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.