just another tourist

back in prague for just about a week now, and it's been great getting settled in and getting used to the city i'm calling home for the next 3 months. monday and tuesday of this week mostly consisted of unpacking, shopping for groceries, eating cheap but delicious food, and searching for good deals in the shopping district near our school.

wednesday we had our first day of orientation. it was probably one of the most pointless afternoons i've ever had, but, what could i do? our second day of orientation was on thursday and we got our desks and found out our first project for studio - it's called "first impressions" and it's entirely open-ended, so we'll see what i come up with by next thursday.

thursday afternoon we were actually able to move into our permanent rooms. kelly and i have a small but really cozy room on the first floor with a great view out over the city. we have plenty of storage, a fridge, and a tv (but we can't get it to work). the pension is a pretty interesting place to say the least... we have very interesting characters that work there including an angry czech woman that serves us breakfast - she's definitely my favorite. the pension's pretty historical too -- during world war II it was actually used as a birthing hospital/facility for jewish women who had gotten pregnant by nazi soldiers. the soldiers would give the babies german surnames and send them to families in germany, meanwhile sending the mothers to concentration camps. it's definitely surreal to think about what these rooms were once used for...

anyway, thursday night a bunch of us went out for pizza and hung out at a pool hall near the pension. no school on fridays! so, yesterday kelly, meredith, mary, julie and i went to do the usual touristy things like charles bridge and prague castle. last night, kelly had made reservations to eat at a restaurant supposedly run by architecture students called Klub Architecktu. it was underground in a cellar and they served really great and reasonably priced food. 14 of us went, so it was a really great time. today i did some more toursity things with miller, john, paul, and ryan. we tried to go the jewish cemetary but it was closed today. so, we crossed to charles bridge and walked along the river looking for the kafka museum. we decided to skip that for today and then headed north looking for a pedestrian tunnel ryan had heard about. before we got there, we all split up. ryan and miller went one direction and john, paul and i went up a hill to take a look at some ruins and a palace for queen anne of belvedere. afterwards, we found the pedestrian tunnel and took some pictures of that for a while. it was a pretty awesome space that pretty much comes out of nowhere. we found the castle uphill some more, and then of course in the most tourist-packed location in prague, we found ryan and miller. we toured the outside of the palace and the church (again, for me) and then headed back to the metro and onward to the pension.

tonight i think we're planning on going out for ryan's birthday celebration -- it's his 21st tomorrow... so hopefully i'll have some pictures to show for that!