weary lion door knocker

morose lion door knocker, originally uploaded by jumu556.

I felt like posting one of my black and white photos that i just uploaded. This one is a door knocker on the door entering the town hall clock tower on old town square. This building is so old that the clock is astronomical and is based on the principle that the earth is the center of the universe. You can imagine how much this lion has seen pass him by... And maybe surmise why he might have such an expression?

The snow is probably gone from his forehead by today, I took it last Thursday and it's been raining and above freezing all day. Warmer here than in NC, I hear!

the fun of trying new things and being optimistic about food.

On Sunday we didn't do very much but wander out to eat and do some laundry and take naps (and on my part listened to the Vintage21 podcast from a week or so ago). But the adventure (using the word loosely) was in the meals. At lunch, we had our first friendly waiter! He actually made a joke as he was serving us, or kind of more made a silly mistake and laughed at himself. So that was a nice first. (not that I blame people for having a lack of warm & fuzziness and fake american smiles and all that. I completely understand that when you feel like crap, and your only job is waiting tables, putting on a smile to placate tourist customers feels practically hypocritical). But it was nice to have one who was friendly. So I ordered an omelette sandwich, (it was kind of a breakfast-y cafe), and saw it came with mayonnaise on it. Now, I don't like mayo. Never have. But I can handle a little bit and I don't mind scraping off the excess when it's just a little blob under the lettuce. And I had heard the warnings that in Europe they like to pile on mayo. But I was feeling optimistic, and I figured it would be simpler for the waiter and whoever made the sandwich if I didn't modify the order at all. But when I got this sandwich... every single layer had a slab of mayonnaise. And the top one, mixed in with the iceberg lettuce, was about half a jar of it. After scraping as much as I could out of the lettuce, tomato crevices, onions, omelette and bread, from both halves of the sandwich, there was at least 3-4 heaping tablespoons of mayonnaise on my plate. plus all the goop that I couldn't get out and just gave up on. It was a good sandwich, I'd never had an omelette sandwich and it was on their fresh homemade bread, and it was less than $5. I'll probably order it again, but... I think I'll bother to ask for "no mayonnaise, please!!!" I couldn't believe someone would actaully choose to ingest that much blobby oil and fat. Bleah.

new things

So I've been trying to keep track of the new things that I've done here. Besides just "being in Prague," there are a lot of new things I've tried, or have to do daily. Here's the compiled list, so far, in no particular order.

• been (and eaten!) in an Ikea.
• ridden a REALLY REALLY TALL escalator. (you'll probably see a post about that later, someone said it has almost 200 feet vertical difference between the top and bottom. plus it's this old soviet thing so it goes really fast)
• commuted in a foot of snow.
• ordered food on a menu with no english.
• eaten a McDonald's happy meal at Gatwick in England (only 1.99 pounds!), although I haven't visited one of the dozens here
  
• eaten cabbage and sausage soup, and liked it!
• listened to a live jazz concert with flute, xylophone, bass, and drums.
• tried, (but did not like) chocolate chip yogurt... (bleaaaah. it was sour with little bits of chocolate flakes.)
• bought food in a grocery store that has the food lion symbol but is called "Delvita"
• successfully figured out which bottle was clothes detergent and which was fabric softener (a very difficult endeavor, but if you try it, detergent has an icon of a t-shirt with a stain on the back while fabric softener has a feather)
• eaten a stone-fired pizza (very similar to Brixx) and it didn't even cost $5!
• ridden the yellow line subway to the end of the line one way (getting to Ikea)
• communicated with someone who did not speak my language (she said something, i said i didn't understand, she said something else, I heard "five" and i realized we were supposed to tip her if we checked our coats, so I did!)
• watched a movie/commercial being filmed on the steps up to Prague castle
• seen a Little Caesar's pizza for the first time in a long time - inside Tesco!
• washed clothes inside something that we guess is a foot-wash sink? it's rectangular, deep, only a foot off the ground, and has a regular sort of faucet on it. But it worked well for our purposes.
• eaten out every day I've been here, usually at least twice... (that's actually getting a little old, I wouldn't mind simpler things that don't require sitting and waiting and ordering and having to pay over a dollar for water even though I have a bottle in my bag...)
• learned to be able to stand drinking carbonated water, since they seem to often misunderstand me. the Czech brand, Mattoni, isn't so bad.

that's all I can think of for now. I'm going to be posting some snow pictures on flickr later, we were up on top of the clock tower on Old Town Square yesterday for our first studio. The views with the snow everywhere was gorgeous. Might post one here... though fair warning, I won't have access to my computer over the weekend, most likely, because they lock up our studio and only the professors and director have the keys, and they don't want to come to work on the weekend... So I'll be even later on my emails and updates and such.

see? I really am here.

see I am really here., originally uploaded by jumu556.

This will be a quick one just to let everyone know, I'm here, and whole, and haven't had too big a chunk taken out of my wallet by flight delays and overnight stays in London. If you want to see a few more pictures I took on our first walk around Prague (I think it was Sunday), check out my flickr site. It took long enough to get here, but it was worth it.

are you kidding me???

are you kidding me???, originally uploaded by jumu556.

Good bye, NC!!!
I like to think it's a going away present. The day my flight leaves (God willing it will leave) and it snows an inch. First time in like a year and a half. well, blog you from the other side (of the atlantic!)!!

almost there... almost there...

I plan on arriving at RDU in less than 24 hours... that's kind of crazy. I've been good about packing and preparing ahead of time, though, (I mean I had more than a month! and it was sooooo nice...). I've been trying to pre-adjust myself to changing time zones, sort of, by going to bed an hour earlier and getting up an hour (or maybe just 45 minutes...) earlier each morning. So this morning I got up at 6:45. Crazy, huh? I was pretty impressed I could get myself to do it. The planned bedtime tonight is 8:30 but will probably be more like 9:30, which also is crazy. I don't know when I last went to bed before 9. Probably last time I was jet lagged? Anybody who's had a studio with me knows I don't have a liking to pulling all-nighters (and work all sorts of crazy early morning and weekend hours to avoid it), and in the same vein I don't like navigating foreign airports and cities on 2 hours of plane-sleep (equating to a half an hour of real sleep, I believe). So this is my effort at reducing that effect and maaaybe getting some more sleep on the transatlantic portion of the flight. But... I have a window seat, and it'll be so cool looking out on the clouds and the twilight thousands of feet in the air... I think it'll help once it gets dark and the distraction to press forehead to window (and maybe take a photo or two) is gone. Well I should get busy. Less than one more day of packing!!!! (that's almost more exciting than going to Prague... wait, no, it's not. it's just annoying.

T-4.5 days and counting

packing, buying, reading, repacking, cleaning, weighing suitcases, repacking, sleeping... that's me right now. for the record, I am sick and tired of packing and buying and repacking. It's no fun. I will be very happy when it's all over, and I've hopefully not forgotten anything I can't buy there. so, here I go, back to pack.

mluvim česky... except not. at all.

I'm trying to learn at least enough Czech to not be completely and totally lost and ignorant when I get there. I found out there are not very many resources available to teach yourself Czech and none of them are ideal. I decided on the pimsleur audio cd's (only to lesson 16, not the "complete" 30-lesson set (for the exorbitant $150!!). And also a separate grammar book. Pimsleur recommends you don't read or write anything while listening to the lessons. I know myself well enough to know I need to have an image of the word in my mind in order to remember it and pronounce it, even if I have to learn Czech phonics (and why do you consider this so above me, o pimsleur user's guide?).

So, with the help of the grammar book (which assumes I can already read complex dialogue from chapter one but has some helpful charts and vocabulary), as well as several English-Czech online dictionaries and phrasebooks, I've managed to ingrain several useful phrases, and am working on some other vocabulary. The thing is, I've lost some motivation because pimsleur has started doing phrases like "what would you like to drink?" or, "where would you like to eat?". These phrases are too long and complicated to look up on any of the dictionaries or phrase books I've found online, and I can't quite tell how the words are spelled (since I don't know the particular declension or conjugation and I haven't found where to look that up online) so I can't get a good idea of it in my head. And relying on imitating the sounds is not working very well.

Plus, I don't think this phrase is really necessary at all, not in the basic sort of way. Pimsleur hasn't even taught me to count, yet, or to say "my name is..." both of which I think are pretty high up on the "basic necessities" list.

But it certainly has not all been a loss. I've gotten to practice pronunciation, and broadened my vocabulary from nothing at all to at least a dozen or two words. I think the most useful phrase I have learned so far is "Promiňte nerozumím." "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

stones up to the ridgeline

stones up to the ridgeline, originally uploaded by jumu556.

so this is a test to see how blogging some of my flickr photos works. i like this picture more than it probably deserves, so I chose this one. The rocks lined up like that just seemed so random to me, up on top of the ridge. I thought it might be collected from water draining off the slope, but the path is sunk lower than where these rocks are, so it would seem like the water would want to flow down the path and not right there.... so idk. it confuses me. so i took a picture of it.

preparations...

so no, I haven't left yet... still in the ol' durham. But I was bored tonight so I made my blog. Personally, I feel like blogs have the flavor of narcissism and self-absorbtion, two things I try to avoid, at least on the conscious level. Not that I don't write down thoughts when the mood strikes, but that I have never anticipated anyone else would be interested in reading them. So writing this is a litte awkward for me, but I'm sure my normal ranting, digressing mind will kick in and take over quickly enough. This is fair warning: I probably will go on plenty of tangents, but I'll at least attempt to keep my posts within the realm of "keeping family and friends updated on how I'm doing in Prague" as that is the purpose. I'll be busy here for the next two weeks trying to get everything organized and bought and weighed and pondered over how much i actually need it in the first place... as the title says, preparations. but i needed to post something to make my blog look a little less blank.