my mother told me she re-read my last blog entry the other night. then she told me she got all upset because she realized that what i was saying but not really saying is that i have grown up. psssahhh whatever THAT means.

then a few minutes later she told me she raised a daughter who was inept at life and helpless. i think something about the dishwasher triggered this.
but regardless.

so on the weekend of june 19th i went to virginia to see some mwash peoples blah blah blah and then coming home i just so happened to get trapped in the hell pit that in dulles international airport for the night. and well, seeing as i was there from about 9pm to 9am i had some time to kill, felt like writing and went and bought the one article of paper writing stuffs i could find, which was a U.S. Capitol magnetic shopping list and started writing away all my FEELINGS. well, see. i guess i should start you off with an introduction to my feelings.

I came home. i was distracted. then about 2 weeks/ish maybe three/four/five in i realized i was in like huge praha shock withdrawl issues. I had no job. I was bored. I spent about… lets say 77% of my day thinking about it. yeah its nice to think about, but it was kinda becoming a life ruiner. I still had this problem when I went to virginia, but going back to school was nice. seeing those friends was nice. I came to realize it was so nice because not only did i get to see those friends, but the minute i got there and hen picked me up i kinda stopped thinking about prague. I understood that once i got back to school in the fall/end of summer i wouldnt be haunted by prague anymore because academs and the wonders of fredericksburg would push themselves to the top once more. this could be good. so then they dropped me off at the airport, every plane was backed up, all flights cancelled, slept in a chair, bought said piece of shopping list and BAM welcomed myself back to a world of prague ceaseless thinking. So… I wrote some shit down that night. and i am going to write it down here. just you know, so i remember. how i felt then, because i might feel differently now.

Page 1. ( i had the common sense to number the pages!)
I always knew I was bad at adjusting. Adjusting from school to home to home and from home to school ect.

I think everyone goes away thinking they will come back a changed person: all cultured and different. I asked Tina how I had changed from the start of the program to the end and she said “You hug now.” True. hugging was never my strong suit. I saw big changes happen in some of my friends. friends that had maybe not had that “special/really prolific change” happen in them yet. friends that had not yet been over seas. friends that needed to grow up more or less. i had that change when I went to Australia and New Zealand with people to people before 10th grade, so i got a bulk of it out of the way.

I know we didnt save any lives in Prague. we came we experienced we drank we saw and we left. I remember listening to Ann and Jon Young talking ahead of me in Henrsko and how we didnt do anything really teriffic in Praha. Like, we didnt help the homeless, cure AIDS, raise money, whatever whatever. this has been something i have thought about often.

Page 3. Yeah page 2 happened, i just didnt write it in.
There are so many different stories I wish I could tell but cant. You just had to be there.

We wanted the feeling to come but it never did.

Did we really matter? AIFS staff sees so many students coming and going to prague. So many of us have lived in the kolej, in 101 b, in praha 6. So many others before me and others after me will find my same secret garden, will go to the same bars, have the same wonderful stories of the night trams and random adventures. Do we even matter? does our experience at all matter? I am not sure. should it be this important to us if so many people go through what we did? what did we go through anyways?

Page 4.
I do not handle emotions very well. I wish I had dealt with leaving Prague slightly differently. When I am in a situation that is good and I feel it ending I get narcoplepsy. the weekend of March 3rd it struck. I fell asleep at Radost and became the peoples coat rack. Then Sunnys the next night. I had to start taking preventive measures before we went out, like chugging instant coffee.

Page 5.
I was getting sad before anyone else was and I hadnt ever experienced half of my trip. because i got sad before anyone else, i had kinda sorta learned to deal with it just around the time when everyone else was starting to get emotional. and by learn to deal i mean acquire my very own “emotional block”. and by “emotional block” i mean i didnt have any feelings about coming or going or anything. i felt nothing about anything. Later, once I got home, i think i actually dealt with it. delayed reaction much? I mean…. I would think about the last day in prague with people a lot, like me, tina, tara, jen, mep and jeremy just walking around and I remembered how I felt NOTHING during that day. then when i got home, and prolly around early junish ness i would think of that day, with all those people and stuff and this horrible heavy feeling came in my chest. and i realized I was sad about things ending, but this was in june, and things ended in may. i walk the slow path.

page 6.
Maura referred to my whole trip/group/experience as a ‘camp mentality’. people just went nuts. because we could. because we wanted to and because everyone felt the same way about everything.

Being bored there proved I lived there.

Ne emotio.

Some of the last nights we would be talking to bri and kristina and they would be talking about going to england and china the other parts of the world for the summer and we would just sit there and someone, i think cooper or tina or someone would just be like “dont make friends. just dont. dont do it. its too hard to leave them.” and i think they/whoever made a very valid point. Its just so hard to leave people you love so much and know you might never see again.
THE END.

So now…
now summer is done. school has started….
over the summer towards the end i got busy. i got so busy i couldnt think about prague a lot anymore.

but now i am worried about a different thing. I am fearing that I am forgetting prague. I dont want to forget it. But without the constant thinking of everything, i dunno… i dont want to forget it. I do want it to still be there.

I had a semester sans text books, sans readings and sans work. I never read a book for class and still got wonderful grades. In the dorm we lived in there were no such things as R.A’s, unless you count Jan Weiner, the 86 year old live in professor and his wonderfully good looking 20 year younger wife, Zuzanna. Sunday night was beer pong in the hallway night, because yes, John Albert actually thought to bring solo cups and ping pong balls so we could all stay in practice. One of my first memories of hanging out with my roomate was when we opened a bottle of white wine (with my leatherman i think) one sunday night and we sipped it in the lobby.

I would always come back to my room after an afternoon out or at class and would walk down my hallway and smell the wonderful aroma of nag champ, bris insense scent of choice and i would walk in and go “OH BRI! i can smell the nag champ all the way in the lobby! i just love it!” to which she would reply “oh, can you smell the weed??? no? well good.” yeah.

so to be perfectly honest, though i saw some of my friends change, i myself do not think i did much blossoming abroad. i think most of my changes have happened since being home and having to, well, deal with being home, to realize that i now have a group of friends that i will have to work hard to maintain the rest of my life seeing as they are not at a comfortable reach like school friends or home friends.

I wish I could tell you stories about how i changed the world,or something like that. But i cant.
I have been having this argument wiht myself for some time now, whether or not what i did while abroad was worth it. I didnt go anywhere super super different, i mean i didnt go to Turkmenistan or anything, but then again I didnt go to London eigher (no offense london) and was a a semester worth of copiouos drinking and lackof school work actually worth it? i think i feel guilty because i didnt get an internship or a job while abroad. i didnt live in a homestay. i didnt FULLY emerse myself into the czech culture. but let me argue myself here for a bit. At the same time i know i learned about their culture. you dont need a job to experience people in the street, on the metro, the tram, in the kolej lobby. i walked around enough on my own to learn things. I think. i know i learned.

i learned more than this, i know it. i do. but its hard to think.

i know i was greatly affected, but im not sure how yet.

something i wonder about rather often is this fear i have about losing my prague friends. prague is our backbone, but it was short lived. we dont see one another often enough to keep it strong. eventually it will fade and deteriorate. friendships like this often take that route. college and where you grow up/who you do it with are long expanses of time. one semester abroad, is, but at the same time, its only one semester. its an intensified period of time, but still. so when is the point going to come when i stop seeing the friends i see and love seeing now, who were some of my closest while abroad or when will our friendships “blossom’ into something where it goes beyond prague. for some people i already am kind of forgetting that we met in prague, which to me is a relief, it validates things and i know this friendship will last, but for others… not so much, and this worries me.

I have been discussing how now that our senior year is here we felt like the Prague chapter will now officially come to a close. I thought that would work. And then i got to UMW and i realized the chapter was still open. I am bad at adjusting and I know this, I know that I will stop wishing that I could look out my classroom window and see Prague castle, and I wish, well I wish a lot of things were different,(i know my life doesnt suck. so not too different) but yeah. I just think about it a lot, and maybe that is because im bad at adjusting and will get over it.

and then I talked to Leslie. And i know i talked to her around the 1 year anniversary of her going to Spain, and I know that that is going to be hard. ive actually thought that far in advance to realize that. but she told me, very frankly infact, that it is hard being back here, and with time it gets easier, but the chapter never really closes, and it just sits there and hangs over your head and haunts you. so thats what i have to look forward to.

I will always remember that time that I was at the Loyola Boys Apt and Brads sister was there talking about her study abroad time some like, 4-7 years ago and how she still wasnt over it. its different for different people and it is what you make it. repeat. It is what you make it.

the end.

I enjoy my family, they make me laugh, and its nice seeing them again.

Tina told me I wouldnt be able to use my cell phone and she was right. I keep hitting all the wrong buttons.

I fear I am going to start forgetting Praha. I mean, I know for a fact I hardly ever forget things, but at the same time I feel like theres a blurry shadow over everything praha. Kinda like it didnt really happen and its all a dream. Ok, let me word that better. Anytime I think of it I see myself looking at myself and not like, me there in the moment. or something. is that how memories should work? I dunno, theres nothing I want to forget about that time, even the bad parts (were there any bad parts?!) and… well.

To be perfectly honest I dont think I expected much going into this semester. Like, I learned going into UMW that Somerville friends from early on educated me on the principles of good friends and i mean, my standards are kinda high as a result. it takes a lot to get into my upper crust circle. It took me awhile to get UMW friends that good, and I dunno, maybe I didnt think Praha poops could make the cut. Well, so when I went into the program with that mentality, it def didnt make it better when i first started seeing people in London and decided i would have a grand total of 0 friends based off my wonderful judgementalness. And yeah, then stuff happened. and by stuff i mean i made friends. and i made better friends then i really thought possible.
People from home and people who visited always asked about the people in the program. This is what I always said. AIFS had 120 people. 60% of those were girls. 39% of those girls were duds who wore cute clothes/too much makeup. As for the boys, most of them were wonderful people aside from about 12 exceptions. We loved to hate the duds. I would not change the group we had for anything because sans them it would not of been as interesting.

We lived in such an intense bubble world that everyone knew everything about everyone. I loved it. I pretty much lived off it.

something small i have noticed is that I keep putting the key into the door upside down. I thought I would be slamming into doors because of the pull/push difference, not because of the keys.

I miss the aspect of living in a dorm and always having your friends all the time around you and beside you. For some reason I did not miss this any other time I left a college dorm. maybe cause friends were strewn all over campus but most likely more because i hated marywash for the first 2.5 years… hmmm….

I wonder what home is. How does one define “home”. Do I consider the Kolej in Praha 6 to be my home? Do i consider Praha to be my home? It took me a looooong time to start referring to anything UMW as home. Im pretty sure I was calling the Kolej home pretty quickly. I guess it depends on the situation and who you are. But can something that you only lived in for four months be considered your home after you leave it? I have a ton of fantastic memories from 101b, Praha, and the kolej but is that enough? think of all the people who were there before me and who will be there after me, having the same great time, well, ok, i highly doubt most people can have such a great time, well, if they drink as much and do as little work as we did it could be possible. ok, well whatever.

“Kde domov muj?”
where is my homeland. thank you czech national anthem for haunting every Praha study abroad persons thoughts.

I miss trams. and bottles of wine. and dirty floors. and women in aprons.

Every semester for the past 3 years I have been going to college I have reserved one night to drunken crying about missing home. The first night in Praha I thought that might happen, and I was awfully close, but I mean, I couldnt miss anyone. I just didnt miss anyone. I found myself forcing myself to miss, which wasnt right. I had no emotion about family and friends and was just going about daily life waiting for it to come. It never really came. I never cried about not being at home.
I used to think about rugby a lot and sing the songs in my head. when i did get lonely or something like that I would look at pictures of home/friends a lot and then be decent. as the semester continued I found myself not singing rugby songs, not thinking about rugby and that I took down all the pictures that were on my wall earlier then they had to be, just because… I didnt need or want them up anymore.
One day towards the end (ok it was early april) when me, cooper and tina went to the metranome to have a picnic (fyi the day i sprayed a bottle of red wine on my white coat and then went out sans changing) we talked about how we all felt like we were gonna get wicked homesick at the start, and we waited for it to come, but it never came.

I started missing Praha, the people and environment earlier then I should of. I tried to focus on the now, but it got hard. I kept seeing the end and I kept wanting it to go away.

I remember being at the pool hall on easter sunday night. Right after getting back from Poland. It was a smallish group. I was just sitting there and realized I felt like I knew those people for ages, not only for 3 months. It was a good feeling to have.

So thanks for now helpful little blogsie,you are filled with grammatical errors and far too many periods, but you served your purpose. I mean I might not be done with you for good, but lets be serious, what do I have to write about now?

Na shledanou.

so i am going to write now about my times in praha after the masses left and then my time in Budapest.

* so everyone left praha that saturday except for a handful of us. it rained and got cold pretty much the instant everyone left. i also got sick that same very instant. hmmmm. ponder that one for a minute. so i stayed in the kolej till wednesday. i didnt sleep much the whole time and went downtown a lot and shopped. people left daily. by wednesday it was just me, james, kiko and christy, but i mean it mine as well of been just me and james ( i mean, i dont talk to kiko and christy!) james dragged me from my passed out at computer state to Sunnys for a last Gambrinus on tuesday night (SIGH) and then i went to bed and left the next morning for budapest. Goodbye Cesky. We didnt do it proper, I was distracted by three 9340934 pound bags and no escalators.

* from wednesday morning till friday night EST i had FAR too much time to think. I got to Budapest and ran into Jen buying a metro ticket. AIFS is a small world bubble force, we are everywhere, even outside of Praha. i dropped crap at my hostel and left. i walked around having no idea where I was going/what I was going to do. I found the Danube and parliment and… pretty buildings?? yeah, I was walking behind Parliment at around 4ish when all the sudden this blue clad thing came bounding at me yelling my name. i was like ‘what the crap is this!?’ then i remembered jordan and his giff Annie were there till the next day. So me and Jordan had a wonderful reunion and spent the rest of the day seeing crap, inlcuding Jen again, god talk about random. We saw Heroes Sq, umm, St. Stevens, other stuff and made a valent attempt to get to statue park, but only made it halfway. We went to dinner then Jordan in his typical Jordan way made it clear we just HAD to go out drinking one last time, well and it was Annies 21st birthday. So we went to some sketch bars, tried the Hungarian brewski and got closed on twice until we found THE BAR OF THE CENTURY. ie the taxi hangout post. the bar tender was this fat man with a huge fro and tight pants with suspenders (i could of made that last part up) and his dirty comrads in the corner. needless to say we spent WAY too much time here, but i had fun and Annie had a fab/awk/memorable 21st. Sometime in this process of getting drunk and talking about the wonders of praha/AIFS/statefairs of the midwest me and jordan realized that I never got his wallpost telling me to meet him at parliment at 4 and only by the wonderous gods of Budapest did i happen to walk by there at 4:20. this made Jordan estatic, which is quite the site to see. so around 2 i said my goodbyes and swore the whole way home.

the next morning i met betsy. I dragged her to Zara (this isnt important, sorry) and then we went to Statue Park which took awhile, so I felt accomplished instantly. Staute Park is one of the largest collections of Communist Art/Sculptures. Its in this field outside of town and it is so cool. the bitch at the counter made me pay full price even though i showed her my studentska praha tram pass. gah. the statues were huge and had a lot of hands in them. I dont want to analyze them. betsy took me to Buda Catle and all the sites. We tried on Hungarian embroidered peasant tops and went to an indoor market. we even went to a marzipan museum. it was a good day. We got ice cream after and talked a lot. it was nice. She had to get home by a certain time so after I went to a park and thought for awhile and looked at the sky. when I left the next morning my block left for a minute. then it came back.

*on one of the three plane rides i took that day my block left again. It was my cheap 1/4 bottle of wine drunk quickly at a high altitude that influenced it. that and the lame ass cheesy scene i was watching on the bad drew barrymore movie, well no that actually had nothing to do with it. Im pretty sure the Indian man who kept asking me why I had never been to Niagra Falls was worried. And then *poof* I got home and was welcomed with open arms, open forties and a free zombie movie. Hello Somerville.

this was from my first breakfast on the morning i went to breakfast three times. AIFS is over and done with now. 98% of everyone and everything is gone. It was a weird night when everyone left. No one slept. Me and tara played with the holes in our pants a lot. we got them from our super fat upper inner thighs rubbing together so often. we played Jewels ‘Adrian’ a lot and discussed whether or not Adrian was a little person, someone with autism or someone who was in a canoeing accident. People left in shifts. i had an emotional block on.

I should of gone to the airport. Once they left all the emotions came and it was bad. i mean, i knew they would/i needed them to and it would of happened at the airport with people i have strong feelings of goodness for instead of alone. i got used to the idea of people seeing me look like a mess since then. I got 40 minutes of sleep at my computer (of course) and woke up to a text on tinas phone from cooper saying “we are leaving czesky now. ne diky alexis.” which of course was not a good thing to wake up to. i just still cant believe that Jessica Burns made that group of people leave praha together, talk about stabbing me in the heart.

As for the other issue at hand…. I know I cant be here/europe anymore/too much longer. its not even that i want to go home, cause i dont, but the dynamic is off and never will be the same again. those here still managed to talk about others and have a hall/floor/something reminiscent of 112 collaborative floor feeding frenzies which is nice.
i feel awful but seeing AIFS people is a driving force in me going home.

I keep thinking I am hearing people who arnt hear anymore talking.

Its really hard being in the Kolej right now. the emotional block keeps coming and going. just when i keep thinking im over people leaving me (which im pretty sure im not anyways) i realize that in a few days im gonna have to deal with me leaving Praha. I hadnt even thought about that until today.

and to think, in january i didnt want to come here.

last night there was a Kolej party. Someone non AIFS invited the world to their BALCONY(!??!why dont i have one of those). It was huge. the weather was pleasant and it was fun. One of the AIFS gems decided to wear her special orange with white polka dot booty pant ensemble. I love them for adding that element of shock and surprise. Zusanna eventually came and ruined the fun. She does that often.

Yesterday we climbed the Baby Tower. Praha looked so small from up there. The steeples were all tiny, the Castle looked podunk and Petrin tower looked like a toothpick.

We went to Berlin last weekend. Berlin was filled with history. I learned a lot. We had a lot of fun. We did the pubcrawl garbage. We did it all. We even got some Dunkins. There is a lot I could talk about, but dont have the energy to do now.

i think I might feel like I have a lot of work to do and not that much time left. Today we are going souvenir shopping. I still only have the krowns mommy and daddy left with them. Yeah, so i cant shop.

Now it is beautiful outside and i am inside. this needs to change.

This morning I asked Jeremy what he wanted for his birthday and he told me he wants to go home.

There’s a bit of truth in every gossip.

fast forward to tuesday.
so we go out that night and we are playing a game of straight out intense foosball (apparently so much so that cooper had to tend goalie using only his rear end to move the little foosyman) annnndddddd i had put my bag down more or less right near me and then poof. bag = gone.
So long story short. the white bag is dead. i would like to take a minute to reflect on the memories which are now lost somewhere in Praha.

The White Borderline Eurotrashy Overembellished Fake leather bag: I got this in grenoble france. at a store called Made in Italy. The label inside said Made in China. i loved it. it was an impulse buy. the best of its kind actually. i miss it.
The Wallet: oh pretty wallet. i can get over you, but your contents meant so much to me. My ugly ugly drivers lisence is gone forever, as is the retard UMW one which didnt work anyways and got me free lunches. My cute ISIC card is lost (sorry hen, no new additions to the collection). and my sultry Chuck U ID/Tram pass. lets see what else. the credit card thing and lost money thing just sucked,but its replaceable to some extent. meanwhile, the picture of Noras dad from the Globe is not replaceable. damnit.
Digi: You POS. You took the worlds blurriest pictures. you had some gems on you tho. now i have my moms sweet camera tho, so i mean. you win some you loose some.
Kledy 4.5: my nokia vodafone is by no means a Kledy. but i had some gem crap in there. like some really great texts ( THERE WAS A DISASTER. ECT) and i had some even better typo name things in there (aerion, pan, whoever else) those names have actually seemed to stick.
The Pencil Box: F’ing A. of all the things i will miss the most…. my pencil box has more or less become a part of me. it helped me fit in with the asians in Grenoble, it got whipped out at bars and parties across europe and va. it was always reliable to not just me, but the people around me. and i had recently added wicked nice pens i bought at the athens airport. it even had a compartment for an eraser.

tomorrow we go to Berlin. walking tours and pub crawls are calling the 8 of our names.
AND GOOD LUCK RUGBY GIRLIES AT NATIONALS.

A hundred times nothing killed the donkey.

the end is near and i think about it often. i try not to but it cant be helped. we talk about it a lot too. we tend to focus more on the feelings we have about feeling and not about the feelings we are feeling. which is good. avoid emotio at all cost.

then this whole virginia tech thing happened. i was just talking about how the only news that quickly reached us/reached us at all was the death of anna nicole smith and brit brit shaving her head. hmmm. there are two kids here from va tech and then there is me who goes to school in va where everyone knows someone at tech. and i don’t want to say anything more.

1.Poland(!)
a. I had been looking forward to Poland for like, eternity it seemed. Mainly because I mean, Poland, who ever thought I would be going to POLAND? def not me! also, Poland is home to perogies and vodka and other scrumptious things like intense catholicism and… stuff. so yeah, that and it was our last weekend AIFS party trip (something that me and tina have come to cherish, i mean who doesnt love drama and 50 something kids all packed in a bus. good stories tend to be a result). So we were excited and we get on the bus on friday morning and dont get off till friday night (krakow is kinda far from praha, yeah?) so that was friday. well, ok, story not really over yet. We got bottles of wine at this huge megamart/heaven for the nights activities and i even got a wine opener! yes! no more red wine on white coat!! so we get to the hotel, crack open the bottles and start the night. eventually we arrived at Prozak which was this crazy awesome club which was like the perfect medium of the tunnels and random niches/secret rooms of U Psudo and the crazyness of Cross Club. Yes, it was amazing! So because we were in Krakow we drank some vodka because it was cheaper than beer and it was good. the moral of the story is that the night was outrageous and awesome and AIFS had a lot of fallen soldiers by 3am.
b. Z took us on an intense walking tour series all sat. the easter markets were up and i loved them. they had so many beads and wooden toys and boxes.
c. Krakow old town area is gorge.
d. as we left old town area on sat we walked past these native american men dressed up playing music. its interesting to see native americans in… europe?? ha they attracted quite the crowd.
e. We had heard rumors of an INDOOR water park that we could go to. so we thought, ‘hey, lets do it!’ then we saw the group of people we were going with and i got really nervous. (some people just make me nervous!) so nervous infact that i picked another scab off on the way there and then locked my crap in the wrong locker,resulting in me having to get the security guard later on. but yeah, so we walk through these doors into this wonderful wonderful land of water and fun! once my foot touched the water the nerves went away and i went crazy. i still cant get over this place! it was just so cool. lets see, they had these racing wicked fast going water slides,a rock wall where you just fell into the water at the end,lilly pad things you had to jump around, and these huge slides that looped all around the building outside and then shot you back inside. there was also a lot of hot tubs with fat people in them and a crazy lazy river which sucked you away instantly with a wicked strong current! i still get all giggly just thinking about it. sigh.
f. Hmm Easter Sunday. this should be a douzy. so on sunday we were listed as visiting Auchwitz 1 and 2 (birkenau) and being myself and this visit being one of the main reasons i was looking forward to going here in the first place, i was really paranoid something would get in my way of going. so about a month or so ago i think “OMG WHAT IF ITS CLOSED BECAUSE ITS EASTER!!” so i ask some friends and they go, nee nee it shouldn be, and i ponder asking Z if that could happen (i mean, poland is really catholic, but this is a jewish thing, so mekfjkjks) but of course i didnt. and then word gets out “Auchwitz 1 is closed”. and i was like, wtf, are you serious. Auchwitz 2 was still open because its not so much a museum as just a camp u walk around with signs in it. but apparently Auch 1 is half musuem like in a concentration camp. so we go to Auch 1 and walk around for almost 2 hours and it was interesting, i mean i loved it (if one can love such things) and saw most of it (it was HUGE) but the Nazi’s had most of it destroyed in the last bit of the war so soe of the barracks were up but pretty much we were walking around ruins. the train tracks were still there however which was intense. but the whole time i couldnt stop comparing it to Mauthausen and how hard it was walking around there and how easy Auchwitz was in comparision, which was just not what i was expecting. Mauthausen was really well preserved and you could walk into the gas chamber and the area were they kept the dead and just intense intense stuff like that and Auchwitz 2 not so much. So i left feeling rather odd because it didnt hit me so hard, and Jana kept telling us that just this stupid little museum (auchwitz 1) was closed so we went on in the bus and onto Praha. later we got back and talked to people who went to Poland before us and they said that Auchwitz 1 was so good and interesting and they spent 2 hours there and barely even went into Auchwitz 2. they said that it was not just a museum that was there but like, a museum in a concentration camp. tara said that it was really really intense and hard and that all the stuff from the camps were located there, like hair and shoes and suitcases. it was also more intact then the other, which means there was more to actually see and take in. prolly like Mauthausen.
… so pretty much im pissed. this is what i really wanted to see. i dunno, i dont wanna sound like i love morbid crap, but if you know me you know im interested in anything genocide/holocaust ish and blah blah blah and if one is into that crap Auchwitz 1 would be the place of all places to go. i just know that its gonna take me AGES to get back to Auchwitz and the fact that i called it being closed and that jana made it seem like were werent missing anything makes me even more mad. the end.

2. Easter (Neděle velikonoční)
a. Easter is HUGE HERE. the markets are wonderful here and filled with eggs and candy and wonderfullness. they last till the 15th. I love it.
I had read in my little Praha book about the easter monday tradition of boys whipping the girls and have been pumped about this for AGES as well. and i could tell you more about it, but im lazy so im gonna copy and paste it!

” Easter Monday (Pondělí velikonoční) is a day off, the day of the pomlázka.

The origin of the pomlázka tradition (pomlázka meaning both the whip and the tradition itself) dates back to pagan times. Its original purpose and symbolic meaning is to chase away illness and bad spirits and to bring health and youth for the rest of the year to everyone who is whipped with the young pussywillow twigs. Boys would whip girls lightly on the legs and possibly douse them with water, which had a similar symbolic meaning. An Easter carol, usually asking for an egg or two, would be recited by the boy while whipping. The girl would then reward the boy with a painted egg or candy and tie a ribbon around his pomlázka. As the boys progressed through the village, their bags filled up with eggs and their pomlázkas were adorned with more and more colorful ribbons.

This tradition is still largely upheld, especially in villages and small towns, although it may have lost its symbolism and romance and is now performed mainly for fun. Some boys and men seem to have forgotten that the whipping is supposed to be only symbolic and girls don’t always like that. The reward has also changed – money and shots of plum brandy (slivovice) are often given instead of or in addition to painted eggs and candy. So by early afternoon, groups of happy men can be seen staggering along the roads… All that aside, Easter remains one of the most joyful holidays on the Czech calendar.”

so… interesting eh!? whips were on sale everywhere yet i forgot to buy one (?? typical.)
i did almost get whipped tho sunday night at the pool hall tho. it was 8 minutes till easter monday and there was a man with a ferocious whip behind me as i bent over to shoot my pool ball thing and according to witnesses it was a close whippage encounter. whew. to be perfectly honest the whips were FREAKY looking. like really really big!!

3. weekend plans.
a. mom and pop come tomorrow.
b. pfeffer is coming tonight.
c. the women of 101B are making Christy Smiths secret Sangria recipe. be prepared potluck goers. beware.
d. just sprayed olive oil on lappy. WAY TO GO!!
e. the wineopen was stolen btw. the night after i got it. heinous pigs!!

well, first and foremost… tina, alexis and ann arrive in athens with the rest of the crew who went straight to santorini, but we used our cultural instincts and chose to explore Athens before heading to the islands. we got into Athens at like…. ummm say 3something AM. WONDERFUL. we took a long ass taxi ride with this trashy crazy cabby who drove in the middle of two lanes and didnt know where to take us. well, we eventually got the the NEOS somethingiforget around 5 AM and hackled the man for a room we reserved and passed the crap out. we promptly awoke earlyish and changed back into the clothes we wore the day before and started off!! YAYAYAYAY. Athens, well Greece as a whole, has always been somewhere ive wanted to go (the top three are prolly Iceland, Armenia and well, Greece might of been two. meh) so being there was rather surreal and i kept thinking we were in italy. infact, i still cant believe i got to Greece. aww sigh. ok, so we walked for awhile, found the Agora and the Acropolis and walked for miles to them. NOW FUN BEGINS.
STEP ONE: the Agora. the agora was friggen fabulous. i loved it. the weather was gorge. it was filled with stuff just everywhere! like, column bits and statues and big bells. according to WIkipedia it was the heart of Athens and is where all the busy dailey crap took place. there was just so much to see here we walked around in it for a wonderful amount of time just looking. we also scaled this cliff thing with wonderful views.
STEP TWO: ACRAPOLIS. oh you wonderful wonderful place! well, it was packed. with italians none the less. i mean of course all of italy which had been SWARMING praha for the past month decided to come haunt us here as well. I hate them. SO MUCH. yeah, so they were in my way constantly, but whatev. yeah, so we got in free (EU students get in free everywhere. i had never been more thrilled before in my life) and saw all the theatres of Dionysis and some old columns leading to the Pantheon and then we climbed the stairs and low and behold, there she stood… THE PARTHENON. covered in wonderful scaffolding. ha. to be perfectly honest i thought she was going to be bigger, but she was still powerful and strong and filled with so many memories of Dreiss’s 114 class and real memories from ancient Athenians praying to to Athena…. or something??
and then i found the Erecthion. Oh, i think i liked this more then the Parth. Those caryatids were just so breathtaking! I cant even go on because I feel lame and kinda incoherant.
STEP THREE: The Plaka. The Plaka is this area filled with shops, stray puppies, tourists, dining establisments and you know, that crap.The Plaka was where we were when the MONSOON came and we chilled in this awesome sandel shop until we moved on. about that, so it was beautiful and then all the sudden this cloud came. and then the rain came. heavy. then the hail came. yeah.
STEP FOUR: Zeus! Tina has this odd thing for Zeus so we wanted to find his temple and stuff and i mean, ruins are awesome! so we made our way to his place, which also had Hadrians gate and some roman baths and tons of stray pups. so we saw the gate and the baths and the wicked awesome Zeus temple. i really loved this one. it was fantastic. it was large and intimidating and some of the columns were broken which made it even cooler. and we had a stray dog with us named Zeus who led us around and protected us from the lightning.
STEP FIVE: the National Archaeological Museum. Wonderful place. odd, but wonderful, let me discuss. it was not what i expected. I think i wanted more, maybe? there was no signage here, and the front just didnt scream nice nice world reknowned museum. the layout was also a negative for me, you had to like, go crazy to find the WC and the stairs up, not to mention THE GIFTSHOP WAS CLOSED. GAG. the stats out front also seemed to be in rather poor shape, one was lying on the ground like it tipped over and there was another one covered in a blanket by the door. but moving on… inside i saw hundreds of things i knew briefly of/wish i knew more about. i was transfixed because, well, it was amazing, but also because thinking about just how IMPORTANT all of the pieces in that museum are/were to history and culture and every other genre of art since then. it was just mindblowing, yet i was disapointed in myself because i didnt really know any of the stats or the history behind them because i havnt taken greek art yet. also, i was expecting more pieces that I KNEW but i realized that most of the originals have been destroyed and are now in italy as roman copies of greek pieces. i did see one of the bronze men tho, the gilded death masks, the crazy horse jockey boy, annnndddd a lot of roman busts actually as well.
STEP FIVE: im not sure we went anywhere else of importance. we got a crepe filled disaster and just explored. Athens was amazing though. i loved it. i still cant believe i saw what I saw.

annnnnnnddd ONTO SANTORiNI.

we arrived in the most podunk airport EVER. it was like a 2×4. so we arrive, wearing the same thing we arrived in athens wearing 1.5/2 days prior. met up with the motly Layola crew who were prolly appauled at our lack of clean clothes/showers. and then Santorini took us all by its wonderful grasp and led us to a week of wonderfulness. There were huge mountains, ok, one huge rock hill right by our hotel and it was just gorgeous.

it wasnt what i expected though. I had this image in my head of really nice nice white houses with blue doors and roofs EVERYWHERE. In reality(aside from Fira) there are a few white houses with blue roofs and doors and most of the rest of the island is shrub covered emptiness with some dingy looking buildings and a multitude of hand painted signs. i liked it. greece was authentic. in two weeks it will be packed. we had the island to ourselves.

While in Santorini we had the Day of Experiances. it was by far the best day out of the whole trip. I mean i love lounging on a beach and drinking all day and into the night, and this is what we did 98% of the time, but this one day we got proactive and it was amazing. So… on this day of Experiances our first adventure was going on a boat cruise thing of the volcano and then the hot springs. we left from the Fira port, which incase you didnt know is the scene where you eigher go down 03940394039403940329403294039204329403 steps or take a donkey down this steep cliff. EXPERIANCE NUMBER ONE! going down the steps while avoiding bell chiming donkeys and crazed old donkey owners was rather intense. so then we pop onto the boat, go to the volcano, pay a hidden fee to climb it and see wonderful views and tons of lava rock and it was cool. Then the boat took us to the “hot springs” of the aegean volcanic island area. yeah. about those hot springs. here is what happens. the boat people anchor ship outside this little cove and go “OK whoever wants hot springs must swim there!” and i was like, umm what, i mean ok! so we jump off the boat into absolute frigidness then swim like the dickins to the hot springs to get warm. and then everyones hearts were broken. the springs were like swimming in a pee spot in the ocean except the water was red from the red mystery mush at the bottom and there were constant cold shots and many hidden rocks. soooo we left and got back onto the boat. once we reached land a whole new slew of experiances happened… prepare yourself!
well, we rode donkeys up the cliff! WE RODE DONKEYSSS!!! it was so awesome. i almost got trampled before the man made me like, mount it (everyone else got a nice little easy way up via cemement block) and we were off. the trip really was steep. the donkeys tripped a lot and i thought about how typical it would be if i died from my donkey falling off the cliff with me attached. the greek man leading us was chatting away on his cell phone the whole time which made me laugh a bit. so we dismounted donkeys at the top and then went to this outdoor cafe looking over the aegean and the volcano and we got fried tomatoe balls and fava bean paste and felt all true greecianesq. then we left, went back to Kalmari, (the village where our beach and hotel where) and twiddled our thumbs and had cocktail hour until our 9 pm din reservation at a mystery location. EXPERIANCE NUMBER TWO! dinner was a riot and is officially up there in the super hardtogetonto list of Alexis’ Best Meals Ever List (Kangaroo in Gren, brazilian in chicago.. ect) Due to the previous cocktail hour at the hotel everyone was a bit happy as we went to this place and sat down a table of 9. i had no idea what to expect exept it was some kind of “special” set price meal with like, multiple courses and was very greek. and so it began!! out came well… 1. amazing bread to die for gasp gasp. but this is norm, so lets move on. 2. potatoe salad with calamari. large chunks of potatoe and huge long strips of unfried calamari. wow. 3. sardines on toast. HUGE sardines. very salty and i couldnt help but think about maura in 7th grade. 4. this eggplant veggie thing, this was prolly my least fave but still good. 5. octopus chunks in some amazing red sauce and fave bean paste. OMG THIS WAS SO GOOD. OMG OMG OMG. 6. HUGE squid stuffed with rice and tomatoes and other thingys. this. was. so. to. die. for. 7. best greek salad of my life. the tomatoes were so red and fresh and the feta… oh man the feta. 8. dessert. some ice cream with alch in it which i passed on and some odd cake i also passed on. yeah. just take a minute to imagine 9 drunk americans who have never eaten/experiances anything like that before yelling in excitement and trying and devouring every single thing. it was spectacular.

so greece, you were not as romantic, green and lush as i thought you might be, but then again i saw you in the off season. apparently summer is your time to shine. but regardless you were wonderful and filled with treasures and kind stray dogs and scary stray cats and i think i might miss you.

1. right when i thought i was dead/nearly dead people free for awhile, BAM go to Mustek metro stop and there is this Policie man standing guard over a pool of blood with some bloody rags placed over it… yeah so much for that.
2. almost got hit by the wonderful 22 tram. it was scary.
3. saw the neo nazi youth once more at the tesco night tram stop. no knife this time. stellar.
4. maura and meredith came. we saw some crap. like FUNFAIR (kinda a crackhouse) and CESKY KRUMLOV. annnndd its over.
5. easter markets are being set up in Wenceslas Sq and Old Town Sq. thoughts of easter make me happy. its kinda a big deal here, lots of wooden eggs and candy and plus size eggs dangling from giant trees. Easter monday is gonna be money too, i cant wait to be slapped around by men with paddles (theres a tradition involving men whacking girls with paddles in these parts, but im too lazy to share it right now. at a later date perhaps.)
6. the kolej is 86% student free right now as spring break started for most wednesday night/thursday morning, that is unless ur going to greece and the only flights available leave sunday at 11pm then… yeah. theres like 4 of us here… bumming and waiting till we arrive in Athens at 3:00 am. I cant wait to watch the sunrise with a hunk of feta in hand and maybe a stray cat in the other. (umm i heard stray cats were big there, but theres a chance i made that up)

told ya, life is lame (glorious)