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Apologies for the radio silence, cyber kittens. Things have been a little crazy over here in Central Europe, by which I mean, of course, that I’ve been in Poland and Slovakia for the past week and have only just gotten over the plague that resulted from the journey. Oh, I was also posing with this wonderful creature, so naturally blogging was the last thing on my mind.

 

Thanks to my lady Skye for this one

Rather than spend too much time talking about Slovakian folklore tradition, I thought I’d take this opportunity to catch the world up on what exactly I’ve been doing for the past seven weeks (has it really been that long?).

It occurs to me that I’ve written hardly anything at all about Prague itself, so I suppose I should start by saying that I love it here. I spent last weekend in Moravia, the other half of the Czech Republic, with Will and Corinne, and while I enjoyed Brno immensely, I could not wait to return to Prague on Sunday morning for lunch with my family. The feeling of arriving at the Florenc bus station and knowing exactly how to get home without resorting to my smartphone for assistance helped me realize just how much this city has become my home during my two months here. I love nothing more than chatting with my host family in our apartment in Josefov; waiting for the 17 at Pravnická Fakulta; and knowing where the nearest worthwhile pub is, regardless of my location. While I may not be having the study abroad experience that Europe is known for (though I suppose I could be going to clubs and am just choosing not to), I am having the study abroad experience that I want.

On an SIT program, every day is a little bit different. I am, in fifteen minutes, going to leave my apartment to head down to Prague 4 for a private Q&A with a contemporary Czech poet. Tomorrow, I’ll be watching a movie at MAT studio with my classmates. And, scarily enough, on Friday, the first draft of my Independent Study Project (ISP) proposal is due.

The program culminates in the ISP, where each of us goes out on our own for four weeks to do research into a topic of interest. I’m proposing a project wherein I teach English to Czech children in a smaller town in northern Bohemia, because I have apparently become the kind of person who’s comfortable doing that sort of thing. It hit me, though, when my classmates and I were discussing our potential ISP topics that it is, in a sense, the final phase of this once-in-a-lifetime program. (I can hear them yelling at me for mentioning this already, but this is the way my anxious brain works.)

How do you go back to reality after a program like this one?

Thankfully, I am fortunate enough to have a grace period between SIT and America. After the program, I’m heading to Fez, Morocco with Meredith; then I’m going around the world in 15 days with my brother (details to come); and afterwards, my mom is meeting us in Prague for what I believe will be a blissful 10 days of beer-drinking before I have to board the plane back to Chicago.

Whenever I look forward to these moments, though, the thing I am most excited about is not Morocco. Or my Eurotrip with Jake. Or my summer in the States. It’s the prospect of showing the people from my old world–Meredith, Jake, my mom–this new place, this city that has, in such a short period of time, become a fundamental part of what makes me tick. I can only hope that they love it as much as I do.

 

 

Osvračín

Whoever said that study abroad was all parties and drunken exploring was only partially correct. SIT packs so much into a single day that I’ve had trouble finding enough time to do my homework, let alone update my blog. My yoga mat is collecting dust on a shelf. My clothes are all over the floor. And, oh yeah, I moved to an Underground community in Western Bohemia, sans Internet, for a week.

The idea behind the Regional Homestay is to immerse us in another part of Czech culture, so off I went with Ally, Will, and Corinne for five days of working with clay in Silva, our amazing host’s, ceramics studio; taking long, long walks through nearby villages (the smallest boasting a population of only 26 people); and crashing birthday parties at the local pub.

It’s not easy for me to leave the city. I know this, and I know that it makes me look like a brat when I start complaining about the lack of a 24-hour pharmacy or cart food. For this reason, my time in Osvračín was humbling and incredibly important. It allowed me to take a step back and assess why it is that I feel most at home on an overpopulated island 13.4 miles long. Why do I break out in hives when the chorus of birds outside is louder than the sounds of traffic?

Of course, the easy answer is looking down my nose at non-city dwellers, but it’s not the correct one. The reality is that I am afraid. I am afraid of spaces like these villages because I don’t have the option of constantly plotting my next move. I can’t bounce from therapy to class to lunch to class to the box office to rehearsal to the library. And, bringing it back to Prague, I can’t jump from a book launch in Vinohrady to a wine bar in Žižkov before passing out around 1 and starting my day with Czech homework on the tram to school.

Instead, I have to sit.

I have to go on long walks and actually enjoy the view (and the beer at the halfway point). I have to question my position as a cosmopolitan individual and realize that that does not in any way make me better, smarter, or more interesting than the girl from the village of 26 people. On the contrary, my host, Silva, is the most incredible and inspiring woman I’ve ever met, for reasons difficult to put into words. What I will say here is that she is special. She lives in the moment, and I think I would do well to take a lesson or two from her.