Thursday was a Czech holiday so a lot of businesses were closed, schools were closed, the city was dead really. We still had classes, though. We convinced our Czech teacher to have a party this day so we arrived with snacks and she arrived with stories. It was awesome. We ate these wafer waffles, lots of cookies, and Zack even brought good ole American candy corn. Everyone brought drinks, too. It was a little weird drinking beer and wine in a language class, but weird is what living in another country is! We spent the entire class learning about the Czech government, stories about movements in the country, and the differences that Lenka noticed between America and the Czech Republic. It was really fun. I was actually pretty bummed out when it was time to end class.
We went drawing in St. Nicholas Church afterwards. My drawing teacher keeps calling me by my roommate's name, Laura. I correct her, but apparently I mumble and she doesn't realize I'm trying to correct her. Anyways, today was the first day that she called my(Iris') drawing "very nice." BOOYAHHHH SUCKAAAAAS. I may be an artist after this. Watch out.
Yesterday, we went on an eco-friendly adventure. The best part of this whole day was getting out of the city. We went to a reeeally tiny town called "Jindřichovice pod smrkem." Yeah, try saying that bad boy four times fast. Anyways, the town is powered by these two windmills. We went to go see them and even got to go into the bottom part of them. It was on the hillside and my god- combined with the fall colors, this place was beeeeautiful! Afterwards, we went to the other side of town (a 5-minute drive) and went to go see a Superadobe, which is a house created by an Iranian architect. He died two years ago, but his daughter continues his work. I tell you this because I heard this story four times. The superadobe sort of looks like an igloo, but its bags of earth coiled around. We saw one in the making and also met the mayor, Petr Pavek!
The mayor looked like a mountain man to me. He was in charge of the construction on this hill. Actually, it looked more like he was the only one doing construction on the hill. The only thing cool about him though was that he lived in a tee-pee. He was boring. I was distracted, once again, by the sweet view.
We adventured around for awhile and I found the perfect gloves for my construction worker outfit. We walked back down the hill and went to a- well, I don't know how best to describe it. It's kind of a like an Amish cottage. It was called the Skanzen and it was precious. Everything was hand-made without modern technology. I've got some good pictures of some of the machines. Upstairs, they had a collection of old items like sleds or bears or books. It was a really great place- unless you had to go to the bathroom. It was an outhouse indoors essentially, with only a candle lighting the room. I felt so hardcore. We ate lunch here. It was handmade vegetarian goulash and it was delicious. They had dumplings and cabbage and soy meat, etc. There was delicious tea as well. I really enjoyed it.
We finished lunch and then traveled an hour to a superadobe house that was completed. Oddly enough, it was owned by a famous Czech actor named Jaroslav Dusek. He wasn't there, but the people that were there were probably a whole heck of a lot cooler. One guy whips out a didgeridoo and starts playing it inside the superadobe. As I mentioned before, this place is practically an igloo so it echoed and homeboy knew his circular breathing. Mr. Frazier, my high school band teacher, would have been proud to know this man. I wanted to start folk-dancing or stepping or something. There was another man with a mean rattail. We had a good time here. A couple people discovered that our bus driver was selling beer for 20 kc (that's about a dollar) so a few people were drinking at this point.
We left this place and stopped at a castle for a hot second. I have no idea why we stopped there because for one thing, it was closed, and another, our two tour guides had no idea why it was significant. We only stayed for 20 minutes before we made our last stop at a Permaculture farm owned by a Czech-American couple. For being farmers, they were extremely well-educated. Their house was in the middle of Srbsko. Never heard of it? Me neither. It was almost tinier than the first town we went to, but their home was beautiful and remodeled. To put it mildly, this couple was loaded and intelligent. They gave us a presentation about food and stuff (literally, it was called "The Science of Stuff"), which was interesting enough. I enjoyed listening to it, but I enjoyed their daughters more. Oh and the tea! It was organic herbal tea. So freaking good.
Actually, let me just say that the entire day seemed involve small children- they were everywhere! One of the professor's granddaughters was with us all day, the other professor's children rode the bus with us, and the mayor's son was about to his us all with a Finding Nemo dodgeball. Well, we ended the day meeting this couple's daughters, who were the only children that could speak English, therefore they were the cutest cause we knew what they were saying.
There were even more animals. There were cows, horses, goats, chickens, a turkey that is too friendly to be used for Thanksgiving, more horses, a cow mounting a horse (I have a picture, don't worry), bees, and yeah- I think that's it. I had a really great time galloping in the fields with goats.
Oh gosh you'll never believe who I ran into at this place! M. GOAT! We took a picture for the friends and family back home.
By the end of the evening, I was exhausted. However, we left the couple's house and saw so many stars. I haven't seen stars in forever because the city is too darn bright. Bryan and I took a romantic walk behind the house to star-gaze. That was the whole day in a nutshell.
I woke up this morning with the intentions of writing a paper all day so that I would feel better about celebrating Halloween tonight, however I got distracted by Becca inviting me to go visit a cemetery nearby. I went with her to find WiFi, but the places we found didn't open for another hour, therefore, I walked with her. The cemetery was beautiful. I know that sounds a bit odd because usually people don't just go walk around cemetery's, but it really was a beautiful place. We decided that we should talk about our futures in the cemetery. It's scary that mine is a semester and a half away, but talking about it around tombstones make me feel better.
We went back to a restaurant with WiFi afterwards, but unfortunately I needed this letter in the password: Á. I know what you're thinking, "Iris you got it in this blog, why couldn't you get it in the password?" Well, cyber friend, I have no freaking idea. It took my almost 25 minutes to figure out how to get an international keyboard on this computer and even though I now have a cool American flag in the corner of my macbook, I still have no idea why I couldn't spell out the word prasátka (pigs). So I gave up trying and came back to the pension.
SO, I procrastinated in posting this and now I have more updates. Saturday night was the mega-Halloween celebration. We went to Radost FX (Rhianna made a music video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd8jh9QYfEs) and let's just say that I had the exact same experience as Rhianna. It was real fun. We got in fo' free because we were dressed up, too. I was a construction worker. One of the perks of hanging out with design kids is that they can draw me some sweet tattoos. Zack drew a moose on my neck, while James drew a naked lady on my forearm. I didn't take any pictures, unfortunately, but it was professional quality (good thing, too, because it didn't come off for days). The coolest costumes from our group was the blue man group.
The next day and a half was spent working on my Philosophy paper, which I BEASTED. Monday night was movie night this week and it was the best movie we've seen yet. We watched "Lemonade Joe" and it was a spoof of an American Western film. Oh my god. I was dying the entire time because it was so corny and old and perfect. Basically, it was about a guy who was promoting drinking lemonade instead of whiskey. I can't do the movie justice by describing it, but if you ever find yourself in a foreign language film shop and stumble across it, invest in it.
In other news, we went to the Opera Tuesday night. We watched "Rasalka." The only way to summarize it is "Little Mermaid on crack." It was about a mermaid who was trippin' over some prince so she got a witch to turn her human. Homegirl ended up sabotaging the whole relationship herself with good looks and charm (sort of like me all the time), and therefore, Ariel(/Rasalka) was doomed and instead of the happy marriage at the end, everyone dies. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the prince definitely didn't live. It was really fun, despite the whole show being in Czech. They had English subtitles at the top of the stage, though.
I haven't really done anything cool since then. Mostly applying for internships and real-life jobs... bahhhhhh
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