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!