Reflections
Written by Kylie Fuller (Johns Hopkins University)
Central European Studies in Prague, Student Correspondent, Spring 2013
I am now approaching my last weekend and week in Prague. It is amazing how fast this semester has gone. I still remember getting off the plane, and stepping out into the cold strange city. It was snowing, and I could barley see out the window of the bus as we drove away from the airport. Little did I know that the weather would not improve much from then, even though it is now May. It is true that it isn’t snowing still, but there definitely seems to be no sunshine to spare. I still had an incredible experience, and I believe that is a true testament to how great of a city this is. Despite the weather being more than a little depressing, I still had the time of my life. Maybe the greatness would have been too much for any one person to handle if the weather was good! As my culminating blog, I wish to reflect on the good and bad things about studying abroad in the Czech Republic.
Since I want my semester to end on a good note, I think it would be good if my blog did as well, so I will start with the negatives of studying abroad in Prague. I have already mentioned the biggest one, the weather. Winter lasted until mid-April, and I celebrated my first snowy Easter here this year. It was a wild experience to be walking around the Easter markets in a winter coat and gloves. I also felt bad for the hoards of tourists, who definitely were not expecting the weather to be like this when they booked the trip. It is now mid-May, and the weather has changed to cold and rainy. It is incredible to not have to wear my winter jacket any longer, but my raincoat is only a slight improvement. My second biggest complaint is how hard the language is. Czech is a phonetic language, so it was easy to learn the alphabet and how to pronounce everything. That was the only easy part about it. The grammar rules are so difficult, and even if you learn how to speak, understanding Czech is ten times as challenging. There is also a big discrepancy between the Czech we were taught, and the Czech that is actually spoken in Prague. The endings and words are slightly different, which meant I couldn’t understand Czech people, and they definitely could not understand me (Luckily, most everyone here speaks at least some English!). My third complaint is the nightlife. There is none. The bars and clubs are really cool, but they are spread out all over the city instead of in a central district. Also, the young people in Prague don’t go to these places. My Czech buddy says either students don’t go out at all, or they go to bars for a drink and then go home. That means the only people at clubs are tourists or older, wealthier Czech people. There are only 20 people in my program, so I felt starved for interactions with other young people. The level of smoke in a lot of these places was also a radical change form the U.S., where smoking in enclosed public spaces is forbidden. And lastly, it is impossible to find a good bagel here. That will be one of the first things I eat when I return home.
That sums up all of the negatives, so now it is time for all the fantastic things about Prague. Although I could not tell this at first, I soon came to realize how beautiful the city is. You can walk pretty much anywhere you need to go, and the decoration and architecture of the buildings lining all of the streets never ceases to amaze me. Prague also has many squares and parks that people can sit in and enjoy the scenery. Now that everything is finally green, it adds a whole new beauty to the city. The second best thing about Prague is the public transportation. Public transportation in the United States is so pathetic that I actually feel embarrassed when foreigners ask me about it. It is impossible to get around the U.S. without a car, so it was a nice break to be able to easily get from place to place quickly and without much stress. Thirdly, the food and drink in Prague are amazing and cheap! I don’t know how I will be able to cope when I can’t get dinner and a drink for under 4 dollars. There are some ingredients that are very difficult to get here, but the fun of not only going shopping, but also seeing that the bill was less than $20, undermined it! I also appreciated Prague’s central location in Europe was a huge plus. The location of Prague gave me the ability to travel to otherwise.
Although these are obviously not the complete lists, they are the highlights of both. As I said before, the good greatly outweighed the bad, and I would highly recommend studying here to anyone who is looking for an adventurous and wonderful abroad semester!
Czech Class
Written by Kylie Fuller (Johns Hopkins University)
Central European Studies in Prague, Student Correspondent, Spring 2013
Part of the requirement for being in the CET program is that all students in Central European studies and Jewish Studies must take Czech twice a week for the entire semester. This class is to be preceded by a weeklong intensive Czech class. I have taken Spanish for most of my education career, so how hard could this be? It turns out that Czech is very hard. We sat down our first day of intensive Czech to meet our teacher, Jiří. He was tall, friendly, and extremely good at Czech.
Only half of us were in this room, while the other half met their new teacher on the other side of the building. We were handed our new Czech workbooks, and began right away. Although the letters were the same as the English ones, they had funny accent marks on them and made sounds we swore our mouths were physically incapable of making. Stressed, we tried to pronounce words with three or four consonants in a row. It would be an understatement to say it was unsuccessful. As hard as it was, after a week of class 4 hours a day, we could count to 100, say hello, and order food. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was a HUGE accomplishment.
As the semester went on, our class grew closer over the hardship of learning this language. We finally got to the point where we could say a few sentences, so I tested them out on my Czech Buddy, Denisa. She could not understand a word I said, and when she replied it was a similar situation. Frustrated, we decided to stick to English.
Although that attempt was unsuccessful, when my mom came to visit over Easter I got to show off a few of my new skills. I ordered food for them in restaurants, and pretended to speak to a guy at one of the booths at a farmers market. I say pretend because I had no idea what he was saying, but just continued to nod and smile and say “Ano” which means yes. Although it probably didn’t fool him, my mom and my brother stared at me with wide eyes of amazement. My brother asked me what I had said, so I had to make up an elaborate story. Luckily they were only in town for the week, so I was never caught!
When finals came around, everyone started to panic about the Czech final. Although we had now been taking the language for over 4 months, it still felt as like all we could do was say hello and order food. I can barely even count to ten anymore! Students were furiously studying the week before the test, worried that once we began to take it that everything we learned would disappear.
Our class was lucky that we only had a written test, and it went much better than expected! It turns out I remembered more than I thought I did, which was a huge relief. The other Czech class had a written and an oral exam, and they were not happy about having the latter. I’m not sure how my grade would have turned out if my class had had an oral component. I have tried a few more times to communicate with my Czech Buddy, all of which have continued to be unsuccessful.
I am glad I have learned another language as difficult as this one, but it leaves me wondering if I will ever have a need for it again!
Prague in a Nutshell
Classes have been over for about 3 weeks now and everyone is falling in a different routine. I know most of us can say that routine is sleeping in until 2pm…I hope that’s not just me. With all this free time on my hands, I had no idea what to do. I knew I had to do some finishing touches on my movie, still attend elective classes and study. There are just so many hours in the day that I couldn’t spend all of them doing just that. So one day, I woke up and decided to explore.
Now you’re probably thinking, “Well duh Kendra, you’re in Prague, of course you have to explore”. The only difference is I’m trying to do it all in the last month we have here. In the beginning of the program, all the groups had scheduled tours of Prague with a tour guide. Unfortunately, on my day, it was cancelled due to sickness. So I never saw anything, I never visited the Charles Bridge, the Prague Castle or the Lennon Wall. I must say, after our tour was cancelled, I never had much motivation to see these historic landmarks because it was still freezing outside and classes had picked up quickly. All excuses aside, I kept saying to myself that I’d see them later, I’m here for 4 months, and I have time. It’s so funny how time creeps up on us too. I soon realized I only had a matter of weeks left and I needed to get of my butt and really explore the beauty of this place.
I started with the Charles Bridge, which really seems like a completely different world all on it’s own. So many people of different cultures visit this magnificent sight. You see so many different faces and hear a variety of languages from all over. Statues and street vendors selling everything from Caricatures to hand made jewelry surround the bridge. It’s a bit crowded and by a bit, I mean it gets hard to actually move around. Everyone wants a picture at every spot on the bridge and it’s so beautiful that I understand why. When I first visited it, I didn’t take any pictures or even bring my camera. My reasoning was I wanted to take it all in. I wanted to just experience it with the naked eye and not be distracted by all these advances in technology created to help preserve memories. Plus, I wondered how people used to remember beautiful places like this before cameras were invented.
Towards the end of the Charles Bridge, you go down stairs and end up in a small beautiful area with old hotels and restaurants that’s next to a park. Walk along a ways and turn the corner and there you have found the Lennon Wall. It was gorgeous to witness in person. There were so many graffiti pictures of John Lennon himself. Inspirational quotes and symbols covered the walls like “Give peace a chance” and “Dreamer” in big letters. I even saw the Statue of Liberty! John Lennon said “All you need is love” and if you walk a little bit past the wall, you’ll see hundreds of locks. These locks have couples names written or carved in them. They are locked on the bars on the wall and the keys are thrown away as a good omen to a relationship that will last forever. It’s really sweet and I hope to one day do the same.
We were all told when we were younger that when two people love each other, they sometimes create babies…giant babies to be exact. They can be seen with slot-machine faces as the entrance to Museum Kampa. Thank you David Cerny for creating these giant, scary looking babies for us to climb on and be frightened by. You can see other unique statues at the museum itself. The best part about this location is that when you’re done seeing everything, you can go outside and rest by the river and reflect on everything you have seen in this beautiful city of Prague. So that’s Prague in a nutshell…a rather big nutshell too.
Smoke in the Woods
Written by Kylie Fuller (Johns Hopkins University)
Central European Studies in Prague, Student Correspondent, Spring 2013
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Most people can agree that Mondays are brutal. I know the weekends are supposed to be restful, but it still seems to take an excessive amount of effort to pull myself out of bed Monday morning. After I finally get up the rest of the day usually goes smoothly, and I finish for the day around three. However, instead of going back to my apartment today, I hopped on the metro towards the airport. I checked the screen shot on my phone of the Google maps directions and transferred from the metro to the 116 bus. My directions said to get off at the third stop, but when I looked at the list of stops on the screen in the front of the bus, I couldn’t see the stop I needed. Puzzled, I looked back down at my phone. Upon rechecking my directions, I realized that the directions said to take the 161 bus… not the 116. Luckily, the 116 still was going to the stop I needed to get off at, but it was at the very end of its route.
After finally getting off the bus, and gratefully so, I headed down a narrow path into the woods. It was a nice day, but slightly drizzling. The heavy tree cover shielded me a bit. When I had been walking for about twenty minutes, I silently conceded that I was going the wrong way, and that there was nothing at the end of this path. As I walked around the bend, I came around the first house I had seen in a few miles. I checked my phone again, and veered off right around the small house. Once I finally rounded the fence, whom did I see but our program coordinator Kim!
So grateful to see someone I knew, or even anyone at all, I quickened my pace to the field she was standing in. Thankfully, this last part of my trip was entirely down hill. Her back was to me, and she was intently looking ahead at something that I wasn’t able to see from my position. As I got closer to where she was standing, a massive structure entered my field of vision. To my surprise, the large structure was a spaceship.
As I walked past Kim to get a better look around, the rest of the film set came into view. Two young boys in roughly constructed spacesuits were running around a group of my peers in the FAMU program. They were surrounded by camera equipment, and seemed to be in a fervent discussion with some crewmembers. I decided not to interrupt them to say hi just yet. Instead, I walked around the forest a bit to get my nature fix.
When I returned to set, I immediately got yelled at for being in the shot and making too much noise! Silently, I crept around behind the action to observe it from a safer angle. I had never seen the filming of a movie before, so this whole process was really exciting for me. The students were absolutely incredible. It was funny to see them being professional and serious. As much fun as this was though, I knew the main event was yet to come.
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As the sun began to drop, the FAMU students began prepping for their big stunt. After a while of bustling around, one of the co-directors came over to the group of us who had been just standing around. He informed us that they were going to light the spaceship on fire. A little nervous, I looked around at the other people standing with me. I could tell they were thinking the same thing I was: Why are we lighting a gigantic fire in the middle of a forest? One of the people next to me voiced this concern to the co-director, who told us that we were on fire extinguishing duty, so it was our job to make sure that didn’t happen. Now I was really nervous, but decided to put on a brave face to help out my friends. The fire was lit and the camera started rolling. After only a few minutes of shooting, the crew started yelling that it was time to put out the fire. As we came running over with water, the flames grew to about seven feet high. The spaceship was completely ablaze as we ran back and forth as fast as we could with water from a nearby stream. Three people had real fire extinguishers that they were using to try and calm the fire down. After ten minutes of sprinting, the spaceship was only slightly smoking. Soaking wet and exhausted, we retreated to a nearby fire pit to warm up a bit. The students were all hugging and cheering after their success. The shot had worked perfectly! The cleanup was long, but everyone was in high spirits, so it went quickly. We ended the night cuddled up around the campfire roasting hotdogs and laughing about all that had just passed.
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