Once situated on the plane, I watched a little TV but tried to just get as much sleep as possible. They served us dinner around 11pm eastern time and then breakfast around 4am eastern time, which was also about the same time we caught up to the sun. So, even for an expert sleeper such as myself, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep.
After the long flight, I arrived at London's Heathrow airport around 10am their time. The first thing I did was run to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Many others must have felt the same way, cuz there were a bunch of girls in there brushing their teeth as well. Then I used the bathroom real quick. Besides being the smallest toilet I've ever seen, you had to "wave on" in order to flush it. Silly Brits...
After my bathroom experience, my next goal was to find Jade, who is the other American going through the same program in Prague that I am. I was feeling very weird and lightheaded and probably not paying much attention to where I was going, and I ended up wandering around Gate 3 at Heathrow, which was where I had landed. However, after asking several people where the in heck I was supposed to be, I found out that I had to leave Gate 3 and take a bus over to Gate 5. (Side note: if you want to use one of those little golf cart things that help people who are old or handicapp, they are called a 'buggy'. It was funny hearing them say that.) I had no clue that Heathrow was that big. I think 5 O'Hare airports could fit inside Heathrow. Anyway, at this point, I figured that I had missed meeting Jade at the gate when she arrived and my only hope was that I would run into her waiting at our gate for our plane to Prague. I FINALLY see my flight listed on the screen and now I figured that all I would do was wait. About 5 minutes after I sat down, I hear over the loud speaker in a British accent, "Would Amy Dickinson please come to the British Airways customer service desk". I look around quisically, slowly gather my things and walk to the desk. There, Jade was waiting for me and she had me paged. Thank God she found me so now we could help each other. At this point, I had never met the girl before, we had just talked over facebook and email. I asked her how she was doing and she says not good and that she had been throwing up on the plane ride over from the states. Just as she finishes that statement, she starts heaving and she slaps her hand over her mouth to keep from projectile vomiting. I look around and point to a garbage can and tell her to run over there. While she is holding back puke, I ask this food place if they have a garbage bag....i mean rubbish bag according to the British....that I can have for her. So, they give me a bag for Jade. Then one of the workers points out where the rest rooms are and we race over to them just in time for the second round of puking. Once Jade had her stomach calmed down, we just sat and waited for our plane to board. This was a good time to talk and introduce ourselves with no puking involved. Finally, around 3pm our plane boarded and took off for Prague. Here is a picture showing all the planes ready to taxi at Heathrow
The flight was fairly short and we also jumped another time zone which landed us in Prague around 6pm. When we landed, I had no clue who was picking us up or how. I litterally thought that there might be a person waiting for us and holding a little sign with our names on it like on TV. Jade said that she found out the guys name was George, but that's all the information she had as well. We first come off the plane to the baggage claim and got all of our luggage. We each had 3 huge bags and a carry-on. Then, like 2 blind mice, we just start walking towards the exit hoping that someone was there to pick us up. Standing there with a piece of paper with our names on it was George! We quickly introduce ourselves and push our luggage out towards the curb where he is parked. He's a nice man who speaks english very well and he helps us load all of our stuff into his van. As we take off for our apartments, he starts explaining all sorts of things about Prague and where to go and how to do them. Since my brain was pretty fried by now, most of it went in one ear and out the other. Besides, I think I was too frightened by his driving. I honestly don't know how these people drive over here. Each lane is so small and compact it's amazing that cars can pass each other with out producing sparks. Anyways, we drive through Prague and over the main river and to our apartments, which ironicly are situated on the corner of America street and some other street I can't pronounce. As we are going up the street, he exlaims how excited he is that there is a parking spot and promptly swings the car over the curb and up onto the sidewalk. He helps us unload all our stuff, mumbling something about Americans and packing everything but the kitchen sink, and walks us to our building. Since these buildings are a million years old, they aren't really equipt for handicap people or anything. So, we had to lug our kitchen sinks up a couple small sets of skinny stairways. Each apartment is a bit bigger then I expected. It has a little kitchenette, a bed, a couple of desks, and a small bathroom.
After dumping our stuff off, George tells us that the people at AAU (our school) want us to come and talk to them tomorrow between 1 and 2pm. No letter, no email, just a message relayed through George. He then asked us if we had any Czech money, and when we both said we hadn't exchanged any money yet, he just gave us 1000 crowns (about $50) out of his pocket and told us we could pay him back when we had a chance. Then he said that there was a little store around the corner that we could get some food for the night. So, George left and we took our $50 and headed to the little store. Since nothing is in English, we just had to guess what we were getting by the pictures on the labels and the general apparence of things. I managed to get some pop, water, granola and yogurt. Since this is the easiest thing to spot, I have a feeling I'll be eating a lot of this.
After unpacking the little bit of groceries we had, we both just got around and tried to go to sleep since we were both exhausted.
Wednesday, May 26th
We both "attempted" to get up early, but neither one of us made it out of bed before 11am. We had just enough time to get around, eat a little, and then head toward the AAU campus so we could meet with the reception desk and find out what the heck we are supposed to do. Since we didn't know the subway (metro) system yet, I decided to walk. I think Jade was just about ready to kill me after I kept saying "we are almost there" about 1000 times. After following George's hand-drawn map on a piece of paper for an hour, we finally made it. The people there were really nice and they let us know about our classes and took us on a tour of the campus, which resides in several buildings just a few blocks from each other. This is the main office building where we meet for our Czech class and the streets and buildings nearby.
After finding out that we met for our first class the very next morning, we took the tram home, dumped off our stuff, ran back out to a bank just in time before it closed so that we could exchange some money and then jumped on the tram to this mall called Flora where a 'bigger' grocery store was called Albert's where we could get a few more items. I managed to get some meat that had the appearance of turkey and some cheese and bread. Which some of it is homemade right there in the store and put out in bins for you to get.
After our 2nd shopping trip, we came home, unpacked and collapsed to get ready for our first day of classes.
That is all for now, I'll update you further in a couple of days since I have to get to some homework right now and then collapse for the night. :)
Sorry if my spelling is bad. I just tried to do spell check, but since I am on a Czech server, it doesn't recognize any of my words and says that they are all misspelled.
