From Day 1 : Adventure Is Out There! (daily life)

Chicken Schnitzle with mashed
potatoes and my first beer!

Here's to the start of a three month adventure, completely out of my comfort zone. I have always been one for challenging myself and attempting to expand my box of familiarity, but leaving the country for three months was nothing short of terrifying. After about 24 hours of traveling (with the time zone differences and breakfast food at 11pm because it was 5ish in London), we arrived in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. We went to the John Lennon wall and found a few pubs with amazingly fresh hot tea and of course beer. I am not a huge fan of beer but I've been told it is really good and stronger than the kinds back home. The food here is also quite good (dessert being the best) and I have yet to have anything that I did not enjoy. Because of all the good food and feeling like a tourist, it hadn't quite set in that I would be living 5,000 miles away from home for the next 13 weeks and I'm not sure after two weeks, it has set in yet. After being with 6 classmates for three days and exploring, we met up with the other 17 classmates at the airport, and got on a bus to head to Olomouc (about 4 hours from Prague). We have now been in Olomouc for a week and a half and it is starting to feel like home, despite some of the interesting differences and challenges.
For starters, water is more expensive than beer, and at every restaurant you have to ask for still water otherwise you will end up with sparking water. You would think that carbonated water would taste okay, but I can assure you, it has the worst flavor and is rather funky. One of the first nights we were here we went on a hunt for regular ole water, and there are probably 2-3 full isles to choose from. We haven't mastered the Czech language yet (if ever), so reading labels is a challenge and we ended up with giant bottles of bubbly water. However, since then, Google Translate has become our best friend. Did you know that you can take pictures of what is written and it will translate it (loosely) for you!?

Shoebox with awesome old fashion candy striped bedding.

While Google translate can help with reading labels, and sometimes even menus (most are in Czech, and if you're lucky they will have the English translation in fine print), it could not prepare us for our daily living conditions. Our room is pretty much a shoebox, and our beds are touching head to foot. We also could not figure out the internet situation. We had all all the boxes and converters and ethernet cables you can imagine, but it still wouldn't work so we ended up buying a router; best $33 we ever spent. The exchange rate is between 20 and 20.7 kč to $1, which means 33 dollars is about 680 kč, so for 3 months, it was well worth it. The windows in our room are also kind of different. They can open like a door or if you turn the handle 180 degrees, you can open just the top of it and it'll fold down like an old time bridge over a moat. However, we didn't know that our window could fold down, so we just slept with the window open the normal way, thinking our window was "special." Note to self, because we are on the first floor right next to the steps up to our building, we had a visitor last night. Around 4am, I woke up to a strange sound that was on repeat. I thought it was Shyenne (my roommate) listening to music or something. Oh no. It was a cat!!!! That's right, a cat came through our window and was meowing trying to get our attention, at 4 in the morning!!!! I woke up Shyenne and she was still delusional from only four hours of sleep the night before. She was scared it was going to jump on her bed after she made eye contact with it, so naturally she used her pillow as a defense mechanism. However, instead of jumping on the bed to cuddle with Shyenne, the cat stretched out and hopped on back through the window.

The famous night cat.

There are quite a lot of cats around the buildings, but luckily they were not a problem while doing laundry at the laundromat two blocks away from where our dorms are located. Regardless, I had other struggles on my first trip to the laundromat. I got there with my laundry and was ready to try this out, but I forgot my detergent. So I left my dirty clothes there and had to walk back to my room to get it. Side note, there are three different keys to get into our building and they all look the same. I'm going to have to figure out a labeling system at some point, because it is kind of a pain to get the right key to open the right door, especially because doors and I have never gotten along. But it gets better. After I got back to the laundromat with my detergent, I realized I only had a 1000kč bill to exchange for laundry coins, which would give me $50 in tokens to do laundry, not actual kč, but tokens (all in increments of 20). I messaged some people to see where I can get change, but before I got a response, I asked the gentleman beside me if he had change, but of course he didn't speak English. I was told by some of my classmates to go to the front desk in the reception area of all the dorms to get change, but of course when I got there they were on break for the next 20 min (also my laundry was left at the mat for a second time). But finally, after an hour of running back and forth, I started my load of laundry!
All of these adventures thus far have come with their fair share of laughter and frustration, but it is unrealistic to except anything different; after all, we are living in a different country on a different continent. With that said, I am excited to continue living here, but I am starting to miss bits and pieces of home. I wouldn't have thought that I would miss not having to ask if someone speaks English, going to a Lutheran church, driving a car down the interstate, or even jolly ranchers. However, I know that even though these slight differences will make me appreciate being home the beginning of June, I am excited to continue learning and loving this city I now call home.