Irrational Fears of Culture Shock, and a Quest for Parmesan Cheese

Ahhh Prague… The past few days of orientation have been busy, fun, and supposedly “useful,” but for the most part just busy and fun. Wednesday was our first day of orientation, and it was nice. We got to the school at around 10, after grabbing Starbucks (a creature comfort…) and were greeted with a lovely breakfast spread. We ate while going over some information, and Nicki talked to us for about an hour about Prague, and life here, and how things have changed, and…. Culture shock! Apparently, in 3 to 6 weeks, I will inevitably wake up one morning and hate my life, and be extremely frustrated, and want to cry. If (when?!) this happens, I’m supposed to go somewhere like the mall or McDonald’s and feel like an American. Moreover, the condition of culture shock can either be woken up to or brought on by something like going to an ATM and it being out of money. So, naturally, I’m now living with this irrational fear for the impending blow of culture shock. Like, I’m scared that if I let down my guard for one second, it will pounce on me from out of nowhere and I will die. Ok not quite, and my apartment mates all think I’m crazy…. But I maintain my irrational fear. Hahaha.

Since I’m already talking about how I think strange things here, I will share the dream I had the first night. In order to understand this dream, you need to know that the toilet paper in Prague is bright blue half of the time. Blue toilet paper. Now, if I weren’t also getting used to being in a new country, I would have noticed the paper and been like “oh, that’s weird,” and moved on with life. BUT, apparently it stuck in my mind, and I had a dream the first night I was here that lasted the whole damn night that involved lots of running around and craziness with friends from home, and DEFINITELY included a significant amount of time spent in a huge, cement-floored, Wal-Mart-like building with an ENTIRE WALL-LENGTH SHELF of multi-colored toiled paper…. So trippy.

Anyway, Wednesday night we went to a local bar about a block from our apartment, and I ordered a real drink for the first time. Something called “High Society” with gin and grapefruit juice and some other mixer I can’t remember. It was fantastic. We weren’t very popular with the guy who took our drink orders, though, because it must be an unwritten rule there that you only order beer. When we told him we wanted mixed drinks, he was thrown off because we didn’t want beer. When the four of us told him we all wanted different mixed drinks, he gave a non-sarcastic, exasperated sigh and pulled out paper and a pen. Noted: next time, we’ll just order beer.

Thursday we had more orientation and more wonderful breakfast. We didn’t do anything too important except filling out some paperwork, and the kids here who weren’t lucky enough to pre-plan housing (i.e. everyone except for my apartment mates and I), continued to meet with realtors. I feel so bad for them because having to find housing is an added stress that would probably throw me over the edge if I’d had to deal with it when I got here. It means you have to make friends fast, and, on top of getting used to a new place with a new culture and a new language, you also have to worry constantly about where you are going to live once you leave the hotel. I don’t really like uncertainty, so that scenario just seems hellish to me. One good thing I can say about the housing search is that it has resulted in five new neighbors for our apartment! Some other kids from the program decided to live in our apartment and moved in last night.

After orientation, I went to an electronics store in the Center to get an adaptor for my computer. The only adaptor was 399kc ($20) so I decided to wait because that’s just ridiculous. BUT, I did get a grater! I am determined to find parmesan cheese in this city, and when I get some, I will need a grater. At Albert’s grocery store today, I found out that there’s a cheese shop somewhere in the vicinity…. So you will be hearing more about my cheese quest.

The rest of Thursday was pretty chill. I came back to the apartment after orientation and finished reading “Chasing Harry Winston” by Lauren Weisberger (author of “Devil Wears Prada”). Ultimate chick-lit. I picked it up at the airport because I figured it wouldn’t fail to lighten things up if I got stressed out. I started “Atonement” last night, by the way. It’s apparently, super depressing and thought provoking. Sharp contrast to Book #1 hahaha..

Michaela made potato soup for dinner, and I’m not usually a huge potato person (I mean, I like potatoes, but I think they taste boring), but it was SO GOOD. Yum. I’d have I again anytime. Then we bought drinks and mixers at the cute little Vietnamese convenience store across the street and hung out in the apartment before heading to a bar near Wenceslas Square. This bar was particularly interesting because it was cave-like (seems to be a running theme). From the first room, there was a shallow flight of steps down to another room, and so on and so forth for about 7 rooms (and some stairs branched off). The décor in each room changed slightly, and one room had a pinball machine and several foosball tables, which we took advantage of. Definitely going back there.

Today we walked around Prague and Henrietta and Pavlina, two women who help with the CERGE program, showed us good places to eat and shop and stuff. It wasn’t all that helpful, since Jeannie already knew and had shared a lot of it, but we had an awesome encounter with the doctor who we’re supposed to go to if anything is wrong. He came downstairs to the front of his building when we got there so say hi, and he said in a thick Czech accent (that, I swear to god, sounded New York-Italian, too): “Have fun, and I hope you all enjoy Prague very much. Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do… But that leaves it pretty open.” And then he like, chucked to himself and walked back inside…

After lunch at this wonderful place called “Bohemian Bagel,” which also incidentally has great hummus, about a fourth of the group met back up with Pavlina and a Czech student named Denisa, and they took us to a mall and huge IKEA store on the outskirts of Prague. I bought some Tupperware, IKEA style.

We came back to the apartment and went grocery shopping with our neighbors. I am going to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch here if it kills me, so finding ingredients was my quest at the grocery store. I always have a quest when I go there. Last time it was parmesan cheese, and this time it was chocolate chip cookie ingredients. The level of ambition was up like ten-fold. I THINK I got everything I need, thanks to the double-check I got from the American woman who saw me staring like a retard at the butter selection and asked if I wanted any help. She didn’t speak any Czech, but she’s been here for 3 years, and the woman can find her way around a Czech grocery store. She glanced over the stuff in my basket and said it looked good to her, so I hope she’s right. I came back and made (tried to make) pesto pasta from scratch without a blender. Mildly successful, but I think I’ll stick to mom’s garlic/almond/olive oil/parsley/(preferably parmesan) cheese recipe next time. It’s just sort of always good, and it’ll remind me of home if I smell it cooking. Tonight we’re going to meet up with some girls who just moved into an apartment a few blocks away, and there’s a bar some of them have in mind that sounds not-too-sketch and pretty fun, so it should be a fun night.

As soon as the semester kicks into gear, I swear that I’ll quit it with the day-by-day recounts, but at this point, everything is so new that it all seems like news. In a nutshell, Prague is great, and that creepy little culture shock phenomenon hasn’t found me yet.