All About Madeline.

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McDonald's ice cream cup and Madeline on metro. The other night liz, alice and I Headed into McDonalds, looking for Alberts, a grocery store, and because it was closed, liz purchased a kitkat McFlurry and I ordered a vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce like substance. Boy was that delicious. Boy was that nice. I placed my order to the guy behind the counter saying, Can I have a vanilla ice cream and he replied 'you can'. Boy did I think that was funny. We then met up with Lokke, Maoira, and Madeline (who had just eaten a large hot dog), and went on the metro. For some reason, I needed Madeline to hole my empty plastic McDonalds cup for a moment and when I handed it to her, she grabbed it and it shot right out of her hand because she was wearing mittens and squeezed the cup so it slipped right out. The cup landed on the floor of the metro, the spoon landed between some guys feet and I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. Madeline and I both lost it and I was bent over laughing. I looked up to see if others thought it was funny too, but my eyes came in contact with one man who just gave me a death like stare. It was still funny. Liz told us don't worry because we were getting off at the next stop, but really we had like four stops left. It was funny.

During our lunch break between our Intense Czech class, me, Denise, and Madeline decided to go to a little deli to get lunch. I had gone there the other day and got a roll of bread, cheese crackers, and chocolate cookies (the best thing ever). SoThis is a very tiny deli and there is one elderly-ish woman cashier working behind the counter. I went to go ring up my roll, cheese crackers, and cookies for the second day and she began to yell at us (in a funny way) that we should be eating healthy food. I really did not think she was going to let me buy my crackers or cookies because she was trying to tell us what to eat. She came out from around the counter and brought me to the yogurt section where she kept trying to hand me yogurts, but I kept saying 'I don't like that. I don't like that'. to which she mimicked me, 'I don't like that'. We were just all laughing and she was getting really upset in a funny way because she cared so much about us being healthy. She even pointed to her hair, eyes, and teeth and told me I needed to eat well to have a healthy body. When we were buying the food yesterday, Deli owner woman wouldn't let us buy unhealthy food

seeing movie with host parents- sitting through all the credits, man of the house got out of the car on the side of the highway type thing
Tonight my host parents and myself went to see Babel, the movie in the theater. It was pretty interesting although I did not understand all the parts because the parts spoken in Morrocan and Japanese had Czech subtitles instead of english ones. The rest of the movie was in english however. I felt bad that they had to read, while I just had to SIT BACK and RELAX.
It was so weird, when the movie ended, no one in the theater moved until ALL the credits/music was finished. It was so crazy to me.

01/24/08
Talk about getting lost. Today Madeline and myself got lost, very lost. Here is what happened. After our FAMU advising session, Madeline and I decided to take tram 17 along the river and to the bottom of our hill where we would catch the bus. I did this particular route once before (I usually take the metro) and Madeline has done it a few times. We are on the tram for a little while- and Karen (another homestay student who lives near us) gets off the bus. About three stops after that, Madeline and I realize things are not looking too familiar and we figure out we have gone too far and decide to get off the tram. There is a slight problem when we get off however, because we are on the other side of the tracks, and need to cross. I felt safer crossing the tracks when I saw other people do it. Madeline and I ran across the tracks and hopped over the poles that don't let you cross. I then heard sirens but they weren't for us. We get to the other side of the tracks and see a bus stop across the street so we decide to cross the street and wait for the bus, no matter what number it is. We notice the 253 comes by and though we do not recognize that number bus, we decide to get on because we thought, keyword, thought it would head back in our direction. Madeline ran about two blocks ahead just to make sure the road did not wind, but she could not tell anyway. So the bus comes and immediately after entering it, we realize we have made the wrong decision because the bus pulls into the "turn" lane to go up a hill, away from the area we want to go. Madeline and I begin to laugh, exchange glances, then realize the bus is getting onto some kind of highway taking us seemingly away from the city. We begin to laugh even more because there is really nothing we can do at this point. The bus gets off an exit and we get off the bus at the first stop. It is a somewhat sketchy neighborhood, and I am advised by Madeline to whip out my map. This does not help much because Madeline can only find the name of a place that "sounds" like the place we are looking for.

Suddenly, a man appears, in a maroon-ish suit (I think that is what he was wearing) and Madeline approaches him asking if he spoke english. "no"... deutch? "No". As we are walking away, I ask "METRO?" because that word is the same in English and Czech. The man lights up, as if he knows what we are talking about and begins to walk, motioning us to follow him. We start to and just at that moment, a bus pulls up and he tells us to get on it and we do. The next stop was the metro! How exciting that this angel of a man would help us and talk to us the same moment the bus arrived. It was truly a Christmas miracle. We ended up on the yellow line and needed to get to the red line C and had to travel all the way back to "Florenc" which is like 6 stops away from our home, so we ended up so far away and traveled an extra like hour and a half just to get home. I told Madeline that the two of us should not be allowed to travel anywhere together.

Funny: Madeline was telling me that she speaks German. I asked her if she spoke German fluently and she said "No". She told me her mother does not speak english and she only speaks German. Therefore I was like "How do you NOT know German fluently?!" She was talking about her host mother and I thought she was talking about her real mother. AHHHHH the miscommunications.

Also Madeline and myself thought it would be a good idea to dress in a grey grannies wig with a scarf, sunglasses, and a cane in order to get a seat on the metro.

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