So the weekend was a nice break from all things CIEE. On Friday after the harvest festival, Maya and I went to Czech ska concert with Helena. Unfortunately, we met her at the concert a little late and only caught the tail end of the show, but it was really fun. Maya also met up with Stanislav (now that's a name for you), a Czech friend of one of her Brandeis friends who studied in Prague last semester. All of the music was in Czech, but Stanislav at least translated the gist of the songs for us. There were tons of people at the concert too, apparently the band we saw is pretty popular, and it was a free show. Afterwards, Maya, Helena, and I went out to a pub with Stanislav, his sister, and his sister's friends. All of them knew English pretty well (two had previously studied abroad in Amsterdam), and the funniest part of the night was when one of sister's friends asked why some states in the US require people to own guns  (they're illegal here).

On Saturday morning, we woke up a little early and took a bus to Karlovy Vary with a few friends. The bus was pretty cheap (about $18 round trip), played a movie,  and gave us drinks and newspapers. Unfortunately, we got off the wrong stop in Karlovy Vary because none of us realized that there was more than one station! We figured things out relatively quickly, but it was pretty unnerving at the time because the station is in the "bad" area of town and also, there was a kid, maybe 16 years old, dressed in camouflage with a hanker chief tied over his face and carrying a big gun walking around. All of us were like, "What is this kid doing?!" although we figured the gun had to be a fake gun. After a few minutes, he walks away from the station, and we thought he had left. But then, someone sees him watching all of us from a bush a few metres away. Honestly, we were all glad when we figured out where to go to find our hostel.

The hostel ended up being about a 30 minute stop away from the bus station, at the completely other end of Karlovy Vary. But the walk was gorgeous. We walked right through the center of the tourist-y spa area and up a huge mountain where our hostel was tucked away. The hostel itself was also great. It was the first hostel I have ever been in, but other students who have more traveling experience said that it was the nicest hostel they had ever seen. It was very modern and clean, and every room was part of a two-bedroom suite with a kitchen. I paid for a 10 bed room, that ended up being a 6 bed/4 bed suite, but stayed in my own room with a double bed since my friends Kelley and Joe's suite had an extra room that was never booked. Not to mention, we also had breakfast included and we all paid between $20-$30 for the night depending on our room.

After we unpacked, we went our for a long, late lunch and wandered around a little more. Now, Karlovy Vary is famous for their hot springs and spas, and we all had brought our bathing suits and high expectations. However, unless we just didn't know where we were going (which we didn't...), we never found them. I think perhaps that there really aren't any "hot springs" as we typically imagine them. Plus, all the spas are owned and controlled by hotels. We ended up going to one of the "spas" for 100 CZK, which ended up being little more than a lukewarm pool with mineral water in it. It was fun nonetheless though, and we all had a good laugh. Afterwards, we began our epic quest to find a pub to end the day. Let's just say about 2 miles and an hour or two later, we found one pub with an open table and finally collapsed. Perhaps pubs and spa towns just don't mix too well...

On Sunday, we ate breakfast at the hostel and wandered around Karlovy Vary some more. We took a tour of the "caverns" for 150 CZK, which in retrospect, was probably the worst money I've spent so far in the Czech Republic. A 15 minutes tour of an underground pathway and a guide who barely spoke English... I had a wonderful three course lunch for 150 CZK, and then we took the "funicular" railway up the side of one of the mountains. Karlovy Vary is known for is mountainous location as well, and we had a gorgeous view of the countryside. Luckily, the sun came out for five minutes while we were up top, so we snapped some pretty sweet photos. Exhausted afterwards, we headed back to the extremely sketchy bus station and went back to Prague.

So... more about classes and this weekend later!

**written a few days ago, sorry, no internet connection to upload it!**

Friday!! Everyone is super excited because our end-of-intensive-course exam is over and we finally have free time (two whole days!). Although hours and hours of Czech class everyday has been helpful, being in class for so long on top of all the activities they've been scheduling in the evenings has been ridiculous. We come home, go grocery shopping, cook, do Czech homework and either go out to the bar, or more likely, just go to bed early.

Last night, CIEE bought us all 200 CZK (about $12) tickets to a ballet at Narodni Divadlo (National Theater, picture 3), a gorgeous building a few tram stops from my flat on the Vltava River. It was nice seeing everyone from the program all dressed up. The ballet itself was interesting... a couple of modern acts before a more traditional final one. One dance featured only male dancers, dressed kind of like thugs in a parody.

This afternoon, Maya, and I went with Leah, a girl from another CIEE flat, to a harvest festival in Narodni Miru (Miru Square). We ate tons of sweets, bought liters of Burcak (picture 2, sweet Czech wine only sold during the fall, or punch with a surprising strong kick), and watched a folk show (picture 1). I tempted to think that this is a typical weekly market, but really, I think it's more like a smaller Durham Fair to Connecticut - a special annual festival. Anyway, big sugar high.

More later. Tomorrow we leave for Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad, in German), the Czech spa town, and tonight Maya and I are visiting another flat before going to a ska concert with Helena!

Every time my computer logs me out of blogger account, the site reverts back to Czech and it takes me about five minutes to figure out how to log back in! At least all of my language classes are starting to come in handy and I can finally recognize some words.

Anyway, the last few days have been pretty uneventful - just class and a few CIEE activities here and there. A few of us are planning a trip to Karlovy Vary this weekend, the big spa town west of Prague. I'll have a big surprise story about that on Monday, if all goes well, you'll see why. I'm also probably going to Oktoberfest with my family in two weekends.

Eh, I'm a bit in a rush. I have a bunch observations about Czech life in general though, so I'll leave with that:

- Czech drivers: they're nuts. They drive about 100 kph in the city and stop for nothing. Of course not pedestrians.

- Trams have the right of way over pedestrians.

- Tesco labels their food in English, but the cooking directions are only in Eastern European languages. Tough for people like me who really don't know how to cook/estimate.

- Czech fashion: also nuts. Today, the women on the metro next to me was wearing snakeskin print cotton pants. I was worried I wasn't going to up to snuff with European fashion, but honestly, very very few of the Czechs would qualify as stylish under our (US) standards. A lot of women dress like US hookers, in Tesco...

- Czech "gangsters": this is as amusing to me as seeing my skinny, translucently white younger brother pretending to be a rapper.

- Although, Czechs and minorities: hardly any. I've seen two black people total while here. One was wearing a shirt that said "I'm not a rapper," I found this to be especially funny here.

- Food, in general, goes bad in about two days here. Milk, fruit, bread. This is why people go grocery shopping pretty much every day.

- Not an observation, but when I'm commuting alone, people keep approaching me and talking to me in Czech. Do I look Eastern European? Also, Czechs are supposed to be reserved, we learned that in Czech class.

- People (generally) LOVE IT when you try to speak Czech, even if you kill the pronunciation.

- Chocolate bars are amazing. Kinder Bueno especially.

- Czech love their dry cookies.

- Tesco bill a couple days ago: two bottles of wine, two bottles of liquor, soda, cookies = 400 CZK. Or, about $24.

- $1.50 bottle of wine, verdict: terrible. That was a dare though.

So today was all about castles. We met up with everyone in CIEE at 8:30 (ugghh) in the city center and took buses out into the Czech countryside.

To be honest, I've seen a few castles in Ireland, so while I was looking forward to going today, it wasn't the most exciting things ever. The first castle, called Krivoklat Castle (in English), was about and hour and a half ride. We left Prague, drove through the suburbs (all old Communist-style architecture), and through miles and miles of fields and woods. Most students took a nap during the ride, but I love riding through different areas and looking around. The country around here isn't too different than in New England, but there are a ton more hills.

The ride was also ridiculous though because our bus driver was really aggressive and just INSANE. The giant tour bus we were on was kind of old, and the bottom kept scraping when we went down the mountains. We took mostly narrow back roads that could barely fit two cars across normally, and they had sharp turns and wound around the mountains with super steep ledges on one side. After leaving the second castle, we hit a guardrail, and the driver backed up without even looking behind us. The poor driver behind us almost got run over.

Anyway, we had a guided tour, translated into English for us at Krivoklat Castle. A couple was even getting their wedding photos done while we were there. After, we got back on the bus for another hour and a half and went to Karlstejn Castle, closer to Prague. We ate a late lunch in a restaurant and then were split up into groups for a scavenger hunt. After finishing, a couple of us stopped for food in the tourist-y village that surrounded the castle, and then headed back to Prague.

Tonight, a few students are coming over to our flat to hang out before we all go out to a club. Tomorrow is the first chance we get to sleep in and have a free day, which everyone is excited about.

Ah, internet! I'm actually sitting in the middle of a shopping mall in Andel, just down the street from my apartment. The wifi that we were "borrowing" in our flat officially went down the other day, so my flatmates and I have been visiting various internet cafes and internet bars (yes, beer and wifi) over the past few days. Perhaps this is good for my compulsive email checking habit though! Anyway, that's why I haven't been posting much, but hopefully I'll be able to better keep up now.

So, orientation is finally over and I'm halfway through our two week intensive Czech course. Orientation was this crazy five day affair where we'd have classes like "Dealing with Bureaucracy," "Minorities in the Czech Republic," and so on, and go on scavenger hunt-like activities. Except we would be be in all of these scheduled activities from 8:30 or 9:00 and not get back to our apartment until 17:00. Most of us were exhausted all the time and wanted to wander around Prague on our own, instead of schlepped from one tour to the next.

It's probably better that I didn't have a chance to update last week - honestly, I was tired, homesick, and miserable. I would get back to my flat and collapse, all I could think about was how unhappy I was and how much I wanted to go home. And this from the girl who couldn't stop talking about leaving for Europe all summer! I think it was a combination of sleep deprivation, a "bad" housing situation, and generally eating terribly.

At first, I hated living in my flat. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice apartment in a nice area, and I appreciate it now. But it's much, much different than living in a dorm. My flat is really far away from the others in my program, and it was really hard to make plans with other students at first. It was terribly isolating in the beginning, but now that I'm getting used to putting in more effort to call people and so on (as opposed to knocking on my floormates' doors), things have gotten a lot better. And also, catching up on sleep definitely gave a rosier tint on every situation I've encountered in the past few days. I feel tons better now, no worries, but I feel like no one ever mentions the difficulties of adjusting to studying abroad at first, and just how important a good night of sleep is!

So yeah, since Monday, I've been struggling with the Czech language (SOOO HARD!), but commiserating with everyone else in my class. My Czech teacher is really funny and easy going, despite the fact that few of us can pronounce even two syllable words. We're usually in class for about 4 hours a day, but today we cut off the last hour and our teacher sent us to practice our "shopping vocab" by taking us to a neighborhood in Prague 10 where few people spoke English. We then had to track down a marketplace, a butcher shop, and ask for the prices of different items. I was successfully able to ask two women for directions to the marketplace, but the cashier had no idea what I was saying when I tried asking if the pastry I was pointing at was apple (apple is jblkno, 'j' sounds like a 'y' and where'd all the vowels go?). However, it's really exciting to be able to recognize words in conversation on the trams and on signs now that we've been in class for a few days.

Before dinner, me and my two American flatmates, Julie and Maya, went to explore the park next to our street. Not even kidding, it's like Central Park but cooler. I took pictures, but I haven't loaded them onto my computer yet. Perhaps tomorrow? Anyway, I went to the park yesterday when I went for a run, and was completely surprised at how big it was and that it's more or less a steep, steep mountain. There's a gorgeous view of the entire city from the top, not to mention that the Eiffel Tower of Prague (yeah, that's right) is about one block from the park fence. And a labrinyth maze. And an observatory. And a mountain tram-thing. And giant gardens. Seriously, coolest area ever, and right next to our street. More exploring on this later.

We went back to our flat around 18:00 for dinner, because our Czech flatmate, Helena decided to make this Friday her cooking night. She made this delicious pasta pizza with vegetables (which I actually ate) and some salad. We sat around and talked about Czech food for a while, and learned that the fatty, carb-intensive, "traditional Czech meals" that we'd been eating in restaurants all week are actually not too common in real Czech houses. Apparently they take a long time to cook and, of course, are really unhealthy. Despite this, I am in love with bread dumplings.

I could write an entire entry on Czech food and my Tesco (giant supermarket chain) shopping experiences, and I probably will later. Within a 30 second walk from our flat, there's also a portaviny (small, usually Vietnamese-run grocery store) that sells cheap wine and delicious looking ice cream, a pub, and Karvarna Cirkus, a cafe/breakfast place that I want to try this weekend.

Otherwise, I think I should probably head back to my flat soon. I was out late-ish at some other students' flat last night, and ended up walking halfway across Prague at 1:30 because I took the wrong night tram. Tomorrow we've got a trip planned to a castle at 8:30 (through CIEE, my program) and Sunday is our first day off, yay! Pictures soon, I promise.

Ahh, so I am arrived and (almost) over the jetlag. Or perhaps it's just the strong coffee I gulped down from the stand down the street.

Prague is pretty awesome, but overwhelming. To be honest, today is the first time I've really felt relaxed and okay. I had read all about culture shock and adjusting and everything prior to leaving, however, I pretty much just assumed that I'd be the happy, upbeat person I always am. But traveling, jetlag, a new country/city/language, and the pressure to socialize with everyone new has been pretty rough. Everyone wants to go out to the bars at night and meet everyone else, but at the same time, I'm so exhausted all the time, I don't want to go out (or confirm the drunk American stereotype like half the rest of the students here have been doing). It's been a mixed bag.

But on the upside, Prague is gorgeous (when it isn't raining), and easy to get around. I feel like I know more Czech than most of the students on the program, which can be difficult since I don't much more than please, thank you, hello, goodbye, etc. The Czech language, by the way, IS SO HARD! I'm staying in a flat for the semester with two other girls from the program and our "Czech buddy," Helena. Helena is super nice and patient (especially when we wander around Tesco, the cheap superstore for food/everything, for hours). Our flat is far away from the other flats in our program, but we're in a nice area and have the coolest bathroom ever. The bathroom is enormous with a deep, full size tub. Unfortunately, the hot water runs out very quickly! Internet in the apartment is unreliable for now, so I am just quickly writing this post before more orientation classes in a few minutes (apologies for the randomness!).

Intensive Czech classes start on Monday morning, and I hope that we'll have a break in oriantation activities sometime soon so we can explore the city on our own. I was excited this morning because I successfully navigated the metro for the first time, even though I'd been half asleep when Helena explained how to use it! Otherwise, I'll update again when I have more internet time, and perhaps even write about my "misfortunate tragedy" on the first night getting lost on the way back from the bar...

Oh admit it, "bwog" is a funny word to say

So here it is, the Spark Notes to my Big European Adventure. Off I go, or, at least as soon as I board my flight in about ten minutes. But hey, you're along for the ride too, in that watching-from-the-window-seat kind of trip.

You: "So, where are you living on campus this semester?"

Me: "Uh, actually, I'm leaving for abroad in a couple of days..."

You: "Wow, where?"

Me: "Prague."

You: "Wow, Prague's awesome! I visited [insert time] ago! It's my favorite European city! How'd you decided on Prague?"

Or something like that. Seems like everyone I've met lately has been to Prague in the past few years and has declared it to be one of the most beautiful cities. But hey, no complaints there! Either that or I'll get a, "What's Prague?"

But how did I decide on some cold, former Soviet Bloc city that speaks a language that few people know (or can even pronounce)? Well, for some reason I decided not to go to gorgeous Spain or Chile and practice the language I studied/suffered through for five years. I didn't want to go to France without speaking French, Germany with no knowledge of German, and you know the rest. And the UK and Australia didn't seem to provide the culture shock I was looking for.

But hey, Eastern Europe has always seemed a bit mysterious. The locals don't expect (or so I hear) visitors to speak Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, etc. And does it count that I'm a smidge Eastern European myself? Anyway, I kept hearing great things about Prague and coupled with the fact that it hasn't switching to the Euro yet, it sounded like a great (and somewhat cheap!) deal.

So hear I go. Knowing roughly 100 Czech words and only the basics about their politics, I'm heading into a country where I don't even know how to pronounce the word for coffee yet (crucial, obviously). So hopefully you all can tag along, keep up with my adventures (or in Emily fashion, "misfortunate tragedies"), and drop me a line once in a while so I can keep up on what's going on back at home!

Miss you all already!