First Week of Classes

I just finished my first week of classes here in the Czech Republic and have come away from the experience with a few enlightening tidbits of information. For example I learned that attendance is really optional, even for the professor. During the first half of the week I spent more time waiting for classes than actually in classes. Also, punctuality is not the most valued trait. My first class, the professor was about 10 minutes late, I soon learned that that was going to be pretty good. He went over the syllabus. End of class. Typical. Wednesday I had my next class. After traveling 45 minutes to get there, the prof never showed, I went and bought face paint so I could don my country colors at the party last night. Then this morning was the most productive, my prof for my first class was only 15 minutes late, we had a whole lecture, then my last class the professor was on time! I was a lucky member of the program to have the majority of my professors show up to class. Most of the program was out until 4 last night, a ton of people got up for the 8 am today, that prof must have had a late night too, he never showed, poor guys.

So long story short, the first week went well, and I don't think this semester will be too particularly taxing academically.

Also, on a quick side note, I have come to the realization that I will be living on pasta for most of my time here. Unfortunately, pasta sauce is not so common and pretty expensive. So as much as I enjoy the pasta with butter and garlic salt I've been eating, if anyone has any favorite things to put on pasta that don't come out of a can labeled Ragu I would sincerely appreciate you passing them along!

Grocery Shopping

Up until this point in time I never realized how important reading was to grocery shopping. I've been grocery shopping twice since I've been here and both times have been quite the adventure. What kind of cheese do you buy when you can't tell which is which, how about lunch meat, is it turkey, chicken, really bad ham? And milk. Is it whole, 2%, skim, soy? What if I was lactose-intolerant and needed soy, I couldn't read it and tell. Have you ever noticed how poorly labeled produce is. There was a row of apples, kiwis, and potatoes or some combination like that, all with dramatically different prices, but listed horizontally, while the row was vertical. Essentially, without knowing the czech words for the various produce you can't tell how much they were. Then I narrowly escaped buying shortening while trying to buy butter. To compound the fact I can't figure out what certain foods are, I have the added nuisance of having a limited kitchen. All we have is a fridge and hotplate. So, our ability to cook things are limited and when cooking instructions are in Czech, it makes figuring out what you can cook much harder. I bought some dumplings, they are the big Czech delicacy (aside from the beer which I also bought 500 mL for 50 cents) but have absolutely no idea how to cook them, much less if I even can without an oven. On top of all that, everything I buy I must be able to carry in my backpack on the tram back from the store. All in all this was an unforeseen complication to life, but weirdly enough I love it.

Shink.

This is my shink. Part shower. Part Sink.

A Few First Impressions

Dobre Den! I've been here in Brno for a few days now, unfortunately I've been without internet in my room until now. I finally have time to fill you all in on a few observations I've made about the Czech so far.

1. The Czechs are a surprisingly attractive bunch of people.

2. KFC either loves the Czech or Czech people love KFC, I'm not quite sure which is which but there are a ton of KFCs everywhere here.

3. Despite my finding out that my original assertion that there are no cognates in the czech language was wrong, I have found that Czech is possibly even harder than I expected.

I've been spending the last few days discovering these and many more interesting aspects of life in Brno, and I'm absolutely loving every minute of it. The program I'm in is amazing and I'm having so much fun with the other people. I've made friends with some pretty awesome Japanese people, I celebrated Lithuanian Independence Day with the lithuanians in the program, and I've even argued with a frenchman about politics. I feel like I've been running nonstop the last few days here trying to get everything taken care of, checking in with the police, buying more insurance, transport passes, registering for classes, going to my intensive czech class which is aptly named, it is intense. I've gotten a hang of the tram system, and after a few flaws with getting on the bus, I've managed that too. So, things are going swimmingly and I'll post again later!

Also, on a slight side note, this may be interesting to those of you who know what a clutz I am, which really should be anyone that's met me. On the tour of Brno today we were walking down the stairs at the tower in the cathedral and I managed to slip, go crashing down a few stairs, knock down a fellow member of my program and generally lose all sense of dignity. I survived and walked it off. So at the very end of the tour I was talking about how I'm such a clutz and I can't walk on ice to save my life. At which point I slipped on one of the patches of ice that line every street of Brno, and land on the same part of my ass I fell on in the tower. Suffice to say, I know have an impressive bruise on my hip/ass/thigh. JCXC, think that picture the volleyball team kept in the locker room. Everyone else, think an awful, very large bruise.

Ahoj!

Here We Go

Well this is it. Tomorrow I leave for the Czech Republic. My bags are packed, I have my visa, my boarding passes, my ipod is charged and I am ready to go. After months of planning, applying for the program, applying for my visa, picking classes and saying my final goodbyes, here I am, ready to start one of the great adventures of my life. And I couldn’t have planned a better last night with the family, watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. It was a great international moment that created a wonderful prologue to my semester abroad. So, here we go.

Vizum!

So excellent news to report. Today I officially received my visa (vizum, knock that up to 3 czech words I know now!) to study in the Czech Republic. After the long process of collecting letter that say I'm not a criminal, I have a place to live, I have insurance, I'm not a hinderance to society, copies of passports, birth certificates, you name it. Followed by a few weeks of waiting. It's official now. I"m going to the Czech!

Lesson Learned: University Bureaucracies are so much worse when you’re dealing with them in another language.

So I’m not even in the Czech and I am already in over my head. I have spent the last two days (in between driving my sister around and doing yard duty at St. Pat’s for my mother) trying to put down my housing deposit for the University. Well, as simple as that sounds it was actually quite complicated for me. It started out when I got an email from the director of the program reminding us all that it was due by the 10th, I may or may not have forgotten it existed. Anyway, I go and log onto the student website, which is actually much harder than it sounds. First, I have to type out the whole web address because these Czech’s can’t seem to figure out hyperlinks. So once I do that I spent about half an hour trying to actually log into the site. That particular issue may have been stupidity on my part since I spent most of the time inputting passwords that I normally use only to eventually find out I never changed it since I couldn’t figure out how exactly to do that the last (and only other) time I logged into this site. So, I’m on the site, I find the place to put down the deposit, I get all the way to completing to order only to find that I need a SUPO account to put down the deposit. I had no fucking idea what a SUPO account was, where to get one, or why I even needed one. After searching through old emails I eventually found the steps for that got it done. By the way, they like to pretend these sites are all in English, there are still a lot of necessary things that are in Czech. I eventually got it all taken care of though there wa a valuable lesson learned: University Bureaucracies are so much worse when you’re dealing with them in another language.
On a brighter note, I now have my first Czech friend. The Univeristy sets the internationals up with a “tutor” basically an assigned friend to help you assimilate and get around Brno. So Josef, my tutor emailed me today and we are now officially facebook friends and I’m already bugging him about what I need to do for registration. I am sensing Josef and I are going to become very close.
On yet another side note, my mother informs me that I’m not actually very clear about where I’m going. She seems to think people are not very well versed in Eastern European geography, particularly Czech geography. While I informed her she was obviously misguided, she was insistent and I find life is easier when my mother thinks I think she’s right. So I will be in Brno, the second biggest city in the Czech, (more information included in this handy Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brno) studying at Masaryk University. Also the Czech is next to Germany and Poland, which is a piece of information both my mother and I had to look up after I decided to go there (see map).