Rozumite Anglicky?

I've completed my week of intensive czech classes, and have concluded that the phrase "rozumite anglicky (do you speak english)?" will be steadily relied upon as my stay here continues. There have been small triumphs though. Last week, I could ask in czech "how much does it cost?", but was dumb to the answer. But I know the numbers now, though a few of them are only discernible from one another by paying close attention to the number of syllables in each word, so, the probability of me getting it right is depressingly low. But with practice and carefully tuned in ears, I'm relatively confident that I'll be able to get by. I can do some other very basic things in czech now, so, yay for progress. Plus, my "czech buddy" is back, and he tends to go where I go, so i've got a built in czech english dictionary by my side most of the time. I should pay him for his translation services. And also, a LOT of people speak English. and pointing, the universal language, has proved to be very useful. So basically, depsite the language barrier, my lack of czech language skills doesn't seem like it will render me too helpless here.

This week was also busy, in addition to my intensive czech classes all morning, I've had two days of tours plus one day with some shabbat requirements. On Tuesday, we took a tour of Prague and it was, unfortunately, really bad. It was our tourguides first tour ever, and he was really nervous, which exacerbated his trouble with translating into English. That fact, on its own, wouldn't have been too terrible if he had interesting insights and shared with us cool facts about the history, but he didn't. Jiri was on our tour and he basically took over after about a half an hour to share with us what he knew about Prague. We went back up to the castle which was still breathtakingly beautiful, and saw a few new things (like the monastary where the monks used to make profit by making wine).

On Thursday, the Jewish Studies kids met back at CET at 2:00 for a tour of the Jewish Quarter. That tour was immeasurably better than the Tuesday one. Our guide spoke perfect english and was very knowledgable. We went into the Old New Synagouge, which is the Europe's oldest active Synagouge. Then we went to the Spanish Synagagoue, named not because it has Sephardic influence or has a Spanish congregation, but because the architecture of the building is int he Moorish style. The synnagogue has an exhibit upstairs which was interesting, had information about how Czech jews used to live both before and after WWII. We also walked through the very old Jewish cemetery. Next, we checked out the Jewish Museum. It had lots of old artifacts that were confiscated by the Nazis but kept stored and perfectly labeled. I read an interesting plaque there which discuessed hot the 1st Jewish privlidges in Czech Lands were granted in 1255-1262. The sovereign of that time found inspiration in the 1244 Charter of Duke Friedrich II, for Austrian Jews. I also learned fromt eh tourguide about Jewish lastnames. He taught us that for taxation purposes, jews were forced to get "proper" surnames (instead of simply being "Firstname/Son Of Father's Firstname, aka, Yehoshua/ben Avraham"). The people issuing names had to issue like, a thousand a day, so they stopped being creative and started naming people after places (hence lots of Berg's and Stein's and Hirsch's) or after characteristics, or, people could pay to be given a good name, hence Goldberg and Silverstein, etc). Finally, we walked into a synnagouge. the names of Czech people who died in the Holocaust were inscribed on all the walls, in each room, ceiling to floor. From speakers, a man sang the names of the deceased in a somber melody which I first mistook for solemn prayer. Next, I walked through the "Art in Extreme situations" exhibit, full of artwork from the Children of Terezin, many or all of whom died there. It was beautiful and sad.

And then it was friday. My class went on a field trip through the Old Town Square with our beyond awesome Czech teacher (also named Jiri. There are, I swear, a thousand Jiri's here). Then we hung out at a Franz Kafka cafe before going to the JCC for lunch, which was really awful, followed by an hour long lecture from David, the Jewish Youth Coordinator who likes to impersonate Ali G and Borat. (When I saw him earlier that day with my friend Mike, we were like "hey David", to which he responded, without hesitation "yo whattup my niggaz" in true Ali G form, but with a slight czech accent. Doesn't sound quite the same coming from him. Anyway, his "short talk" was torturously long and I kinda fell asleep while my classmates played games on their phones. On our way back, good friend Steph got pickpotted on a crowded metro, which sucked. She's the second person on our program to have gotten pickpotted within this first week. Oh well. We were back at the Old New Synagouge at 8 for shabbat. Us girls had the privilege of sitting behind a wall with a tiny window in it through which one could theoretically watch the service, but which realistically it was impossible to hear or see anything through. So we sat until the end of services.

Then, we came back home to celebrate Mirek's 23rd Birthday! He bought himself a cake (we were planning to make him one, but he beat us to it). It's a traditional Czech Honey Cake and it's amazing. Then we started drinking, went out to a bar, and ended up at an 80's club with most of the remainder of CET. it was a fun night.

Yesterday, Saturday, was also fun. We hung around the apt untill around 3, when we met up with some of the girlies to walk around the mall. Then we came back to the apt to make dinner. Afterwards, I went with Mirek to watch the Czech national football team play Slovakia. They tied 2-2, and Mirek says that that means that there's almost no chance that CZR will make it to the World Cup. To drown his sorrows, I invited him out with me (and also, I needeed someone to help me with directions). We went back to a bar we had stopped in the previous night to meet up with a throng of CET people. It was a LOT of fun. We met a group of British/Australian/Irish/Canadian guys all there as part of a bachelor party. They bought a few of us a bunch of drinks and were just generally interesting and cool to chill with. Then the CET group left, and we went to McDonalds, I have no idea why or whose idea that was, but I got fries and it pretty much hit the spot.

Today, the plan is to do laundry, go grocery shopping, find the John Lennon wall, and study czech. Wooohoo.

Below are a few pictures.


Roomates


Roomates and our matching pj's


Mirek big pimpin' on his birthday