Things that Terrify me #2

This is the door to my room at Kajatanká dormitory here in Prague. Aside from being the regular entrance into my private chambers, it was also my first impression of the place where I would be living for the next month. It terrifies me. It doesn't scare me for the half-torn stickers with foreign sounding words, or the text sharpie-ed onto it bathroom graffiti style. I'm not even frightened by the male genitalia so carefully and painstakingly applied to it by some unknown artist, etched in like home-runs on the bill of some fat little-leaguer's baseball hat. What's terrifying to me is that two of the three are crossed out like lost lives in a poorly executed game of pac-man. What went on in this room that required three phalluses to be applied to the door and two of them to be x-ed out like naughty kids on Santa's list? I don't want to know or need to know, but it scares me.

In other news, class is going well and I've been having a great time here. I'm going to try to get some more posts up next week on several different topics. Thanks for reading.

Trips and Tours

One of the best things about my summer language course in Prague is the free weekday tours and weekend trips. Three times a week and twice every weekend the school's administrators and teaching assistants take us students on tours around Prague or trips to surrounding areas outside the city at no extra cost. Although I usually end up exhausted and sweaty, it's always been worthwhile. The first trip I went on was last Wednesday and consisted of an arduous, but beautiful, walk around Prague's much, much smaller Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower of Prague was nice but generally unimpressive compared to the real thing. What was nice was the view (bottom picture). Something that I found very interesting from the first tour was a church with a "magic", (their words not mine), wooden statue of the baby Jesus that has protected the church from being destroyed over the last five or six centuries (second to last picture, it's really small and in the center). Its about the size of a GI Joe and has its own wardrobe of robes given to it by various popes and other important Catholic officials over the years. Our guide told us that a couple hundred years ago, one of the priests was playing dress up with the splintered savior, (sorry, I couldn't resist), and its arms fell off. That night the priest of the church dreamed that only a person of pure spirit could reattach the arms. He was disappointed to find that there was no one holy enough in the whole city, and the arms were never reattached. After hearing this I walked up to the spruce son of God, (again, I'm sorry), and snapped its arms back in place...just kidding. It turns out that its arms were already attached when I saw it. I don't know if it was all just a legend or a story to amuse us, but I was pretty bummed that I didn't get my time to shine in front of the lumber lord of lords, (last time, I promise).
The next trip I went on was to a Czech museum with the fourth largest equestrian statue in the world, (impressive, I know). I forgot my camera that day but there wasn't a whole lot to show. The giant statue outside of the building was covered by a tarp for repairs and they wouldn't let us take pictures inside the museum. The museum was very modern and informative, and it even had English translations. It was very nice to learn a little more about the recent history of the Czech Republic and how it is now just starting to overcome all the struggles that it was forced to face over the past century.
The weekend trips were a little more exciting for me. On Saturday, I started off by traveling several hours to the castle of the Austrian diplomat and chancellor Metternich (third from bottom up). This place was very, very cool. Sadly, I couldn't take any pictures inside though. Metternich begged, borrowed, and stole 'gifts' from around the globe while he was working in international politics and was a good buddy of Napoleon. I saw everything from libraries with thousands of ancient manuscripts to Roman busts of philosophers and statesmen, Egyptian sarcophagi to Samurai suits of armor, Turkish guns to Ming dynasty Vases, Italian Renaissance tapestries to Greek statues of Psyche and Cupid, a lock of Napoleon's hair to medieval pikes and claymores, and the list goes on and on and on with amazingly awesome things. Later that day we traveled to the spa town of Mariánské Lázně whose 'curative' spring water has drawn some of the 19th and early 20th century's most powerful, artistic, and brilliant people, (Twain, Goethe, Chopin, Edward VII, Dvořak, Dumas, Kafka, and Kipling just to name a few). As you can see from the pictures the town was incredibly beautiful and it was a blast just walking around and staring at the architecture (pictures four, five and six from the bottom up).
On Sunday I traveled about an hour to the silver mining town of Kutna Hora to see a couple of churches. The first was an awesome Gothic church that was/is a rival to St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague (pictures four and five from the top down). It was paid for by the villagers with the leftover slivers of silver, (say that ten times fast), after the ore was turned into currency. The second church was a little more strange. For a long time the church housed over 30,000 bones in its crypt from various battles and the plague. One day in 1817 some extraordinarily creepy monk(s) thought that they would put those leftover people parts to good use and display them in even creepier ways to teach the locals about how fleeting life is. The walls were literally covered with human bones (the first three pictures). There were columns, vases, a chandelier, coats of arms, etc. made out of human remains. It was incredible and disgusting all at the same time; a lot to take in. Some people on the trip were having a hard time with it all. I, of course, was humming: "them bones, them bones" and eating beef jerky. I drew some dirty looks.

First off I'd like to apologize for the way that the pictures are arranged. I meant for them to be in correct order. Once again, I'm sorry but I can't comment on the comments. I don't know why. I do really appreciate them though. It's really humbling to know that people care about my day to day activities and well-being. Thanks for reading and all of your kind words.

Czech Lessons

Have you ever sat in a classroom and felt as if the teacher were speaking in another language? That maybe you had accidentally walked into the wrong room, were having a mild nightmare, or were possibly the victim of some elaborate practical joke? If you have, than you know exactly how I felt on my first day of Czech lessons at Charles University...except I guess in my case, the teacher was actually speaking in an entirely different language: Czech. When I sat down in class last Monday, I expected the four and a half hours of class to consist of a Czech teacher who spoke in English giving my classmates and I an overview of the Czech alphabet, maybe some vowel and consonant pronunciations, and perhaps, if we were all doing well, some simple vocabulary words. It was a beginner course for English speakers, how bad could it be? I was mistaken, it turns out it could be pretty bad. Shortly after I set my pen on the desk, the teacher, Hanzo, began speaking Czech. No English, just Czech. He spoke at least as fast as an auctioneer and sounded about twice as foreign as a Japanese game show. I sat and stared at him like I would a Spanish soap opera, it sounded nice but I didn't understand a word. Pretty soon the words that were streaming from his mouth started to sound like questions, and worse yet he was looking at me. I knew that I wouldn't be able to give him the answer that he wanted to hear, but I had to say something in Czech to maintain any shred of credibility I had with my new students and teacher. I reached into my limited Czech vocabulary and chose the word "prominte" (excuse me) hoping that that could buy me some time. The teacher repeated what he had said earlier, only slower and with greater diction, I had to think fast. This time, after several minutes of flipping through my five dollar english-czech two-way dictionary, I answered with "nerozumím, jsem z Americky" (I don't understand, I'm from America). The teacher then rolled his eyes and skipped me, (a reaction I've grown familiar with in my years of schooling). It ended up being the most difficult first day of any class I've taken in my life, the teacher didn't even speak English for the first forty-five minutes. Since that first day, I've slowly begun to pick up words here and there and have spent quite a bit of time studying on my own. So I'm learning, just very slowly. And although the classes aren't any less difficult, they've become more manageable. It's very much an international classroom (1 from Israel, 3 from the U.S., 1 from Japan, 1 from Taiwan, 1 from Italy, 1 from France, and 2 from Greece), and all of my classmates are pretty sharp. I'm definitely the dunce in my class but a dunce in a room full of egg-heads is still pretty bright, (or at least that's what I keep telling myself).

The pictures with this post were all taken right outside the place where I go to school, with the second to last being my actual school building. It get's pretty easy in the third hour of class to stop paying attention and stare out the window at Prague.

Once again, thank you for all the comments.

Things that Terrify me #1

This is graffiti written on the inside of the door to the water closet, (room with a toilet), in my dorm room. It terrifies me. I don't know what "Piko" is, why I should "take it", and what makes "it so easy". I don't know if I want to know either.

P.S.
For some reason I can't comment on my own posts. I just wanted to say thanks for the comments, I really appreciate them.

*UPDATE*
I was informed by a friend that "Piko" is slang for meth. This makes the graffiti at least twice as terrifying.

-Alex

Adjusting

I'm sorry that it's taken me a few days to get a new post out, I've been busy acclimating to my new environment. Since I arrived a few days before my classmates, I spent the first two or three days here getting a feel for my surroundings. I walked about 5 miles in every direction down multiple streets to build a mental-map of the area that I'm in. I found some nice parks, shops, and a fairly cool old monastery. I'm not going to lie, these first few days were a little rough. I was dealing with some sleep problems and a little home sickness, but both have progressively improved as I've met more of my new classmates and kept busy with school activities. I always forget how much I take advantage of the comfort and convenience of home and how I don't fully appreciate the people and places that I'm most familiar with until I'm separated from them. That's my sentimental post for the month.
The activities for my class started yesterday at an older portion of Charles University in the center of town. There was an orchestral string quartet playing music by Dvořák, (probably the most famous Czech composer who was also extremely influential in American classical music), some speeches by some of the campus big-wigs, a placement test, and then a dinner that night. The music was exceptional and the surroundings were equally awesome, but I got absolutely nothing out of the forty-five minutes of speeches that were all in Czech, a language I don't speak and am taking this course to learn. The purpose of the test I took was to separate the 202 students from 39 countries and 4 continents into different groups based on our Czech language skills. Since I've never been known for my skills especially when it comes to foreign languages, as my Spanish and Japanese teachers can attest, I turned in the exam blank with only my name, country of origin, and perceived skill level (beginner) written at the top. I think I was the first person to leave the lecture hall out of the whole group of students, my mom would be proud. After turning in the test I went outside and met a few other guys, (one from France, one from Germany, and one from Greece), who had all done the same. Despite our lack of Czech skills we all spoke English and decided to go for a walk around the Old City portion of Prague and have a beer. Later that night all of the students and faculty had a party where we chowed down on some finger food and wine, while representatives from each country sang an impromptu song, (I was part of an attempt at "When the Saints Go Marching In" sang by the five or six U.S. students). This morning I showed a few of my new classmates the places I had found near campus and took a quick but practical tour of Prague given by one of the teacher's assistants.
Thanks for tolerating my ramblings and poor punctuation skills, it means a lot to me that some people back home are taking even a passive interest in what I'm doing. From now on I'm going to try and write about my happenings every other day.