Before I rant for the next few paragraphs or so, I would just like to apologize for not updating the blog as often as I thought I was going to originally. For the sake of not boring all of you with short paragraphs every other day, I wait until the beginning of the week/end of the week to type out all that has happened. So, now you know how I work and hopefully you will not have to waste the effort of checking my blog every day and just looking on Sunday/Monday for a new post. There will be weeks when I update more than once though, just not very often. Moreover, lets move onto what happened this past week.
This past week was very interesting, exciting, and enjoyable (all adjectives that I will be using quite often while here). This past week was the second and last week of the mandatory Intensive Czech Course taken by all the students in the ECES program. The course was long (4 hours 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 2 weeks) and a bit aggravating to say the least. I chose to take Latin for 8 years of my life; a non-spoken (for the most part) Romantic Language that evolved over the years to become elegant and easily understandable in it's formation. My life revolved around translation and not speaking the language in anyway. I then come to Praha for a semester, where the Language is not Romantic and is, of course, spoken. I do not think I could have chosen a more backwards language 8 years ago to prepare me for this trip, whoops. The language has some different letter pronunciation and a lot of vocabulary that needed to be learned, but the class was not too terribly bad in the end. The professor was extremely nice and in the end I came out with a B+ for the class; not bad for a Romantic :-p
Friday came quickly (unfortunately) and started with learning some drinking songs with the professor and then going to the pub at 10:30 in the morning with him to get a pivo (beer) with the the rest of the class to celebrate the completion of the class.
After class on Friday, I strolled through the city with a few people and saw some new sights and then finally found one of the English Bookstores. The store is called Big Ben and has quite a lot of books despite its size. I ended up picking up the new Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol and have been reading it in my spare time. I am about half way through and love it. I highly recommend it to anyone who would like a new novel to start. We then went out to a pub that night before calling it a day.
Saturday was truly and adventure. My friends Jordan and Amanda, and I chose to go to the small town of Cesky Krumlov. The best way to access the town is by bus and train. So starts the adventure. We took the Metro to the main train terminal and got up to the hostess where we bought our round trip tickets to Cesky Krumlov. We left her presence and wandered out into the terminal where we finally examined out ticket. The ticket had no information on it what so ever. We did not know where to go, when to go, or how to get around. We wandered around the terminal for 15 minutes trying to figure it out before we found a grumpy security guard and asked him the meaning of our confusion. He told us that you buy a ticket and then just chose which train you want to ride on; there are no ticket specifics, you just buy and go where ever you want. We then found our train and sat for about 3 hours with the cutest little old czech woman before hitting another train station. We then had to get off at that train station so that we could transfer to the one train line that runs into this picturesque town near Austria. We saw that the transfer train was not leaving for about an hour and a half, so we wandered and explored the town we got off in, grabbed some lunch, and found the square. We then made it back to the train, where we met the same little old lady we had sat with going to this train station. Like on the previous train, we did our best to communicate with the woman. After about 50 minutes or so, we finally made it to Cesky Krumlov.
The town of Cesky Krumlov is the epitome of the perfect small European town up in the hills. There were streets no bigger than an over-sized ally way with shops on both sides. We wandered through the streets and made it to the square where there was a small festival. The booths smelled of food goodness and the young children were putting on a musical display. After some spelunking in town, we wandered into the castle where we just kept hiking up and up and up until we finally made it to the top. I like to rationalize our hike and the higher spots of the hill as the different levels as heaven. We would make it to different plateaus the higher we went up, and each plateau was more beautiful than the last. When we made it to the top, well, nirvana is the only word that comes to mind. The last level was the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. It looked like a garden taken directly out of a 17th century French Chateau. It even overlooked the entire town, a little cliche in my opinion, I mean, how many castles are there in Europe that have to overlook the entirety of a town :-p
After a little more meandering, We got back on the train and headed back to Prague. The trip was long, but worth every waking moment.
Sunday was a little bit more relaxing, with a lot less train. We woke very late to recover from our journey and a bunch of us took a walk through Prague and ended up on the river. We decided to take a couple of rowboats out and enjoy the sun. The boats were very enjoyable, but were short lived unfortunately. We wandered for a little longer after giving up the boats and then head back to the dorm before going out food shopping. Sunday night was the night that I did the only American thing I can remember since coming to Europe. We all missed Football a little bit, so we found a pub that would put on American Football games is the TVs were reserved. So we went out, had a couple beers and watched the Patriots before calling it a night.
Today was, well, a very spiritual day. Today was St. Wenceslas Day in the Czech Republic (the equivalent to their Independence Day) and Pope Benedict XVI has been in town for the weekend. The pope conducted mass the next town over from Praha, so Sam, Amanda, and I went out to this town and got to experience mass conducted by the Pope. The best way to describe this mass would have to be......Giant Papal Concert 2009. The mass was conducted in a field where, in front was a massive stage (makeshift altar) and designated sections for people to stand and watch the mass. There were thousands upon thousands of people there and was definitely an awesome experience. I am so happy I got to listen to Pope Benedict conduct mass in Latin. Spoken Latin is always awesome to listen to. Side note....The Popemobile is awesome and drove but 10 feet away from me (Pope not included in purchase of said vehicle). We then made our way through the crowd at the end of mass and made our way back to the dorm. The rest of the day was quite relaxing and enjoyable and has led me to right now. I am going to watch a movie in a little and enjoy the first day of classes tomorrow (of which I have none).
I apologize for the length of the post, there was a lot to mention and I hope you all enjoy reading it. Until next time....
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