Dobry Den, Seattle

It's been about two weeks since I landed in Prague, and I feel like I'm finally getting my bearings. I've moved into my apartment, which is a bit outside the city center. It's a super residential area with lots of families, (supposedly) many expats, and dogs everywhere. The dog to human ratio in Prague is apparently one to one, and I've seen just about every breed of dog ever created at this point. I share my flat with two roommates, both UW students (there are 6 kids from Whitman College in our program too) and both girls that I get along with amazingly well. I can't say the same for a lot of the other roommate combinations, and I'm eternally grateful that my 8 weeks in Prague will be drama free on the home front.

So the program that I'm a part of through CHID focuses on history, political science and literature of the Czech Republic, although much of history and political science will often talk about the surrounding countries and their interactions around WWI and WWII. There are 21 students, six of them from Whitman College. There's this weird dynamic between the UW and Whitman kids; I've become friends with most of the Whitties, but in the beginning I thought, "We seem like such slackers compared to the Whitman kids, they must think we're all stupid." Although that feeling has subsided, I think it's still active among some of the other UW kids. In all honestly, it's probably a non-issue as long as you're getting your shit done. But even that is hard to do if you also want to get to know the city more. That's probably the biggest complaint I have about this program: the courses are really interesting, but there's simply too much work to do. Part of the point of studying abroad is to immerse yourself in a foreign city, and that's been difficult with the amount of reading and papers we have. In total, we have 9 papers to write (from 3 to 7 pages in length) and two projects (one of which is already done).

I wanted to start this blog sooner, but the curriculum of my program has been surprisingly rigorous; this week I have a political science paper about the role of political elites in Central European socialist regimes. I suck at any non-literature/cinema studies papers, so this should be good fun. As I'm sitting in the internet cafe by my apartment, everyone else in the program (except myself and my roommate Laura) are peddling through Southern Bohemia on an 80 mile bike trip. I (smartly, so to speak) declined to participate in lieu of finishing my thesis. But since we had such a heavy load of homework to do (finished a book, read half of another book, still have 3 articles to read), I ended up doing that instead; plus I caught up on some much needed sleep. Not sure how much of this the bikers got to finish over the weekend.

Aside from school, I've been able to do some fun local stuff as well. I visited the Prague Castle, which has a beautiful cathedral and an amazing aerial view of the city. I also went to a couple football games shown on these jumbotron screens in Old Town Square, a touristy area of Prague. Our classroom is in the middle of Wenceslas Square, a historic area where lots of protests have taken place but is now more of a shopping district; there's an H&M and a Sephora within a couple blocks of our building. The coolest bar I've gone to by far is called U Sudu. It's apparently a well known place to purchase pot, but it's got the most intense labyrinthian, cave-like atmosphere I've ever seen. You can easily get lost in all the different rooms, walking down stairs and encountering numerous locked doors. It reminds me a bit of "From Dusk Till Dawn," where there's this distinct feeling that if you get locked in one of the rooms everyone will turn out to be vampires and try to devour you.

This coming weekend, I'm planning a trip to Karlovy Vary to attend the city's film festival. It's a couple hours outside of Prague, so it won't be too expensive. About six of us are committed to going so far. We just have to work out the hotel situation and train tickets tomorrow. I'm super pumped to see "Bathory," a film about the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory that was filmed by a Czech director.

So...since I have a paper to write I'll cut things short here. I'll try to update before the weekend and add some pictures too :)