Jewish Quarter in Prague

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Ugh! I’m tired. Tired from doing and taking the big world into a relatively small mind. We had another excellent breakfast at Hotel Aron (Muesli, Yogurt, coffee, sweet cakes, boiled eggs, and bread with jam). Mom still hasn’t given into the liverwurst. Then, we packed everything back into our bags and headed to Florenc Station. There main bus station building has a baggage room where you can pay $2.50/bag until midnight. The guy who works there seems to really hate his job, but he guarantees safety and that is really all we need. We gladly gave him our luggage and headed to the Prague’s Jewish Quarter. The Jewish Cemetery was easy to find. Buried there were people who lived in the ghetto all the way back to the 1800s. There was a special group of people who were responsible for burying all the dead. The museum next to the cemetery shows special plates and glasses these people received as a gift for doing this depressing job. The signs said that they had an annual banquet as well. There was one small lid that was silver and had four men carrying a body on a litter on the top. I asked Ava what she thought this might be, and she answered that it looked like a muffin tin. I had to have a laugh at that. When I think of burying people, muffins are not what come to mind.



While it was easy to find the Jewish Cemetery, it is NOT easy to find all the synagogues around it. After about 30 minutes of wandering with a map drawn by a definite sadist, I give up. I tell mom that I don’t care about seeing the synagogues anymore. To quote Lori, “I’m so over this!”



She asked what I do want to do. The truth is, I really want a nice tumbler that I can use for my tea on the way to school in the morning. And more specifically, I want one that says Prague on it. I know there is a Starbucks on the other side of the Charles Bridge and mom says that there were some really nice tumblers there. Ava and I decide to cross the bridge in search of a winner tumbler while Mom goes in search of some food. Ava and I had a great walk across the bridge and made it to Starbucks in no time. They did have tumblers, but not a single one had Prague written on it. I decide that I’m not going to buy one because, although they are nice tumblers, they aren’t what I want. Instead, we grabbed some really yummy pita sandwiches from the shop across from Starbucks and head back over the bridge, munching as we go. This time, no spankings were needed, because Ava was as good as gold. It was a nice little walk and we chatted a bit as we passed by the various booths and street performers.



When we met back up with mom, she had a pizza box. Apparently, they had given her an entire pizza and not provided any plates or forks or napkins. We headed back to Florenc Station, got our bags, and found our way to the subway platform. I thought we were in the clear, but mom said she had to go to the bathroom. There were two police officers standing on the platform, so mom asked them where to find the nearest bathroom. The officers had an in-depth discussion (in Czech) that lasted about 2 minutes. They decided that they didn’t know where to find a bathroom anywhere in Prague (or at least it seemed that way). I told mom to go outside the station and use the McDonald’s bathroom while we waiting with the luggage. This was successful and we arrive at the station to catch our bus home with about 30 minutes to spare.





Ava made me take her to the bathroom twice while we waited for the bus. I had to pay 5kc (25 cents) each time and an elderly lady gave me a specific amount of toilet paper that I could have based on that fee. That is one thing that a person visiting Prague may want to put in their budget. It is very possible to spend $10/day just using the bathrooms.



Luckily, we arrived home without incident. Ava and mom crashed quickly. Meanwhile, I “stayed up” until 9 to finish these blog posts for all of you. I hope that you enjoy them almost as much as we enjoyed our weekend.



I can’t believe that tomorrow is Monday! It’s my first full week of teaching for my practicum. I will work with Jane’s 9^th grade on Monday and try my hand at using wikis for class projects. I’m pretty excited/nervous about it and hope that it goes well. I think that being able to watch their fellow classmates speak will really help them hear and perhaps overcome some of their pronunciation issues. This sort of thing gives me goosebumps because I am really using what I learned during graduate school. I will also take Ava with me on Monday as a sort of test run. Mom has done a great job watching her, but Ava really has a knack for taking advantage of her “grandma” status. I hope that it will work for Ava to be in a classroom situation where she is not the student. Please pray for all involved that this is a success.

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Photos

Ava and Swoop
Catching the Final Subway before going home