home sweet home


(i promise to post more about the rest of my semester when i'm not so exhausted about travelling for 24 hours)

Sneak Preview!

My project is due Friday and I've been in the darkroom developing all week.

These aren't the one's I've developed, just the negative scans with the dark and light reversed...my prints look much better because I can play around with it. For my exhibition I'll have 3 sets - prints of people from life in Prague, portraits of the photographers I interviewed, and a portraits of my friends with a magnifying glass. These are from the first set. And also, they're not actually square, flickr just cropped 'em.



I'll have my final paper and my final prints up sometime this weekend I hope. I'm excited!

One thing I will NOT miss about Prague:

This morning at 8:30, I woke up to the ferret not only coming into my room (my door doesn't latch close), but climbing into bed with me. It attempted to crawl up my shirt and then bit my toe.
Eeeeeew.

11 days to finish my ISP.
15 days until Brendan gets here and my program officially ends.
24 days left in Europe.
Whoa.

The past few weeks have been pretty sweet. Prague is so incredibly beautiful! Spring is amazing and I lie in parks and carry my camera with me everywhere and take millions of photos and eat icecream.

I can't believe I have so little time left. I still have all the postcards I've been meaning to send for 2 months :/

My project is going well and I'm loving photography. Today I developed my negatives for the first time (so that you can have them out in the light and they look like negatives). It's amazingly satisfying to know that I took those pictures and made them into something you can see! I can't wait to be able to make the actual prints.

These are the photographers I've been interviewing/taking their portrait:
Dragan Dragin (also my adviser who helped me set up my darkroom) - http://www.dragandragin.net/
Karel Cudlin - http://www.cudlin.com/
Angelo Bozac - http://www.geocities.com/angelo_bozac/

Also, Brendan and I are going to Amsterdam and Vienna for a few days! So excited!

Hura!

Guess what! This summer I'm interning at DeCordova! So excited!

Also, I bought a pink poofy skirt today and I kinda look like a little cupcake, but I kinda like that. I'm wearing it tomorrow to celebrate beautiful spring and freedom because...

Zitra rano, budu psat muj test. Pak, pujdem do parkovy a budu cist proteze ne budu mit skolu uz! Jsem moc vesela! (Tomorrow morning, I will take my test. Then I will walk to the park and I'll read because I will not have school anymore! I am very happy!)

...I'm officially beginning my independent project and it's gonna be AWESOME. Here is a piece of my proposal if you're interested:

"This is a creative project in which I aim to learn about black and white portrait photography through a circular process in which I will interview Czech photographers about their portrait work; learn about the ethics, compositional, and other considerations from one photographer (my advisor); and also learn about the practical side of developing black and white photography.
The key components of my methodology include:
1. Interviews with three photographers about their portrait work and a second visit to the photographers to take their portraits
2. A black & white photography workshop to learn about darkroom processes
3. Preparation of a short portfolio of photographs – with the three portraits as the center point – but perhaps including other portraits or other photographs
Other supporting aspects of my methodology include:
1. Attending photography exhibitions, visiting museums and galleries in Prague to see examples of Czech portrait and other photography
2. Reviewing a select group of essays about portrait photography with a focus on the ethical frameworks

Through this process I would like to gain a working knowledge of how to:
1. Successfully take artistic, ethical black and white portraits with my non-digital camera
2. Develop my film in a darkroom
3. Prepare a small exhibition of my photographs"

I'm having a bit of trouble focusing on my work:

This is what I have to do this week:
Tonight (Tues/Wed) - Write 6 page cultural studies paper; prepare for Czech presentation
Tomorrow (Wed) - Czech presentations; study for Czech exam; go to photo exhibition
Thursday - Czech written exam and then Czech oral exam; study for our final Seminar exam (basically everything we've done all semester)
Friday - Seminar final exam; FREEDOM!

This is what I want to do this week:
Hunt through the flea market for spring clothes, take photos with my nikon that arrived today, and lie around in the sun napping and reading.



I'm finding that this attitude is problematic.

PhotOHs!

Obama and Spring! Click to make bigger!

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7983963.stm)

Jsem nemocna.

So I've been sick since friday morning. And I'm talking high-fever, cough, horribly sore throat, barely able to get out of bed kind of sick. My host family went skiing without me, which I was actually glad about because I didn't really want to be seen like that. I watched My So-Called Life, a documentary about Vaclav Havel, all the new ANTMs, and Rachel Getting Married.

Today was the first day where I felt like some form of living being, without a high fever but with more of a sore throat. My host mom insisted I go to the doctor, which was sweet of her. It was a huge pain in the ass to get there, but I found out I don't have strep and they gave me some medicine to help my throat and cough. I'm going to stay home again tomorrow and then hopefully go to classes on Wednesday - it'll be upper 50s and sunny!

As a side note, Czechs eat the strangest things on pizza. My host mom brought me a piece tonight that has cheese, ham, pepper, onion, tomato, kidney beans, tuna fish, and corn on it.

Another grey day today....

Lately, I've been especially missing

-hanging out with skidmore friends on the green:

-icecream and summer things with home-friends:

- family:

(sorry, dad, but i don't have any polaroids of you!)

Central Europe trip!

Well there are some pictues from my trip! I don't know why it came out so small - click on it to make it bigger!

Krakow was really really beautiful. My parents didn't believe me, but it's true! The first day there was so sunny and fun to walk around and explore. We bought nuts and apples and dried fruit from an old lady with a stand and sat on the base of the statue in the main square in the sun! And watched little kids chase after huge bubbles. It was so so nice. The next day was gross again, though, and then the day after that I went to Auschwitz. It was...intense. There were huuuuge crowds which was bizarre. I don't really know what to write about it except that it was just sad. That night was Erika's 21st birthday and then we left for Bratislava at 6 am the next morning.

Bratislava was cool to see, but it's sooo small and there's not really that much to see. I wish I could've had another day in Budapest and 1 less day there. The weather was disgusting and hailing and snowing. But I went to see the national ballet with Crystal and Sam and I ate lots of cabbage soup and went to a workshop where I made lots of jewelry out of recycled computer parts and fabric and things.

On Friday morning, Erika, Crystal, Sam and I set off for an adventure in Budapest! Our hostel worked out fine even though the water wasn't consistantly hot and we didn't have towels. We didn't have to share a room with anyone which was great. On friday after our long train ride getting set up at the hostel we had a delicious lunch and went to this old old hotel that's famous for it's thermal baths! We went to the all-women bath area and realized that we had forgotten to bring a change of underwear to swim in...so we all just decided to go for it and be european, 'cause we figured we'd all be the silly americans in our underwear anyway. And we saw a bunch of women walking around naked in the changing area. So we walk into the bath room in these sheets that they'd given us and oh! Turns out we're the only naked ones! Turns out Europeans DO like to wear bathing suits apparently. It was just hilarious and silly and there were some old saggy women walking around naked. Anyway, it was quite the experience and we all had a lot of fun. We went for dinner and then walked to another place for dessert and explored a little more and then went home.
The next day was one of the most wonderful days I've had all semester. We just wandered all over Budapest and the sun was out and it was great! We ended up going to all these major places to see and just stumbling into a lot of them too. We had coffee and croissants at an outdoor cafe, shopped in the famous market and bought food for a picnic, stumbled into another cool market area and had our picnic there, saw the parliament buidling and tons and tons of other beautiful buildings while we walked all down by the river, walked all around Margeret Island and climbed trees and bought a huuuuge cotton candy, walked down the river from the other side and happened to find this amaaaazing fort thing on top of a big hill right at dusk, walked around there and found a beautiful church with the ruins of the old foundation in front of it and a beautiful view of the other part of the city and hills behind it, walked across another bridge at night, stumbled upon some festival/celebration/demonstration in front of a huge church where everyone had torches and music was playing, had really good dinner, and went to the famous New York Cafe for dessert which is another old old old and fancy hotel there.
I had such a great time and I wish we had longer there, but I feel like I got as much as I possibly could out of the 1.5 days there! I want to go back in the summertime!

Now I'm back in Prague for my last 3 weeks of class. After that I have 5 weeks all to myself for my independent study project! I'm going to do a photography project and do non-digital and develop my pictures myself - I can't wait to start. I think it'll focus of portraits and people in their environment and be anthropological/documentary/art photos with a focus on the artist process and photo ethics. When I have decided more details about the project I will post them. My camera from home is coming in the mail, but until then Sarah lent me her manual so I can get used to carrying it around everywhere and taking pictures of everything. I took it on the trip with me and I can't wait to develop them!

well, hey!

(favorites from our trip to this art space/old farm/ngo for czech-german relations last friday.)

oh my, i'm exhausted. last week was a super intense week academically and i was out all day every day going to school and some event or another. which were are really cool, but i got super burnt out by the end. i should have had a relaxing weekend with not that much to do, but i had all these internships to apply to for the summer, so i was super stressed out!

now it's tuesday and i'm done with my application things, but have a lot of homework this week and friday i leave for the central europe trip! whew!!

i'm going to krakow, poland, then bratislava, slovakia, and then with a few girls from my trip to budapest, hungary. i'm incredibly excited! especially because we won't really have academic work and it sounds like we'll have a lot of time to explore each place.

i hope by the time we get back the weather will be nicer. turns out that march grossness is just as depressing here as it is at home. just with less snow and way more buildings. but it almost makes it worse because prague is so beautiful and i know it'll be so amazing...if it was just sunny and warmer than 40. ooooh well.

just a side note: there is way too much cake available here for my own good. waaay too much.

oh and for good measure:

(this is the ferret i live with...)

I had a wonderful day today.

Here's why:

woke up in time to shower, get dressed, eat delicious cereal for breakfast instead of grabbing a banana on the way out the door, and got to school on time.
i decided that spring should be coming soon and so i wore flats instead of boots or sneakers.
had the best lunch ever! all these professors and study abroad people are visiting our program, which is really annoying, but had its perks - we had amazing afghani food for lunch!
we went to the institute for the study of totalitarian regimes where they have all the secret files from communism available. we learned about the controversy of these files and saw spy photos of people (which strangely enough, are incredibly beautiful) including, surprise!, some of my theatre professor from the 80s. it was so fascinating and i'm considering doing something for my independent project with the photos.
went to a coolest flea market/thrift place in the old train station with sam and crystal...i found an overall-skirt and a spring trenchcoat for 3 dollars each.
had mexican soup for dinner at one of my favorite cafes
met sarah and all the professor people at a restaurant and got to eat a few bites of delicious cheesecake that i will dream about until i can go back and have it again for real
went to the COOLEST performance i've ever seen that took us all around an old building and up into the director's apartment that was the coolest little apartment i've ever seen, and it ended with them bringing out tons and tons of food and having a little party for the guests (there were only about 15 of us) and the actors, where i met some really nice people. and the director's husband is a really good photographer named dragon who i hope to learn photography from!

now glorious sleep.

Ostrava

This pretty much sums up Ostrava. (I didn't actually live with the guy in the middle, he was the neighbor that was over all the time.)

That's me and Liz, the girl I went with, in the middle with our two host brothers and the bottom one's girlfriend/possibly wife? We weren't clear on that.

I would've posted a couple of Liz and I with the kids we hung out with at the community center, but my academic director lectured all of us on privacy of kids and not putting them online...so I can email some if you ask!

I'm having a hard time writing about Ostrava. To be honest, it was a really hard, exhausting and overwhelming experience. Basically we went to live with a Roma family and work at a community center there. It would be the equivelant to spending a week in a poverty-striken area of an inner-city in the U.S...except the family spoke about as much English as I speak Czech. In other words, not very much.

For our group's debriefing in Český Krumlov, my academic director gave us these prompts which sum up my trip well, I think.

1. Greatest Challenges
- not giving up the first day at the center when we learned that a) it wasn't heated, b) a kid or kids had broken into the closet and stolen our wallets, but luckily they found mind (sans money) and c) spending a subsequent 3 hours in the police station that afternoon
- spending a full week in such an overwhelming environment: no privacy, no english, constant chain smoking from every family member, living with 6 other people including a 1 year old child, the intense smell of the house, the constant food being pushed on us, the loud talking, etc.
- when I got the stomach flu and was up all night puking in the one bathroom and then could barely get out of bed the next day

2. Most Bizarre Moment
- when I was sick in bed the next day, everyone still tried to bring me all this food and drinks and stuff...i couldn't really convey the subtley of "thanks for being so sweet and bringing me food, but it actually makes me feel worse because i'm so nauseus, so no thanks," when i all i could say was "no thank you, i'm sick." so the older son brought me some kind of mysterious liquid that was fizzing and told me to drink and was waiting for me to do it. I drank 2 sips and it was horrible! Luckily I didn't drink any more because I found out later from Liz that that mysterious mug was full of vegetable oil, water, and salt. Ack!

3. I will never look at LUNCH MEAT HAM the same way again (after having plate after plate put in front of me every morning for breakfast)

4. Greatest Lesson
- learning how much my environment effects my state of mind
- experiencing firsthand that poverty is not always new and interesting poverty, like living in a completely different culture, and that sometimes it's all-too-familiar...that it is uncomfortable and it just sucks
- learning that sometimes things suck, but to just recognize that and then try to appreciate the little moments that are funny or bizarre or interesting, etc.

So in the end, I am definitely happy to be back in Prague, but I really am glad that I went through it. I really did learn a lot and it ended well. The people were really nice and I feel like I gained a lot of political and social perspective that transcends just this culture.

The nicest moment of the week: the night before I left, my host mother gave me her beautiful scarf that I had complimented her on the first day. It was so sweet and the gesture meant so much - I'll never forget it.

Cau!

Leaving tomorrow for Ostrava! Back a week from Saturday!

by the way, they only have espresso here and call american "kava" the worst in the world!

Today at SIT I got a bouquet of flowers from my lovely boyfriend and a Valentines Day package from my lovely parents! What a wonderful day for mail!

Unfortunately, later in the day a "bankomat" ate my new atm card I JUST got in the mail. Ugh.

Then I went and shopped for art supplies....

....because on Thursday I leave for my regional homestay; I'm going to Ostrava [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrava] to live in a Roma [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup)] community and teach art to kids at the community center! I'll be there from Thursday to Thursday with another girl from my program (she'll be teaching dance) and then we're meeting up with the whole group in Cesky Krumlov and will be back in Prague a week from Saturdayish. I think it'll be really cool and really scary at the same time, but I'm living with the director of an NGO there who is friends with my academic director.

But I probably won't have internet or my computer for that whole time.

In the meantime, here's how I celebrated Valentine's Day: lots of desserts and red lipstick and "cervene vino"!

Now I have to write an essay and study for my Czech test tomorrow!

happy "valentinsky" day!

SO.

Things here are exhausting but great. I'm going to go exploring today, then to dinner with the girls, and maybe out to a cool club tonight.

My classes have been really interesting, too. I have literature at a famous intellectual cafe and my professor wrote underground literature during communism and signed Charter 77 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_77). My theatre professor has been studying here since the 60s and has worked a lot with Vaclav Havel. In one of my Czech classes this week we went out to lunch and properly ordered and read the menu in Czech. I had fried cheese!

I also went to my host sister Olga's ball with her this week and brought some girls from my program. It was NOTHING like American prom and so goofy and fancy and fun.

Also, my friend Martha cut me straight-across bangs!

Before the Ball:

Sam, Martha, Olga, me, Olga's friend - Agata, Jessi, and Crystal. Clearly, we look like the short Americans!

To prove that it is (occasionally) sunny here and that I do, actually, have friends here:

(the second is the view from my school buidling!)

(out to dinner, and our group minus one - with our wonderful academic director)

Today I'm going to a cafe/ngo for a discussion and then to a film screening and discussion!

Cau!

It's sunny out today and it's beautiful! I'm going to go have something sweet from Alchemysta, the wonderful cafe below us!

Also, tonight I'm going to a silent movie, "A Trip to the Moon," with live music being performed during it.

:)(:

i know it looks grey, but it's so great!

moved into my homestay! its soooooo cool.

Week one = sweeeet

Dobry nacer!

Wow, Prague is so wonderful and I really love it here. Things are super busy, though, but in a good way! I do so much walking (thank goodness on account of all the beer, coffee and desserts that I'm consuming!)
The other day we went on a "drop off," where my program director, whom I apsolutely adore - I've never met someone with so many amazing connections before - sent us on kind of an adventure where we had to figure out how to find and get the cool places she'd listed. I saw the Memorial for the victims of Communism, went in the most AMAZING antique store EVER and bought an old notebook with literally a thousand old matchbook labels from all over the world, walked to the National Ethonography Museum, attempted to see an art gallery that way closed (you went through a hall out onto windy rooftops to get there!), and met the group for dinner at a beautiful restaurant in the basement of an old old gothic church.

The other day I saw the famous clock tower and Old Town Square which is super touristy, but beautiful anyway. We've been finding great cafes every day and started real classes yesterday. I have 3 hours of Czech in the morning with a break to walk down to the first floor of the cafe in our building to get coffee, which is just espresso here. In the afternoon I have an event or a lecture from like 5 different people. Our literature lessons are in a famous cafe in Old Town every monday morning :)

Today I found out about my homestay! I'm living with a woman and her 17 year old daughter in Prague, about a 40 minute train ride from the school (public transportation RULES here!) They seem really cool - the mother runs an NGO for civic participation. There is also a 20 year old daughter who lives in Prague with her boyfriend. I meet them tomorrow night at a little partyand move in on Saturday!

Okay, pictures later, I have to leave the cafe cause it's one here and it's closing!

Na shladenou!

today i learned caj means tea (pronounced like "chai")

So I'm here!

It's been a very long day - we flew overnight and lost 6 hours in the time change. We're staying in a really cute hotel until Saturday when we'll move into our homestay (all of which speak some semblance of english and have internet, hooray!!) All the girls are nice and I think we click well. It's nice to have a small group walking around 'cause we don't look super super touristy.

We spent a good portion of the day in different cafes today which were so cute. I really like our homestay coordinator, Lenka, who is young and Czech and very giggly and sweet. She picked us up from the airport and is great to ask questions and she took us on a walk around the neighborhood where our hotel is.

Sarah, our academic director is a little older, but i can tell is no nonsense and very smart. She isn't quite as warm, but I like her and think she's going to be really good as our program director. She's fluent in Czech and has been living in Prague for 13 years doing a lot of art history stuff. It's cool 'cause all the girls in the group - all 7 of us! - have a range of majors.

Tomorrow we have a lot of orientation things, then we get to go have dinner on our own, and then we're going to a dance performance :)

I've never had the experience of being in country where everyone speaks another language, but it's made me shy about speaking english because I feel like everyone will know I'm american and it's embarressing!

Okay, it's 9 and I gotta crash. Goodnight!

Leaving tomorrow!

I've been going back and forth about whether to make a blog or just send out mass emails, and I finally decided this will probably be a better option for me. Especially because it makes it WAY easier to post pictures!

Even though I won't be doing massive emails, please send me an email and I'll send one back asap! hmode@skidmore.edu
Anyway, I leave for Prague tomorrow! I'm super excited and nervous, especially because the only Czech I know consists of a very small number of phrases I learned on an audiobook. Mostly things like "Do you speak English?" and "I don't understand," which I hope will serve me well.

I've got to finish running errands and packing.

This is where I'll be on Sunday:

Nashledanou! (Bye!)