I am finally writing a new posting! YAY

I know it has been a long time since I wrote anything, but I have been so busy! I was very happy to get out of London and on to Germany, and while I was in Germany I didn't have internet. Munich was amazing, I had a lot of fun there and enjoyed that the people were friendly and loud at restaurants. These are two things that I have not found in Prague. I think that 90% of the people here are unfriendly, and the other 10% just don't care. They also don't talk, ever. In restaurants I feel like the Americans are being so loud, but if you talk above a whisper, then it already seems loud. The people on my program are very nice though, and I have made some great friends already! I am learning some czech, but I am very ready for my intensive class to be over. . . it ends on Friday with a big test that I am not looking forward to

Last weekend our program took us on a trip to Moravia where we went to Brno and Austerlitz, and also to the Moravian caves. Brno was freezing and I didn't like it very much, it definitely wasn't even close to being as pretty as Prague. Austerlitz was really neat because we got to see where Napoleon fought and we went to a really strange museum. My favorite part of the trip by far, though, was the trip to the caves. They were so amazingly beautiful and there was even an underground river that we were able to take a boat ride on!! It was very exciting, and the walk to the caves was absolutely gorgeous, but almost reminded me of Pennsylvania. I have attached pictures at the end of this posting so you can all check out the caves too!

Prague is marvelous. It has been snowing a lot lately, but it is starting to warm up. I already feel at home here it almost feels like I have been here forever, but at the same time I can't believe that I have been in Prague for almost two weeks already. It is a strange mixture of feelings. There are some things here that I have learned to love and hate already.

The first thing that I halfway love but also hate: beer costs less than water. At first this seems very exciting, I know. But I was almost dying after 10 straight days of drinking only beer because I didn't want to pay extra for water. So I splurged, bought a big water and now I refill it from the sink in my dorm and carry it with me. This means that I still only drink beer at restaurants, but if I am getting a quick snack I don't have to have beer with it anymore.

The second thing that I love: CREPES!!! we managed to find a place, thanks to Tara's old friends, that sells the most amazing crepes that I have ever had in my life. I didn't even know food could taste this good. The best part? One gigantic crepe filled with chocolate and coconut costs 25 crowns. That is barely over a dollar!

The third thing I love: public transportation. I love the trams here, they make me so happy. Plus I don't have to pay for gas.

Something I hate: public transportation. The trams may be amazing, but they smell bad. And having to take the tram means that grocery shopping can be a disaster. Today my suite mate Katie and I ventured out to tesco, and only realized when we were leaving that carrying 6 bags of groceries onto one tram, then off, then on to a connecting tram, then from the stop to our dorm= the worst experience ever.

It is very sad that at home you probably couldn't pay me to buy my groceries and then walk home with them from the alberstons that is right down the street, but here I bought my groceries from a place that was easily 10 miles away, and then lugged them the whole way home. . . and even though it was awful, I still found myself thinking: I really love this city, I do I do I do.

I love waking up and going outside and not understanding one word that I hear on the street. As insane as that sounds, it is such a calming feeling to be just me, with my thoughts, and no other conversations butting into my head. I also love being able to say thank you, hello, one more beer, how much does it cost, what is it. . . and all of the other little random czech phrases that I have learned in my czech class.

Last night I was on the tram going dinner with some friends and I saw this tiny yorkie on the tram (there are dogs everywhere here and none are on leashes, yet they are really well behaved) I reached my hand out to let it smell me, and before I even got two feet towards it-- the dog started growling and barking like crazy. It was a bad experience, I'm not going to lie; however, the cutest thing in the world was hearing the czech man saying: co to je maggie? maggie, co to je? Which means, what is it maggie? maggie what is it? For some reason, I thought it was the cutest thing ever. That dog knows more czech than I ever will. haha

I wish so much that I could transport everybody that I care about and let them experience everything that I am experiencing here. Even though I woke up in the middle of the night my third night here, didn't know where I was, and randomly started crying. . . I wouldn't change this for the world. Of course there are times that I wonder why I am here, or how I am doing this. . .how I can live so far away from everything that is important to me. . . but then I look around me and remember that I am in Prague, and find myself laughing so hard I am crying and almost peeing, at Meredith (my roommate) playing the air fiddle to 'the devil went down to georgia' and all of my friends who are having a dance party at 2 am in my dorm room. I remember that is something that I could never even dream of, and that makes it a thousand times better, and it makes those times that I get so homesick that I cry, completely worth it.

I love it here. I am learning so much about myself already. . .and its only been 2 weeks!

xoxo I miss you allllllll

enjoy the photos and hopefully I won't be so busy and I can post more later

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=ntg0pk0.4vs0mlkc&x=0&y=-wdret8
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=ntg0pk0.bpnn8k7g&x=0&y=-h37ud8

ps. these links don't show up as links, so if you right click and select 'go to address' you can still see the pictures

Hello everybody! Today was my first day in London and it was colllld here! I got off the plane to a sky that was so full of clouds that I felt like I could reach out and touch them. It was also raining really hard and it was super windy!

I got really lucky and was able to travel to London with some really fun girls. It made the trip much easier to take and a lot more exciting. After being in London for about 20 minutes we all realized that we had broken just about every rule in our "what not to do abroad" list that we were given before coming. In the airport the voices over the loudspeaker made us all stop and say "wow listen to them talk!" then we got onto the bus and zein, a girl I traveled with, was like "oh my gosh!!! the wheel is on the other side!!!!!" Then when we went to get lunch and had to pay 8.5 dollars for a little sandwich we decided that London basically sucks. Not really, but it is so expensive and cold and rainy that it is just a bit depressing. It didn't help that we were all completely sleep deprived and the hotel didn't have our rooms ready until 5 hours after our flight got in.

After our rooms were ready we all went to take naps and then some of us headed to the 'welcome drinks reception' that the hotel had for us. At the reception I got to meet my roommate and my suite-mates and they are all really cool! We hit the town for some dinner and a drink together and it was a lot of fun. I have, however, learned that I am way too trusting and at times pretty stupid. I asked this nicely dressed man on the streets of Piccadilly Circus where we could find a nice pub. It seemed totally harmless at first, but after we were on the tube going out of Piccadilly and into another place that I don't recall the name of, I realized that this guy was kind of scary. He wasn't just showing us where to go-- he decided that he was going to take us, four 20 something girls, to a nice restaurant and buy us dinner. Hmmm, this guy was like 50 and I realized that he might expect something from us after dinner.. .. so I found a girl handing out fliers to a bar/restaurant and convinced her to walk us to the restaurant in hopes that the man would leave. He didn't at first, and I almost thought that we were going to lose our suite-mates because they felt bad to leave him. Finally they did and he was pretty upset with us, but just walked away. We made a new rule tonight: I am not allowed to ask for directions, or for good places to eat. . . because I am so trusting that I will follow somebody anywhere. . . and that could get dangerous! Maybe he was just a nice guy, but the girl handing out fliers said that we really have to be careful because nice looking people can very easily try to take advantage of young American tourists. Lesson learned!

After we left the restaurant we decided to walk around this new area that we were in and randomly ran into a big group of people that we were originally going to go out with. It seemed very unlikely and strange that we ran into them. London is so big and out of all of the people here, we just happened to run into some that we knew. So that was pretty cool. We got a drink together and then took the tube back to our hotel, as we were all getting tired.

I went to sleep at 12:45, only to wake up at 3:30 and I have been up since then. It is now 5:30 and I have to be awake by 8 for a bus tour of London. This time difference thing is killing me! I really miss Andrew too, and I got to talk to him online tonight which made being away even harder. I felt like we were so close, because we could talk, but then I had to remember that he is thousands of miles, and an ocean away from me

I am going to try to get a little more sleep in me before tomorrow, so I'm going to go now. I'll post pictures after I take more. I miss everybody and I'm really glad that I get to share the experience of being away with you!

xoxo
Jen

So this feels a bit strange. . . my first blog ever. I'm not much of a 'blogger' by nature; however, I thought that doing this would make it easier to keep in touch with family and friends after I leave for Prague. It is now ten days until I leave and I have pretty much done nothing to prepare for my move. . . which is, of course, starting to stress me out. It is almost as if I procrastinate and pretend I'm not really moving to another country, then maybe it won't really happen? Maybe I will just wake up and realize that this crazy idea that I had to go away was just a dream. . . and maybe that would make me happy. I know that I really do want to go, but as the days crawl closer I get more scared. My emotions are going and I am a constant up and down of excitement mixed with sad mixed with stomachache. Excitement to live in another country, sad to leave what I have here, and the stomachache that stems from the flip flopping of those two realizations. I am going to live in another country for four months, and I am going to be away from my friends and Andrew the entire time.

Oh well. I now have the first blog out of the way, and hopefully it will get easier to write, and more exciting to read, as time goes on.

-Jen