Alive and...overwhelmed

I...made...it...

After flying on a 10 hour flight, (In flight movies: Ratatouille (seen it), The Jane Austen Book Club (No interest) and Rush Hour 3 (seen it, and was disappointed) )  and connecting through Frankfurt I made it to Prague! 

So I got my swiss army knife taken away in the Frankfurt airport, but not my other knife, which is a huge buck knife. So yes, I flew all the way from San Francisco to Prague, through two huge airports, with a huge knife in my carry on. So much for all this intense security.

Also, I broke my record and stayed up for 30 hours straight. Once I was finally taken to my apartment, (which I will expand on in a second) I dropped off my stuff and got acquainted with my roommates, Joe, and Jared and Logan. Pretty cool guys, from Maine, Michigan and Texas. Between the four of us, we have the U.S. pretty much covered. The reason I didn't just crash was because it was 4 in the afternoon and to avoid bad jetlag I had to stay up until "sleep time" here in Prague. The two guys who met us at the airport, "Geiger" and Zach, who work for the USAC program, told us that they were taking us to a cool pub and a great club that was playing 80's music. Honestly, these guys are hilarious guys (Geiger read us a short story and some poems on the shuttle from the airport to our apartments via intercom) but they are a couple of clowns. They really aren't that organized and honestly, who takes 40 super tired, jet lagged kids out to a pub and club the first night they are in a huge city they are new to? It was a bizarre first night experience, but I guess it was a good way to stay awake. Plus, the 80's themed club was hilarious. (Madonna! Bon Jovi!) 

So my apartment...officially sucks. We have a decent location, next to a beautiful huge church and public square, but our apartment is super small. We also don't have an oven, toaster, or dishwasher. Two bedrooms, one big, one small and a tiny dining/kitchen. Our shower is more of a bathtub that you have to sit down in and hold the faucet over yourself. Needless to say, it's another annoying facet of the apartment.  It also doesn't help that every other student in our program have huge apartments with queen beds, living rooms, large kitchens with ovens, dishwashers, etc. I would be okay with this, but we are paying the same rent as them! We're going to see what we can do to move out of our place and into a bigger place, where we can actually have people over. We also have an 80 year old neighbor, who has lived in his apartment for like 40 years, and was a little freaked out to see four 20 year old college kids from the states moving in next to him.

So enough complaining. The city is awesome, but really overwhelming and confusing when you are new to it. It's frustrating not knowing how to get around (I write this from a friend's apartment where I don't know how to get home from and there is a good chance I will get lost by myself in the city tonight, but it's happened to just about everybody at least once). 

We started class today, which was interesting. Our professor tries to speak to us in Czech, and nobody has a clue what she is saying, but we are slowly learning the basics. The alphabet, pronunciation, that sort of thing. We're just trying to learn basic friends so we can be civil and polite with people around town and in restaurants and pubs. 

Okay, I'm a little blogged out, I'll update when I can, every day here is quite the unexpected adventure and you never quite know what is coming...

Oh and fun fact: Apparently we live in the "Gay District" of Prague. Another plus about our apartment!