Fri 10/14/2005 11:04 AM

Hi everyone!

It is a friday afternoon right now, this weekend I am staying in Prague but next weekend I am going to Kutna Hora (a small town in the far away czech republic for the weekend.) I will most definitely have a lot to say about that later. Everything is wonderful here. Last night I went to two concerts. The first one was a saxophone and piano concert. It was kinda a mix between classical, contemporary and cheesy jazz. I had so much fun. First of all, it was sold out months in advance, but because the company I am interning with threw the show I got to go for FREE, and they even reserved PERFECT center row seats. I felt so special. We got there and there were no seats left so I went and found Jiri (czech for george) and asked him if i could sit anywhere that was open and he was like "nooo....we reserved seats for you." It was really funny because I helped make the program that afternoon and I got really excited because some pieces I really liked were on it. They laughed at me, but it was fun seeing my English on the program the same day I worked on it. Then the second concert was Frantisek's quartet. It was at a place i have been before...U Maleho Glena (the little glen) and it just happened to be a 2 minute walk away from the church that the first concert was in, go figure. So i scooted out of the first concert and rushed on over to the little glen with my friend just in time to catch the second song of the first set. It was great, I really know all of their tunes by now so I feel special. I went with my friend who is an OOOBER jazz player. It was fun to listen to her talk about the different players and the messages they were sending out.

Today I woke up early and practiced all day and I have to head home soon because me, katrina and a couple other people are going to see the ballet Swan Lake. I think other than the nutcracker when I was 5 years old, this will be my first ballet. And I better like it because I am going to see a ballet of Cinderella on sunday. Did I mention that the tickets for tonight were 30Kc...roughly translated that is $1.50. Yeah, I love it here. I have definitely been following through on my goal to see something musical once a week, it is completely wonderful.

Hmm....what else? Oh yeah, I have a random list of stange/wonderful things here that I have been writing down when I think of them so I wanted to add that.

1. the KFCs!!! There are KFCs on EVERY corner. Really....every corner. And they are packed allll times of the day, even at 9am. All I know is that they don't even have biscuits so I don't see what is so special about them.

2. ALL men here wear teva sandals. I am really not a big fan on them in the first place, but now that it is cold.....they still wear them! They just add a nice pair of wool socks. I'm not quite sure what is wrong with shoes that cover your whole foot for the winter. But teevas are the thing here.

3. Between the hours of 10pm-6am is a time known as QUIET TIME. You can get arrested for being noisy anywhere in Prague it is between those times. Police have had to come to our dorm a couple of times this past month. It is strange and hard to get used to. It is a fact that Americans are loud. No matter where I am standing...indoors, outdoors, on the metro.....I can always hear an american before I can see one. Because of this I try so hard to speak softly, but I just cant do it compared to the czech people.

4. There are 7 cases in the czech language. One of them is called vocative and what it means is that when you call me to get my attention from across the room by name changes to Emmo, Katrina to Katrino. Isn't that strange? Names ending in a consonant stay the same, and the rule for Male names is different as well.

5. When I order something in czech, because I definitely can, they always answer me in English, it is very frustrating! and...ice cream is spelled zmrzlina, I bet you can't pronounce it...but i can :)

6. The most wonderful late night food in the world = smazeny syr = fried cheese. I know right off the bat I should be repulsed by it, but the best way to describe it would be to say that it is a giant mozzarella stick on a fresh baguette. They have tarter sauce, ketchup, mustard or mayonnaise as a topping as well. And this sandwich costs again, 30Kc.

That my list for now. I uploaded all my pics from amsterdam, vienna and more from prague with my friends and everything so if you are curious feel free to take a look. I still don't have Internet in my room, every time that someone asks we just get told "Oh yeah...next week." But it hasn't really been a problem.

Oh yeah!! Nicole is coming to visit me on Halloween weekend, and Leah is coming with some friends the weekend after, and then the weekend after that I am going to ITALY. I bought my plane tickets and I have it all planned out. I am going to be spending

1 night in Venice, then i am heading over to Bologna for 3 nights I think, then Chinquaterra (I think that is how you spell it) for 1 night, then florence 2 nights and then Rome for the remainder of the trip. Everything is coming so quickly!!! I can't believe how long I have been here for. And ask me anything in czech, I know know verbs and I can conjugate them as well.

We have been having wonderful weather here. No rain for as long as I can remember, but I just finished captioning all of my pictures and I am very behind schedule so I must go. I hope that everyone is doing well at home and abroad.

Emma