Sleepy

This week has been interesting, though some of it has been rather boring. I am enjoying learning Czech and feel a little bit better about it, though not much. it is frustrating to know that you are never pronouncing anything 100% correctly. I really enjoyed the lecture from Professor Shanahan this week, he is an American who has lived abroad for the last 15 years or so, primarily in Paris and Prague. He seems to think we will not be here long enough to experience extreme culture shock, but the end of May seems pretty far away to me. Luckily I have not found anything to be all that scary or different. There are a lot of little things though. For example, in the movie theater they actually assign seats (and it is kind of hard to find your seat in the dark -- i suppose if you go earlier they probably have the lights on while people are coming in). We have finally figured out how you are supposed to tip, and approximately how much (between 5 and 10%). When you give them the money for the check (let's say its 130 czk) then you tell them how much you are actually giving them (for example 140czk) and then they will give you the rest of the change. You are not supposed to leave it on the table.

On Friday we had a reception at CERGE with some Czech students. It was nice to actually speak with some Czech people. I know we will meet more Czech students when classes start, but it is a little strange to be living in a country and have only the briefest interaction with the people who actually live there. We met a couple of really nice girls at the reception and I hope that we will see more of them.

I am currently feeling a little sick, sore throat and all, but its not too bad. I stayed in bed most of the day in an attempt to fight it off, but I am still tired. Kelsey and I went out to dinner with the other Kelsey and Emily who live downstairs. We had chinese food which was really good. I like the neighborhood we live in. It seems like there are a lot of nice places to eat, and I really like having the Church and its little park outside (except when the Church bells ring incessantly).

I start real classes on tuesday!!! I am guessing that it will be really hard to be in class all day, since I haven't really done that in a long time, but its only two days a week that I have to be there all day. On Wednesday we are planning to go to the opera. We can apparently get tickets in the very back for just a couple of dollars. Also, on the 28th we are planning a trip to Dublin for Kelsey and our friend Alison's birthdays. Alison's birthday is the 28th and Kelsey's is March 1st). We are really excited. We are going to "couch surf." There is apparently this website that is a network of people who basically let people stay in their homes for free, and then in return they can stay in other people's homes for free. Our friend Julia is on the website, and Alison, Julia, and Hannah couch surfed when they went to Vienna and they said it was really fun.