I'M HERE!

I AM IN PRAGUE. And I'm really extremely tired. But I also want to write about this while I'm still in "just got here" mode, so I'm going to get an entry out before I take a shower in this beautiful apartment and crash in my bed.
The trip over here went just perfectly in the end, and it really wasn't too bad. The main issue turned out not to be the weather (although there was snow at all four airports), but rather getting through a layover in Europe on not enough sleep and minimal direction. I had a layover in Philadelphia, which was totally easy, and then another, much trickier, layover in Frankfort. The layover in Frankfort was tricky for the following reasons:
1) We were about 20 minutes late, giving me an hour and half total;
2) The flight staff gave extremely minimal information about customs, luggage check, and transfer flights over the loudspeaker while we were en route on the airplane. It was sort of like "Ok, hope you all had a great flight. If you're staying in Frankfort, that's fantastic. Go get your passport stamped and pick up your baggage. If you're not staying in Frankfort for some ridiculous reason, and you'd like to go somewhere else from here, then that's a whole different story, and one that quite FRANKly (haha, get it?) we don't care about. If you don't have a boarding pass, you should probably go find one, and if you checked baggage, we hope that you checked it all the way to your final destination, because otherwise you'll need to go get that from baggage claim and re-check it." You get the picture.
3. After I found my way through customs and decided to take my chances that the luggage had, in fact, been transferred to the plane going to Prague, I got stuck in a super long flight-transfer line for Luftansa Airlines. There were two registers open, so that took at least 20 minutes.
4. I found myself in the longest security line i've ever seen in my life. It moved quickly enough, but still took like half an hour to get through.
5. This one is my fault, and almost too embarrassing to put in an online blog: I got stopped after sending my backback through the security line because.... they thought my translucent purple Gameboy (which I threw into my bag on a whim in case I got stranded somewhere) looked suspicious enough to go have checked by security experts. Adding to the embarrassment of the Gameboy was the particular game that was in it. Pokemon Yellow, anyone?
6. Oh yeah, also, the weather.
But, in the end, everything worked out great, and i got to the gate with five minutes to spare until boarding even started. I got to Prague only about twenty minutes behind schedule, and found Anna from CERGE no problem, got driven to my apartment by an expert taxi driver, and am using the internet on my flatmate Jeannie's computer that she so awesomely let me borrow.
I feel like I should mention some positive stuff now, because contrary to what it probably looks like based on what I just wrote, I actually had a really great trip over. I'll do this list style too:
1. I got pistachios at the Richmond airport. I love pistachios.
2. I got a window seat and the seat next to it (which was next to the isle) all to myself on the 8 hour flight :-)
3. I was awake when we hit the Atlantic on the coast of America, and awake when we flew over the coast into Europe. There's something pretty sweet about viewing coastlines from an airplane, especially at night when all the lights make the border between water and land really beautiful.
4. I FINALLY watched Julie and Julia on ont of the little seat-back movie screens. I'd read the book, and the movie like seriously made me tear up way more than is probably normal. But I do really love cooking, so maybe that's a good enough explanation.
5. PRAGUE IS BEAUTIFUL, and I've only seen what I saw from the taxi ride to the apartment in Prague 2.
6. Our flat is also very nice, and so is the landlady.
7. Did i mention that it has a washer? IT  HAS A WASHER. This should actually count for like 10. It's going to.
+10
18. I got here in one (very tired, but very excited) piece.
Pictures coming soon. I just need to take them first.