Merry Belated Christmas

With Christmas now over, all I can think about is my trip.  I no longer have to spend all my time hoping that I got someone the perfect gift, since they all have their stuff.  Now I get to start worrying about how I'm going to pack and how I'm going to be able to handle being away from all the people I love for four months without limited communication with everyone.  I'm starting to think about what's going to happen if I actually get culture shock, I've handled it before, so it's not gonna be too bad, right?  Or what if I can't pick up Czech as fast as I need to in order to talk to the local people?  It seems as I'm starting to get cold feet about the whole study abroad thing, but I know that I'm going to go through with the trip, I'm just having some second thought at the moment.  I already miss the people from Boone, how am I going to be able to go months without seeing them?  I'm used to going almost a semester without seeing my family for more than a few days, but it's going to be weird knowing that I'm not going to be able to see anyone I know for that long.  Luckily, the program I'm going through, AIFS, has us all meet up together in London before we go, so we'll all get to know each other there and hopefully make good friends.  If not, I'll just have to meet some awesome people early on in my classes at Charles University.

I'm also getting excited about playing around with my new camera.  I got a Cannon Digital Rebel for Christmas, which means that all of my dad's lenses fit on my camera and he can teach me all the little details of how to use it.  Last semester, I used a Nikon D40 for my photography class, so I haven't really played with the Cannon digital SLRs that much.  I'm hoping that I get to play around with it enough before I leave so that I'll be completely comfortable with it the whole time I'm abroad.  I'm also really excited that I now have a journal to keep a good record of my travels.  It's a beautiful journal and I can't wait to fill it's pages with the stories of my adventures while I'm over there.

Tomorrow I'm starting to work again for Turkshish Kebap House, which I'm really excited about.  Everyday working there is an adventure it seems.  I never went home over the summer without a funny story, which made life so much more interesting.  I'm going to be working five days a week, which will be good.  I'm trying to get some money saved up for Prague.  At the same time though, I kind of wanted to relax a little bit this break before the next semester and I really wanted to spend lots of time with all my friends from home.  I'm going to try to balance work, friends, and family so that I get to spend time with all the people I love while still being able to have some money saved up.  


Veselé Vánoce a šťastný nový rok!
Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Beginning Winter Break

I started this blog so that people can know what I'm up to next semester.  I'm going to be studying abroad in Prague, so I'm not going to be able to keep in contact with people as easily.  In order to try to get in the habit of actually updating this, I'm going to try to start posting stuff up here before I leave.  My goal is a post at least once a week, but I have a tendency to forget to keep posting stuff.  Hopefully my friends and family will give me hell about it if I start getting too lazy about it.  At this point, I'll just write about what all's going on in my life, but it's not going to get really interesting until I leave at the end of January.  I also might be getting an account with smugmug or something like that, so I can post lots of pictures of everything I do, but I'm not sure what's going to happen with that yet.  I'll post it up here if I do get one.

Yesterday, I left Boone for the semester.  It was more of a bittersweet moment than I was expecting it to be.  I am having trouble fully grasping that I'm not going back to Boone for school next semester, I still feel like it's my home and where I should be.  I'm going to miss all my wonderful friends and amazing sisters in Boone while I'm gone, both at home and in Prague.  That being said, I am so excited about seeing all my friends from good old HoCo.  Tomorrow I'm going to see about working at Turkshish again for the time that I'm here.  For all you people in Howard County, if anyone's going to actually read this, you should come visit me at Turkshish Kebap House.  It's an awesome little Turkish place with awesome food, with both vegetarian and meat options, or at least it was good last time I went.  I'm also going to be going to a bunch of concerts at Hebron for Jay, my brother.  This weekend alone, there are at least two concerts there.  He's in the good band and choir group, so it'll be fun concerts.

Since I am going to the Czech Republic soon and I'll have to learn Czech, I think I'm going to try to end each of these entries with a fun phrase in Czech.  That way I have to start thinking about the language and hopefully that will make it easier for me to learn over there.


Hodit flintu do žita
This phrase means "to throw in the towel" and is literally translated "to throw the rifle into the rye".