Hair cuts and shopping

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We have been here for a month. So, one month of the 5 and 3/4’s that we are staying has already passed. We have certainly experienced a lot. We have done a lot of work. We have made some good new friends and we hope to make a lot more. It has been fun.

The day is dawning without any snow falling. Odd... The sun was shining into the cafeteria. We get to eat undisturbed very often in the morning. Not that others disturb us, we enjoy eating and talking, but there is NO one in the cafeteria when we get there most days. That is doubly true on Saturday and Sunday when the students are still fast asleep while we are eating. The cafeteria opens at 7:30 and we have been awake since 6:20 or 6:30 most days. That gives us plenty of time to shower, dress, poke around watching the weather report, etc. Then at 7:30 we are starving! Some of the time we hear showers running as we pass rooms on the way to the cafeteria. There are three or four young master’s students who are in the cafeteria early most weekdays. But the rest of our world is sleeping later than we two. We also go to bed before others we are quite sure. Lifelong habits are not easily broken. Breakfast on Saturdays are just like the rest of the week except they serve hotdogs in addition to the regular fare. Billy actually ate one this morning. I don’t know why. I ate a bowl of cereal with yogurt, a really tasty bread thing. It is a baked sweet bread of some type stuffed with poppy seeds or cheese or walnuts or marmalade depending on the day. I think it was poppy seeds or raisins today. It was dark and tasty and ground too fine to be certain. I had orange juice and green tea with a little lemon in it. I, illegally since the sign says “Carry no food out of the cafeteria”, made myself a sandwich for supper. That way we don’t have to worry about cooking and messing with all that. The rolls are very good and I add tomato and lettuce in the room. Other students eat two sandwiches, sweet breads, yogurt, cereal, coffee, juice, ham and cheese and on and on. I also ate like that for two weeks and then realized there was going to be a problem with zipping my slacks. I have calmed down now to a normal sized breakfast. But how I miss my oatmeal. I think I will try to find some in a store and have it for supper once in a while. It is my ‘soul’ food.

My foot feels mildly better today. I want to go downtown. I guess I will learn after an hour or so if I need to come back and rest it some more. It doesn’t seem to like walking for several hours at a time like I enjoy since the injury. We will dress warmly, get our tickets and head out in a while. If there is an adventure, you will be among the first to know of it.

I miss chapel on Saturdays. That is the only day without church services of some type. We have had a good week of prayer disciplines. Our leader this week used each day for a different kind of prayer/meditation discipline. We enjoyed each one very much but it made us homesick for our group on Thursdays who do very similar things. It is always good to be in a group sharing prayer together. Whether intercessory, lecto divino, examine or whatever having a community of believers together seeking God and praying is a wonderful experience.

The weeks of intensive classes are over and the seminary is back to its normal schedule. The library is now closed on Saturday. This is our first Saturday with nothing on our schedule and that means we have time to go downtown to shop and just look around.

Busses, trams and the subway run on an abbreviated schedule on weekends. Someone told us there is no public transportation at all on Sunday. I asked a person who lives here if that is true and they said, “No, there is public transportation on Sunday.” Also the cheapest tickets, 12 Kc or about 50 cents, that are good for one hour during the week are good for ninety minutes on the weekend and on weekday nights.

I bought a map of the city our first Saturday here. On the back is an excellent map showing the routes of all the trams. Nancy said she wanted to go to a shopping center that is located downtown. I checked the map and discovered that we can ride the Jeneralka bus one stop and then catch the No. 20 tram. The No. 20 tram will take us all the way downtown and makes a stop right in front of the large shopping center. We could go by the subway, but that involves making a transfer and probably would take more time than simply riding the tram. Also, the tram stays above ground and we will see parts of the city we have not seen before.

We got off the tram at the Andel stop, this is where the shopping center is located. There are a number of stores, including a fair sized grocery store here. We toured the grocery store. This was Nancy’s first visit to a grocery here in Prague and she liked what she saw ... especially that we can buy oatmeal here. She has really missed her oatmeal for breakfast. We then walked along the street and discovered a large three level shopping mall. By this time it was almost one o’clock and we were hungry. Located on the top level of the mall are a number of fast food and not so fast food restaurants and five movie theaters. Walking from restaurant to restaurant we settled on one that specializes in Thai and Mexican food. Nancy ordered a Thai shrimp soup and I ordered chicken fajita, which I shared with Nancy. Both dishes were excellent.

Before we went to the upper level I stopped and took a picture. A young security guard walked up quickly saying, “No photos! No photos!”

I have no idea why they do not want people taking pictures inside the shopping mall. Later I saw a large sign at the entrance of a store on which was written “No Photos.”

Nancy noticed the waitress who served us had a very nice looking short haircut the way she likes her hair done. After we ate she approached the young woman and ask, “Is there a place here where I can get a haircut?”

“Whoa,” she responded, “my English isn’t that good. What do you want?”

Nancy spoke her English words but accompanied them with ASL. The very clear signs of that question made the English clear. The young woman smiled and pointing down with her hand said, “Two floors up ..... oh, down. They do very good haircuts there.”

We made our way to the second floor down, which is the ground floor, and found the styling salon. We both got haircuts. Nancy’s is quite good. the young woman who did mine stopped often and checked with me to see if she was cutting my hair as I wanted it cut. I repeatedly showed her I wanted it shorter here, more off there, etc. She was very careful, and as a result, I am well pleased with my new haircut. I really enjoyed the Czech shampoo. She shampooed my hair before cutting it with a rich very pleasant feeling shampoo. She massaged my head slowly and gently, rinsed that off and did the whole thing over again. Then after my haircut she shampooed it twice again. Definitely there were no stray hairs down my clothes or the back of my neck. I didn’t see the color of the shampoo they used on me, but I did see Bill’s shampoo as I went back to get my blow dry. They had a purple shampoo of the type that makes white hair shine. Not a ‘blue rinse’ but one of those that really makes your white hair lovely. He looks really good today with his hair fairly glowing. We were amused to see the Czech men with VERY short hair cuts having their hair blow dried so it would stand up. Not a flattering look in my opinion. It wasn’t an American or European punk style just a short of weird hair sticking up look. There is a definite difference in European haircuts and American. Hard to define the difference but easy to notice it. Girls with straight hair don’t seem to use the same style of cutting we do at home at all. We need to make more pictures and send them to you. The Czech Republic has a lot of very attractive women. This particular seminary does too. In fact, if we didn’t know the selection criteria for Masters and Ph.D. studies were quite strong here, we might think the women on campus had won a beauty contest and had been enrolled on the basis of beauty. It is nice to be surrounded by both beauty and brains (not to mention friendliness and warmth).

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Photos

No photos
This is the mall where, after taking this picture, a security guard rushed up saying, "No photos, no photos."

St. Vitus in the snow
High on the hill St. Vitus cathedral as viewed from the Charles Bridge. We have snow, and more is on the way.

Frozen Certovka (the Devil
Frozen Certovka (the Devil's Stream on Kampa island. The island is really a very nice section of the Little Quarter in Prague

Snowy Charles Bridge
Even with cold weather and snow tourists flock to the Charles Bridge.

Yes, it is cold in Prague
Another view from the Charles Bridge.

Comments

[anonymous]

Nancy...hope the Advil gets to you soon for your foot's sake. Enjoying the journal and photos! Sharing with Doris! - Joyce Miller