Wednesday, February 3, 2010

I HAVE INTERNET!

Two days ago (the first full day I was here), we went down to the CERGE school building at around 4pm for the first time and met about half of the other people on the program. Fun fact: the building is located on the street that used to house the communist headquarters in Prague (and still houses the party..), so a lot of Czech people are “scared” to walk down that street even now, because people used to just disappear sometimes when they were brought there. The street name translates into "Prisoners' Row" or something. 
The school is beautiful inside. It used to be a palace, I found out today. The classroom we were in for the meet-and-greet had a very high ceiling and gold detailing around the walls. There weren’t any desks, just a huge wooden table. Pretty sweet. I don’t think I’ll be in the building much for classes, since I am taking most of my classes at Charles, but whatever. After the brief introduction to the school, those of us who were there went out to explore the city a little bit. I didn’t have my camera, unfortunately, so no pictures, but we went to Wenceslas Square, where that famous astronomical clock thing is, and across Charles Bridge. We had pizza on that side of the river (and my first PILSNER! It’s a well-known Czech beer, and it’s sort of fantastic) in this ridiculous pizza place. We went in, and then went directly downstairs, where we were seated in, I kid you not, a rainbow colored cave complete with stalagtites and paintings of women in some sort of jungle setting. So weird. But pretty sweet. At this point in the day, like 6:30, I was starving and so so so tired, so after I ate, the starving problem had been covered, but the exhaustion had not. A few people went out after dinner, but Kyra and I meandered our way back to the other side of the river with most of the group and found our way back to the apartment. That was pretty impressive on our part, because we had never actually walked back to the apartment before at this point. We used the National Museum as a landmark and never actually got lost. 
Yesterday morning I went on my first grocery shopping trip, about two blocks from the apartment. I went by myself since it was pretty close. Well. Not. Not because it was pretty close. Because I was about to starve haha. It’s called Albert’s and its in the basement of this sweet looking red building. I witnessed some guy stick a pack of crackers down his pants and peace. Slightly unnerving, but I was pretty careful. Two awesome random things about the grocery store:
1)     I found the peanut butter before I found the nutella. WTF. I thought Europeans were supposed to despise peanut butter enough to never carry it in stores.
2)     Nitra, this one is for you, in case you’re reading this: I heard “Africa” playing in the store and immediately thought of you. After having a mini-celebration in the middle of an isle, I also realized that it had been set to a techno beat. Yeah, Prague! Hahaha
Yesterday, we also went to this super cute bookstore/coffeeshop/restaurant called the Globe, about twenty minutes walking from the apartment (it’ll be closer once we get our public transportation passes). It was nice to go there because it’s geared toward English-speakers, and sells books in English. I got a couple books that felt American (Freakonomics and Atonement) and some coffe and a hummus wrap with the best hummus I have ever tasted. Ahhhh so good.
I also found out that there’s a gym about twenty steps from the front door of my apartment, so my next move will be to find out whether they only offer classes (which would be in Czech, and sort of, well, hard to take), or if I can go jump on a treadmill a few times every week. If there’s no good way to do the gym here, that’s ok because I think I’ll be walking a lot, but after 48 hours here, I have mostly ruled out any chance of running outside. Prague may be very many wonderful things, but a running-outside city it is not.
Today, we had our first day of orientation, and it was pretty chill. Since everyone else (except for our apartment) is still looking for apartments, that's what the focus was on. We all met Nicki Norris (the director), who has been emailing us weekly for the past couple of months, and I'm kind of in love with her, so I feel like that's a good thing. We came back and FINALLY got internet, and I went grocery shopping again. We'll probably go out tonight, but I'm not sure where yet.. 

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