ok. we got here at noon. shamrock and adam picked us up (fellow teacher, adam is boss). took us to our flat which is quite large for 2 small girls. we are blessed and uber lucky. we unpacked a little and rearranged... showered... then shamrock came and took us to a super cute retro cafe where we got coffee and desserts and talked for a couple hours. his english is superb. at 930pm, after over a day of no sleeping (minus restless on the airplane), our eyes were shutting - so we went home and slept together - very soundly until 11am. at about 1pm shamrock and adam picked us up and took us to eat in the very cute city center. then adam went back to work and thus began our "transportation orientation" - we have the basics down, have a monthly tram pass, can ask for a bus ticket in czech (jidenku patnact minuto, prosim), have our stop memorized (dum energitiky), went to ikea for sheets that aren't big enough for our bed, came home and hung out w/ shamrock and randomly saw fireworks over the city from out 7th story flat and then gina and i chatted and rearranged the night away in our flat. at 3am we forced ourselves to lie down. note - not tired AT ALL at that point. today we woke up at about 10am and went to tesco agaion (basically - walmart) and spent more money on food and flat essentials (hooks, cleaners, apples (jablko), toilet paper, colored pencils, a fan - no air conditioning here, stuff) and are now at librex - bookstore and internet cafe.
so - our boss is a rockstar - literally - he's been in a band for like 9 years which he described as "funky, latina, ecstatic" and lucky for us - they have a show tonight -- so we're going to that at like 6pm. one of their songs made it big a few years ago and they were on the "czech mtv". pretty stoked about that.
i have never laughed as hard (minus me and twig's trip to nyc) as i have this past month/ week here. everything is funny. our door hates us to get in our apartment - i literally cannot open it. gina has to do it. there's some special trick to it that it refuses to let me in on. so we sit there and giggle for 5 minutes and barter our lives away with the door telling it that we live there and we're allowed in. it's ridiculous. funny for now - i'm sure it will make me cry one day.
i think in english and spanish - hardly ever czech. i said "uno momento" to some random czech the other day. i think "con" for with. minds and languages are bizzare-o that they do that. i'll be happy when i think in english and czech and not spanish. i've said "si" several times instead of "ano". i'm pretty good at saying "prosim" - universal polite word and "dekuji" - thank you.
our first experience at tesco our first day -- you have to "rent" and shopping cart and we COULD NOT figure that out for a good 10 minutes and finally used czech well and asked someone. i felt very accomplished when we figured out you needed a deset coin. we tried a penny - note - doesnt work. must be czech coin.
we live 7 stories up. for 5 stories going down - it's normal. the last remaining stairs just feel silly and stupid. our views are PHENOM. there are so many windows. it is so nice.
due to the fact that gina is a creative genius - our living room looks cute and 800% better than when we got there and it's using all stuff that was already in the flat. we have 2 twin beds - like each of us - so we pushed them together in each of our rooms. i've slept w/ her both nights and we dont' even come near touching. however - the sheets are like 2 inches too small. so that's a problem. i do miss my down comforter mucho. oh there is a slide at the bottom of our building. really its a ramp but gina uses it as a slide everytime and causes us to giggle all the way to the tram stop. little things are fun and funny.
the first time in prague should be about a month from now unless we can't hold out. that's when our esi retreat is. next week we have school orientation w/ adam in the morning and city orientation in the afternoon (post office, stores, getting around, etc). our other teammates get in sunday and tuesday - that is very very exciting - jonna on sunday (will be 2nd year here) and laura tuesday (will be 4th year here). we hear great things about them so we should be great friends.
look on facebook for pics. gina is posting our last days at wciu now and pics of ostrava will come soon. if you look at my friends - premek is shamrock and he has pics up of the city and our school. this should be good for now - probably sick of reading. all is grand here. loving it loving it loving it. all exciting and challenging and delightful and funny.
oh - we have a washer - no dryer. that should be muy interesante (there's that spanish again.)
love you all
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