August 20–26, 2008, Number 197
Finishing up Classes and Exploration
This one will be short since I wrote to you only Tuesday to tell you the stories of my trip, and although I have not forgiven my fellow classmates this week has come out successful. The Krizikova group has made a list of all of the things that we want to get done this weekend that we weren’t able to do over the time we were here. Man do we have plans. We have roughly 20 things to do this weekend and surprisingly enough we got to almost all of them. We did all of the majors over again such as Charles Bridge, Old Town, New Town, Vyshard, and many many museums. My favorite was that of Salvador Dali and Alfons Mucha. Although there was many works in each gallery I was disappointed by the lack of originals, but the paintings from the artists are easily appreciated just as well, but one would think they wouldn’t charge 10 dollars to see a print.
When I am not running around Prague this week, like a chicken with my head cut off, with the others trying my hardest to soak in the atmosphere and experience, I am writing papers. I have three due at the beginning of next week for each of my classes as a final report. Each paper is coming along well at the moment; I have to use actual information that can be gathered from books due to my lack of internet access. It is strange to go back to using books as a reference after so long of just typing up a paper based on internet sources. What is worse is you aren’t able to find any credible sources for Czech topics that are written in English with the expectation of on Wikipedia, and lets be honest that isn’t credible by any means. We are actually encouraged to use Wikipedia, since no other sources are available. For those of you who don’t know that is a major problem in the states, since wiki has no reliable author but is instead a collaboration of truths from various viewpoints of users and the knowledge how they see it. That is if you can get internet though, there has been a dance between the three apartments vying for usage. It seems to travel sporadically from house to house with no warning of when it is coming back. I have most of my information just based on information given in class what has become hard is not being able to get a hold of my parents through Skype. I know I will be able to see them in less than a week now but it is still nice to talk once in a while, but the lack of ability to communicate has made that quite hard. I knew I should have gotten an international cell phone from the beginning, a $150 value but felt the free Skype would work best for me.
So now that I know and have seen all of Prague it is just left to finish up my classes. I am not going to lie, I love Prague but at this moment I have never been so ready to see America. I long to be able to decipher peoples conversations, and not walk through the city oblivious to what is happening around me since I can not understand it. I am ready to see the American flag or at least the familiar habits of the American people. The 8 weeks that I have been here have been amazing and I think the perfect amount although Dublin and Scotland still have the option of being thoroughly explored when I meet my family there. I have to write some papers so that this wouldn’t all have been in vein. We will see you soon!
- Laurilee
- Michigan Technological University
- 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295
- 906-487-1885