Hello everyone! Here is just a little insight on how my first week abroad has been going.
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| The first day in Prague, this park was so much fun to walk through! |
It is crazy to think that I have been in the Czech
Republic for only a little over a week! Before I started my semester
abroad I was told by many previous students that the first week would
feel like the longest week of my life, and boy were they right. Our
flight arrived in Prague on March 10th, where we then stayed for the
first three nights. It was interesting to see how different the culture
was right as we stepped out of the airport. Prague is a very touristy
city which was exciting coming from Kearney, Nebraska. As we got to the
hotel we quickly put our stuff in our room and then left to adventure
around and find some food of course. For our first meal we ordered a
burger and fries (so American, I know), but it was still tasty! Trying
all the food has been amazing, plus dieting is definitely not a priority
here (whoops) and there is no holding back!
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| My favorite thing I ate while I was in Prague |
After a couple days in Prague, we finally met up with
the entire UNK study abroad group at the airport on Sunday, March 13th.
We then took a 3-hour bus ride to the wonderful city of Olomouc.
Everyone says that Prague is the the heart of Europe but my heart
belongs to Olomouc. If I didn't miss my family so much I think it's safe
to say that I could see myself living in Olomouc forever. Once we got
moved into our dorms it finally felt real that we would be living in
this city for three months. We also have three other flat mates who are
from Brazil, Ukraine, and the Philippines. The first couple of days in
Olomouc we were given tours to become familiar with the area which was
nice!
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| The view of Olomouc |
Classes have been quite interesting
especially our language class. I knew Czech was almost impossible to
learn but after attempting to learn just the basics (it is very
difficult and pretty much the opposite of English) was when I realized
that jumping into the culture would be the best way to slightly become
familiar with the language. One thing that is nice about the classes is
that Monday through Thursday we do not have class until 3pm which lasts
until around 7pm. Then on Fridays we have class from 10:30am until 1pm.
It is very fortunate that the classes were set up like that because then
if we wanted to take a weekend trip someone we could leave right after
class on Friday and return before class on Monday!
Even
though three months seem like a long time, after making travel plans I
have realized how quickly it all will fly by. "Sometimes it's time to
get away from it all and experience things in a
completely different way." - Kim Mance. That quote has never fit more
perfectly into my life and this is just the beginning! Na Shledanou!
Yay, Yay, Yay, we finally had a
somewhat normal week with a routine! Even though school here is way different
than school in America, it was nice to have a familiar “class getting cancelled”
type of thing to happen because our teacher got sick on Monday. The only
difference here is that instead of finding out from a simple email that class
was cancelled we got the news that our professor actually had to do to the hospital.
Going to the hospital sounds way worse than it actually is though so don’t be
alarmed. When someone states that they are going to the hospital here it
basically means they are just going to the typical clinic as they would in the
United States. As the week progressed we were able to go to class and learn about the Judaism and Christianity. This was quite interesting considering I have never really been able to talk about religion in any class throughout my high school or college education. 
