Musings of Museums.

Shall we continue? As one may notice, if one checks the posting times on these new ramblings, I'm using this lazy and antibiotic infused Saturday to run through a weeks worth of excitement, so now that we've all had a chance to shower and shave, possibly grab a cup of tea and settle back into our comfy computer chairs, I bring you last Sunday.

I slept, until noon. (typical?)

But as soon as I awoke I was taken by a strong desire for cultural enrichment and sophisticated socializing. Thusly, I called up my go-to pals, the gang if you will, Peter and Stuart, and decided on an adventure of the Art Nouveau variety. Off we went into the heart of the city, into the tres touristy Wenceslas Square, to the Mucha museum!

AH. Perhaps this means very little to some of you, but Alphonse Mucha is without a doubt my favorite artist of all time. For future reference, the top three looks like this:

1) Mucha
2) Toulouse-Lautrec
3) Renoir

Now Mucha is the one who designed the famous Paris metro sign, he was the father of the short lived Art Nouveau movement, and an undisputed genius.

It was one of the most breathtaking museums I've ever visited, which is saying quite a lot considering it was pretty tiny. I nearly had a heart attack being that close to some of his prints. I spent a small fortune at the gift shop, and, on a rather unpleasant tangent, nearly got my head bitten off by the coat check lady when I tried to hang up my own coat. "NO SELF-SERVICE HERE," she yelled in broken English.

Terrifying, I'm far too fragile to be reprimanded by strangers. (Especially after the fried cheese I bought off the street, my stomach was already unsettled enough to begin with... ughhhhh.)

A Church! Made of PEOPLE!

Only in Eastern Europe...

I can't even explain this properly, so here's the wiki-entry to do that macabre job for me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary

It's a strange feeling, being surrounded by thousands of skeletons. It was beautiful, in a gross, creepy kind of way. So the room filled with uncomfortable laughter, the flash of two dozen cameras taking pictures of gaggles of girls smiling before the giant human chandelier. Do you smile? It's a weird thought, smiling at mortality like that.

Return of the Plague

So, as some of you may know, I'm sick again. Everything up until that point (namely this past Tuesday) however, was fantastic. On Friday I went out with a few friends to a popular bar called Usudu, which, aside from being filled with cigarette smoke, is a pretty cool place to hang out. The bar is underground, designed in a series of tunnels that wind into larger rooms, each with a different feel. The first floor is a classy wine bar, the second full of fooseball tables the third full of punks, the forth full of loud obnoxious Americans dancing on tables... not me... of course. Anyhow, Friday was a bit of an early night seeing that the next morning was our all school mandatory field trip to the town of Kutna Hora, so I opted for a pivo or two and bounced on home around 12:30. The next morning a awoke at the ungodly hour of 7am to prepare for the 40 minute journey to Na Florenci street where we were to meet our buses. Surprisingly, I made it there with 10 minutes to spare and parked myself down on the bus next to Peter, my new friend from Emory, who unfortunately was not as lucky as I in the sleep department the night before. The bus ride wasn't bad, and was actually pretty relaxing, on the way there I inhaled the two sandwiches Daka had packed for my breakfast, caught a few minutes of sleep and watched the first Prague snowfall of my trip.

Our first stop in Kutna Hora was to the Cathedral, there's not much to say to distinguish it from the other 52 million cathedrals I've seen in my long 20 year existence, except for the amazng stained glass windows inside. BRILLIANT. Absolutely gorgeous, I took about 27 pictures just of windows, which I admit may be a bit obsessive, but none the less, I was rather impressed. Next we took a tour of the mint museum, which would have been really cool had they not closed all of the actual minting workshops, so basically it was just a room with a bunch of coins in glass cases, and not a lot of coins, maybe 20, 22 tiny, REPLICAS of coins. Tres sad. Anyway, I did however find out that the original dollar was based somehow on the czech tolar... but unfortunately I can't remember why. Oh well, I guess that's what wikipedia is for.

After that was my personal favorite, Obed! (lunch) We all crammed into this very touristy, but still quaint, medieval themed restaurant for arguably one of the best meals I have had in Prague: Potato soup, Chicken with potatoes, (notice a trend?) one non-alcoholic beverage of our choosing AND some sort of pastry that looked like it had a meatball in the middle of it, but it was actually some kind of candied berry (thank GOD.) Anyway, the food was fantastic, I got a hot chocolate that was pretty much just melted chocolate and loved every sip. Plus lunch gave me time to catch up with new friends before heading off to the main event of the day...

The Bone Church.

Tom Hanks is a God.

ITUNES is the devil. It tells me it's going to take 27 hours to download That Thing You Do!

Unfortunately, I have planned my ENTIRE evening around watching this movie. People are counting on me, dozens, and dozens, of people.

Well I guess the bar will have to do instead.

Jak Se Mas?

[Week 2 of 17]

Dobre!

So my host family, is amazing. Miroslav, my musican host father is always bringing back brilliant/ quirky/hilarious Czech movies for me to watch and makes this dynamite pizza with BACON FLAVORED CHEESE. (I know, I couldn't believe it either.) Daka, my host mom, is one of the sweetest women I've ever met and is determined to fatten me up before I leave. They have a fifteen year old daughter Nela who's perhaps even more obsessed with Gossip Girl than Molly and a thirty year old son, from Daka's first marriage, who I have yet to meet.

We live in Praha 5, which is just across the river from where I go to school, which is in Praha 2. My commute isn't too bad, but it's a lot father than I am used to... which I suppose means I'll have to learn the fine, and long overdue art of punctuality... slash waking up before noon. My commute to the CIEE Program center in Vyshrad is as follows: walk from house down through small park to tram at Klamovka (15 minutes), take tram across river to Charles Square (15 minutes), switch tram for two stops (3 minutes) , get off, walk UPHILL to class (15 mintes.) So in total it takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to get from door to door.

The house is perfect, my family shares a two story house with Daka's brother and sister-in-law, who live on the floor above us. However, it's a bit more complicated than that as Daka and her brother don't really speak so the house is literally split in two, with each family having their own entrance to avoid confrontation. I don't know the full extent of the schism but from what I've been told Daka's brother's Russian wife isn't a very nice person.

I have my own room off of the living room with a perfectly tiny little bed and an equally adorable desk in the corner. The room used to be Nela's nursery and is aptly fitted with bright red teddy bear curtains and a lion king hanging lamp. I have a huge standing closet for all 8000 t-shirts I HAD to bring and plenty of room for all the dresses I brought just in case the sun comes out before I have to leave. I haven't gotten much of a chance to make the room my own just yet aside from the few pictures I've tacked up to the walls and random trinkets strewn about the shelves above my bed but I plan on getting more creative as time goes on.

As far as my studies goes I'm done with opening orientation and am now into my fourth day of intensive Czech. All in all it's going really well, the language is just as complicated and intense as I feared but I'm enjoying every minute of it. Class is every weekday from 9:3o to 2:30 until the 6th, except for today (we went out to lunch by the river) and tomorrow (we're going for some hands on practice: shopping.)

Yawn, more later, once I wake up.

Je Daleko, Je Daleko.

[Week 1 of 17]

Wow. So my first week here in the Czech Republic is already coming to a close, and I must say it's gone by at an alarming rate, although that may be due to the fact that I slept from Thursday night to this morning due to an ambitious final attack by the new years cold germs left hiding in my body... (cough, sniffle, cough) But that's irrelevant, shall we start from the beginning?

I arrived last Sunday into the mist and the rain of what, thanks to global warming, is now considered an average winters day. Exhausted after a red eye and a two hour layover in Zurich, I promptly ignored the gloom and dragged my concrete legs up to my temporary home on the second floor of the Holiday Inn. Upon entering I met Lauren, my roommate for the night. We didn't say much, she watching Gilmore Girls (why?) and I on the verge of a coma, and so after our brief introductions I climbed into bed fully clothed and passed out, sleeping through our brief (and from what I've been told redundant) welcome meeting, barely waking up in time for our first dinner abroad.

Post nap, we met in the hotel lobby in packs of twenty or so, all starving and eager for our first Czech adventure. Our groups were led by two of our "Czech Buddies," local students from Charles University who had volunteered to live with us in our various apartments or dorms in order to help us assimilate and adjust. So off we went into the bitter cold of the evening, down through Prague 4, from our hotel in Vysehard, down the ice slicked cobblestone streets to a local pub. Once there we all crowded in, a horde of annoying americans, and promptly ordered "pivo" (beer) for all. Small talk followed, and soon I discovered I was outnumbered, for all my comrades hailed from UCLA or Central Jersey. Beyond that, I discovered that the ratio of girls to guys, is a pleasantly unbalanced 3:1, no one knows where Middlebury is, and that a lot of parents offer their children money in return for abstaining for underage drinking. Personally, I will add this to the list of things I will not do as a parent, below airport leashes and above letting them have tv in their room... but that's just me; I've seen it backfire too many times, and as for the leashes... I don't think I even have to argue for that one. But I digress, dinner was excellent, we all decided on Svickova, (beef in creme sauce) which was amazing, and opted out of dessert in favor of rest.

Day two started with a bang, or rather, a very loud series of knocks coming from the hallway. I shot out of bed to see who it could be, for I had another hour of sleep to get in before my Dorm meeting, when to my surprise I was met with "Mary-Caitlin, the homestay meeting has started!" I wiped my eyes, "wait, what? I'm not in a homestay, in fact, my name isn't on any of the housing lists, but I was told..." Ivana quickly explained the unfortunate clerical error and urged me to get change and head downstairs for my host family would be arriving to pick me up within the hour.

I pack, I stumble, and downstairs I meet Miroslav.

....to be continued.

Mapping the Western Territories.

So, at last/alas, I am home.

Aspen was wonderful, and if it's any of your business, I have told you this already, and if I haven't told you... well then, quite frankly, I'm not going to. Although some of you may be amused to discover I tried my hand at snowboarding and kicked ass...mostly... except when I was too busy snowballing down the mountain. I have bruises in strange places...

California was a very different kind of nice; I got to spend a lot of time with my family, which was duly needed and much appreciated. The weather wasn't too bad either. (70 biatch!) Unfortunately the job search is a bit stalled as my trip coincided with most peoples first few days back from the Christmas/New Years break. Never fear though! Los Angeles is my summer, movies movies movies, or maybe television, but a set regardless. *knocks on wood*

Blargh, so this is basically just an update on my Prague-ress (HAH! WIT!) Yeah... I know. I haven't received my visa from the consulate just yet, and I'm beginning to worry. The other day I met with a family friend who just got back from Prague and didn't get his visa until half way through, which, though terrifying, gives me a bit of hope that even if I don't get it in time they'll let me in anyway.

All around super excited be heading off; I leave a week from tomorrow to get there by the 19th, and then it's two weeks of intensive Czech: 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. Not really looking forward to that, but it'll be amazingly worth it in the end. I'm still looking for a good volunteer program in the city; I have my heart set on working in an orphanage a few days a week. Other than that I'm just starting to pack and procrastinate...

Let the countdown begin.

<3