As long as I’m living here I might as well learn the language, right? We’ve started taking Intensive Czech which is two weeks of five hours a day of Czech, Czech, Czech. Our classroom is up on Vysherad, a hill just south of the city that has the greatest views of all of Prague. It was the original castle of Prague before Charles IV knocked it down and ordered a larger one across the river. Being in a beginner language course at 20 and jumping feet first into it is like being back in kindergarten. All 12 of us stumble around with the sentences and had to work on ‘Dobrey dén’ and ‘Na shladenou’ (good afternoon; good-bye) for about a half an hour. We are learning survival Czech like what to say in a restaurant, meeting people, and telling time and numbers as quickly as possible and we’ve had the afternoons free.

The program I am on absolutely rocks so far. The Czech teacher is great and sometimes we head out on trips for lunch or the grocery store to practice with our teacher. I’ve been trying to throw some Czech phrases around when I’ve been out to dinner or shopping and it is going all right at best. Czechs are eager to practice their English on Americans and I’m eager to practice my Czech, and they usually win. Everyone in the city is really nice and I’ve had no trouble at all adjusting. Just watch out for pickpockets. It feels like I’m constantly looking for who is going to reach into my jacket and grab my camera and wallet. Expect everyone is a pickpocket is the only way not to lose your stuff. Two people on the program have already been pickpocketed or held up. Not as scary as it sounds, but definitely not a good situation to be in. I feel bad a lot of the times because I’m on the look out every second I am in public. Paranoid? Not at all, because the one second you don’t look around is the guaranteed second you’ll be without all your gear.

Last weekend we hit up a huge Prague-style euro club. Lights, smoke, trashy 80s music, and five stories of Americans, British, and Australian tourists. I’m going to make a real effort to try to remember names of clubs, pubs, restaurants and the like, but it will be tough, especially with the spelling. Karlovy Lazne was the name of the place, right at the foot of the Charles Bridge. It’s a little odd going to some huge club at the base of one of the most historic places in Prague, but it was a cool place with a crazy mix of music and wild Australians all over the dance floor.

So since then, we’ve been continuing with Czech and going out for some really ridiculously inexpensive meals. The dollar here goes so far. Lunch cost no more than $6 at a full-service restaurant for an awesome meal. Dinner, with two beers and some meat and potatoes or pasta, runs never more than $9, maybe $12 if we are going fancy. Czech Republic is to switch to the euro in 2009, so it’s nice to be here now when we are living like kings. The cost of living is about a third of that in the states and the grocery store is about a fourth the cost.

I’m at a great internet café now typing this out to you all. A place called The Globe. It is a little Americanized, but it’s got a great feel to it, a nice size bookstore, and a huge restaurant-café in the back. I’m headed out on a field trip with CIEE to an old Czech town an hour outside the city in the coming days, so I’ll share with you some pictures and a few stories later.

I just wanted to give you all a little glimpse of the start of the semester with these first two posts, so I’ll aim to throw in my thoughts about Prague and living here in the next posts. For now, I’m just totally excited to be here and am fascinated by everything in the city. The people I have been meeting through school and the city have been some of the nicest, inquisitive, motivated people and I can’t wait to see Europe with them all.

Enjoy, have fun.