hello, it's me. (again)

Class

yours truly in front of the history building the Nebraska
Semester Abroad Program calls home.

I thought I'd give all my faithful readers a little glimpse into the 'rough' life of someone studying abroad. While I absolutely love it here, and am so grateful for everything I have seen, it's hard to be away from my usual crazy schedule that I love (and hate) back in The States. A typical weeks schedule on the class side of things is Monday through Thursday we meet from 3:00pm to 6:15pm and then on Fridays we meet from 10:30am to 1:00pm to accommodate traveling on weekends. Each day we normally have a guest lecturer from the Palacky University faculty and either a Czech lesson or another lecture from our beloved professors and go to Czech locals, Jan and Martin. The guest lectures are normally over the previous Communist Regime in the Czech, country relations with the Czech or the US, and sometimes they are just random topics the lecturers enjoy or have their Doctorate in.  Our Czech lessons are... hard. Czech isn't a language useful language for anywhere else in Europe, but it is nice to have for my short 83 days here. It is very cool to finally somewhat understand what signs say and be able to read a menu without my handy dandy google translate app. Speaking the language is the most difficult for me, so  don't expect me to come back and be able to teach you how to say something cool( unless ordering wine, beer, orange juice, and asking for the bathroom is cool.) The lectures Jan and Martin give are my favorite. Jan gave a lecture before we left for spring break on the Habsburg family, which I mentioned in my previous blog, and it was so incredible how much he knows. My favorite lecture that Martin gave was about witches and vampires. Overall, it makes me a little sad that I'm not studying theatre or dance here but it is fun to learn a new culture and language and from professors that are completely opposite from my crazy theatre family in the Fine Arts Building.

Daily Life

Hot chocolate with a scoop of ice cream
and Sami enjoying herself at Cafe 87

I've given you a glimpse into my class schedule so I guess its only fair to tell you what I do for the other 12 hours of my day. I can't lie. I'm lazy. When I am in Olomouc I normally stay up until two or three in the morning catching up with people from back home or (gasp) watching Netflix and sleep until noon. When I do drag my butt out of bed I love walking around this lovely city. Its starting to get nice now so I cannot wait to see and explore the ring of parks that are all around Olomouc. I also like to taste my way through the city. I have been to a couple of restaurants twice because they are so darn good but most of the time we just wander into a random restaurant after class and hope for the best. One of my favorite places is Cafe 87. I love love love breakfast food and they have omelettes and toast YUM! I've frequented the shopping malls maybe a little too much which could be one of the many reasons I will be coming back with a two cents left in my bank account. The tough thing about the city is that the things I would do back home I can't really do here. I'm used to dancing close to 25 hours a week between classes and rehearsals, as well as choreographing for shows and show choirs. It's been a little tough not being able to dance in a studio setting but I make up for it at Belmondo. This is a Wednesday night treat for all of us. Belmondo is a club close to the city center that showcases a new country each Wednesday, sadly the US doesn't get to have a night this year but experiencing and DANCING my way through other cultures is super fun!

I went to Berlin!

Berlin Board

Breaking away from daily life and class, I went to Berlin, Germany this past weekend! We left Friday afternoon on a six hour train ride adventure to get to our final destination of Berlin. I wasn't feeling well that morning so the train ride was a little rough and when we finally got there I only had enough energy to eat, but thank god I did. My first meal in  Germany was so so yummy. Clark and I shared the Berlin Board which had fun little tastes of different German foods and I had the yummiest potato soup with sausage in it. The next morning I still wasn't feeling the best, but toughed it out for a really awesome day. We went on a three and a half walking tour and our guide was amazing. Her name was Susan and she was from Canada and I could already tell she was going to give us a great tour from how excited she was when she welcomed the group. We went to Alexanderplatz, the city centre, the old library, a few museums, part of the Berlin Wall, a Holocaust Memorial,Brandenburg Gate, and so many other places. The most surreal thing we saw that day was the site where Hitler killed himself. Our guide walked us through a beautiful little park area and stood next to a parking lot. She noted the beautiful scenery and then said 'But its not what you see with your eyes at this moment. It is what lies three stories beneath us." Three stories below our feet was the bunker of Adolf Hitler. The man with millions of innocent blood on his hands lived literally right under my feet only a few decades ago. The bunker has never been opened due to the history being so recent and the threat of,neo-Nazis creating a shrine over their 'leader',  it also isn't on any map, and the only think to mark it is a small poster next to the parking lot.  The actual modern city of Berlin is only 25 years old which is absolutely astonishing to me. A place that holds an incredible amount of history has only been able to move forward from in the last 25 years.  Our last day in Berlin we went to the May Day celebrations. I'm not 100% sure what makes May Day so celebrated in Berlin but it was an amazing experience. There were over 45,000 people celebrating May Day in a tiny three to five mile stretch of park. I had never seen anything like it. The incredible part was everyone was very intoxicated and it still was a pleasant place to be. I'm not legal in the states, obviously, so I haven't experienced anything like this before, but I couldn't image 45,000 Americans being that intoxicated and not see a single fight or an other altercation happen. I love just sitting there for a few hours and watching everything around me. Berlin was a really cool trip that I didn't expect much from, but it was well worth it. I'm sorry to my blog followers that this is such a short and not very in depth post, but I promise to do better next week. Until then!

The gang watching a street performer in Berlin