Perhaps one of the things I am most proud of since arriving in the Czech Republic, is the title of my Blog posts, whenever  I czech’n  about being in Prague. Kidding. But it’s a pretty darn good title, you have to admit! It’s hard to believe how much we have already done. It’s not even been a week yet, and already I’m starting to feel more comfortably adjusted to European life.

Granted this is only orientation week, and not even what most of the program will be like, but with half of September gone for our first excursion, half of October gone for our second excursion and all of November gone for finals and our ISPs, it feels like we barely have any time for class left in the semester. It was a bit of a relief and somewhat exciting to learn that Sarah Brock, our Academic Director, intends for our elective course to be the depth and challenge of the program, which means an intense creative writing course will be the biggest challenge academically this semester (except perhaps after classes, working on the month long creative writing piece over November). I say this not because I think it means that I will have an easy academic semester, but because perhaps I’ll be challenged in my creative writing in a way that I am not at Redlands.

I happen to know that Redlands students tend to frequent SIT, and apparently Prague specifically. The last Redlands student to go on the SIT trip to Prague was in the Fall of 2011. I know this because of several factors. According to Sarah, there was another Redlands student a few years ago who also did this program, and his name also happened to be Joe. Ironic isn’t it? I also happen to personally know him. When I visited campus in the Spring of 2012, my mom and I were given a personal tour by an Ad Host named Joe who was a creative writing major. The concluding fact however, was that another Ad Host had told us he just got back from Prague. That’s how I know it was him. Also… given there’s only about 5 Joes that go to Redlands if that, it doesn’t take very long to determine the only other one who’s a creative writing major!

Here are some highlights from Orientation Week: Navigating, Language, meals in Prague, Creative Writing, and Homestay Families. I’ll cover them in that order. Navigating started off with a bang. We all arrived Saturday (or most of us with good flights did anyway) leaving us one day to be totally pampered and guided everywhere. Sunday, we received our first assignment, which was to navigate the metro and/or tram system in groups to a specific destination, with minimal instructions from Sarah. That helped tremendously to plant a seed for confidence of navigating to grow. It also helped cultivate a group dynamic of we’re all in this together: helpless and completely lost. But we found our way, and achieved the goals we were assigned. Now, with a transit map, and map of all the roads in Prague, I feel very comfortable about getting anywhere I need to within the city completely on my own, which is good, because that’ll start on Saturday.

The Language. We started language classes on Tuesday, and have done them every day since (though they’ll only be Tuesdays and Thursdays after this week). The program is structured conversationally and is intended to teach someone the language, but not about the language (as foreign language classes in the US tend to do). On the first day, Tuesday, we were already holding conversations, introducing ourselves, where we’re from and that we were students. It wasn’t easy, and I don’t have everything we did down perfectly, but I was impressed we were able to speak as much as we could in just one day. Also, it’s amazing that when trying to learn your third language, how much your mind reverts not to your first language, but your second. I found myself thinking everything in German and wanting to respond to the professor in German, because I could. I don’t know if there were subtle similarities in the languages that were doing that, or if I was thinking anything but English and so reverted to German instead since I was also comfortable enough with it, but whatever it was, it fascinates me. Talking to others, they had similar experiences with the languages they’ve learned to.

Meals in Prague: what is there to say, but for the most part I love European food. Breakfast has consistently been granola and yogurt, hard boiled eggs, cheese and ham, and sometimes a small pastry/bread. Before arriving, I knew that breakfast was going to consist of at least something of the sort, but every morning, I take the last few bites, and think just how good it actually tastes. (Even though it’s not my waffles and eggs combo that I love so much). Lunches are big, often times being pizza (Italian style, not American) or some sort of hot dish: ratatouille…burrito…spaghetti…French onion soup… etc. Dinners have also been big, and with similar options that we’ve had for lunch, though one night I did have a croissant with ham and cheese; again… being a more European dinner. At our homestays, we’ve been told to expect often times a smaller dinner such as that croissant, or even completely cold cut, not necessarily even meat. Instantly my mind jumped to the six days I spent with a family in Germany eating bread rolls with various spreads for breakfast AND dinner. All I could think was: I’m going to be here for a lot more than six days this time…! But however it ends up, it also means I have more time to adjust to it, get used to it, and even perhaps to expect it (proving problematic with reverse culture shock in December, as is usual apparently with these long term trips).

The second to last highlight was creative writing. We hit the ground running with this workshop. First of all, according to Sarah Brock, Petra Hulova (missing all the accents in the name) is considered one of the absolute best contemporary Czech writers there is, not that Petra would say so of course. So it’s quite an honor that we get to work in such a small group with such a writer. But in class, she asked us a little about ourselves, about our art, why we write, and how we envision ourselves as writers and our writing itself. After this discussion and a review of the syllabus, we then proceeded to receive feedback on our samples we submitted for the program, which was surprising. There was some interesting feedback I received, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s actually given me some things to think about my current work, which is the best, I think, that I could hope for.

The last exciting part of Orientation week that I want to address, is my homestay family. We received our assignments yesterday, and I was super excited to meet my family from the get-go. I have three siblings, two of whom live at home presently, and from what I can gather they are a very athletic family and into economics and law. I had the chance to meet them tonight and I honestly could not be more excited. They are a very outdoorsy family it would seem, have hosted several American students before, and seemed genuinely excited to have me over for the semester. My two older siblings have both been involved in Scouts at some level, and my host brother Albert also plays the piano, and is getting more into music lately. Our dinner tonight has made me realize there’s so much more to look forward to and to learn about my host family and to share stories and experiences, and I could not be more excited or eager to have been assigned this family and to start getting to know them.

At last. 7 days. About 155 hours. That is how long I have been in the Czech Republic/Prague. 7 days. Already, I have accomplished all this (and more – these are just a few highlights). Now, I have to look forward to really starting to learn about the Czech Republic, its history and the arts, as well as going from being a complete foreigner in language to moderately comfortable, to being challenged as a writer, and to learning how to conduct research for an in-depth research project. This week may have been the beginning of my adventure, but my adventure is really just beginning.

 Until Next Time,

Joe