Wondeful Weekend

Sitting in my living room in the middle of Prague.  Windows open - enjoying the last couple hours of peace and quiet.  My roommates have all been gone for the weekend and I have been enjoying the time on my own.

Went to the Trafo Gallery on Saturday for the remnants of the NAMES Festival.  Street artists from around the world were invited to Prague to create installations on (and in) buildings around the city.  Felt strangely familiar with this piece:

EAMES!

The Solar Do-Nothing Machine

One of my professors happens to be a curator at the Museum of Decorative Arts here in Prague, and this afternoon she took us behind the scenes of the Eames exhibit that opens there tonight. 

Charles and Ray Eames pined by the bases of their furniture

It was amazing!  How wonderful to view a furniture exhibit with a furniture expert!

LCW chair

We also had the opportunity to hear a lecture given by the Eames' grandson who now works with the family business - 0f course I took the opportunity.  He spoke very candidly about life with his grandparents and their approach to design.  So inspiring to see images and here stories of these two creating together.

More from CZ

Czechs love wafer snacks and I am very thankful for that.  Think of those orange, pink and brown wafer packs that we used to get as kids - and then think of them "all grown up".  Hazelnut are my favorite.

My father was here this weekend.  So nice to have family in town.  He was very lucky to be here on the nicest weekend we've had in the last few weeks.  The weather has been very rainy and cold, but the sun was shining this weekend.  We mostly just spent the time wandering around finding whatever it is that we could find.  We happened upon this:

They pee quotes from various well known Prague residents.  Right in front of the Kafka museum.  

Mushy Brains

Spent the weekend in Pavla's village.  It was nice to get away from things before school started.  Her ma made us some delicious traditional Czech dishes, including this delight:

Really really thick mashed potatoes.  One plain, one with cheese and (of course) one with powdered sugar and poppy seeds.

Spent some time with Pavla's granny and granddad.  The two sweetest Czech's you'll ever meet:

Both are in their 80's.  Lived through some crazy times.  If you don't know much about 20th century Czech history - it's worth looking into.  There's been a lot going on here in the last 100 years.

Granny tried to speak some English with us.  She learned a bit when she was real young, but when the communist era came around that was the end of English.  That she remembered any is remarkable.  She speaks German very well and was quite surprised when I was able to respond to her.

When we weren't busy eating, we were busy hiking.  That's how Czech people stay so thin.  They eat gravy, dumplings and potatoes with sugar for every meal - and then they go climb a mountain.  I've got the eating part down.  I still need to work on the whole mountain climbing thing.  They make it look so easy.

"Some News Good, Some News Bad"

Today was the last day of our intensive Czech class - I'm very glad to see the end of it.  We've been sitting in a classroom all day for the last two weeks, with just one day off.  And it has come to an end.  We did, however, have the best teacher in the program, Jana Cerna, and today we said goodbye.

We went the whole two weeks thinking that she would be our Czech teacher for our whole semester in CZ, but she found out yesterday that she will be unable to teach us due to scheduling conflicts.  When she broke the news to us, she told us how we were the best class she's ever had and she's enjoyed her time with us more than any other class (that's my own interpretation anway - her English can be difficult to understand).  As she was explaining the situation to us, she started crying and naturally, in a classroom with nine girls that love Jana Cerna, we started crying as well.

She promised to come visit us.

Stomping Grounds

Allow me to introduce you to my neighborhood.  Friends, meet Vinohrady.

New Neighbs

I think my neighbors are hiding form me.  I've only seen one woman that lives in my building and she's a bug-eyed old lady with the most adorable dog.  Everyone has a dog here.  

If you like pork and gravy, Prague is the place to be.  They call it "Candle Sauce" . . . ?

I started learning Czech yesterday.  If you'd like a challenge, I dare you to try it.  

I've been tired every minute since I got here.  I fell asleep in the airport while I was waiting for other flights to get in and woke up to these two young Czech men standing over me, laughing.  I'm glad they thought it was funny.