{"id":1186,"date":"2018-02-27T15:42:26","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T19:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2021-01-11T19:55:54","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:55:54","slug":"spring-in-the-czech-republic-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/2018\/02\/27\/spring-in-the-czech-republic-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Nate Dracon: Post 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nate Dracon
\nAIFS Charles University
\nPrague, Czech Republic
\nSpring 2018<\/p>\n

dobr\u00fd den from the city of Prague, Czech Republic!<\/p>\n

I have been in the Czech Republic for almost a month now, and the differences between here and the U.S. are striking. Getting over wasn’t a problem, even for
\na 6\u20194 student. I would just say that I am accustomed to never having enough leg
\nroom. We first stopped for two days in London before taking a short flight to
\nthe Czech Republic. The first thing that made me appreciate that I was in a very
\nforeign place was arriving at the airport and being unable to read anything
\nsince it was all in Czech.\"\" From there, it was straight to the dorms, and the
\nnext day I started my Czech language class. I never realized how good I had it
\nlearning Spanish until I took on the Czech language which doesn’t use vowels.
\nDuring that two-week, 5 hours a day language class, I was able to use my spare
\ntime to travel the Czech Republic. The first week, I went to Czechy Krumlov and
\nvisited an ancient castle. The second week, I took a two day trip to Monrovia. I
\nhad a great time on this trip as our group was able to visit Brno, have a
\nprivate dinner in a wine cellar dating back hundreds of years, and visited The
\nBattle of Austerlitz Memorial. My study abroad group is comprised of about 40
\nkids from all over the U.S., and we are all getting along reasonably well.
\nClasses at Charles University just started so they are pretty uneventful so far,
\nbut there is so much that I have already learned from living in Prague that I
\nwill try to break it up into categories!<\/p>\n

\"\"History
\nBeing a History major, I was excited to visit a city that has been virtually
\nuntouched for almost 600 years. In fact, my school, Charles University, was founded in the 14th century. I never realized how young America was until I learned about the statues on the Charles Bridge. I was initially disappointed to learn that they are not original since they are made out of sandstone. Therefore, they need to be replaced every 300 years, and I realized that the current
\nstatues might be older than America itself. The fact that the bridge has
\nreplaced its statues multiple times since the 1300s is amazing to me.<\/p>\n

Social Interactions
\nIt was hard to imagine how much we take for granted in America until I visited a
\ncountry that was communist until the 1980s. Communism affected, and still
\neffects, the lifestyle and culture of the Czech people. It seems that the Czech
\npeople have real trust issues with one another rooted in their fear of the
\ncommunist secret police. No one talks to one another, and no smiles are
\nexchanged in public. Any common business transactions, such as buying food, is
\ndone with borderline rudeness from my perspective growing up in North and South
\nCarolina. Same can be said for the interaction between men and women. Prague is
\ntruly a man’s world where women need to be careful about what they say and how
\nthey dress, especially when it is late at night. It has been difficult for many
\nof the girls in our group to adjust to this since America is a very
\nforward-thinking compared to an eastern European city when it comes to
\ninteraction between men and women.<\/p>\n

Living in Prague
\nPrague is a beautiful city, just not particularly where I live, which is in a
\nlarge dormitory.\"\" That being said, I mostly buy my food at the grocery store
\nexcept for the burrito place I frequent called Burrito Loco. I have been going
\nthere every day since I got here since it’s close to the gym I joined. I think
\nthat I am their only American “regular”. On Wednesday, they actually smiled at
\nme and gave me a free brownie, so I must be making progress! My dorm is about a 15-minute commute by metro to city center. I live in an area of the city that
\nwas built by the communist, so it’s just what you might imagine; dark, grey, and
\neverything looks the same. In fact, it’s so bland that our guide told us that
\nafter the communist left, the city had to paint each building a different color
\nsince kids could not tell the difference between them and would get lost trying
\nto get home after school.<\/p>\n

Food
\nA great thing about food in the Czech Republic, as compared to the U.S., is that
\neverything is cheap. I eat three meals a day for under $10 each. Czech
\nfood is good, but there is little variety. It mostly consists of some stew with
\nmeat and dumplings. It is straightforward, and I got tired of it quickly.
\nThankfully Prague has excellent international food, and as long as you stay away
\nfrom the tourist areas, the food is reasonably priced.<\/p>\n

Being in Prague has been a great experience so far, and I look forward to
\nsharing more in the upcoming months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nate Dracon AIFS Charles University Prague, Czech Republic Spring 2018 dobr\u00fd den from the city of Prague, Czech Republic! I have been in the Czech Republic for almost a month now, and the differences between here and the U.S. are striking. Getting over wasn’t a problem, even for a 6\u20194 student. I would just say that I am accustomed to never having enough leg room. We first stopped for two days in London before taking a short flight to the Czech Republic. The first thing that made me appreciate that I was in a very foreign place was arriving at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-spring","tag-czech-republic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2345,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/2345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}