cheers to immersion

We made a Czech friend!

So after spending about three hours at a French restaurant having wine, cheese, and fondant chocolat (side note: I LOVE how they don't rush you at restaurants here at all. People not only eat later, which is taking me some getting used to, but they eat for a much longer time too, which I've discovered is also the best thing ever because I feel like I'm really enjoying my food and having a meal), we were giggling and squealing our way down Old Town Square, when we stopped to take a frappucino sample at Starbucks (aka my lifesaver for these past three days thanks to late nights and early Survival Czech class). The guy handing them out was really chill, so we ended up talking to him for a bit, and he asked us for our emails and if we'd ever like to go with him and some of his friends (he's 19 and goes to university in the city) out at night sometime.

Um, hello? Partying with the locals?
Sign me up!

Lesson learned: yeah, it's surprisingly quiet here (i.e. everyone gives us really weird looks wherever we are because people talk in super quiet voices and are really reserved, even in public places like restaurants and the metro), and yeah, people don't generally smile, but the Czech people really do seem to be a lot friendlier than we anticipated.

the food the wine the cheese the people

Can I just say?
I LOVE EUROPE!

i'm in love with a city

I'M IN PRAGUE.

Now, originally I was going to start My First Study Abroad Blog Post talking about the moment I fell in love with the city. Or, in other words, the moment my cab from the airport hit the top of a hill (after a few miles of nothing but normal-looking trees and flat road), and I saw the entire, fairy tale city spread out in front of me, the red roofs, the spires, and all. And I was in awe. There is no other word to describe it. The image of Cinderella's town at the very beginning of the movie comes to mind (the old-school version, where they used to show an overview of the "town" and then zoom in on a particular area as they began the narration), thanks to the dominance of the Prague Castle. I mentally played cheerleader to my taxi driver (...who did not speak English) by, given my generally decent sense of direction, I would think, "Please turn right, please turn right. ...YESSSS! Go left! Go left! ...SCORE!" in order to somehow -- through mental willpower -- make my dorm building end up in the center of the city.

But instead of all that, I'm going to focus on the moment I first really interacted with a Prague local.

So it turns out that not only is my dorm pretty near the center of town, but I'm also on the fifth (read: TOP) floor of my dorm, which means I have a great view, but that my thighs are going to get a killer workout in the upcoming four months. That also means that after unpacking, trying to figure out how to use the Internet/phone, laughing with the girl living across from me about how we both are now super inspired to visit Greece thanks to Mama Mia! and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (don't judge us), I was about to faint from hunger. Literally! So, since Lilly (the girl living across the hall) was taking a nap, I decided to venture out on my own (this is big, you guys) to find lunch.

My map was totally incomprehensible (it was all in Czech!), so I walked out, turned left and headed straight, as per some general directions a girl downstairs had told me to take to get to an area of cafes/restaurants. I walk down the adorable cobblestone alley and see this cute little shop with a sign that says "Sandwiches." It looked cute, so I open the door and am about to go inside when I hear a man's voice yelling Czech at me.

Oh no.

Well, after I worriedly go, "Sorry?" he informs me that the place is closed. Relieved that I wasn't breaking some previously unknown intrusion law and totally despaired over how I was going to find food, I ask if there was another place nearby where I could get a bite to eat, he asks me what I wanted, and when I say I just want a sandwich or something, anything, he goes, in the classic way that only a Central European can say it:

"...I could give you a sandwich."

I probably could've kissed him right then. So he unlocked the cafe, went down into the kitchen, and I waited outside by the road for my free lunch.

Well, turns out, there were no more pre-made sandwiches downstairs since it was the weekend, and the place apparently didn't get that much business. The feeling of doom comes over my entire body, until all of a sudden I hear Czech Guy go, "I can make you a sandwich. If you're not scared, you can come to the kitchen."

What? "Should I be scared?" I ask.

"Well, no. Well, you'll see."

And that's when I break the first rule of How Not To Get Screwed While In A Foreign Country; and I told him that it was my first day in the city. "In that case," he goes, "we're making you a sandwich."

I walk downstairs with him into the kitchen and survey that it's 1) pretty clean, with the ingredients all packed away, but also 2) that the ingredients did not have any labels on them to tell me what they were or when they expired. Czech Guy started poking at the bread to see if they were good or not, and when I asked about their status, he said he wasn't really sure since it was Bio Bread.

What the fuck is Bio Bread?

Well, he didn't know how to describe it in English, but basically he just said that it was "really healthy," so I figured it was probably organic or whole wheat or something like that. I poke at it to see what it feels like, and it's rock hard. I'm crushed, until I realize that: THIS IS PRAGUE! THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST RESTAURANT I'VE SEEN! I'll just go down the street to look for another cafe!

And thankfully, I found one with outdoor seating.

just being utilitarian

I suppose everyone has to starve at some point in their life.

And my time is definitely now.

After what I can only describe as a painfully frustrating last dinner at home before I fly out tomorrow morning, I got my budget laid out for me for my upcoming semester abroad. And as everyone knows, the beauty of living life free of food points is that the money allotted for food no longer necessarily needs to go towards food. Granted, this is also a major policy problem when applied to larger government projects, but in the case of little ol' me, life sans a meal plan has taught me one great fact of my life:

I'm willing to starve for cute clothes and trips to faraway places.

I mean, it builds character, right? Didn't we learn in economics that consumers should maximize their utility per dollar spent? I'm just being efficient here.

what happens at the resort stays at the resort

“They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,” Malia’s mayor, Konstantinos Lagoudakis, said in an interview. “It is only the British people — not the Germans or the French.”

- "Some Britons Too Unruly for Resorts in Europe" (NYTimes)

I wonder what do they think about American college students.