cold feet

picture of building in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic

WINE TASTING!!! We had red and white wine on the table, and then everyone sampled some other white wines. i...did not.

looking from the bottom of a canyon (?) at Punkev Cave. the hole i guess is 120 meters from a surface. After this picture was taken we went on a small boat ride on the underground river that flows through the cave.

picture from about 10 minutes before a massive snowball fight erupted in from of St. Barbora church. One of the snowballs hit the church door...I think someone put himself into the express lane

image from the entrance to the italian court

keeping up with a blog is incredibly difficult at times. half the time i want to blog, im just too tired to do it, or too much has happened that i need to digest a bit. it also does not help that blogger is a bastard for pictures. refer to the pictures above as i describe the weekend

but anyways..

last weekend i went on my first trip around the Czech Republic to Moravia. Moravia a region in the eastern part of the country. i think that about 46 international students went, and 2 officers in Czech Tech's ISC (international student club). we were on the bus for 2 hours, then arrived at Kutna Hora. i think it is a town. there, we visited the italian courtyard, which i believe was one of the first treasuries and mints in the country. of course this is about the point my camera died for the day because my extra batteries were underneath the bus in my bookbag...which is not where i was.

After that we got lunch and my friends and i wandered until we found an italian restaurant i got me some pizza. i have actually had a lot of pizza while in the Czech Republic....its quite delicious. And then a massive snowball fight erupted in front of St. Barbora's church. it went on for like 15 minutes. almost everyone got hit with a snowball. we looked at the church, where it was rediculously cold, and then proceeded to have a snowman making competition. i wish i had taken pictures, but i think the winner was the canadian people who made a hockey player, and somehow "happened" to have carrots on them.

After this, we headed to the Church of the Bones, which is the church decorated with bones because during the plague, the church ran out of room in the cemetary, and decided to put the bones to good use. It was a pretty eerie place, and really damp.

And then...we headed to Olomouc, and spent the night in their dorms. So we all dumped our stuff off and walked a few blocks to some restraunt and had dinner. it was chicken with ham on top and cheese or something...it was interesting. my friends and i sat with a girl from greece and a girl from france. After that we were supposed to go to a disco, but i went with the group that went to a bar first. There was much drinking and someone wound up dancing on a table. Then it was club time...which was a lot of dancing, drinking, and constant beat of something (i barely danced...and had stopped drinking by this point...good plan for me)

The next morning, we waited around for like 45 minutes for breakfast...because whatever we were supposed to have fell through...so one of the officers had to run to the grocery store. i had chocolate yogurt...or thats what i think it was. it was bizzare. then we took a shortened tour of the town of Olomouc.,,you know the town square, churches...crap like that. Somehow though, i struck up a conversation with a french guy...and we pretty much talked for the length of the tour. It was a good time...but of course because it had been snowing off and on for the past few days...i slipped and fell on some ice, and him and a bunch of other people saw me.

good times...i felt like a moron

After this i think we headed to a town close to Brno for our wine tasting thing. i wound up staying in a room with 10 other people. I think i was one of the least drunk people in there at the end of the night. Wine tasting was definitely an experience...thankfully i stopped drinking about halfway into the night...and learned that i think wine tastes like ass. I wound up sitting next to the same french guy i was talking to earlier in the day, and at one point he got on his knees and begged me to drink more wine. i declined...but was moved by the moment. There is a picture of it up on facebook. We wound up getting kicked out of the place at like midnight...and i was stuck with a group that got lost on the way back to where we were staying.

The next day we walked through Brno was were released for lunch. Me and some guys from k-state ate at mcdonalds, and talked about how much nicer the ones in the Czech Republic are than the US. These people looked to be working there..and there were flat-screen tvs. After lunch we took a tour of a 17th century prison. It was cold, and damp, but kinda cool at the same time. I tried to take pictures, but it was too dark and nothing was showing up in my pictures. After this, we all walked back to the bus and headed back to the dorms. But...on the bus...and for pretty much most of sunday...about 3/4 of the bus got sick. I blame the long walks in the snow we took for 2 days...and all the booze.

This week has been pretty relaxed except for wandering around for 2 hours trying to find a laundromat in the rain. and the one that was supposed to exist did not; i was PISSED..and soaked by the time i got back to my room. This week I payed for my internet, did FINALLY laundry (which costs about 15 dollars all together...its more expensive because its not very common to have dryers in the Czech Republic...and the laundromats probably jack up the prices for foreigners) It was one of the best laundromats I've been to; i thought that the washer i was using was too full, and the lady managed to shove more of my clothes in there. BUT...i wound up washing my phone. i did not realize this until ten minutes after the washing machine had started. I felt like a moron, but i wound up getting a new phone today. Somehow, the sim card in the phone survived!!

I also wound up going to a salsa party yesterday, and the french guy that i had mentioned before spent ten mintues trying to teach me to salsa. He told me to try, just for him...so i did. I don't know why, but I just couldn't do it. He gave up on me and told me it was kinda sad that i couldnt dance, but was kinda nice about it.

today I went to the Museum of Communism in Prague. it was incredibly interesting. its main focus was on the soviet regime in Czechoslovakia from 1948-89. And then my friend and i walked around for a while because it was raining earlier, but it cleared up and was gorgeous outside.

and then this weekend...im going to south bohemia to go to a castle and check out the legit budweiser brewery...and i think some other stuff too. I'm really looking forward to it

well...this is entirely too long now

dobry den!