Quite A Grand Adventure: A Sunday Afternoon

Prague is beautiful. I wake up in the morning and look out my window and see city and trees. I don't know if I'm looking north, east, south, or west, but it really doesn't matter. Every building is old and beautiful, and from my window at the pension on top of the hill, with fog settled down inside the buildings, it looks as though the world end when the city does. I wish I could take a picture that fully captured the view.

Today is Sunday. We've slept in and are planning to go grocery shopping and then kill the afternoon at the Institute until church in the evening. We take our time getting ready for the day and then finally load up and start walking towards our tram station, which, by the way, is called Jiriho z Podebrad (say that five times fast). We stare at the Baby Tower while we walk. We don't know what it's really called or what it really is, but we've affectionately named it the Baby Tower. It's this very modern looking tower a few blocks away that has massive babies crawling up the sides. Super creepy. I'll try to get a picture this week.

We ride the tram just like normal to Mustek station. As we're coming up the escalators we get trapped inside a group of Czech students who are all dressed up to go... somewhere. They start speaking English a little bit and then all of a sudden begin singing “Staying Alive.” The one guy in the group works the falsetto portions. It was pretty impressive. We didn't talk to them, but we laughed. I don't know if they were making a scene because we were American or just because they could. Maybe a combination.

There's a small grocery store called Albert that's inside the Mustek tram station. Anna and I swing by on the way to the Institute to grab the necessities – bread, meat, cheese, pasta, and Nutella in a little glass jar. I've never seen such fancy Nutella before. We stroll by the American candy on the way to checkout and see three different types of KitKat bars: traditional, crunchy (which I've only seen on occasion in the State vending machines), and “KitKat Senses.” It has extra filling. I'm pretty sure it's hazelnut. We snag a couple to try later.

It's 13:30 and the Institute doesn't open for another hour. We go to Costa Coffee, order hot chocolate, and occupy an upstairs table until it's time to leave. The second floor of Costa Coffee is where we spent our whole afternoon yesterday. For a chain coffee shop, it's really nice. And all of the old architecture of the city means we've got a great view, even if we're only staring at the buildings across the street. I try my nifty KitKat. It is indeed hazelnut filling. It's just okay.

views from Costa Coffee

We leave at 14:28 and walk three minutes to the Institute, passing the pizza place with a hotdog on the sign, the street market with the laughing witches (dolls, not people), and the man who is gold and standing like a statue. We've seen them all over the city, and even though I know exactly what they are it never fails to weird me out a little bit when they start moving or talking.

I head up to my studio and have a semi-successful Skype session with my parents (with a brief hello from Mrs. Freeman), then about ten of us head out to church at Faith Community, a little congregation that meets in an old train station in Praha 6. Getting there is a bit of an adventure, as none of us have been to that part of the city yet. We finally make it without ever really getting lost, although we did take the longer route. We receive quite the warm welcome and stay a few minutes late to meet and talk to people. I find out that many are teachers, and I meet two or three who know Kate Parker (my old 8^th grade teacher) from the Christian International School of Prague. That's pretty cool. Small world, right?

After church it's just dinner and Institute, working on sketches and trying to find inspiration for this flower costume project. I make some fabric flowers and partially drape my mannequin, so that's kinda cool. Mostly we're just hanging out and killing time because the Institute closes at 21:30 and there's no wifi at the pension, so if we want internet and other human contact, we have to stay put.

little flowers!

Eventually it's time to close the doors, so we hop the tram back to Jiriho z Podebrad and call it a night.

So that's what my Sunday looked like. Most other days have been about the same, aside from spending a little less time bumming in coffee shops and a little more time in classes at the Institute. This weekend we go to Cesky Krumlov Friday night for some student bonding time. Fingers crossed for snow...