“Day one” = January 15-17

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(I’m sorry I haven’t been able to post this blog before now, but I have no internet in my Czech apartment.)

Today was probably the longest day of my life, which makes sense because it was really two days that only a few crazy people like myself seem to think counted as a single day. Anyway, today began with my not-so-astute decision to simply not go to bed the night before my trip, since the airport shuttle was coming at 5 am and I’d be up that late normally anyway. (Round 1 - Insomnia: 1, Ahuva: 0)

A couple hours before sunrise, I left the house with a surprising dearth of tears or other sentimental displays and arrived at the Sacramento airport around 6 am. I chatted up a few friends and relatives while sitting at my gate and then flew to LAX. I got to LAX around 9:15, went to Southwest’s baggage claim, found my luggage, and proceeded to look like a deranged fool while dragging my luggage, by foot rather than shuttle, to the international section because, hey I had time, right? Well, eventually I gave up because I didn’t know where I was going. My flight was run by Lufthansa but booked through United, so I didn’t know whether to go to the United International section (yes, that exists) or Lufthansa itself. After much confusion and a few phone calls, I found out that I was supposed to go to Lufthansa to check in. So, I get on a shuttle, which was surprisingly difficult given the number of different types of shuttles that all stop at the same pick-up spots and, of course, my inability to properly wield my 100 + pounds of luggage. Apparently I looked like a goldfish trying to move a cruise ship, so some guys on the shuttle leapt up to my rescue. Thanks, guys. You know, it’s only because of you folks that I still have all of my limbs.

After a long while, I finally got my luggage checked in and myself through security only to find that there were no restaurants on this side of security. Rather than go through it again, I went to this stand and bought a hot dog without the meat, which some people might call “a bun.” Mmmm, lunch. Then I sat in the airport for hours because my flight to Frankfurt was delayed until 4 pm. I chatted up some folks again, tried to get wireless at the airport, failed, and played Tetris to consol myself. About an hour or so before boarding, I spotted this guy at the gate who I realized was someone on my trip. Eventually I went over to introduce myself, and we took a little walk around the terminal because there were no two empty, adjacent seats. This guy’s name is Joel. We have a lot in common, so I imagine/hope that we will become pretty good friends over the course of this trip.

The flight to Germany went pretty smoothly. I was really thirsty and so tired from not sleeping. But for some reason, I just can’t sleep on airplanes for more than an hour or two. So, I watched Hairspray with John Travolta and listened to Lufthansa’s international music channel for most of the 10-hour flight. I also talked with this girl in my row who was going to Italy from her small hometown in New Zealand.

Apparently sometime during my two hour nap, I clepto-ed some guy’s sweater. I’m not sure how I stole his clothes in my sleep, but I did. This guy (I couldn’t tell which European country he was from) who was sitting in front of me, randomly turns around, pokes me, and says with a heavy accent, “I am losing my jacket.” I assume he means “missing,” so I look under my seat and find a squishy travel pillow that doesn’t belong to me. I hand the pillow to him, and he smiles. I think he’s content with that because he turns back to facing the front of the plane. But then he turns around again and says stuff like, “Jacket? Jacket. Like sweater. Sweater!” about seven times. So I look to the empty seat at my side, and lo and behold, there is a man’s sweater. I have no idea how it got there, but I handed it to him, and he stopped bugging me. Yay.


My flight from Germany to Prague took off about 10 minutes after we landed in Germany. I’m surprised that Joel and I caught the flight, but somehow knew in my heart of hearts that our luggage would never make it. It was only a 45-minute flight from Frankfurt to Prague, shorter than the flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles. It’s so weird that all of these countries are so close to one another! But anyway, when we got to Prague, we found out that our luggage wasn’t there and wouldn’t arrive for many hours. So, we went through customs easily and met up with this CET guy named Jiri (pronounced like Yeer zhee) and another girl who was on our flight (Kathryn, she’s from Dallas). Jiri gets us a taxi, and we drive off to the apartment in which we’ll be living for four months.

I wanted to nap when we got to the apartment, but I couldn’t fall asleep for the life of me. I was so tired that I wasn’t tired anymore. It’s kind of like fasting. If you can just beat the occasional waves of hunger, you feel like you can fast for days. Well, since I couldn’t sleep, I explored the apartment, which is surprisingly big. Both guys have their own bedrooms. The three girls are sharing two rooms. One girl, Deena, has her own room; while another girl Jessie and I are sharing the other bedroom. Jessie wasn’t here when I arrived, so I started re-arranging the furniture because the set up made no sense and because I was so sleep-deprived that it seemed like the cool thing to do. Because I was the last one to get here, I got stuck with the little bed in the corner. It’s about a twin size, while my roommate has a bed about twice as big. I don’t really need a big bed, but it did bother me that I got the short end of the stick just because my flight got in later. Sniffle, sniffle. Woe to me. All right, I’m done complaining. I’m not even going to complain about the cold, mainly because the weather hasn’t been that bad so far. I was even okay without thermal underwear—as long as I had my puffy down coat.

Anyway… after re-arranging furniture, I went out with Joel to find an ATM and buy a card with minutes for our rented cell phones, which were conveniently in the apartment already. I tried to nap after that, and failed again. So I stayed up until around 5 pm, when we all went downstairs to meet Jiri for dinner. We walked a distance and took two tram thingies (tram thingies = approximate translation from the proper Czech terminology) to a pizza place where lots of other CET people were. (There are several programs besides the Jewish Studies one I’m on, which only has seven people.) I was trying so hard to stay awake and be a functional human being. It was working well at first, so I successfully talked with Suzanne, a Czech grad student studying counter-terrorism, while waiting for pizza. But I soon became overwhelmingly dizzy with exhaustion. I really felt like I was on acid or something, experiencing my own little world of intense colors and such from the candle-lit pizzeria. I just wanted to go back to the apartment and sleep, but we went and walked around town a little in the dark. We saw a couple of beautiful things, like Wenceslas Square. And then we went back to our apartments.

I felt really gross from all that traveling and wanted to shower so badly, but I had no clothes to change into because my luggage still wasn’t here. Finally, around 9 pm the buzzer rang, which Joel and I recognized as a sign that our luggage was probably here. I still had my shoes on, but Joel was wearing only socks on his feet. He left the apartment like that, thinking it’d only be a few steps to where our luggage was outside the building. But the guy at the bottom of the stairs took us all the way around the block to where he was parked and gave us our luggage there. I was so happy to be reunited with my luggage—especially after hearing that it took over a month for one person to get their luggage back. So, I happily schlepped my 100 pounds of luggage up to the 4 and a half-th floor where our apartment is. I found my shower stuff, showered, unpacked most of my clothes and finally collapsed on the bed. One day. And it was good.

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