Jan 28 09 Wednesday

---***some of these will be written the day of and then published when I have internet again so they are not necessarily "new" but i want to keep them in chronological order***---


Woke up earlier than intended today. Got an easy start with the walk to the metro and the subway ride to school with Art Rice. We got a group mini-tour of the area we are in - there's a great outdoor market with fresh fruit and vegetables. However, it also seems very touristy - not that we're not tourists, but the prices seem inflated and EVERYONE speaks English. I thought that was probably not such a good sign as far as places to get a cheap meal or buy something that wasn't crap as a souvenir.
We probably sat in the seminar room for 3 hours just going over rules and indications etc. Our studio space was built in the 13th century! We got some good advice about traveling around Europe.
For lunch we had a two hour break and spent the majority of our time wandering around St. Wencelas square. We ended up at a pizzeria for lunch that was run by Italians who spoke English, but not well, and mostly just snarked at us.
I almost fell asleep in the second part of the presentation - Dana is very sweet but she rambles and apparently feels the need to read things to us that she's given us written down, which I find a little patronizing, honestly.
After Orientation the Monitors had a meeting which went on far too long and stressed me out a little about the things we have to do as a monitor- but I guess it's not that many things as far as it goes. We had roughly an hour to go home and get ready for dinner.
Dinner was as a group at a monastery in the western part of the city. We had to get on two trams to get there, and it was not easy as a group of 23. After the first tram we all managed to get on the second one, but at the stop for the monastery about 2/3 of us couldn't get off! The tram-driver shut the door too fast. We just took it to the next stop and got off there and walked back. The food at the monastery was great. I had a fresh trout and it was the perfect size portion. The beer was excellent too but I can't remember its name.
In fact, in between getting off at the monastery, 3 of us didn't make it off and no one noticed until we were seated and there were extra chairs. Blakeley, Terry, and Andrew were in the first tram car and didn't make it off either time. They ended up taking the tram to the end and getting off and wandering around town. They said they found their way back to the hostel ok and then went looking for a place to eat. Blakeley said they ate at a place near our studio called Beer Factory which I found hilarious.
The rest of us headed back on the tram and got off to take a walk around the castle and over the Charles bridge. It was absolutely beautiful, and I got some decent photos but I broke my camera screen. Unfortunately, there is no viewfinder and no way of setting the exposure now - which means it's on an unfixable unknowable manual setting and I can't even see the menus. I'm so grateful to my roommate because she has an extra (!) camera with her and is lending it to me for the time being.
Three of us took the metro home and have been chilling out. I've had a cold that I haven't managed to shake yet - it seems to have gotten worse since I've been here, actually. I'm sneezing a lot more and my throat really hurts from all the draining I've been doing. Now since my camera is broken and we really don't seem to have that much time to ourselves what with the group activities and immediate excursions to Paris - I'm stressing myself out, I think. I really want to just cry that my camera is broken. I miss everyone and I don't know if anyone else here feels like me. I feel very alone. I think I feel worse because I'm sick.