I don't have a good ear for languages, which consequently means I'm not particularly good at Czech. I know we've only been learning it for 3 days, and that it's a really hard language, but it's a bit frustrating at times, since my mouth just can't seem to make half of the sounds it needs to. There's a lot of diacritical marks over the letters, which completely change the pronunciation of the letter, and in certain cases, such as the difference between R and Ř (note the little mark on top), where it changes from a normal, English-sounding pronunciation of "R" to some sound I can't even quite describe. It's more of a "rjjjzzzzhhh." I'm not quite sure where they got that one from, because it doesn't even sound like what you think any kind of R would.
At least now I can remember certain words, even if they are the really easy ones. I was kind of proud of myself when I asked for a "voda" (water) last night when we went out to dinner, even if that's one that sounds reasonably like English, or barring that, some kind of romance language.
Now as soon as I stop saying "excuse me" to people in English when I'm on the metro, it'll all be okay.
Showing posts with label first impressions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first impressions. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
getting lost is the only way to find your way around
Note to self: Next time I'm on a tram, make sure that I get on going in the right direction, because I shouldn't cross the Vltava River, gorgeous as it may be, when I'm on my way home from class. That was an experience.
Orientation has been interesting so far. We went to Old Town Square yesterday, which is the big tourist center. Classes are in a building located just off the square, and that's really nice too. I seem to be learning my way around, but not knowing Czech is getting kind of interesting. Today we started intensive classes, but there's only going to be so much I'm able to pick up. At least now I can say please and thank you.
I felt particularly lost when Emily, Rachel, and I went food shopping yesterday at Tesco, a British import which seems to be analogous to Wal-Mart. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see American toothpaste and shampoo brands in my entire life, even if most of the labels on them were in Czech. Food shopping was a bit challenging, mostly because we didn't know enough Czech to tell what certain things were. Groceries are cheap here though, which is always nice.
On the same food note, I was super excited today to find Schar, this really good (and very European and not really available in the States) GF brand at this pharmacy near our dorm. It made me feel a little better about surviving in a country where everything seems to involve bread.
Today I finally got a hair dryer, which was a bit of an adventure in itself. I didn't want to get one at Tesco, where they were about 1000 crowns (roughly $50 American) so I went to this Radio Shack/Best Buy-ish electronics store next door. Nobody there spoke English very well, so it was a lot of pointing and sign language. Easy enough, until I paid and went to the back of the store with my receipt to actually pick up my hair dryer, where I proceeded to wait on a line for at least 15 minutes, while everyone else patiently waited for me (which I felt kind of bad about) with no one around to help the rapidly forming line of people waiting to get whatever they'd just purchased. It felt a little bit communistic, in a way.
I also got a phone, which I'm super excited about, because I feel a little more connected to the world. It was also cheaper than the U.S., which is a good thing, since I'm only using it for four months. It's with a company called Vodafone, which doesn't service the U.S., and all of the students on the program had cleaned the store closest to the Center out of the cheaper phones, so we went to Wenceslas Square (the center of the tourist area) to find another Vodafone outlet, and just took the metro home from there, after a detour to Citibank, because the other bank refused to cash my traveler's checks.
Tomorrow we have more intensive Czech, and I need to buy a metro pass, since I didn't get around to doing that today. Emily and I tried, but it didn't exactly work out, since the crazy lady running the booth tried to send us to a station that was on a different train line, and we didn't feel like heading all the way there when we'd been running around all day, and I don't think either of us were in any mood to find our way there after such a long day.
Orientation has been interesting so far. We went to Old Town Square yesterday, which is the big tourist center. Classes are in a building located just off the square, and that's really nice too. I seem to be learning my way around, but not knowing Czech is getting kind of interesting. Today we started intensive classes, but there's only going to be so much I'm able to pick up. At least now I can say please and thank you.
I felt particularly lost when Emily, Rachel, and I went food shopping yesterday at Tesco, a British import which seems to be analogous to Wal-Mart. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see American toothpaste and shampoo brands in my entire life, even if most of the labels on them were in Czech. Food shopping was a bit challenging, mostly because we didn't know enough Czech to tell what certain things were. Groceries are cheap here though, which is always nice.
On the same food note, I was super excited today to find Schar, this really good (and very European and not really available in the States) GF brand at this pharmacy near our dorm. It made me feel a little better about surviving in a country where everything seems to involve bread.
Today I finally got a hair dryer, which was a bit of an adventure in itself. I didn't want to get one at Tesco, where they were about 1000 crowns (roughly $50 American) so I went to this Radio Shack/Best Buy-ish electronics store next door. Nobody there spoke English very well, so it was a lot of pointing and sign language. Easy enough, until I paid and went to the back of the store with my receipt to actually pick up my hair dryer, where I proceeded to wait on a line for at least 15 minutes, while everyone else patiently waited for me (which I felt kind of bad about) with no one around to help the rapidly forming line of people waiting to get whatever they'd just purchased. It felt a little bit communistic, in a way.
I also got a phone, which I'm super excited about, because I feel a little more connected to the world. It was also cheaper than the U.S., which is a good thing, since I'm only using it for four months. It's with a company called Vodafone, which doesn't service the U.S., and all of the students on the program had cleaned the store closest to the Center out of the cheaper phones, so we went to Wenceslas Square (the center of the tourist area) to find another Vodafone outlet, and just took the metro home from there, after a detour to Citibank, because the other bank refused to cash my traveler's checks.
Tomorrow we have more intensive Czech, and I need to buy a metro pass, since I didn't get around to doing that today. Emily and I tried, but it didn't exactly work out, since the crazy lady running the booth tried to send us to a station that was on a different train line, and we didn't feel like heading all the way there when we'd been running around all day, and I don't think either of us were in any mood to find our way there after such a long day.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
not as delirious, but still jet lagged
It's 8:31 on the morning of my second full day in Prague, and as far as my body's concerned, it's 2:31 a.m. and I should still be sleeping. I can't quite adjust to this whole time change thing. I couldn't sleep for most of the plane ride to Paris, and I napped for a few hours yesterday afternoon, even though everyone said you shouldn't, if you're trying to adjust to a new time zone. This led to me sleeping for about two hours last night, and then waking up for another almost-three before I could fall back asleep (for not as long as I'd like) because I'm still on New York time, even if I'm an ocean away. A full day of orientation activities should be fun when I'm running on this much sleep.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
I'm here!
So after a very blurry day of travelling, I'm finally here. Still very jet lagged and kind of disoriented, but I'm here. It hasn't really registered with me that I'm in Europe yet, even though all of the signs are in Czech and everyone outside of the dorm isn't speaking English. I guess it takes a while - maybe once all the jet lag wears off.
I got to JFK around 2ish yesterday afternoon, met up with Emily, went through security, and spent the next two hours waiting at the gate so we could board. Normally, I'd be calling everyone in my phone book, but I left my American cell phone back in New York, so I wouldn't call me on that until I get home in May. I won't be getting back to you anytime soon if you do. Verizon doesn't get service in the Czech Republic, so I'll be getting a cell phone here.
Since that wasn't an option, we mostly just hung out, got the requisite slightly trashy magazines, and I discovered just how bad I really am at sudoku. Really - the puzzles were easy and I kept having to start over. Maybe by the end of this trip I'll actually figure out what I'm doing.
The flight from JFK to Paris wasn't bad, it was just really long. The six or so hours dragged on for quite a while, especially since I couldn't sleep. My body was still on New York time, which meant that it was really confused when I was trying to fall asleep around 8:30, because I was trying to get on a European schedule, which meant that it was 1 a.m. or so. I spent most of the flight reading, watching bits and pieces of Little Miss Sunshine, and playing the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game that came on the TV. I kept losing, because it was the UK version of the game and I only know so much British trivia, but eventually I won the million.
Transferring through Charles de Gaulle airport was kind of tricky. It wasn't that everything was that hard to find, it was just that we had to take two separate trams to get where we needed to go - on the exact opposite side of the airport from where we had landed. No one had any real idea of where we were going, so you had a bunch of really tired NYU kids wandering around the airport at 5 a.m. It was fun. We had to go through security again to get on our flight to Prague, but once we got on the plane, I slept for most of the flight, seeing as I still thought it was around midnight.
Customs went fairly quickly - all they did was check our visas. I now officially have a stamp in my passport, which is very exciting to me, even though it seems a lot of people in the program have been to Europe before. It took us a while to get out of the airport though, because some people lost their luggage, and they had to figure out where it was and when it could be delivered to the dorm before we could get out of there. The bus ride to the dorm is kind of blurry, mostly because the jet lag was starting to kick in.
We got to the dorm and found our room, which is all the way at the top. When they told us it would be on the fourth floor, I thought they meant it would be up four flights of stairs, but each floor has two separate landings, so if the elevator is always this slow, it looks like I'll be getting quite the workout this semester. We apparently have the smallest double in the building, but we get charged less for it, so it's okay, and the stairs up to the study lounge (which has the only accessible balcony I've ever seen in an NYU building) are right outside our door, which will be nice and convenient when I need to print something.
The dorm as a whole is nice - really clean, pretty spacious - and from what I've seen of the neighborhood, it's nice too. I napped for a few hours, even though I know that's not what you're supposed to do when you have jet lag, and then we went on a walking tour, which basically showed us where the subway is, as well as a pharmacy, grocery store, and some of the local bars. After that, Emily and I went back and checked out the grocery stores with a few guys from our dorm. I bought some gum, for under a dollar. Czech crowns still feel like monopoly money to me.
Spent the next part of the afternoon getting to know some people on the program - everyone seems nice so far, and there were a few people I knew from beforehand, which is always good. I'm still a little disoriented and confused, mostly because I didn't really sleep last night, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm still on the same day as yesterday. Everything is just running into one.
Orientation is jam packed with tours and Czech history, and of course, learning Czech. So far, the only thing I've learned is that none of the letters actually sound like what they look like, or how they're pronounced in English ("ck" makes the "tz" sound, to give you an example.)
This could make things interesting.
I got to JFK around 2ish yesterday afternoon, met up with Emily, went through security, and spent the next two hours waiting at the gate so we could board. Normally, I'd be calling everyone in my phone book, but I left my American cell phone back in New York, so I wouldn't call me on that until I get home in May. I won't be getting back to you anytime soon if you do. Verizon doesn't get service in the Czech Republic, so I'll be getting a cell phone here.
Since that wasn't an option, we mostly just hung out, got the requisite slightly trashy magazines, and I discovered just how bad I really am at sudoku. Really - the puzzles were easy and I kept having to start over. Maybe by the end of this trip I'll actually figure out what I'm doing.
The flight from JFK to Paris wasn't bad, it was just really long. The six or so hours dragged on for quite a while, especially since I couldn't sleep. My body was still on New York time, which meant that it was really confused when I was trying to fall asleep around 8:30, because I was trying to get on a European schedule, which meant that it was 1 a.m. or so. I spent most of the flight reading, watching bits and pieces of Little Miss Sunshine, and playing the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game that came on the TV. I kept losing, because it was the UK version of the game and I only know so much British trivia, but eventually I won the million.
Transferring through Charles de Gaulle airport was kind of tricky. It wasn't that everything was that hard to find, it was just that we had to take two separate trams to get where we needed to go - on the exact opposite side of the airport from where we had landed. No one had any real idea of where we were going, so you had a bunch of really tired NYU kids wandering around the airport at 5 a.m. It was fun. We had to go through security again to get on our flight to Prague, but once we got on the plane, I slept for most of the flight, seeing as I still thought it was around midnight.
Customs went fairly quickly - all they did was check our visas. I now officially have a stamp in my passport, which is very exciting to me, even though it seems a lot of people in the program have been to Europe before. It took us a while to get out of the airport though, because some people lost their luggage, and they had to figure out where it was and when it could be delivered to the dorm before we could get out of there. The bus ride to the dorm is kind of blurry, mostly because the jet lag was starting to kick in.
We got to the dorm and found our room, which is all the way at the top. When they told us it would be on the fourth floor, I thought they meant it would be up four flights of stairs, but each floor has two separate landings, so if the elevator is always this slow, it looks like I'll be getting quite the workout this semester. We apparently have the smallest double in the building, but we get charged less for it, so it's okay, and the stairs up to the study lounge (which has the only accessible balcony I've ever seen in an NYU building) are right outside our door, which will be nice and convenient when I need to print something.
The dorm as a whole is nice - really clean, pretty spacious - and from what I've seen of the neighborhood, it's nice too. I napped for a few hours, even though I know that's not what you're supposed to do when you have jet lag, and then we went on a walking tour, which basically showed us where the subway is, as well as a pharmacy, grocery store, and some of the local bars. After that, Emily and I went back and checked out the grocery stores with a few guys from our dorm. I bought some gum, for under a dollar. Czech crowns still feel like monopoly money to me.
Spent the next part of the afternoon getting to know some people on the program - everyone seems nice so far, and there were a few people I knew from beforehand, which is always good. I'm still a little disoriented and confused, mostly because I didn't really sleep last night, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm still on the same day as yesterday. Everything is just running into one.
Orientation is jam packed with tours and Czech history, and of course, learning Czech. So far, the only thing I've learned is that none of the letters actually sound like what they look like, or how they're pronounced in English ("ck" makes the "tz" sound, to give you an example.)
This could make things interesting.
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