Nope. So at 3am we were in the suburbs of Prague with no idea when or how we would get home. See? Adventurous. Needless to say, we made it home. But it was only because of the divine intervention I felt a pull to get off at a certain station and BAM our dorm was around the corner.

Saturday Christina (my roommate) and I really just needed a break, so we went to the zoo! It's apparently like the 6th best zoo in the world (Disney is the best, duh). There are pics up on facebook (the link is in the left hand column). We saw lions and tigers and 2 polar bears. Oh my! It was a lot of fun to just relax and not have to learn or look like a stupid tourist or anything. I mean, everyone looks like a tourist at the zoo (look at the locals!). The one issue was the bat exhibit didn't really have what we in the United States call an enclosure. Yeah. Bats everywhere. It was horrifying. They were technically like tucked into a cave and we were outside the cave, but they kept dive bombing our general location and then flying up that the last minute! Needless to say, we got out of there. But the zoo as a whole was great, and we really enjoyed a relaxing day. We finished with a nice pasta dinner outside Wenceslas square at The Green Tomato. It was delish. Unlike Russian restaurants, they actually give you really food sizes. In Russia, the worst thing was that when we ordered, say, a chicken breast it came on the plate by itself all lonely. But here is more like American restaurants that give you a bigger portion. For pasta at least, the food is genrally inexpensive. We can usually eat out, a good meal of pasta, for about 140 Kč, which is about $7. That's including the water/beer/Coca-cola light (which all run 20-30Kč) and the bread and condiments that you are charged for. Of course, I usually eat vegetarian, so that helps. My roommate's chicken dinner tonight was 178Kč and my vegetable one was 138Kč total, so life really isn't bad.

Today, I went to the Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish History Museum that I am writing my thesis on. There sure is plenty of material to write about! It's almost totally visual (which is what my thesis is specifically about: visual representations). Since it's a memorial, not a museum, about the Holocaust, I think I am going to reframe some of my thesis because I can't really compare it as well the the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the exhibits, but I'll figure that out when the time comes. The same $10 pass gets us into 6 synagogue/museums for 48 hours. Who says Jews are cheap?

The highlight of the day was when Christina and I went to the train station to price out tickets to Krakow for this weekend (!!) and we had no idea where we were besides what metro station. By our superior navigation skillz we found our way to Wenceslas square, which is very central in the city and easy to get home from. BAM. We literally high fived in the street. TOURISTS. From there, we went on an epic wander to find a supermarket call Albert. Not Albert's. Just Albert. Most of the grocery stores here are really small, family run things that only have the necessaries. (Like kiwis, oddly enough, which are everywhere). Albert is more like an American grocery store, which has everything. It's 2 floors! We bought 1 pot to cook things in, some spaghetti and sauce, apples, eggs, almonds, butter, tea, milk and cereal, and bread and jelly to partner with my American peanut butter (they don't sell peanut butter in Europe usually. Cuz they crazy). We discovered this amazing cookie called Mila, which is basically a chocolate covered sugar wafer and these potato crisps (more like a cheeto than a chip in texture) called Super Hearts. SO GOOD. We also invested in some dish and clothes detergent (2 separate things) and a little spatula. Split down the middle, the shopping trip cost us each $18. Win. I love Eastern Europe.

Tomorrow we start classes. Holocaust class starts at 9am, which I think is the crime against humanity here. "Reading Prague", our cultural history through literature and art class, starts tomorrow too, which I'm really excited about. We don't really have a lunch break, but rather 2 half hour breaks between our 3 classes (Czech language being the third). I think I'm going to just pack a PB&J, if I can find a little baggy. None of us can believe we've only been here 4 days, it seems like we've been here forever. I'm already making rude comments about the number of tourists in "my" city. I think the only place I heard Czech on the street was in the grocery store! European tourists are on this place like the Czech people on beer. Like Russians on vodka. Like white on rice. I mean, all over it.
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Emily

Do Toho! (Let's Go!)

Today was our first day touring Prague. We looked at the Jewish center (the old ghetto), the old town including Old square, Wenceslas square, and Republic square. The main city is split into old and new town, the new town is a a mere 700 years old. PSH. And there is still a delineation, but luckily the moat is gone, that would have been awkward with the invention of, I don't know, the carriage...

We also started taking Czech classes today. I feel like I'm secretly cheating because I know the Russian, which is similar in vocabulary and almost identical in grammar. So far it's coming quickly because of that, but it's very hard to write, I keep slipping into cyrillic (there is a phrase I never thought I'd say...)! Our teacher is very enthusiastic, speaks English well and really seems like a very nice woman.

For dinner, the university took us out to a nice German restaurant off of Wenceslas square. The portions ended up being HUGE and I know have about a jar and a half of red cabbage in my mini fridge in the dorm. Yum! I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow, I have some great ones of the old town buildings, almost all my pictures are of architecture!

Don't get used to this posting everyday thing....I'm so tired from walking and learning. Ug.
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Emily

Home sweet PRAGUE!

After hours on a plane, and one very odd interaction with a pair of travelers on their way to happily ever after, I have reached my destination: the dorm room, Eastern Europe edition. It's small and boxy with a large rock that I can only assume is a bed. The shower is a glorified hose attached to the wall and we were issued a hot plate, which I can only assume arose from the ashes of some Soviet trash pile. But it's home :) I'll take pictures as soon as we unpack the clothes we forgot we brought and find a place for those giant suitcases. Oh, and grab a Praha beer. (Praha is Prague in Czech) I am quickly picking up the alphabet and trying to sound my way through the ads we flew by on a 5-speed minibus of doom. I hope I'll learn it quickly, as no one in the group seems to have any real knowledge of the language. Now, I really must take a shower. I don't know how long it's been since I showered, but I do know that I am a grubby monster and I am very ready to shampoo my hairz. (Which is possible due to my begging with my mother to let me bring my shampoo-- I slid in riiiiiiiight under the weight limit on my bag. I am by no means the worst, one of the girls simply paid the overweight fee and has a suitcase the size of, well, my dorm room.)

To all those following my blog, living in my blogosphere, or drunkenly clinking the links on my facebook page--get ready. This 6 week rant/diary/calendar/letter home is going to blow your mind. Or something.
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Emily

On my way!

I'm leaving for Prague in T-5 days. Tuesday night I head to the airport and Wednesday morning I arrive to start my stay in Prague. Check in here and I'll try to update every few days or so, put up pictures and tell amusing stories--travel guide style. Share it around to anyone you think would be interested, I hope you enjoy!
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Emily