It's My Life...

The title, complete with high cheese factor (as Patrick would say), was inspired by a rousing playing of our dear Bon Jovi during the futbol game I attended last night. More on that in another entry, which may or may not be written yet tonight. First, today seems to deserve a “day in the life” description.

Actually, I’ll start with yesterday (Wednesday), because of its importance to my Czech language development: we learned the names of food. Now I can finally say the crucial things like ice cream (zmrzlina), dumplings (knedliky), Cheers! (Na drazi!), and fried cheese (smerzany syr). After our morning lesson, we all went to a restaurant to practice at lunch. This is the best kind of school, if you ask me.

But let’s skip ahead to this morning so you can get an idea of what I do every day. This morning I heard everyone else getting ready and leaving, but my alarm didn’t go off until 8:03, so that’s when I got out of bed. I showered and got ready, then went downstairs and ate a piece of bread and grapes for breakfast while I packed my lunch, then made sure to be out the door by 8:45 so I could catch my 9:01 bus. I did catch the bus but I clearly still don’t have this public transportation thing down: Until we get our permanet transportation passes on Monday, I have to pay eight korunas each way on the bus for a ticket, which I get from the bus driver. Eight crowns is about 30 cents or so. Well, this morning the smallest piece of currency I had was a 200 crown bill, so I had to pay with that, and apparently that’s not acceptable because the bus driver said some things that sounded not-so-nice, though they were in Czech so maybe he was thanking me or something. In any case, he managed to scrape up enough change, and I was on my way.

I ride the bus for about twenty minutes, then get off and switch to the metro. Now, one point on this topic: Elena kept telling me I have to take the tram, not the metro (the former is aboveground), but I’ve since discovered that the latter is a lot faster. I think she just wanted me to take the tram so I could look around, but I frankly don’t have time for that in the morning. Anyway, I usually go only one stop on the metro to Hradcanska, but today I met up with the group at Staromeska (Old Town). We then wandered for a bit until we found the café where we had an hour-and-a-half lecture on the History of Theater. During the lectures we all get coffee or tea (or in my case, usually juice), so we all stay fairly happy. After that we had an hour and a half for lunch, so I hung out at the café with some other students and ate what I had brought: a sandwich, yogurt, and more grapes. We met a British boy who was only in Prague for the day during a tour of Europe. He had already spent four hours of his day in the café. It’s so interesting to meet people from all over doing such exciting (or, in this case, boring) things.

Then we took the tram to meet everyone at the Prague castle, where we spent a few hours going through an art exhibit. It was Cubist, which I’m not too excited about, but we just had a short lecture there and then had some time before we needed to be back at school. We all walked back (it was only about twenty minutes), then stopped at the café right under school to get cake. I ate Medovnik, which is honeycake and my new favorite thing. ((If it sounds like there’s a lot of food in this story, that’s because there is. Today was definitely the worst of it, and I usually don’t get something everywhere we go, but you could...this place is dangerously decadent when it comes to food.))

We ended the day with the third of four lectures on broad Czech history. Today was entitled “How to take over a country in three years or less,” and we focused mainly on the advent of Communism in the Czech Republic. I might be a nerd, or maybe it’s just our lecturer (who used to be a teacher here, and I might try to work with him), but I find it all pretty fascinating. With all the cafes and adventures, my day might sound quite romantic, which I guess it is, but not every day is like that and we really are working, not just being frivolous.

Anyway, tonight I pretty literally dashed out of there because I’ve been late home the past few nights and it’s finally gotten warm here, so I wanted to go on a run. I go the opportunity when I got off the metro only to see my bus about to pull away. I ran and hopped on, but I’m not exactly thrilled that I did, because it was PACKED. Making the bus did improve my record, however: The first night I missed it by one minute and had to wait forty minutes, the second night I missed it by five minutes and had to wait 35 minutes, and this time I just made it. (The reason I had to wait so long is because it was later at night; buses come about ever 10 minutes during the busier hours). I made it home by 6:15, and no one else was here yet, so I was out pounding the pavement by 6:30.

Now, perhaps I haven’t done a great job describing to you where I live. Rostoky, my suburb, is just north of Prague (about 20 minutes by bus- ha). On the way there you go by a beautiful river and lush foilage by the side of the road. The road itself is extremly tiny, and I’ve gotten pretty scared a few times that the bus was going to go right off the edge (Don’t worry, mom, the bus drivers all have decorated their area up front with pictures and good luck charms, so we should be safe). Rostoky is a town build on a pretty considerable hill, and when the bus drops me off, I have to climb to the very top of my hill to get to my house. The top is fairly flat, unfortunately, so I don’t have a great view from my window, but tonight I discovered the true beauty. I started running and was just going as the wind blew me (you can’t really get lost when your house is on top of a hill—if you’re at the bottom, you just run back up), and all of a sudden I came to this open patch which was bordered by an orchard of pear and apple trees that overlooked the river on one side and the entire city of Prague on the other. It was absolutely breathtaking (I think. I already didn’t have much breath because I’m out of shape and I was going up a hill, but it took all the breath I had left). The site/sight made my night.

When I got back, everyone was just getting home. We talked for a bit, then Elena told me to get out of my sweaty clothes so we could eat. I did (because you can’t argue with that), and sat down to yet another delicious meal. The bounty has shifted suddenly from pears to mushrooms (which they’ve promise they’ll take me “hunting” for), so the first course was mushroom and potato soup. My first few bites were absolutely fabulous, but then Elena pulled out a bottle of vinegar and put some—about 2 tablespoons, I would guess—in her soup, and recommended that we all do the same. I added maybe a teaspoon, and it’s pretty safe to say it ruined my soup experience. A tip: never put vinegar in your soup. After that she pulled out two heaping plates of what she called pancakes but what I would call crepes, and either way they were wrapped taco-style around either mushrooms or assorted vegetables. These were FANTASTIC and didn’t require vinegar to enhance the flavor. I ate two and then was forced to eat another. After the third they tried to make me eat more, but I simply couldn’t do it. I don’t know how these people stay so thin. (By the way, the other day Elena was describing a couple she knows who are from America and she said, “They are both like Shrek,” meaning that they are fat, not that they are ogres. I found this hilarious.) Then after dinner Jan pulled out a huge bottle of beer and split it between himself, Elena, and I (they don’t let Simon drink because the drinking age is 18 and he’s 16, and he’s not very happy about it), and then told me that if I wanted more, he could open another bottle. By this time, I was almost exploding with food, and I really thought he was joking, but when I laughed they looked confused. Needless to say, I did not require more.

So we feasted and are now doing our own thing, which for me right now means blogging/emailing/homework. I’ve tried doing homework downstairs, but they seem to think if I’m down there on the couch they can’t be watching TV or anything, so I feel annoying and for now I’m up in my room. Okay, that’s it for now, if I have time you’ll hear about the game tonight, otherwise maybe this weekend.