Playing catch-up

It's been about a month since I last wrote, and I've been pretty busy since. April was a travel and activity filled month to say the least. After returning from Paris, one of my and John's best friends from school, Nick, came to visit for about 10 days, which was a lot of fun. It was nice having a friend stay for longer so we didn't have to pack all the sights into one day--he kind of took care of them over the week by himself. He actually ended up coming with our study abroad program on our trip to Krakow, from April 17-19. That was a cool trip, unfortunately it required 2 overnight bus rides (there and back to Prague after) on a very cramped bus...needless to say I think it certainly helped lead to my being sick the entire following week.

Krakow had a really similar feel to Prague, except not as old and almost like it was trying to look older--which was probably true in some cases, as it fared worse in WWII than Prague, which was virtually untouched. There was an old castle and a huge town square, both of which were fairly similar to those in Prague, except in the middle of the square was a big market that had tons of little items for sale--looked kinda like a tourist trap. We took 2 trips from Krakow for a few hours--one to a UNESCO site that was a really old salt mine that extended 300+ meters below the ground, which was a really cool experience to go down into. It felt exactly the same and was absolutely HUGE under the ground; its just really hard to fathom how that was created and sustained so long. The other trip was far less enjoyable, but probably one of the sites that I will remember most on my trip to Europe: Auschwitz. It was as depressing as you could imagine, very solemn and very uneasy. There is no way to describe the feeling of walking in the same steps as hundreds of thousands, even millions (they say over a million people were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau, the death camp) who were senselessly killed. All but one of the crematoriums/gas chambers was virtually destroyed by the Nazis when they knew they were going to lose the war, but other than that the death camp was fairly in tact, and it was certainly enough to give us some idea of how terrible everything was. Something I think it was good to see but I certainly have no desire to ever go back.

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you...

I spent much of the following week sick in bed trying to get over an annoying virus that made me feel terrible, the same sore throat, fever, cold I always get. Once that was over was glorious though, it was great to finally feel better! The following week was the second games of the semifinals of the Champions League, which is the tournament that the best teams from each country's league play against each other in--a big deal here as you can imagine. Its really fun to sit with die hard fans that literally make these games life or death situations--makes American fans on average look pretty tame.

The next weekend I had a really unique experience. There was a kid named Petr that was a foreign exchange student at my high school sophomore year (he's a year older) from the Czech Republic that I was friends with at the time. Well, turns out that he's been studying in Prague for a couple years so I've met up with him a few times for a couple beers and to catch up. I was actually the first person from Laconia other than his host father in 5-6 years! Anyway, that weekend he invited me to his town, Zlin, to see his house, meet his family and friends, etc. It was a decent sized city (~100,000 people) but there wasn't much to do there, which was actually kind of nice. We got to spend time at his house and he drove me all around showing me different things. I went go-karting with him and his brother, and bowling and to the driving range--quite the weekend and a great reminder of the fun stuff at home. I also got to go out with his girlfriend and friends and get a pretty genuine Czech experience--very few people there spoke English, unlike Prague--that I wouldn't have gotten without him studying in Laconia...what a small world!! (something we've all come to learn all too well since being here)

We had some great weather in the past week and I got to get outside a bit more and do some running (something I'm really going to need to do a lot of this summer after all the delicious beer over here...). On Thursday morning John and I left for Budapest, my last trip of the semester! We were both kind of "tripped out" at that point and thankfully the weather cooperated, so we were able to do a lot outside. One of the main attractions of Budapest is the famous baths, which are basically just huge pools that people go hang out in, but are apparently fresh hot water. The one we went to had a couple big ones outside, so we just sort of hung out with a lot of old Hungarians and enjoyed the great weather.

Now that I am finally done traveling and only have 2 weeks to go (!), I'm really becoming torn between being really excited to come home to the states and realizing that I'll really miss it here. I don't think it will really hit me that I was living for 4 months in Prague for months or even years. It has been an absolutely amazing experience from start to finish, and I would recommend studying abroad to anyone. I have had opportunities over here that I would never have had in my life if I hadn't done it, and I am really thankful for that. My mom asked me in an email a couple weeks ago "Remember when you were on the fence about doing this...?" I do, and I am so glad I finally made the decision--would've been one of the biggest regrets of my life!