Monday and Tuesday of this week I had my orientation at Charles University, quite the contrasting experience to my orientation at CERGE. I found the Hollar Gallery building, where the orientation was to be held, on Google Map the night before so that I wouldn’t get lost, and it was definitely a good idea. The building is located right on the river, a beautiful location, but there’s no huge sign out front that says “Hollar Gallery” so it was reassuring to know what it looked like (it did say Hollar on the outside wall I guess, but I don’t always notice that sort of stuff). I walked in and followed signs to get to a fairly small, stadium seating lecture hall. It was pretty nondescript except for the serpent head at the bottom end of the railing on the wall. Prague is full of wonderful touches like that.
There were about 100 international students in total, and I sat next to a friendly girl from the Ukraine named Helen. Cyril Simsa, the guy in charge of all the international stuff at Charles talked to us for about an hour and a half, with two breaks for coffee (or smoking). I took full advantage of the nifty coffee machine downstairs that makes instant cappuccinos, mochaccinos, lattes, or whatever else you want from it’s 20 choice dropdown list. Plus, they’re less than 50 cents, so what’s not to love?
Cyril Simsa has a dry humor comparable, I think, to Ricky Gervais (thinking specifically about his character in the British version of the Office or as the museum curator in Night at the Museum). Some amusing deadpan lines from his lecture:
“You can see the Jinoice campus from this side of the river, actually. It’s the building that’s painted brick red. It’s not actually brick, but they decided to paint it that color for God knows what reason. We’re all still trying to figure that out..”
“Don’t unplug the computers in the computer lab to plug in your own computer. The connections only work for those specific computers, anyway, and the only thing that can possibly happen if you do this is that the entire system will likely shut down and everyone will hate you.”
“You’ll need a class code to register. Now, they are all assigned at random. There is absolutely no logic to it. So don’t look for any logic. The letter for social sciences is ‘J’. Again, no logic behind it.”
Maybe you had to be there.
Anyway, after class I came back to the apartment to chill and baked cookies with Hannah from the apartment upstairs. Then Kyra, Michaela, and I went to the Mucha Museum, which is, incidentally, right beside CERGE palace. Mucha is a famous Czech artist, and you’ve probably seen some of his work before. I really enjoyed the museum, and will likely go back while I’m here.
I also want to note here that I’ve tried to pay my rent for two days in a row, but the first day I came too late (3:30, and the work day finished at 3, which I did not know) and yesterday no one answered (even though I was thinking ahead and got there at 2:30). Oh well, today I’ll go around 1, and there will be no excuse for no one being there. My apartment mates found the landlord earlier yesterday and said she seemed almost surprised that they were paying so close to on time, so I don’t think my two-days late payment should be too much of an issue. Fingers crossed.
Monday night we went to a fantastic Greek restaurant called Taverna Kri Kri that was about 6 blocks from the apartment. Service was a little slow, but the food was excellent, so it was all right. Then we headed to Popo’s with Rhee-Soo and Pranadhi, two other girls on the program who live a couple blocks away from us. Apparently, word got around about how much we love Popo’s, because like 10 other kids from the program also came. Good times.
Yesterday I had more “orientation”, but it was mostly just paperwork and getting us registered for classes. I had a chance to meet some more people, including a girl from Transylvania, Romania (cool, right??), a few guys from the States, a girl from William and Mary, and a girl from Australia. I ended up going to lunch with Renee (W&M) and Kate (Australia), which was a lot of fun. Also, I need to express here my gratitude for all the stuff the people at CERGE have done for us. While I realized that they were taking care of a large number of issues for us (phones, foreign police, meeting with realtors, getting us to a good location from the airport, etc.), I hadn’t really realized exactly how difficult it is to get all this done. Or, to put it more accurately, I realized how difficult it was, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that one might really come here as a student and have to do all that without any help. However, this is exactly what happened to a lot of the kids studying at Charles. In the case of the two girls, they’d gotten dormitory housing, not realizing just how bad it can be here. Forget bad dorm cohesiveness, or that section of rooms in the basement of the old dorm, or the floor that has the air conditioning system that never works quite right. This is "bad dorms" at a whole different level. Like, dorm projects. To illustrate, one girl’s taxi driver asked her if she was sure she wanted to get out in front of her dorms because it was “no place for a young woman to be.” She was going to stick it out for a week and look around for alternate housing. But, then she decided to take a shower, and there were no shower curtains on the showers in the co-ed bathroom. That was the final straw, and her mother freaked out and told her to stay in a hotel as long as she needed to. Similar stories from a couple other people. The good news is that I hear people ARE finding flats.
After orientation, I headed over to the Fulbright office to meet Jakub, who will be my supervisor for the internship. He couldn’t be nicer, and the office staff members seem great, too. I’m really excited to start, and he’ll set me up with a regular weekly shift once I know my class schedule at Charles. The only potentially dangerous thing about this internship is that the “Flora” metro stop where I get off is quite literally connected to a mall. Ok, so mostly kidding about the dangerous part. Mostly. Sorry, bank account.
I came back and made mom’s pasta for dinner, which was amazing, and then set about doing stuff like updating my resume for Jakub, replying to friends that I’d been meaning to get in touch with, and taking a shower.
I haven’t done much to speak of yet, today unless this blog post counts, but at 2pm I have my first real class (the one through CERGE). It’s a three-hour walking history of Prague, and I’m really excited. I have it once a week all semester. Today, it’s a little chilly, so I’ll have to bundle up a little bit, but 30 degrees is nothing compared to the temperatures we took the tours in last week, so I should be fine.
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