More classes...also more rain

Back to classes today. We had Czech language first thing in the morning. Like I said earlier, I really like this language. To the point that I’m thinking about seeing if there are Czech classes I can take at OSU. It seems like some people are really having trouble with it and don’t like it at all, but so far I haven’t found it that difficult. Then again, we’re only learning basic things like “What is your name?” (Jak se jmenuješ?), “Where are you from?” (Odkud jsi?), and “I don’t speak Czech” (nemluvim česky). We also had more Agricultural Economic Development, which was nearly impossible to sit through. Some of it was interesting, for example we covered a little bit of agricultural history and talked about Justus von Liebig, who introduced artificial fertilizers to agriculture. But for the most part I just focused on not falling asleep.

The other two classes today were both on Czech history, land, and people with Voráček. I think he’s my favorite professor here. Possibly my favorite professor ever. Today he talked about the Czech Republic (mostly Bohemia) in the Middle Ages. We learned about Wenceslas, who was never a king except in the Christmas Carol. He was the man who sort of united the Czech tribes and made peace with their Germanic neighbors since there were more of them than there were Czechs. I don’t know why, but I find this so much more interesting than I ever found American History, but I thought the same thing when learning the history of England last year. We also learned a bit about Charles IV, who was Wenceslas’ (Czech name Vaćlav) son, and became the Holy Roman Emperor. It was a really neat story, because he started to gain power by marrying four times, getting land as a wedding gift for each marriage, then he was offered the kingship of Germany because the nearby rulers were threatened by him. The same general concept applied to the Pope in Rome, and he coronated Charles as the Holy Roman Emperor. Professor Voráček spent a bit of time talking about Jan Hus as well. I learned a bit about him in History winter quarter, but only in the capacity of religion. Here he’s a celebrated figure and even has his own national holiday (July 6th) because he took on some of the corruption in the church following Charles’ death. He was eventually burned at the stake by the Catholic Church because he refused to apologize for criticizing its practices.

A bit of a random aside on one of Voráček’s lectures: he mentioned that in the Middle Ages wars were like sports and international sport has taken the place of them in modern times. He used the comparison of Canada versus the Czech Republic in ice hockey, then started talking about Jaromir Jagr. Though he kept talking about the time he spent with the New York Rangers, and only mentioned Pittsburgh in passing. Which reminds me! Not that this is important in any way whatsoever, but one of the girls here from OSU is also a hockey fan, but her team’s Detroit. She was talking to one of the Czechs yesterday about how Pittsburgh shouldn’t have won the Cup, they only did because Detroit was injured (never mind Gonchar playing with a torn MCL, or Letang’s supposedly significant injury, or Sykora’s broken foot, or Zigomanis being out, y’know, those aren’t important), Crosby’s overrated and Ovechkin’s so much better (…really I had to leave so I didn’t get into an argument), and how Crosby wouldn’t shake Zetterberg’s hand after the game (1. It was Lidstrom, not Zetterberg. 2. Draper was the one complaining, so I wouldn’t put too much stock into it since it wasn’t Lidstrom making the comment to the media. 3. It was after the kid just won his first Stanley Cup and became the youngest captain to ever win…he’s not allowed to celebrate for 30 seconds before shaking hands? It’s not his fault Lidstrom left the ice early and it wasn’t an intentional snub, so leave it alone). Sorry to go off on that little rant, but the person I usually talk to about these things is roughly 4,300 miles away right now so I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

It’s been raining again today, so I’m not going out to do anything. Actually I need to stay in and get some reading done, work on my topics for my papers, do my Czech homework, and do a bit of laundry. Fun times! I was talking to the girls from Kansas State today, and they said they wanted to go to Rome on our extended weekend, and one of the other kids from OSU said they might be interested, too, so I’m going to look into that a bit more. I think it would be nice to see, and it’s really nice that there’s a group of people who want to go. Feel free to write me emails or send texts, I’d love to hear back from home since the six hour time difference kind of prevents talking in real time.

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Part of trip: CFAES Study Abroad - Czech Republic

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