Dobry Den!!!

I have so much to write... It feels weird writing in English because even though I speak English with the other students, I have been writing only in Czech for the past three days so now it feels weird to put sentences together. Anyways...I will start with the adventure at Tesco (supermarket). So, there is a large store called Tesco which is a lot like Target or WalMart. It has just about anything you could ever need all divided on 6 floors. The floors are numbered -1 to 4. -1 is the basement where the grocery is, 0. is the first floor which has shampoo, soap, school supplies, 1. and 2. have clothes, 3. is fabric and toys and 4. is electronics. The first time I went to Tesco I couldn't find the grocery, haha! Someone told me where is was so I finally got some grocery shopping done (although eating out every meal isn't really all that expensive here- I got an entire pizza for 100 Kc which is about $4, or a half liter of beer for 20 Kc or $1- it just isnt healthy). At the grocery they sell 10 .5L beers for 100Kc- what a great investment!! I got beer and bread (turned out to be rye), some meat which I think is turkey? and some that I now think is Ham... oi! Anyways, so I also got some brocolli and rice and pasta but I couldnt find pasta sauce anywhere!! I have checked three markets and have not been able to find it. I did find Tomato paste, though, so I suppose I will just make my own - super chunky of course! So I am finally ready to check out and when it is my turn I find out vwery quickly that the cashier has no intention of even trying to speak English to me - it seems that no one in Tesco will. She cards me for the beer, though, which flustered me because the drinking age is much below 21 here so it didnt make any sense plus I couldnt find the page in my passport with the visa (that has all the info written in Czech) so I had to show her the regular picture part (and my picture is very horrible). Next, you bag all of your own groceries - this part wasnt a problem, though. So i decided to pay with my credit card since I had not used it yet and I have to find the Deutche Bank to withdraw money from so Bank of America doesnt charge me $5 for each transaction. On the back of all of my cards I have written "SEE ID." So there won't be as many problems getting my money back if the card is stolen. However, because of this, the woman would not accept my signature on the credit card slip!! I was so confused because she kept saying "Ne, ne, ne" - i tried to show her my signature on my passport and still "ne, ne, ne" and then some words I could not understand. Finally, I understood that she meant I needed to write "SEE ID" on the slip instead of my signature. Very strange, but at least i got my groceries. When I finally said "Dekuji" and walked away I was shaking a little bit. Sometimes it is hard to be brave in a place where you don't speak the language.

I dont think I need to explain other things in such detail or else no one will read it, haha! My roommate is very nice, she is from New Jersey and goes to George Washington University and her name is Abby. She is in my Czech Intensive course and is much better at it than I am. I think my problem is that there is so much to explore that I am still in vacation mode - but I'm starting to snap out of it. The other girl in my suite has been in Prague for three years - she is a medical student from Botswana. I have only spoken to her once, and I don't know her name. Oops!

The beds are very hard. They are like benches with sheets on them. Thus, it usually takes me a while to fall asleep. There are a lot of cool people in the dorm. I've been hanging out with people from all over the country (and world!). There is a boy from Finland named Thomas. He likes bell bottomed pants, black trench coats and David Bowie. He is very, very shy and is embarassed about his English although it is very good. Also, there is a girl named Olivia from Mexico. She is very cool and I hope to hang out with her more. I just met her yesterday and she came out to dinner with two other friends - Mikey and Joey. She is funny. Mikey is from New Orleans and studies Southern Literature. I met him at the airport with his roomate Tyler and we've become friends. Tyler is from Queens and loves Jazz and obsure films. He's also been a big mack recently as everytime I see him he's chatting up a new girl - haha!! There are two girls from my Czech class that I've spent most of the past two days with: Mercy and Gina. Mercy is originally from Ghana. She said she came to Prague because it is the cheapest place in Europe so I don't think she's enjoying it very much. Gina is from New York and speaks fluent Russian which, apparently, isn't as similar to Czech as I had assumed.

What else... it is very chilly already, unfortunately. However, yesterday Mercy, Gina and I found the European equivalent to H&M: Clockshop. They have boots and sweatshirts for very reasonable prices. I think I will go back there this weekend. I cant wait to sleep in!! It takes about 25 minutes to get to school from the dorm and class has started at 8 30 the past 2 days!!

I miss you all very much, and I hope that as I continue to blog I will figure out how to make the stories short and sweet. Also, I will try to get pictures up... I think I need to ask my roommate if it is okay if I load them on her computer and then put them on my zip disk and take them off the computer because I haven't seen any places on the computers at school to plug in the USB drive. We'll see...


if you want to write, the address is:

Virginia Ivey, 209C
Kolej KOMENSKEHO
Parlerova 6, 169 00 Praha 6
CZECH REPUBLIC



ahoj!
xoxoxo!