Týden Jeden

(Translation: Week One)

I consider this my first week since it was my first full week in Prague. I had a great week, and the city is finally feeling like home. It's a great feeling when you no longer need a map, and you know already have favorite places.

Yesterday morning I wandered around the Mala Strana district in the morning until I got to the cafe that Karen and I like. I got some coffee and worked on my Czech homework. Karen met me there a little while later, and we worked for a while. Czech class went well, and our adorable teacher even took us to the grocery store so that we could ask her questions about which brands were the best and what certain foods said. After class we grabbed dinner at another great vegetarian restaurant that we've found. It was nice to have a real meal (I will tell you about the food eventually, but let's just say that it was nice to not have the Czech version of ramen noodles again). Anyway, after dinner we went to this huge concert that was going on in Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square). Goran Bregovic performed a free concert as some sort of tribute to the Czech people. According to praguemarathon.com it was "an expression of [their] thanks to Czech people for their help and understanding after crucial time in ex-Yugoslavia." (Whatever that means). The concert was actually really interesting. It was sort of like polka music at times, but this guy played a bunch of different music. Apparently he's pretty famous in eastern and central Europe, and the place was packed. One of my friends said that her Czech teacher had told them that Goran Bregovic is like their Jimmy Buffet, and that sort of makes sense to me. There were people there of all ages, and they seemed to equally enjoy it. I found an actual video from last night:



After the concert we met up with Karen's friends who were visiting Prague and went out with them. All in all it was a good night.

Today I wandered the city in the morning with Alexa and Jill. We went to Mala Strana and walked around. Alexa showed us the Wallenstein Palace gardens which were beautiful. After that we went to the school cafeteria for our 10 crown coffees (which are really 13 crowns 'cause they charge you for milk and sugar!), and then we went to class. Our teacher took us to the World Press Photo Exhibit and paid for us and everything. It was an amazing exhibit. I might go back next week. We each had to pick a photo and describe it to her in Czech which was quite the challenge. The exhibit itself was very interesting and had a lot of moving images from the most significant news events of the past year. We couldn't take pictures at it, but I did buy a poster to decorate my dorm a bit:


Anyway, I'm heading out for the night so I will update next week about my weekend. I put up all of my pictures from the week though!