First Impressions (Part I)

This has already been quite the grand adventure.

The plane ride was long, but largely uneventful. The view out the window during the night while we passed Greenland was beautiful. So pristine.

The UK is the most adorable country ever. Going through the airport, I just had to smile at the adorable little British driving around in their adorable little British cars. Even the inane banter between the people working the connection desk at Heathrow was adorable!

So we arrived in Prague around 2 pm. Customs had the shortest line I had ever seen, and we were out the door with our luggage in like 15 minutes. We met someone from my school there named Veronika. Veronika seemed to be very shy, but was nice and helped us with our luggage. The trip to our apartment was kind of rough. We first took a bus from the airport, and then a couple trains, and then travelled a couple blocks on foot. We needed to go up and down several flights of stairs, each of us carrying 70 pounds of luggage. About halfway through it started raining.

When we finally got to the apartment, the person we were supposed to meet was not there, and we didn't have her number. So we sat out in the rain trying to figure out what to do, but eventually a woman let us in. She spoke only what sounded like Czech, but according to Veronika, she was speaking Russian (which Veronika doesn't know) so we had an interesting time getting into the apartment. I feel kind of bad for Veronika, it seems like she got a lot more than she bargained for by signing up to help us out. Hopefully we will become good friends though!

We get into the apartment, and it is pretty nice, although we wouldn't discover until the next morning's showers that there was no hot water.

So this morning started with the aforementioned freezing showers, and we had a lot to get done. So we started the morning off be Czeching out the embassy. On the way there we walked though this great big park which was a wonderful way to start the morning. The embassy was closed on Sunday (oops!) and we were starving by this point, so we tried to get food. We walked into a cafe, acted like total tourists and I felt really foolish afterwards, but at least we had gotten something. So then we wandered around the older section of town a bit, which was beautiful, before heading back to the apartment to meet with the landlord. It turns out the Russian lady wasn't our landlord, just another tenant. Our actual landlady was friendly and speaks very good English, which was good. It turns out there was a fire in the building like two days before we got here, which explains the bad smell and lack of hot water.

These first two days have been incredibly promising. I can't wait to see what the school is like tomorrow, and of course to explore the city a little more. There is so much to see! I took a couple pictures of interesting stuff on my digital, but this laptop is being grumpy so I won't be able to show you anything until tomorrow. Suffice to say, I really like the aesthetic this city has going. Buildings representing every architectural movement from Gothic to Post-Modern all crammed together and peppered with interesting graffiti in the appropriate places. It is so gorgeous, and I am so grateful for the chance to spend time here and get to know all about it.