Czech Lessons Day 1

Today was my first lesson in Czech language.  Since my class is in the afternoon, today was the first time in a long while that I was actually able to sleep in, which was really nice.  I had a nice relaxing morning and made some soup for lunch that I got a little while ago and still wasn't able to read the instructions, but somehow I managed to make it work out in the end.  I finally headed out to class around 1:30 and we got there a little early, so a group of us went to go get some water before class, but when we got back the rest of the group had gone.  Apparently, they went on a tour of the building that our classroom was in, but I'm not too worried about missing it.  Then we headed to class, which was the longest class that I have ever sat through.  According to the schedule they gave us, we would be in class from 2:00-6:45, but luckily for us, we end up getting two fifteen minute breaks, so we don't go completely insane.  Today we just worked on learning how to pronounce the different letters in the alphabet, which is going to take some getting used to on my part.  For the last part of class, we went on a bit of a field trip.  We walked from the classroom to the John Lennon wall.  On the way there, we crossed over the Charles Bridge, which has some of the most beautiful views of the city that I have seen yet.  From there, we walked over this little bridge, just over a stream, that was covered with probably thousands of locks.  What we were told is that, couples come to this bridge with a lock.  As a symbol of their love, they attach the lock to the bridge and throw the keys into the little stream under the bridge.  That way, there will always be a memory of their love in the city.  From there, we went to the John Lennon wall.  The wall doesn't have John Lennon on it or anything, but for the people of Prague, this wall was a symbol of freedom during the oppression of the Communist rule.  At one point, John Lennon was a symbol for the free Western world, outside of the Communist rule, which is kind of ironic to me.  The song lyrics and everything that I have always heard John Lennon credited with saying has always sounded pretty Communist to me, but I guess it's still vastly different from the Communism of the Soviet Union.  As soon as they could, the local government would paint the wall completely white, but every night new protest graffiti would be painted onto the wall.  It was used as an outlet for any form of protest and still is to this day.  It was completely covered with all kinds of sayings, in Czech and other languages, and all sorts of images.  After that, we went to a little student cafe and just chilled out there for a while.  Overall, it was a pretty good day.