First I wanna apologize for having such a large absence of posts, been roughly 2 weeks since my first post. Unfortunately CEA placed us in our own apartment building on the other side of town from where over 50 percent of the group lives. Thus the program cares very little about us and our problems. The internet didn't work for a solid week, with very little effort put forth by them to fix the problem despite our best attempts (we contacted them multiple times a day for the week). But we finally have internet now, so I can do the basics such as call my parents and check basketball scores on ESPN.
Prague is an amazingly beautiful city with a tremendous history. Although most of the history is rather dreary, especially in the last century. This probably translates to the Czech people's mentality. They don't speak on trams, they rarely smile, and often you see them give Americans or anyone who looks like they're having a remotely good time dirty looks. It's certainly an adjustment, one which I don't think anyone I know has fully accomplished.
The public transportation here is the best I have ever seen. And that includes cities like New York, Chicago, Paris, and London. The Soviets built the unmatched system to transport themselves around and Czechs maintain it's the best thing the Kremlin did for them during their 41 year occupation. They have a wonderful metro system that takes about 2 minutes to learn, and then a slightly harder tram system that literally gets you anywhere you need to go. While the metro and day trams do shut down at around 12:30 a.m., night travel is still relatively reliable although much less consistent. There are night trams that run the same routes just at a far less frequency. Nevertheless, I've had little to no problem transported myself around, and I'll leave wasting money on cabs to my friends.
What did I do for the Super Bowl? Well obviously I watched, I will never miss watching a Super Bowl in my life. We first went to this bar near the river called Belushi's but it was too crowded and filled with too many people not really interested in watching the game as we had hoped (girls, guys who *gasp* don't actually like football). My roommates Brian Blake and I left to find something a little more accommodating. We ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe near Old Town Square which promised us an "authentic American experience" on their advertisement. While food was a little pricey, the atmosphere was actually pretty good, and I won 15 bucks and a meal on various bets I took the Packers in (the 10th time in 14 years I have correctly picked the Super Bowl winner).
As the game dragged on in the 3rd quarter, it donned on us we had class registration in the morning which opened at 9 a.m. They would really do that to you Sam? Well this is another one of those head scratcher moves by CEA. They only gave me 3 classes out of the required 4, and only gave Brian 2! We have a finite list of classes which transfer back to UW, so this was quite the concerning matter. Thus we made the decision after we got home from the Super Bowl (about 5 a.m.) to just stay up and go to school early. Being first in line felt astonishingly great, but exhaustion began to creep up and Ian fell asleep on some stairs outside the office (no surprise there however). After the internet went out for another hour, we finally registered at roughly 10. The morning was abysmal, but my schedule is anything but. CLASSES ON TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY ONLY! That's right, I have successfully swapped my normal 2 day weekend and 5 day work week to the much more appropriate 2 day work week and 5 day weekend. The classes are 3 hours each, so it is actually somewhat comparable to the classtime in Madison but just much more compact. I went to 3 of my 4 classes last week, and they seem pretty interesting and significantly easier than anything taken at UW.
Last thing I want to talk about right now is my birthday which fell this past Wednesday. Going out Tuesday night was a lot of fun at Chapeau Rouge and Wednesday was a good day as well. Really didn't get the birthday feeling at all which I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad about, but still overall a good day. Paige took me out for a nice dinner, and we went out to Club Mecca which was fun as well. In between we got in trouble for being too loud (very tame noise levels compared to any pregame back in the States). There is a Czech law which mandates quiet hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. which several people have already been in trouble for. The landlord, who unfortunately lives on our floor knocked on our door as we were about to leave, and promised to evict us the next morning if it happened again. Haha okay Mr. Czech landlord, not sure the legality of that but either way we will have to curtail our habits. It's weird to be 21, and it's even weirder to have the day come and go without much jubilation. Obviously a 21st birthday here means nothing, but it still came and went much quicker than I expected.
Paige and I booked a trip to Berlin next weekend and some of our friends may join us. Looking forward to my first travel experience.
Hope you all enjoyed reading this and I will try to make the next post sooner and filled with pictures.
Sam
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