Sight-seeing and Other Busy-ness

So about a million things have happened in the last week and I can't even begin to talk about them all so I'll go through the major highlights.


Thursday was Lunar New Year (and a Vietnamese girl that some of my friends know (who is now my friend, I love how that works) made us dinner. It was deeeelicious. I miss Asian food so much.


Today I was trying to explain to one of my students what the Chinese version of a dumpling is because here dumplings are basically bread or potato bread of some sort. It's totally different though also delicious and I love them as much as I love the Chinese dumplings.


I think I might be addicted to food. But I digress.



I also met lorn's sister who came in town for a few days (and will be back after a trip to Barcelona and possibly Berlin, jealous much?) and who is also totally awesome. I basically spent the weekend with lorn, her sister and John. 

On Friday...

We went walking around Old Town 

and the Jewish Quarter

and finally on over to Vaclavske Namesti (Wenceslas Square)

It's days like this that you realize how totally small this city really is. I also spent the day learning lots of history, if not from lorn than from the Internet when I got home. I <3 the Internet and the access it gives me to a plethora of information.


On Saturday, I took it easy. I literally did not get out of my pajamas until the sun went down again at which time, we went to karaoke. It was packed. I was nervous. (What? Wait... I don't get nervous at karaoke! I love this stuff!) I sang Love Shack with lorn (not that you've been replaced Meg) and then I sang What's Love Got to Do With It and finally my usual Sweet Child of Mine. 


I guess I didn't totally bomb it.


Sunday we went to Petřín Hill which was an amazing (yet rather steep) walk up above Prague. I can't even begin to explain how many different pictures I have which are views of the whole city from different locations. Seriously: Letná Park, Vyšehrad, not Petřín. 

I love any pictures with the castle in the background.
Hell, I like that there's a castle in my city.

I could probably put together a 360-degree view of Prague.


Monday, I started my Czech class. Luckily I have a lot of friends in this class. However, I've already determined that Czech is freaking difficult. I might even say it's more difficult than Mandarin... Then again, I thought Mandarin was super hard and now I'm pretty comfortable with it. We'll see. Funny thing: When I'm trying to think of words in Czech now, I think of the Chinese words. I did the same thing when I was learning Chinese except with Spanish. Weird.


Today, a little boy ran up to me at the bus stop, sat down next to me and started yammering at me in Czech. I just let him go for it until his grandmother figured out I speak English (and apparently she does too). We started chatting, I said "OK" and the kid thought it was the best thing ever. He commenced a shouting match in which he yelled, "OK" as loud as he could and I whispered it as softly as I could. It made me miss teaching kids.


Also today, in one of my more advanced classes that I just started teaching I told them they could ask any questions about me that they might have. The conversation went a little like this:


Lucie: "How long have you been teaching."
Me: "A little less than two years."
Martin: "How old are you?"
Me: "24-years-old"
Lukas: "Well, in that case, are you married?"
Me, laughing: "No, not yet."
Lukas: "Do you want to stay in the Czech Republic for a long time?"
Me: "Maybe we'll come back to this conversation in a few months when I've gotten to know you a little better."


At that point everyone in the room was laughing hysterically. See, that whole not marrying a Czech man rule might be more difficult to keep than I thought.