Less than a week...

I just realized that it has officially been over a month since I last updated my blog...oops! A lot has happened in the last month and somehow I'm going to have to find time and go all the way back to my spring break adventures and fill you in. For the time being, here's a little recap:

• Midway through April my Dad came and visited for a week. It was so nice to have a taste of home and to see him. We had great weather while he was here and I was so proud to show him around my city. Over the weekend that he was here, we took a trip to Vienna. Vienna was absolutely gorgeous and there was so much to do. It really doesn't have as big of a reputation as it deserves considering that it was once essentially the center of the world's power and culture. Dad really loved Prague and is already planning to come back some day.
  
• Just three days after Dad left for the states, I went on a weekend trip sponsored by my program to Krakow, Poland. I didn't really have high expectations for the trip because, I mean, it's just Poland, right? I ended up loving Krakow. It was so beautiful and the people were so nice. It felt really special to connect a little with my family's heritage.
• The weekend after Krakow, our program sponsored a day trip to a little Czech town called  Česky Krumlov. Only about eight or ten people went on the trip, but it was actually nice after going to Krakow with nearly 40 students. We spent the day doing a tour of the castle there, eating at a Czech restaurant, then wandering around town. 
• The next weekend, we found out that our roommates had been planning on having four of their friends stay in our apartment for four nights. Just to give that some perspective, there are already six girls living here, we only have twin beds and only one bathroom. Even though they had been planning the trip since the beginning of the semester, none of them ever had the courtesy to ask if it would be okay. To escape that madness, my roommates Lisa, Sammi and I decided to take an overnight trip to a Czech resort town called Karlovy Vary. It was a very relaxing trip that included swimming in a thermal bath, relaxing in a sauna, and getting a massage. I have to say though, after a semester in my tiny twin bed that doesn't even have a real pillow, my favorite part was sleeping in the plush hotel bed.

Since then, my life has mostly been consumed with school work. Apparently, finals suck no matter where you are. I've been racing to finish my sketchbook for my art and architecture class, write papers (including a 250 word essay all in Czech!), and read up for my exams...and complete my med school application on top of all that. It's hard because in my last days I feel like I should be living it up, getting everything checked off my list of things I wanted to see while I was here, and enjoying the city. Instead I've been stooped up in my apartment or out attempting to find any artistic ability. 

The good news is that Mom and Robin get here in just TWO days! I'm so excited to see them, but it is a little bittersweet since their coming means the end of my time in Prague. They will be in Prague for three days, and then we leave to spend ten days in Germany! 

Easter Sunday

I had an absolutely lovely Easter Sunday in Prague. I was a little bummed about not being able to be with my family for the holiday, but as they say, "If you can't be with the ones you love, then love the ones you're with."

One thing that I really wanted to do for Easter was go to to mass at one of the big cathedrals in Prague. St. Vitus cathedral up in the Prague Castle complex is the biggest and most well known church in Prague, so I was really excited to be able to find the times when they would have mass on Easter. I thought I was going to have to go by myself, but I ended up going with my roommate Lisa, my friend Jordan, and his roommate. The mass was all in Czech, but I really didn't mind. I've seen Catholic mass in a lot of different languages now, and it has actually become one of my favorite parts of traveling to see mass in other languages. The cathedral was absolutely gorgeous. I had been up there a few times, but this was the first time that it was sunny out when I was in the cathedral, and seeing the church with so much light coming through the stained glass was completely different. 

After church, we walked down from the castle, across Charles Bridge and through Old Town Square. It was a madhouse in Old Town with so many tourists in town for the holiday, but it was really fun to see the Easter markets so busy and bustling. We all went to Bohemian Bagel for lunch, then Lisa and I parted ways with the boys. We stopped into a bakery called the Bakeshop because Sammi had said that she and her sister were going there, but by the time we got there they had already left. We did happen to see some brightly colored cupcakes though, and we decided that they would be the perfect Easter treat.

We went back to the apartment for a bit, and after relaxing for a while, Jordan invited us to meet up with him and some friends at the beer garden. The boys were playing basketball and instead of trying to find them, Lisa and I wandered around the park for a while before meeting up at the actual beer garden. We hung out for a while with the boys, but headed out early to go home and make an Easter dinner. 

In the Czech Republic, they have a tradition on Easter Monday where the men whip women's legs with a switch to bestow on them health and fertility and in return the women give the men a painted egg or a shot of alcohol. Apparently it's bigger in the villages than in the big cities, but either way, Lisa and I decided to avoid the chaos on Monday by relaxing at home and being productive on our school work and work for home. 

Zoo Day!

Since I've been in Prague, one of the things that I have really wanted to do was to go to the Prague Zoo. Today, on this warm Saturday, I finally got the chance to go with my roommates Sammi and Lisa, our friends Stephanie, Wade, and Jordan, and their friend Maggie.

Before going to the zoo, Sammi, Lisa, and I decided that we would have Easter Brunch a day early. We got dressed up in sundresses and went to a restaurant called Radost FX that I had heard has good brunch. Radost is actually a club at night (Rihanna shot a music video there!), but it is a vegetarian restaurant during the day and has brunch on the weekend. The brunch definitely didn't disappoint. Sammi and I each got a huge plate of Belgian waffles covered in fresh fruit and Lisa got some really tasty eggs.

After brunch, we all met up with at the zoo. I had pretty low expectations for the zoo, but it turned out to be really great and very cheap. They had all kinds of animals, but the best part was the giraffes. The way that the giraffe enclosure was set up, the giraffes could come right up to where the people were standing. We held out leafy twigs and with a little patience and a couple of minor shocks from the electric fence we were able to get the giraffes to eat the twigs out of our hands. You could never get away with that at an American zoo between the liability of an electric fence and letting people get so close to the animals, but it was made possible today thanks to the lack of regulation in a central European zoo.

After the zoo, we were all really worn out from a day in the sun. Sammi's sister Amanda arrived in Prague today though, so Sammi, Lisa, Amanda and I all went out for dinner at Cafe Louvre, a notable Prague cafe. It was a nice end to one of my best days in Prague so far.

A Whole New City

Since I've come back from spring break, Prague has become a whole new city. The day before I left, I was still bundled in my coat and boots and I experienced sun, snow, sleet and rain all with in hours. Since I've come home, it has been warm and sunny every single day. The sundresses and shorts that I thought I would never get a chance to wear have now become necessities. Even the Czech people are friendlier now that they're getting a bit of sunshine. Of course, the change of seasons has brought tons more tourists, but I'm willing to have them if it means warm weather. Over spring break, people would ask me how I liked Prague and I had a hard time telling people that I loved it. But now that I'm back, my opinion has totally changed. It just took some better lighting to make me realize how much I love it here. The six weeks that I have left here definitely doesn't feel like enough.

Yesterday I went to a beer garden in a park with my roommate Sammi, some friends of ours, and some friends of friends. It was so much fun because the crowd there consisted much more of Czechs than of Americans or other tourists. It was the perfect kind of warm spring night to sit and talk with friends. 

I also made a breakthrough with my independent study project that I was supposed to be working on while I was here. I was supposed to be doing a project comparing the health care systems in the Czech Republic and the United States, but it turned out to be a lot harder to get motivated than I expected, I had no clear direction of what I wanted to do with the project, and the language barrier proved to be more of an obstacle than I had expected. I was getting really stressed out about having to spend the last weeks of my time here cramming to get the project done. Last night though, I got inspired to take my project in a totally different direction. I got the idea to do my project about why kids in my generation continue to smoke, even though they are well aware of the health consequences. I already have a clear picture of how to conduct the research and I will be able to do most of the research over the summer and throughout next semester, so I will be able to relax and enjoy the rest of my time here. 

I promise I'll work on my first set of Italy blogs tonight!!

I'm baaaaack!

Hey Everyone! 

I'm back safely in Prague and I had an amazing time in Italy! I haven't had a chance to unpack yet, but I'll try to update the blog asap so I can share my Italian adventures with you :)

Only hours till Italy!

I'm finally done with my midterms! I know there's still another half of the semester to go, but it feels so good to be done!

Only eleven hours from now I will be on a plane to Italy. I have a lot of little things to do to be ready and then it's time for Spring Break!!!

I'm sooo excited and I can't believe how blessed I am to get to be in Italy for ten days for spring break. I can't wait to read and eat and relax. I'm so excited for each of the different cities that we are going to. Ahhhh this is going to be the best spring break EVER!!!!!

Two Down, One to Go!

I just got finished with my second of two midterm exams. So far they have gone pretty smoothly. My Cultural Anthropology one yesterday was about what I expected it to be and I definitely didn't need to do any more studying than just doing the readings and looking over my notes. My Czech midterm today wasn't bad either. It was one of those exams that I just couldn't bring myself to study for because I just didn't believe that it could be hard. It took me longer to finish it than I expected, but that was mostly because he put a lot of vocab on there that we hadn't really learned in class, so I had to spend a lot of time looking stuff up in dictionaries. I'm really hoping that I do well on these exams. I don't think that I could live it down if my only semester of bad grades in college is from my semester in a Czech community college.

My last midterm is my philosophy midterm tomorrow. I'm nervous about it, but probably more so that I have to be. We at least have a study guide, so I'm going to go through the readings and hope for the best...

Yesterday I had the chance to shadow a Czech doctor. The patients weren't especially interesting. He pretty much took their blood pressure and gave them a basic diagnosis within a few minutes. What was more interesting to me was getting a chance to talk to him about differences in health care and health systems in the Czech Republic versus the US. He actually went to med school at Yale and got board certified in the US before moving back to the Czech Republic to work (he speaks perfect American English). I'm hoping that he will be a good resource for my independent study project that I am theoretically going to buckle down on once I get back from spring break. It wasn't very busy yesterday, but he invited me to come back again when he has a fuller day of patients. 

The weather here has been crazy lately. Yesterday started out sunny, then we got sleet, then it was sunny again, then there was a thunderstorm that turned into a blizzard. I would say that I can't wait to get to Italy to get out of this rainy weather, but the forecast predicts 60% chance of rain in every city we are going to for every day that we will be there :( I'm trying to stay positive, but I was pretty inconsolable when I saw the forecast yesterday. I'm desperate for sunshine and warmth, and I end up going to somewhere that is getting more rain in a week than they have all month. If nothing else, the trip will at least still be a chance to read, relax, and eat good food, even if it all has to be done indoors.