The End of Week One

Ohhhhh Week 1. We have had a phenomenal time so far. We are all piled into the Institute right now working on stuff for the upcoming week. It’s a little intense considering we have a very limited time that we’re actually here. So I think we left off with Thursday. I had my first classes and I love them so much already. I started bright and early at 9 AM with ENG 223- Czech Film and Literature or World Literature. We started with an intro to what we would be talking about in the class and then we went on an excursion to Vyserhad. We visited one of the most famous graveyards in Central Europe where tons of artists are buried and no politicians. We saw where Dvorak is buried along with hundreds of other important figures in the Czech arts community. One of the main people missing from this graveyard in Franz Kafka, but he is buried in the Jewish Cemetery instead.

After seeing a gorgeous view of Prague that we hadn’t seen before (we’re usually on a different part of the river), snapping a few pictures, and regrouping after losing a few people, Molly (one of our lovely roomies) and I grabbed lunch at Paneria and headed back to the Institute for our 1 o’clock class. I went to World Food and Population or something like that (it’s a science, technology, and society class). The most precious Bob Patterson teaches this class. He said at the beginning of class, “I just want y’all to have fun.” Yes, please!

Then a Czech professor, Dr. Cerny came to talk to us about Czech population, economics, and it kind of turned into a discussion on the way the Czech Republic was affected by the Communist Regime. It was really interesting hearing about everything from the perspective of someone who grew up here.

After class, we headed back to the pension, where B Knox had been doing work all day. We headed to this small used book store, where Bee Knox bought what we thought was a Bible, but turned out to be a book of prayers in Czech. We then headed to a few other stores next to JZP ( our metro stop Jiriho z Podebrad). Jessica bought a really cute shirt and I bought a little notebook with Czech on the cover. We stopped by Albert’s, picked up some food, including this chocolate with kittens on it. It turns out they were called “Cat Tongues.”

Then…we hit da club. We went to the 5 story club right next to Charles Bridge. Our whole group gets along really well, so we all rolled up together. So, each story played a different kind of music.

1.Radio Hits

2. Dance Music

3. Oldies

4. "Black Music"

5. Chill Out

Molly, Sara, BeeKnox, and I hung out for the most part on floors 1 and 4. The Czechs really love Lady Gaga, by the way. We had a BLASTTTT!! It was soooo much fun. Then we attempted to get home. If you look on a map of Prague and look at the Zivikov(?) tower (the TV tower) and then you find Charles Bridge, you can see the distance between the club and our hostel. BeeKnox and I looked up tram stops before we left to get home, since the metro stops running at midnight. Before we even got to the tram stop, we lost one of our people. After we found him, we got on the 53 tram to switch to another one. Then everything goes downhill from here.

One of the guys with us starting freaking out because he saw a pistol on the ground. After finally getting off, after freaking everyone out, we discover that one of our guys has the pistol. WHAT DA HECK?!! Then he said “Oh hey guys, It’s a cap gun.” Then he pulled the trigger and was like “Nope, IT’S A LASER POINTER!!!” After that fiasco, we waited for number 56.

At this point, we tried to call a taxi, but we didn’t know what street we were on. Koki and Mikey went to look for a sign, and when the tram came, they were nowhere to be found. Beeknox took the majority of the group on the tram, while Justin, Molly, and I walk around the corner to find Koki and Mikey and they were walking towards us now. After deciding to just call a taxi, we turn the corner and see the tram still there. Honestly, I don’t remember this really happening because adrenaline kicked in. I screamed to everybody to not cross the street until I said because it was a really busy street. We dead sprinted to the tram and luckily BeeKnox had seen us and told the guy driving not to go. We get on number 56. We don’t know what stop to get off really. Beeknox and I are trying to figure stuff out and the language barrier isn’t helping much right now. Then we’re in the middle of nowhere. We try to figure it out, but we ended up just having to hail 3 taxis to get home. We were less than a mile away. It was kind of frustrating, but we paid next to nothing for our taxi ride. So, we ended up getting home at 4ish, but we were safe and sound :)