Not that I will likely have many readers of my blog, but I figured I’d apologize anyways for my own guilt. Praha (Czech for Prague) is absolutely amazing. It is without a doubt the most beautiful, historic, and clean city I have ever been to. The dorm I live in (Kolej Komenskeho) is kind of ghetto and communist but we all seemed to adjust to the lower quality of the building after the first few days. Things have been really hectic since I’ve been here. Orientation stuff the first week and getting myself settled and stuff and then we started our 2 week intensive Czech language course this week. It’s from 9AM - 2PM Mon. - Fri. for 2 weeks. That’s 5 hours of Czech (not exactly the most beautiful sounding language) a day. Regardless of this, I feel like I am actually absorbing the language fairly well. I try using it with people I encounter (usually at stores) and it’s really cool being able to communicate. I’m usually the lame American who only knows English and some Spanish and thus a non-English speaker usually adjusts to my language or knows my language in addition to their native language. My profesor (or profesorka in Czech) is Jitka. She’s this old woman with lots of energy and enthusiasm, not to mention an extensive amount of knowledge and experience. I’m really looking forward to my semester-long classes that start in a week and a half. Probably the best aspect so far of my study abroad experience is the people I’ve met. There is not one person in our program who i have met that I even remotely dislike, which, not that I’m a judgmental bitch, but usually there are people who just irk me. My current major dilemmas are the fact that I am kind of sick and that I chipped one of my teeth. Okay details. I started having a sore throat/cough on Sunday morning and it’s now Wednesday afternoon and I still have just as bad, if not worse, of a sore throat and cough. I went to the pharmacy and got these lozenge things that the pharmacist recommended. I don’t know the max amount I can eat per day though because the directions are all in Czech so I’m just eating a bunch until I feel better. That makes sense right? Anyway, the worse dilemma, I fucking chipped my tooth. Well, technically, I chipped my crown which is essentially a fake (porcelain) tooth that they put in place of a tooth that has had a root canal. I only got it my senior year of high school so it should not have broke. I was on my way back to the Kolej abut a week ago from Tesco (the Czech version of Walmart) and I got off the tram a stop too early. It was my first time riding the tram alone back and it was night time so I wasn’t sure what my stop looked like and the robot woman who speaks Czech on the tram says the stop and then the next stop so I heard the next stop (my stop) and got off in a frenzy. Anyway, sorry to ramble about this, it wasn’t that bad of a walk to my stop but definitely further than most T stops in Boston. It is also extremely cold here right now. It has snowed more days than it has not since I have been here to give you an idea. Thankfully, being a landlocked country with mountains, there isn’t a lot of wind, otherwise the weather is pretty comparable to Boston. So I was walking back to the Kolej and I decided to eat some fruit mentos that I bought and of course since it was so cold they were frozen hard. Being the invincible man I think I am, I popped one in my mouth and casually strolled along until I bit down on the grape flavored mento and heard/felt a large crack. I stopped in shock and spit out the contents of my mouth into my hand, and of course, there it was half of my crown. At this point I was no longer an invincible man but an insecure girl. As soon as I got back to my room I looked in the mirror. I could definitely hold a mug outside on the street and show off this newly snaggled/jagged tooth and get some crowns. Thankfully it didn’t hurt since it was a fake tooth and you can’t see it unless I pull back my lips. But anyway, the dilemma is getting it fixed. Rather than type any more about my mouth I think I’ll just recap whatever I end up doing for you after I do it so as to save us both a lot of time. Alright momma needs to eat. Farewell my fabulous fans.
Mattay
