Sunday afternoon, Eleanor and I went to breakfast at the American
breakfast place, Bohemian Bagel. We go there whenever we crave
American food. I had a bagel sandwich. It was delish! After we went
to studio to do school work. Monday and Tuesday followed suit.
Today [Wednesday], I didn't have class until 3, so I touristed in the
morning. I went to the Church of Our Lady before Tyn. It's the church
with the distinctive steeples on the Old Town Square. This was a
beautiful, but rather odd church. Not that I know anything about
architecture, but felt that this church was built during the Gothic
period, but was renovated during the Baroque. The architecture is
beautiful and simple with lots of stained glass. But the alters don't
seem to match the structure of the church; the alter pieces are
incredibly ornate and detailed....LOTS of gold leaf. It was def worth
going though. After that, I went to a branch of the Narodni Muzeum
[National Museum], dedicated to Czech landscapes. I don't have much
to say about it... I guess that says it all. At least it was free.
For my final venture of the day, I went to the Mucha exhibition in
Old Town Square. Mucha was an artist at the turn of the century. He
created masterpieces with very stylized female figures...Google
him...you'll know who I mean. I loved this gallery. Mucha designed
everything: festival posters, stamps, postcards, Czech crowns [the
money], theatre advertisements...and on and on. I bought some
postcards there. It was well worth the trip!
My classes are going really well. Not to brag [who am I kidding, I'm
tooting my own horn], but I am pretty darn good at Czech. Of course,
being good in an introductory language class means being able to say
"I am Laura-Nelle. How are you? I am fine. I would like hot
chocolate". But I can say those things pretty well. My class is full
of land arc students who haven't taken a language course since their
sophomore year of high school, so the class moves pretty slowly. I
really like it. At this rate, I'll be somewhat okay at conversing by
the end of the semester.
We are studying Czech poetry in Literature. I find it really
interesting that in a country of 10 million people where Czech has
been widely spoken for less than a hundred years, there are such
incredible writers. Macha is the most famous poet; we are reading his
famous "Maj" right now.
I'm trying to include some details of life here in Prague in every
email, so here goes. The snow is starting to wear on me. Sure, it's
beautiful and picturesque, but it's really annoying when I have to
walk to the Institute with snow blowing directly in my face. We got
three inches of snow on Monday morning. We were so excited that
morning, but when we walked home, we realized that the snow had
gotten compacted into and inch of solid ice. Yeah, that was a fun
walk home. The cold doesn't really bother me anymore. We were looking
at the weather for the next week and we got so excited by a 38
degrees high one day...then we realized how sad that is.
Naskladano!
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