Okay, don't worry, this one will be more upbeat than the last. Our hostel in Krakow was designed similarly to Cloister, although it was touching two other buildings. It had an arch running through the middle of the building, and on one side was the reception, and the other side had the rooms. It was called the Lemon Hostel, and the floors were named things like "Anana" (Pineapple) and "Kiwi", so it was great fun when people decided on their rooms, calling their group the Bananas or whatever. Some people had good rooms, but we didn't. It wasn't unclean, just a [View Full Entry]

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Last Friday was the beginning of the second of the big trips my school here organizes--to Krakow, Poland! I'll be honest, when I first came to Central Europe, Poland was not on my list of places to visit. I thought of it as left over from the Soviet era, gray, cloudy, and filled with yet another language I don't understand. But then the Polish exchange students gave a presentation about their country, and as with every other country I've seen presented so far, I became much more interested in it. The only thing that was holding me back was that this [View Full Entry]

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Two points first: This should be quite random, so prepare yourself. And, I'm still recovering from my month-long cold-like illness. Essentially, I'm sick of being sick, and no, orange juice does not help. Okay, those two things being said, let me begin. Since I've been here, I've been to three real places where I felt like I learned more in-depth stuff about Czech life. The first was a shelter for youth. A Slovak friend who attends university here interned at this shelter for a year, and she invited me to visit with her in order to have an English conversation with [View Full Entry]

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Three weeks ago, I talked to two good friends who are also abroad in Europe, one in England and one in Spain. We wanted to meet up somewhere, but where? Berlin, Amsterdam, Krakow, Italy, France--either flights were expensive, one of us had plans to go there, or one of us had already been there. Hey guys, what about Copenhagen? Cool, it's kind of in the middle for all of us, and although not the cheapest to fly to, not the most expensive either. And essentially, that was that. We were going to Copenhagen, Denmark from Thursday through Sunday. What can I [View Full Entry]

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for 4 hours, at least. So I went on a 3-day trip with a huge group of international students to Budapest last weekend. Friday, we dragged ourselves out of bed at an ungodly hour and headed down the road in a double-decker bus fit for 90 people (but there were 60 of us). We were on the road for about 5 hours, and we went through Slovakia and its capital Bratislava. So eventually we made it to the hostel, unloaded our stuff, and started the day's tour of Pest. For those who don't know, Budapest is actually three cities in one: [View Full Entry]

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You really don't analyze yourself until you live somewhere where you feel different from everyone else. I experienced this in Africa with the color of my skin and especially my language, and I've got it here now with the language again. The main difference is, in Africa, people automatically started talking to me in English, or at least assumed I knew none of the local languages, but here, people just assume I know Czech. Why not? So, a number of times I'm just out by myself, and people come up to me or just say something to me and I don't [View Full Entry]

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Firstly, there will be no puns on "Czech Republic". As much as I love puns, the "Czech/check" ones are way-overused. Hello again everyone! I realize I've left many of you hanging, thinking I stopped blogging in The Gambia because I was eaten by a croc (which we did see but I didn't tell you about) or something. Actually, I just ran out of time to put everything down I wanted to. I assure you, though, if you have a chance to go anywhere in the world, my suggestion is The Gambia. But, I had my chance and took it. I was [View Full Entry]

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My title is one of Gambians' favorite sayings. It's true for them--they're very friendly. Wherever I'm walking to, it's guaranteed that at least 4 adults say "Hah-lo" or "How ah you?" as I walk past. It's too much at first, but now I'm used to it. Some days it gets annoying, but it actually is nice to connect with people, especially the ones I walk past everyday. On the other hand, random guys come up to us and ask us how our holiday is, where we're from, where we're staying, what our name is. It's best to have a made-up name [View Full Entry]

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So I've been in The Gambia for a month now, which I think is unbelievable. Where have I gone so far? The first place we went was Bijilo Forest Park, which is on the other side of Serrekunda from where we live. It's pretty neat because monkeys live there and don't mind the tourists. The forest is thick there, which showed us how this area looked before all of the recent development/deforestation. The Banjul market is another touristy place we went the first week. It basically consists of many rows of little stands along the streets selling various items, fabric shops, [View Full Entry]

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Well, I have way too much to say in one entry, so I'll try to start from the beginning. Basically, it took us a really long time to get here, and we got very little sleep. When we got to Dakar, Senegal, it was nighttime. We stepped out of the plane. It was humid and it smelled like smoke. The ground was packed sand. Immediately, I knew I was in Africa, even though I didn't really believe it. It smelled like I thought Africa would smell. Once we got through customs was when we really realized we were in Africa. It [View Full Entry]

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