Day Two...Slightly Delayed

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Last night was our opening ceremony, I guess you could call it. We went over to the restaurant we’ve been eating at on campus at seven and were introduced to the faculty. Then Dr. Johnson and the Resident Director from Mizzou talked a bit, and all of the students introduced themselves (both American and Czech…which was nice because none of us could remember some of their names). Once we were welcomed everyone had a shot of…well, I honestly have no idea what it was, but it burned and I thought it tasted like cinnamon and peppermint. Would have been a lot better without the peppermint. After that was dinner, then we all just hung out for a while and talked, and a lot of people did some drinking. It was nice.

Today started classes at the University. First off was a bit of introduction to the coursework by Vlasta. Right after he gave us some basic information Michal Lošt’ak started on an introduction to Rural Sociology. At least, what is loosely defined as rural sociology. I think. He really covered all kinds of things relating to sociology in general, how societies have changed over time, and we spent a good bit of time talking about why public executions were popular in the middle ages and why we no longer employ methods such as those. Dr. Johnson pointed out something interesting from that lecture when Michal said something about the use of invalid in the English language in reference to handicapped people. He said that this sort of plays on the fact that these people are not able to work and therefore not valid members of society. And I finally came to understand the phrase “have your cake and eat it too.” I know it sounds stupid, but really, I never quite got it. Now I get that it’s like you’re trying to keep your cake so you can have it later, but you want to eat it now. Yea, I didn’t get that before. I understood how the phrase was used, and the gist of what it meant, but it’s so much clearer now.

After Lošt’ak’s lecture we had an introduction to international studies with Jaroslav Voráček. He’s very funny, somewhere over 70 years old, and very interesting. He’s been at the university for 47 years and told us he’s one of the founders of this program. He seems to tell a lot of stories during class. Today he told us about meeting the Queen of England and asking her if she ever received a gift his grammar school had sent her years before. It was very entertaining. He also has an interesting accent. It’s more a combination of British and Czech than most of the others I’ve heard. Following Jaroslav was Vlasta’s lecture on the Czech Republic’s current economy. I honestly couldn’t tell you much about the lecture because I’m pretty sure I fell asleep. Vlasta’s very soft-spoken, I’m not terribly interested in economics, and I’ve only taken microeconomics, so I really didn’t know much about what he was talking about. All those things combined? That results in me sleeping through most of the lesson, despite my attempts to stay awake.

Lunch came after the economics lecture (not any too soon, I might add). It was at the restaurant on campus, as most of our meals are. We had chicken with pineapples and cheese, which was very good. I even ate some of the pineapple, which is a bit of an accomplishment!

The last class of the day was Czech Language with Michaela Peroutková. It was interesting. Today we mostly covered cognates and some of the accented letters (like č, š, and ). I’m discovering that Czech words are hard to pronounce. I really have to think about it and work at the word to get it to sound right. I guess it doesn’t help that I have problems rolling my Rs. We also got the books that we’ll be reading and reporting on. I got Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” which is nice because I’ve been wanting to read it for a while. Both of the other kids in my group are from OSU, so I’m hoping this presentation shouldn’t be too bad.

After class we got our “allowance” for the week, along with our passes for the sport center. I didn’t get one, though. Fun times. We had a tour of the sport center this afternoon. It’s small, but nice. I’m not really convinced I’ll be using it while here, but who knows. After the tour I actually got on the internet, but at the moment it only works in the entrance hall to the dormitory. Some of us went to dinner with two of the girls from Missouri; they were very nice and down to earth. Apart from that, today’s been relatively uneventful.

Still have a broken toilet, though the University knows about it. I’m keeping track of this.

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