And It All Ends With Beer

I've got to hand it to myself. In under a week, I'm starting to be able to communicate with the locals in Czech. I know enough to get by...you know things like, hello, how are you?, my name is..., how much does this cost?, what time is it?, thank you, excuse me, etc.,etc. And it is all due to my Czech class. This picture is of my Czech book, by the way. It's a great book. One of the best I've ever used to learn a language.

Alright, so Tuesday we went on a walking tour of Prague that was supposed to last three hours. Yeah right! Three hours, I don't think so. This tour lasted at least five. But, I did take a whole bunch of pictures which I will now so graciously show you.

Starting from the top, these pictures are the religious memorial in the center of Old Town Square, the Powder Tower, Prague Castle from a distance, the Charles Bridge (which does not cross the Charles River contrary to popular belief), the John Lennon Wall, the men peeing statue by David Cerny, the Mission Impossible stairs (which we climbed to reach the castle), the Cathedral at the center of the palace complex, the giant metronome which replaced a statue of Stalin, and finally the beer garden where we ended the tour for dinner.

These are definitely not all of the photos I took on the tour. If I were to put them all up, it would take a very long time as I went a little camera happy while we were out. It was a really cool walking tour and I learned a lot about the history of Prague and the different stuff that has happened to the country.

On Wednesday, my friends and I took a stroll down to the Cubist Museum. Cubism was a very prominent style of art in Prague and there are still a lot of Cubist buildings left within the city. Like the museum building itself.

Then today, after our Czech class, we went to the exhibit by David Cerny of the EU entitled Entropa. This guy has become my new favorite artist. His stuff is rather hysterical and I just love looking at it. I'm only going to put up a few of my favorite pieces from this sculpture, but it was so funny. And I understand why the EU got mad at him for creating it.

For those who are a little confused, let me help. You see the Czech Republic holds the presidency of the EU at the moment, so they commissioned David Cerny, a famous Czech artist, to create a sculpture representing the EU. Well, this is what he did. He broke Europe up and made a complete satire of it. These are not all of the countries, but these are some good ones.

The first picture is the entire piece...mostly, it is rather large. Then we have the UK, which is sort of in the EU, but not...so Cerny chose to leave a blank spot. We then have France which is a nation on strike and Sweden which is an IKEA box. I'm sure you get the idea now.

Well, he caused a lot of controversy with this because a) its satirical and b) he said he was going to get artists from every country to do their own country, but instead he did them himself and then made up fake biographies about these people. Genius!

Ok, well...I'm sorry this is such a long and picture heavy post. More to come later. On the agenda for the weekend...row boating on the Charles River, football (soccer) game on Saturday night and Cesky Krumlov from Sunday to Monday. Keep watching! More updates soon!

"Never gonna give you up..."

I'm going to start this post by saying that my father would have been very proud of me today. After class, which got out at 12:20pm my class and professor went across the street to have lunch and the entire table ordered a round of beers. It wasn't even that much past noon and we were all drinking. As a suggestion for him, I think he should give up his dream on Figi and just move here. He'd like it better I think.

Anyway, the point of this actual post is to tell you a little bit about what's been going on here. I know I haven't been here all that long, but we keep traveling and doing lots and lots of stuff. There's never really a dull moment.

On Saturday night, everyone came over to our apartment and we cooked pasta in a vodka sauce (I helped chop the garlic, that's about it). Dinner was really good! We then sat around and tried to figure out what we were going to do. Marek, the one "local" buddy who is living amongst us, wanted to go clubbing so I gave the whole clubbing thing another shot. Well, we went to this club called Lucerna Music Bar and it happened to be 80's and 90's night. This was my kind of party. I absolutely love dancing to 80's and 90's music...mainly because there is no good way to dance to it.

It started out as a big group of us there and by the end of the night, the others girls had gotten tired of the club and moved on to somewhere else. It ended up being me and the guys, which was alright because they are pretty laid back and not as "catty" as some of the girls seem to be. Moral of the story, I love 80's and 90's dance night! When I get back to the states, we so need to find a place that does this!

Sunday morning came earlier than expected, especially considering the fact that I didn't get back until about 3am that morning. My morning started with exploring Old Town and a bit of New Town with Kris. We wandered through Old Town Square where they were finishing up the festival about the Golem, a mythical creature that serves as a protector of the Jewish community in Prague (Kris knows the story better than I can tell it).

After I came back from exploring, I went with the others to Bila Hora which is on the outskirts of Prague to do some voice dubbing for one of my roommates, Jorge. In case I forgot to mention it, Jorge is a student that actually attends FAMU and we were doing the dubbing for a short film that he is currently working on. We did "auditions" where he chose who he wanted to play what part, which meant that I ended up as the main character. This was both awesome and awkward. Awesome because I got to voice the main girl, awkward because there is a sex scene in the movie. But, it was still a good deal of fun.

And then this morning started my first class of Czech. It's a different language, but one that's no where near as different as Arabic. I think I'll be able to learn it just fine. After class, as I said before, we went for lunch with our professor. I got goulash which was amazing! That is something I love about this country, the food rocks!

Well, that's all for now. Na shledanou!