Probably the Last Post Before I Leave...

So I guess that whole updating this once a week did not end up happening.  It’s weird to think that in less than two weeks I’m going to be flying to London for my semester abroad.  In order to help myself prepare for my time in Prague, I ended up getting one of those city guidebooks.  In the beginning, as an introduction to the Czech Republic, it has some history of the country in it, which I have been reading lately.  Normally, I find history boring and can’t really stand it.  It’s probably because I’ve never been good at remembering names or dates, so I just avoid anything where you have to know those things in order to understand what’s going on.  The bits of history that I’ve been learning about are really interesting.  In the Czech Republic, historically it’s considered relatively normal for political debates to be solved by defenestration, or throwing people out of windows.  One guy actually survived by landing in a pile of manure and later he was knighted “Sir Phillip of High Fall.”  I think I could handle more history if it was all like this and fun to learn about.  There is also a really interesting man named Tycho Brahe, or “Tin-nosed Tycho” who has a very interesting story.  He lost his nose in a duel one day, so he made himself one out of tin, thus earning his name.  Then he worked for Emperor Rudolf II as a mathematician and astronomer, where he helped plot the courses of the planets.  He eventually died in 1601 because he didn’t want to go to be rude and leave the dinner table to go to the bathroom.  During the meal, his bladder burst, which eventually killed him five days later.  If you’re more interested in him, here’s his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Charles University, where I’m going to be studying this semester, about a few books that they suggested I read before I get to the Czech Republic.  I read the one that had the most interesting title, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.  When I got the book, I was still excited, at first.  The cover of my copy has a floating bowler hat over a deserted city street, but I should have known not to judge the book by the cover.  The plot is boring at best, and the writing is pretentious.  The whole time, I felt like the author was trying to sound smart while talking about nothing really.  Well, that’s not exactly true, there’s a lot of sex in the book, but that’s about it.  The main guy is a man names Tomas who is doctor that has a bunch of “erotic friendships” and, at the same time is married to a woman who is completely faithful, for the most part.  The other part of the book is following one of Tomas’s mistresses and another one of her lovers.  When they aren’t talking about their sex lives, the author spends too much time trying to sound philosophical, which gets really old.  The plot isn’t introduced until the third chapter, but that’s not as bad as it seems.  The chapters are at most 3 pages long, which makes it seem like the book goes by faster.  I know that some people really love this book, but personally it just wasn’t my thing.

In other news, tomorrow is my last day of work for this break.  It’s been great being back at Turkshish Kebap House.  I really love working there a lot.  They have amazing food, a pretty chill environment, and most of the customers are pretty awesome.  Every day working there is an adventure and I always come home with some of the most interesting stories, although this past month, there has been a lot of stuff that happens that I don’t have any idea what’s going on.  Two of my coworkers tend to speak to each other in Turkish most of the time, so I get really confused.   Then customers who speak Turkish come in, and they all speak Turkish together, leaving Marbel, my Hispanic coworker, and I completely confused.  For a while, I was really confused about how to work the computer for putting in orders, but now I feel basically comfortable with how the computer works.  It’s going to be nice though to not have to work five days a week. 

In the next week, I’m planning on going to travel to Boone, which I’m really excited about.  I miss all the people I love in Boone and I can’t wait to see them.  It’s going to be so hard for me to not get to hang out with them for another whole semester. 

At the moment, I can’t think of anything else to say, so I’ll close with an interesting Czech phrase, like I did before.

Vrhl na ni dlouhy pohled

That means "he checked her out," but it is literally translated to "he vomited a long postcard on her," which is the more amusing way to translate it.