En Route Commentary

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“Mom, I want to go to the Czech!”

“Ava, we’re IN the Czech.” I tried to explain to Ava, who had thrown herself down in the middle of the apartment floor. My little girl was exhausted, and had every right to have a breakdown. She slept for 5 hours on the flight from Detroit to Amsterdam. It was only a 7 1/2 hour flight, so I thought this was pretty good. My mom slept almost an hour at the end of the flight and I slept a whopping…. Not at all. The flight went by quickly, and I tried everything to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep.

We arrived in Amsterdam and realized we had to make it through their aggressive security and all the way across the airport in approximately 45 minutes. If you’ve ever been through that particular airport, you might think this would be mission impossible with a 4 year old who had only slept 5 airplane hours. Then again, Ava’s a stellar traveler, and we made it with about 10 minutes to spare. We weren’t able to keep up with my mom though, and she arrived at the gate before us. Well, she made it to the gate for Munich first. She couldn’t remember the exact gate number I had told her and went to gate B16 instead of gate B18. There were passengers lining up to get on the flight and mom asked if it was the plane to Prague. The woman behind the desk asked her if she was going to Munich. My mom responded, “I don’t know. We might be going through Munich, but we are going to Prague.” The woman responded, “Madam, you cannot get on a plane if you don’t know where you are going.” She then explained where mom needed to go, and she made her way to the correct gate.

Ava didn’t sleep on the ride from Amsterdam to Prague, but I think my mom did. I talked to the nice lady next to me while I tried to maintain some sort of sanity despite the sleep deprivation and overwhelming excitement. We landed in Prague on time, changed money, used the WC, and found the driver hired by the university.

Apparently, the university had not explained to the driver that he would be transporting three women and their international luggage because he brought a very small car and was obviously overwhelmed by the size of our 5 suitcases. He was covered in sweat by the time he had arranged everything. I had to sit slightly sideways in my seat with no seatbelt to fit in the car, but was excited to be traveling the final leg of the journey. Ava slept the whole drive, which was a little over an hour. I kept seeing signs that noted the number of kilometers until Prague, but converting kilometers to miles in my head was abnormally difficult due to being so tired. The driver spoke broken English and had me guessing the names of American movies and television shows that he enjoys. He would describe them or mispronounce the title, and I would decode this for his enjoyment. Who knew that they watched American Loggers and Deadliest Catch in the Czech Republic? All in all, it was good fun and it offered us a chance to see the countryside.

We were greeted at our apartment building by a woman wearing a big smile. Let me tell you all, Olga is wonderful! She worked out the apartment for us, helped us take our bags to our room, and then took us out for lunch. She’s super duper and I hope that I get to know her better before we leave. I will add here a little note about lunch. It was delicious! The soups that mom and I had were very good. I also had stuffed potato dumplings and really liked them. Unfortunately, very few restaurants have English menus and they do not contain photos of the food either. So it would be a real guessing game if Olga weren’t there. Before the food came, Ava asked to use the bathroom. So, I got directions to the bathroom and we walked all the way down a long hallway to find a bathroom. I saw a whole wall of urinals and thought it was strange to have a unisex set up that way, but figured that maybe things were just a bit more open in Europe (Yeah, it was the men’s room.) There were two stalls with doors, so Ava went in one and I went in the other. Just as I noticed that the toilet paper was recycled, Ava yelled out, “Mom, the toilet paper it dirty!” I had a good chuckle and explained from my stall that it was recycled and ok to use. On the way back to the table, she saw that there was a big, black dog lying down in the middle of the restaurant. When we got back to the table, she told mom that there was a wolf in the restaurant, and we all had a good laugh.

Olga also arranged for me to take part in some sort of buddy system they have set up here for foreign students (yeah, I’m a foreign student here). I told her that I would like to sleep for a few hours before going anywhere else, and that my “buddy” could come to the apartment around 6 p.m. This would allow me to sleep for four solid hours.

Unfortunately, Ava had other plans. She went completely Nutter Butters when mom and I tried to take a short nap. So I gave up in the idea, taking a shower to try to wake myself up instead. When I had asked if the buddy would be a student, Olga couldn’t say for sure. I figured (wrongly) that the guy would have a car. So, I donned my heels and some dress clothes. Raddick was wearing comfortable walking shoes and jeans. He walked Ava and me to a big shopping center and we bought a lot of hangers and another converter for the outlets and then walked back. My feet were killing me and Ava was crying most of the way home about being tired. I tried not to be frustrated with her, because these are a lot of changes for her to deal with overnight. We took the bus back to the apartment, which was my first time using the bus here. It was 15 Kc, which is less than 10 cents! The buses are very clean and frequently used.

It’s now 9:35 p.m., and I have not slept in 34 hours. I’m starting to fall asleep as I type. I won’t receive the code for the wireless internet until Monday, so I will post everything then. Of course, I will be typing everything up this weekend, and hope to skype or facetime with some of you once I am connected. Good night everyone!

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Photos

The Last Supper
Ava had some soup while waiting for our friends to arrive to our final Goodbye dinner.

Mickey and Ava
Kim, Her mom Mickey, Lauryn, Zac, Evelyn, and JingJing came to say goodbye to us the evening before our flight.

Lauryn and Zac
I know this is not the last time I will see these two!

We will miss you!
Chatting away about idle things and knowing I will keep in touch.