Can of Worms

I must apologize for the lapsed time between my last post and this, especially upon announcing that I did get my long awaited americorp job in Colorado. I am very excited about my job there and the program, but am trying not to get too ahead of myself and am trying to stay focused here, on life in Prague.

but now for a very long, detailed, and excellent blog to make up for lost time.

um, where to start. Monday.

On monday night we met our Prague friend Micheal at Cream and Dream for a little late night snacky snack of the ice cream variety (though i hate to say we go too often, the staff is beginning to recognize us due to our frequent visits). After our ice cream fix we met up with June, a young man from Japan that lived in the U.S. but is now studying in Italy, that we met at the U.S.A vs. Italy world cup match that we were all watching at the large screens in Old Town Square (note: he was not rooting for the Italians, he says they are mean). We wondered the Streets of Praha on this beautiful night, crossing the Charles Bridge when it was not crowded and searching for the John Lenon wall, which was elusive and we could not find it. It was definately one of our best nights thus far in Prague.



Me with my treasured ice cream and my smart new hat, very newsies, eh?




Tuesday was a exciting and long day, as it was the day of our first cookout at Sir Toby's. We got there early and cut up the watermelon and all the rolls (because they do not have hotdog buns) and then at the appropriate time fired up the grill and threw on the dogs. The crowd slowly trickled in and I would say we had about 30 people there for dinner. There was also live music, which was great and lots of fun. I was manning the grill and brushed aside Lauren's well-meant critic of the dogs appearance, for the dogs were all splitting wide open from the heat. Becca and I both teased her for interfering in the affairs of meat, since she is a vegetarian. Well, it was only after we had fed the hostel guests 50 of our 60 hotdogs,that we realized that the hotdogs were individual wrapped in plastic!! And we had been cooking them with the plastic on!! And people were eating them!! Including me!! I don't know if that is a testament to the Czech's ability to create a good hotdog, because people gobbled them up despite the plastic wrapping, but GOOD GRIEF!! In classic intern style we just tried to poison all of our new cookout friends!! well, reports are in that no one died or was violently ill, but I have a renewed belief that I need to learn as much Czech as possible so we can discern those key phrases on food packages like "peel off plastic before cooking."

This weekend Lauren and I hopped off to Cesky Krumluv, a picteresque town about three hours south of Praha by bus. Becca stayed in Praha in order to have some time to herself and enjoy the empty flat. Lauren and I had a true cultural experience getting to Krumluv, because we know no czech and, um, had no idea what we were doing. We got to the bus station and when we inquired about tickets, the lady just pointed us to one of the bus pick up stops. and we waited for the bus, with out any idea if we could still get on the bus and anticipating much confusion when we tried to get on without a ticket. Traveling without knowledge of the language is really like playing a game where you don't know any of the rules. Well, we watched everyone in front of us, gave the driver money, and purchased ourselves a standing spot on the bus. Thankfully we didn't have to stand all three hours, after an hour and a half lots of people got off and we were able to sit down. But we were still wondering what was going on because we had no idea where to get off and the bus kept stopping and starting again, the bus driver would talk and we had no idea what was going on. but we made it. amazingly enough.

Cesky Krumluv is a great little town, the main attraction (in my eyes) is that the historic part of the city is surrounded by the Vlatava, so you can canoe or float on innertubes around the little island city. and it has a castle and lots of beautiful scenery. The houses are all so tiny and cute, like little hobbit homes. We stopped by the Krumluv house hostel first, because it was recommended to us but we ended up staying in the Ryba hostel, which is owned by an eccentric, non-english speaking crazy woman. It was great. We stayed in the attic with at least 16 other people--truly I was able to become Cinderella for 24 hours, attic room, castle, gorgeous old town-what more could a girl want! (I was tempted to sub in the hostel owner for the scary step-mother, but for all her oddities was was way too nice to do scary.) We finally got to our hostel (our progress was only slowed by our exclamations of delight and our stopping to take pictures every five seconds) and then went to a great vegetarian restaurant and were able to sit right along the river.




me in my bed




Then we walked a bit and went to bed. We woke up early the next day, shopped a bit, and then hopped on inner tubes and floated around the river. It was great fun, but now it is good to be back in Praha with Becca-the trio is reunited!!

places we floated: