New City, New Friends, but Here Comes Reality

Upon exiting the train we were happily greeted with a sign stating NCSU, Allayna Lopossay. We anxiously followed the man with the sign, our cab driver, to his car, and for the first time someone graciously helped us load our bags. After a short drive and a few tips from our cab driver we arrived at our pension which interestingly enough was a gestapo and breeding place for Aryan babies during World War II. To enhance the history lesson, after the birthing the children the mother's were sent to a nearby concentration camp. Clearly our home for the next three weeks is full of history.

Despite the bad reviews and warnings from past travelers the pension is actually fairly nice. Luckily the four of us are still sharing a room and we received one of the nicest rooms within the pension. After dropping off our bags and meeting a few other NCSU students we went to grab a quick lunch in a pub up the street and were pleased to find that the food is much much cheaper and also much tastier than we had anticipated.

Our next adventure was not one that we were particularly excited about, but we knew that it was necessary so we grabbed all of our dirty clothes and headed for the laundry mat. We have never been so appreciative of our washers and dryers at home, but a few hours and $30 dollars later we had freshly laundered socks and underwear. Thankfully we were able to pass the time catching up on phone calls and emails for no extra cost.

Next stop Tesco (inbetween Super Wal-Mart and Department Store) to get a hairdryer and a few groceries. We anticipated this to be a simple trip with a well thought out list, but it turned into a scavenger hunt or so it seemed. We started looking for our hair dryer on the cosmetic floor, then went to the bathroom floor, later were sent back to the cosmetics, then we were guided to the women's accessories, and finally to the electronics. Upon finding the hair dryer within the electronics section it made sense to us, but never would we have anticipated to find it there upon entering the store 30 minutes earlier. Never have we been more willing to pay $15 or 299 Koruns for a hair dryer.

Now on to the groceries...this was a little more predictable, lots of food with words in a language we don't understand. We knew that Czechs ate a lot of meat, but we were surprised to see that their meat department was easily three times bigger than ours at home. All in all it was successful and the food was fairly cheap, the only exception is that we realized this morning instead of skim milk we had bought butter milk, not what you want to combine with your cereal!

Upon returning a group of students from NCSU, multiple programs not just MAC students, decided to go to a five story European dance club. It was quite the adventure!!

We all slept in this morning, since it is the last day before reality kicks in, to catch up on some much needed zzzzzz's. Once we got up we realized we must get going to have a chance to grab any lunch before our orientation at the NCSU institute. Dana the Institute Director went over the general information, gave us a quick Czech lesson, and a tour of the institute. The institute is very nice and well kept.

Dr. Branson, our professor, then took us on a tour of the nearby area. We saw some typical tourist stops and began to learn our way around the area. We then went to get dinner at a traditional Czech restaurant, much to our surprise there were "edible" things on the menu, not just tongue, pork knee, and bear paws. The "edible" food, chicken, was actually pretty good. After dinner we made our way over to the National Theatre and watched the Othello ballet. Since the majority of us did not know the story of Othello we found the ballet to be somewhat confusing, but after intermission and a brief explanation it became much more interesting.

All in all we are having a great time getting to know everyone in Prague and learning about the city!