Housekeeping

Well, it turned out to be a rather unprolific week as far as my blogging goes. When I don’t blog, do you picture me doing nothing blog-worthy or being too busy to relate my overwhelmingly exciting adventures? Last week was a mix of both. Probably the most remarkable thing I did was attend an International Conference on Community Schools, which was exactly as very important and very boring as it sounds. I also took two tests and gave a presentation in Czech for a full five minutes. I used almost every word I know and most words I had to use twice ;). That’s a stretch; taking the test proved to me that I did know a lot. Unfortunately, during the oral part of the test I got pretty nervous. I had to have a conversation in Czech with a man that I didn’t know while my teachers listened and graded me. At one point he asked me what my dad did, and instead of being smart and lying and saying that my dad was an actor, a teacher, a manager, or in economics (those are pretty much the only profession-words we know), I tried to describe with my limited Czech vocabulary what I can barely explain to people in English. Oh, well. My friends in the program and I have been communicating with each other in Czech frequently, which feels good. Last night we went to a restaurant and used nothing but Czech with the waitress, which is surprisingly difficult. Also, one guy complimented me on the Czech I used in a text message I sent to him, and I hadn’t realized that I was using Czech and not English.

I have had a remarkably low-key weekend, which relates to what I was aiming at and completely missing in the first paragraph: I’m really feeling home-y in Prague. I no longer stare open-mouthed at the castle, instead I use it for orientating myself. It’s not a big deal to walk into a café and order green tea and sit at my usual table. I have mastered the bus schedule to the point that I (almost) never get down the hill just in time to see it pull away. It’s strange to be comfortable in Prague, but good, too. This week I have some meetings scheduled for my project, but I also have a lot of free time with which I intend to do some more of the touristy things I haven’t done yet, which will be good, since time is running out.

I did intend to go into Prague this weekend, but yesterday the weather was awful and this morning I woke up to a blanket of snow (almost literally; there’s a skylight over my bed, so I could see that I was covered right when I woke up). I still wanted to trek into the city, but today my whole host family was home (they were all gone all day yesterday), so I’ve been spending some time with them most of the day. Elena is campaining fiercely for me to buy some boots (I didn’t bring any), and today I finally had to admit that she’s right. She didn’t bring it up at first, and I admired her restraint, but a little bit into lunch she couldn’t resist. Bugger. I had a great conversation with her after lunch because she started talking about her favorite topic- how “kids these days” are disrespectful and so on, and when I asked why she thought that was she got on her other favorite topic: Life Under Communism. Remind me to tell you about some of her stories sometime, because it’s really fascinating stuff. She’s very melodramatic about it, so I sometimes forget how serious it was, but it’s truly amazing that she grew up living such a different life.

Anyway, we circled back around to complaining about Simon, who is “Really very smart. I am his mother but I am not just saying that. He really is very smart but he is lazy and impatient and if you want something you have to work.” I nod sympathetically and think about how lazy and impatient I was when I was 16 and how lazy and impatient I’m sure she was when she was 16. Poor Simon. Today at lunch (which consisted of hotdogs wrapped in homemade buns and some palacinky cake that tasted a bit like bread pudding) they had a conversation in Czech that ended with him storming away from the table. I have no idea what it was about, but then Jan told me (through Elena’s translation) that he (Jan) feels bad that they are not at home very much and can’t spend much time with me, and that Simon is jealous of me because of that. So now I feel bad because first of all I’m not around that much either and they don’t have to spend that much time with me and also I really hope that Simon isn’t jealous of me, though that’s totally legitimate because I’m here taking up space in his house and taking attention away from him. Sigh. We’ll see. Also, I think we’re all going bowling tonight, which should be hilarious. Apparently Simon doesn’t want to go, and when I asked Elena whether he liked bowling she said “Yes he loves it but he does not like it with us”. I had to laugh because of all of the times Tim (sorry Tim) or even I, for that matter, didn’t want to do something with parents that we would normally like. Hopefully he’ll come, because I cannot imagine bowling with Jan and Elena. Well, I can, but it’s a very funny picture.

And that’s the current saga of my life. I’ll tell you more about my project soon. Also, please email me or leave a comment if there are things you want me to talk about that I haven’t brought up yet, because I’m getting so used to things that I don’t know what’s interesting anymore. Hope you’re all well.