funniest thing this week

this afternoon, drew, marie and i went for a walk to a place around i.p. pavlova to pick up tickets for our "disco tram" ride next wednesday. (i know... what the fuck is that? more later).

we took the scenic route down what has to be the most beautiful street in prague. nice houses and blossoming trees everywhere. the weather is perfect today (FINALLY. for god's sake, it's been cold since september.) as we walked, we passed a group of gypsy children, i'd say with an average age of 9.5. for a while they were close behind us but, as we were walking at a faster rate, we ended up walking about 20 feet ahead of them.

a few minutes later, a rock hits the back of my leg. i say to the girls, "did those kids just throw a rock at me?" to which marie replied, "no, that was me. sorry. i kicked it with my boot."

fair enough. then, a few more minutes later, we hear the thud of a water bottle hitting the ground a foot or two behind us. then, minutes later, again. just as i began to wonder aloud if the kids were trying to hit us, the water bottle in question hit me on the side of the head! i turned around and the kids were running to hide.

i think one of the girls suggested i "go get them," but that begs the question, what could i have done? i can't reprimand them as they probably speak czech (or if they were indeed gypsies, i guess romanian or whatever language it is that gypsies speak) and i don't.

i felt that they should not go unpunished, but i didn't know what to do. i guess you can't hit other people's children, right? there were probably more gypsy children nearby, and they are ruthless. so any confrontation and i would have got much more than i was prepared to handle. next thing you know, instead of just a bump on my head i've got a knife would to deal with and no health insurance. so we just walked away.

PS, just to be clear, i mean no offense to gypsies. kids, in general, are jerks.

new developments

it's been almost two weeks since my last post so i'm mostly doing this to get myself some momentum back. spoiler alert: all of the following might be boring.

-sergio has left the country. he is back in austin, tx, drinking dr. pepper and watching the spurs. this is sad because, not only is sergio really cool, but he was one of our only guy friends here. i'm used to being surrounded by at least one guy friend for each girl friend i have, and that's not been the case since someone up there decided we should have 22 girls and 2 boys in our TEFL class. don't get me wrong, i love all the girls i've met... but sometimes you need some testosterone. it changes the whole dynamic. and the great thing about sergio was that he wasn't just "drew's boyfriend." he was friends with us, too.

-drew is leaving on may 19. late last saturday night, whilst we sipped on a 120 crown gin and tonic together, we cooked up a scheme to save us both rent. drew will leave her lease early and move into my room for the weeks between may 1st and the 19th. this is interesting because if you've seen my room you know i only have one bed. it is a double, but drew and i will essentially be spooning for three straight weeks. i think it'll be a little interesting, but mostly fun. it'll be kinda like having a three-week sleepover. when i lived with anthony, we had platonic sleepovers pretty much every night, and i miss it.

-i want to inventory all the books i've read since i've been in prague. this might take time.

-i want to go somewhere. berlin maybe.

-i'm conjuring up a pretty sweet trip for july. more info later.\

bye!

payday is thursday

i've only got enough crowns to do one of the following: put credits on my phone or buy deodorant.

which is the better alternative: ignoring my friends' calls and texts or pushing them away more passively with my stench?

i bet you look good on the dance floor*

one of the first things i want to know about someone is what kind of music they like. in the long run this doesn't "matter**" -- i'm not going to prejudge the quality of the friendship on whether the person prefers ryan adams or bryan adams.

however, it does serve two important purposes: if you have favorite bands in common it gives you an automatic conversation topic until you know the person well enough that you have better things to talk about, and if their taste in music differs, it's like you just got free reign on a record store. you remember when we were kids, and nickelodeon (i can't remember if it was a specific game show or just something they gave away for no good reason) would bestow upon some lucky kids the chance to run through toys r us for five minutes? and whatever toys they collected in their carts, they could keep?

meeting people with different music tastes is like that. not in the sense that it's like free music, but that they can say "hey, i think you'd really like this band." and maybe you'd have had no excuse to listen to this band before, or maybe it is an obscure band that you wouldn't have discovered without their help.

i will always have jeff robb to thank for introducing me to the decemberists. i will have the combination of alicia's discovery on myspace, jocelyn's ownership of the album, and pete's taking me to his show at mr smalls for my love of the DJ girl talk. a former coworker, blockbuster steve, introduced me to dashboard confessional. mxpx will always be connected to my high school crush, ian.

and nick i can thank for english rock.

allow me to sidetrack for a minute. you know how certain smells, sounds, places, etc. will indelibly connect themselves to a certain memory? then, everytime you hear or smell or see that thing, that memory will come back to you more forcibly than any time you sit and try to think about it independently? off the top of my head i can think of these examples:

-clinique "happy" perfume will always remind me of the holiday dance in 9th grade, which i attended with adam bishop.
-the song "i'm real" by j.lo, remixed with ja rule, will always remind me of driving to work at blockbuster in the summer of 2002.
-the song "bandages" by hot hot heat will always remind me of the period of time, in 2003-04, when i commuted to school (especially because there is a sound in that song which is identical to the sound a 2003 saturn ion makes when it is low on gas).
-the band "city and colour" reminds me of driving through kansas in june 2006.

and so on. typically, these kind of associations don't happen automatically. i didn't think "okay, from now on, every time i smell this perfume, i'm going to think back on my first boyfriend and how i borrowed a purple dress from my neighbor to wear to this dance, and that he brought me flowers and we had an awkward photo session in front of our tiny, fake christmas tree in my living room and that three months later adam broke up with me, probably because i told him i wouldn't have sex with him." it happened last summer when i was coming around the corner in the offices of marcus and shapira, and bernadette, dan shapira's secretary, had just sprayed that perfume and bam - i felt like i was 14 again. this was years later.

and thats how it usually goes. however, i've noticed that this process has sped up considerably since i've been in prague. already, certain sounds and smells are triggering memories that happened only, at most, three months ago. i stepped into the staff room at the bell school the other day and immediately felt uneasy and anxious, as if being there reminded me of something bad. i don't remember any particularly traumatic experiences taking place there, other than maybe being vastly underprepared for lessons. also, the other day i sprayed my perfume and felt nostalgic, although now i can't remember for what. i'm not sure i felt it for anything specific, but isn't that a bit weird? it was a memory of nothing, but i could pinpoint the time to sometime in the last few months. it doesn't make any sense, i know.

now back to music. i've met loads of new people here and i've been fortunate enough to be given/steal music from them. most notably, by the virtue of mixtapes and shared ipods, i've been introduced by nick to english rock bands (the verve, the libertines, babyshambles, pulp, etc.). this is not music i would have sought out on my own, but i love it.

this music will always be prague to me. and it's already reminding me of prague days gone by. i can't explain this accelerated nostalgia, but a few years from now, songs like "albion" and "supersonic" will remind me of december 2007; of watching movies, going to pubs, hanging out in riegrovy sady, drinking gambrinus, watching dogs cum on each others backs (okay that was february, but you get the point).






*arctic monkeys

**chuck klosterman wrote an interesting column on this for esquire. in fact, for almost any topic, chuck has probably written something profound and hilarious. here's that article: me, on shuffle

lamenting the passing of the blockbuster era

i think there comes a point in everyone's life where you stop acknowledging the arrival of new technology. you refuse to become part of this new technology community and simultaneously become ultra-nostalgic for bygone or moribund technologies. i think this usually happens when you're an "adult" which i guess is anywhere between the age of 18 to 45 (so, unspecific.) i guess it's different for everyone. also, it's not necessarily universal at first; you may balk at certain advancements and embrace others.

for example, my mom has no idea how to use a computer. she knows the internet exists and sees how it could benefit her life, but only at the hands of others. last week i mentioned that i wanted "all the pretty horses" on DVD, and she said she had looked for it but didn't see it at the store. she said "well i could go to barnes and noble and have them order it." then i suggested i could have amazon.com deliver it to her house, then she could mail it to me (since, even though it's 2008*, amazon.com does not deliver worldwide.) she reacted as though this made sense but was not an option she would consider. "i'll just see if i can find it."

also, last christmas i bought her an ipod shuffle. i loaded a bunch of her CDs on her computer then filled up the shuffle with songs she wanted. she began using it at work and said she really loved it; so much that for her birthday, dale (her boyfriend) bought her another one because she wanted to have two song-set options. so, she's embracing technology, but not fully enough to realize that she could drag and drop new songs and in about three minutes have a new playlist on her original ipod. although try explaining that to someone who doesn't know the meaning of the words "drag" "drop" or "playlist."

ANYWAY, i like to consider myself "young" and "hip" and "up with the technology of the time," but i realized recently that i am already falling victim to "technology freeze." i am 23 years old and already becoming stodgy. in fact it started 5 years ago when i worked at blockbuster.

blockbuster first opened in 1985 (nerd alert. but we had to learn all of this stuff during orientation). i began working there in late summer 2001; i'd say at that point blockbuster had just hit or was just coming down from it's heyday. to give you a benchmark, this was just about the last time you could rent a movie in your choice of DVD or VHS. (by the way, who the hell else misses VHS tapes? i see no advantage to DVDs. all my DVDs are scratched. VHS tapes were indestructible. and you could always find the exact place in the movie you left off.) now, blockbuster is all but dead. 9 or 10 blockbuster stores closed in pittsburgh about two years ago; the blockbuster i used to work at in hempfield plaza is now a mattress store.

blockbuster is all but dead, and why? netflix. and ondemand. and itunes. no one wants to leave their house to go rent a movie that, for the same price, can be delivered to their living room with the press of a button.

i suppose this is logical; however, i find it depressing. i think there's something lost when you're deprived of "a trip to blockbuster." this used to be a favorite past time of my father, brother and i; almost every weekend we'd get in the car, drive to the same blockbuster where i'd later work, rent two or three of the latest releases on VHS - sometimes he'd even spring for the over-priced, tooth-rotting snacks lining the check-out.

and what's more fun than going with a significant other and spending the better part of an hour arguing about the movie that you'll end up making out through the last half of anyway? this is an especially fun experience on a first date. suddenly a simple consumer transaction can have make-or-break status on the relationship. your cinematic tastes are on display; you're under intense pressure to make an impressive decision. frankly, it renders me helpless. i play the "non-decision maker," which can be equally as damaging. no one wants to date a waffler.

but who wants this situation?

"okay, let's watch a movie. what do you want to watch?"
"well, i just got braveheart in the mail today. and charlie and the chocolate factory has been sitting on top of the tv for three weeks now. so, you pick..."

the point is, going to rent a movie is as much of the experience as actually watching it. and yeah, right now i suppose you still have a choice; if you enjoy that, you can still go down to blockbuster instead of using netflix. but it won't be that way for long. netflix is running blockbuster into the ground. one day you won't have this choice anymore, and that day will be sad.

maybe the people it affects most won't notice; i suppose that i'm not exactly feeling bereaved over the loss of the drive-in movie the way that generations before me are. so maybe my children will not even notice. they won't even ask me if they can rent movies anymore; we'll probably have a robot like in "bicentennial man" that handles all of those kind of problems while i am busy taking a nap. but maybe, when they hit their mid-twenties, movies will be sent via telepathy directly to your brain, and they will wax nostalgic about the days when you had to sit down and actually press buttons on a remote control to watch a movie.






*i like to use the phrase, "come on, it is 200_ (insert current year)" to express my dismay that certain inconveniences still occur, like the inability to have things from american websites delivered to europe without paying exorbitant postage. also, i feel it is far enough in the future that i shouldn't have to:

-wait 3 minutes for a page on internet to load, ever, no matter what kind of internet connection i'm using.
-wrestle with my ipod earphones EVERY TIME i take it out of my purse to use it.
-take the lid off and stick my hand in the back of a toilet to flush it.

killing yourself to live (again)

do you ever get to a point when you're tired of reading? i was at that point yesterday. i was stranded in the middle of "something happened," by joseph heller. it's well-written, interesting - i want to be absorbed in it, but for some reason i just can't get there.

i've found this year that without owning a tv and without having any real hobbies, i have a lot of spare time. i am one of those people that, when left with extra time and very little responsibility, chooses to nap. as perfect as this life sounds (30 or so hour work week and bars everywhere with very cheap beer), i often get bored. my roommates and i have resorted to card and dice games, but you can only spend so much time playing rummy before the thought of trying to find the six to complete a five-six-seven run in spades makes you want to stab your eyes out.

so i sleep a lot, probably more than i should, which when you wake up having wasted an entire afternoon in bed does nothing but induce a feeling of guilt. given all this time i should be developing some skill, or at least (the english major in me contends) reading.

but i read in waves and sometimes i just don't have it in me. there will be weeks when i finish a book every two days, then a month when i laboriously cover about 10 pages a day, if i'm lucky. i'm there now. i find myself zoning out through entire pages of "something happened," and reading them with little regard to what actually happens. reading this book has become less about enjoying it or getting any intellectual satisfaction and more about setting a landspeed record for number of pages per minute.

until today i was saved. i've discovered by observing books left on the desk in the teacher's office that john, a new guy at dino elementary, has excellent taste in literature. and by excellent i mean nearly perfectly aligned with mine. first he had "chuck klosterman IV." then "extremely loud and incredibly close," by jonathan safran foer. i don't know what else john has up his sleeve, but i want to. also, today he was hunched over his laptop, downloading an entire season of "america's next top model." he seems perfect.

he mentioned that he'd read "killing yourself to live," which is probably the best of klosterman's four nonfiction books to date. i've read it twice, both times completed in one or maybe two sittings spanning a few hours. i asked to borrow it, and in my third reading i think i've found the reading spark i needed.

in about an hour today i've already "read" 71 pages; i use the word read hesitantly, because it almost doesn't seem like reading. it's like having a conversation with someone you find endlessly interesting, who you'd listen to talk for hours on end without hoping to get a word in yourself and be pretty okay with it.

if i could write a book, in a perfect world it would sound just like "killing yourself to live," though if i ever attempted to mimic klosterman i would fail, as i am neither as witty or clever as he. that and i have yet to adopt an affinity for adverbs like "soul-crushingly."

if you are unfamiliar, "killing yourself to live" is klosterman's documentation of a roadtrip he took a few years ago working as a staff writer for Spin Magazine. He spent a few weeks and covered over 6500 miles visiting places in america where famous musicians had died. though this propels the plot and gives us a reason for following him on this epic trip, it's not really the most interesting part of the book.

klosterman gets away with, if not succeeds at making interesting, what every writer secretly wants to do - talk about themselves to a captive audience. i probably know more about chuck klosterman than some of the people i actually know in real life that i count among my friends. and though it seems like that would be maybe the most boring book ever, it's not.

so i'll probably tear through it and you should, too. and if you ever get the chance to see mr. klosterman read at a major book retailer in your hometown, don't forget to bring your copy of his book to autograph.

(what were we thinking?)

people you (want to) know go to chateau

the great thing about the czech republic is that it's completely acceptable to go to the bar on major holidays. in fact i think it's encouraged.

after a few minutes of confusion caused by the changing of the clocks (apparently it's next week), anna and i got back an hour we thought we'd lost. we decided to take advantage and see what our friends were up to.

turns out we don't have many friends, or they were just not up to anything. until marie and amanda agreed to meet us at chateau. almost simultaneously, anna and lori's italian friend stephano agreed to meet us there as well.

so on a blustery (american) easter evening (the czech's traditionally observe a non-religious holiday on the monday after easter), we set out with the goal to maybe get tipsy but definitely end up at mcdonald's when the night was through, regardless of inebriation levels.

chateau is one of those places that you either love or hate. it's full name is "chateau l'enfer rouge" and, as the italians later explained, the upstairs is considered the "chateau" and downstairs considred "l'enfer rouge" or "the red hell." which is about right. it's always crowded with expats. upstairs it's your typical college-type bar. order drinks at the bar, try to find a table but usually end up standing, get hit on by random drunk dudes.

our first encounter, minutes after we got our beers, was with mitch. it went like this:

"hey, do you speak english?"
"yeah."
"cool! are you american?"
"yes."
"awesome! it's great to see some friendly american faces."
"yeah. how long have you been in prague?"
"oh, two days."

apparently mitch just couldn't stand being away from his countrymen. we talked to him for a few minutes before he was distracted by a phone call and never returned (guess we're pretty charming). we learned that he and his friends chose prague for spring break because "it's cheap - not on the euro."

next was the one-two punch of a guy from nigeria whose name i didn't catch and gary from kent, england. i got stuck with gary, who spent the whole conversation using his witty, biting sarcasm to make feel inadequate. two tidbits:

"where are you from?"
"england." (said like it's something that should be obvious.)
"yeah but where at?"
"kent. do you know where that is?"
"no, not exactly."
rolls his eyes.

like my brain has a world atlas built in? imagine if i asked him if he knew where scranton was. goodluck with that one, dude.

gary is a med student, five years in, so like most longtime residents of prague, he's bitter about almost anything. he "hates chateau" and "got dragged out." but then he named the bars he preferred - m1, bombay, harley's -- which are all just like chateau, as in they're crowded and full of expats.

"do you like tretter's?" (note: it's a swanky cocktail bar.)
"no, a little too fancy for me."
"oh, so you're one of those down to earth girls?"
what do you say to that? "uh, i guess..."
"i know. this whole red hooded sweatshirt thing is a facade."

i explained that yeah, i'm really high maintenance, i just dress in a sweatshirt and ripped jeans to go to the bar to throw everyone for a loop. i then explained that we were going to find our friends.

"so i'll see you in ten minutes, right?"

which is true. you really can't avoid anyone in chateau. on any given night, everyone you don't really want to run into in prague is at chateau. we ran into one of my coworker's russian friends, lori and anna's ex-roommate john (who is probably not too happy with the way things ended), and "tefl jen," a former teacher trainer at TEFL worldwide who's scathing lesson observation assessments left a bad taste in our mouths.

all in all though, chateau is not as bad as i used to think. you actually end up talking to people (even though they might be creepy dudes) as opposed to sitting around a table with people you already know, which is a nice change of pace.

on the way home we stopped at mcdonalds. to anna's dismay, you cannot order a swiss king sandwich (which includes bacon AND a slab of fried cheese). as we were enjoying our food, we watched a group of 19 year old brits get kicked out for being too belligerent. considering it's a 24 hour mcdonald's in wenceslas square - probably one of the more difficult places in the world to be ejected from - being tossed out was quite an accomplishment for them.

anyway, happy easter!

an evening at the movies

isn't it always the way that just as you're feeling pretty good about living in europe, you get thrown a curveball deep from the heart of america.

the preview was in czech but that theme song was impossible to mistake.

new indiana jones movie!

i literally gasped.

i have not anticipated a movie so anxiously since my friends and i stuffed ourselves into a packed theater to see a midnight showing of lord of the rings: return of the king.




(i need to get a hobby.)

someone got too high in amsterdam

so, i don't make a habit of smoking pot.

every once in a while i'll get into the spirit. last february i purchased my first and only eighth from one of my coworkers. i suppose i'll leave out names in case my partner in crime doesn't want his or her illegal activities published on the interwebs, but my "friend" and i decided to smoke one evening in my apartment.

there's nothing more hilarious than watching two people who've never smoked on their own before figure out how to do it it. i ended up balancing my cell phone on my shoulder while my (three-years) younger brother instructed me, step-by-step, how to roll a joint. so much for being the older, wiser sister.

after crouching on my bed near open window, wondering aloud if i was "doing it right," we got high. and then i layed on my bed ate two or three bags of microwave popcorn while my concomitant sat in the other room, typing furiously at the computer. at least i think so - i couldn't be bothered to find out. i was too busy thinking thoughts like "this popcorn makes different sounds depending on which teeth i chew it with."

and that was the last time i was high. i avoid it, mostly to avoid the embarassment that comes with being the newbie. i always need coached, or need someone else to light the bong while i try to coordinate inhaling with releasing my finger from the little hold, or whatever it is you're supposed to do.

but this weekend, in amsterdam, i figured... when in rome, right?

the six of us collected at a coffeeshop at about 8:30 saturday night. we parked ourselves at a table where two dutch were already seated, and they passed us what appeared to be a community bong. identifying that as an option with questionalbe safety, we purchased a joint.

leading up to this, i desperately wanted to eat some sort of muffin as opposed to smoke. i figured i could get high while avoiding the inevitable embarassment of attempting to smoke. the coffeeshop was out, so i settled for the joint being passed around.

i took a few hits and after 10 minutes or so hadn't felt anything. something seemed amiss. so in my crucial mistake of the night, i spoke up and confessed "i don't think i'm doing this right."

then came the onslaught of coaching. exhale first! hold it in! if you breathe out smoke, it worked! it was nice, i suppose - i didn't feel embarassed. in fact i felt emboldened. so when someone suggested i take an extra hit or two "just to be safe," i did.

the next thing i remember, i was outside. still sitting on my chair, exactly as before, all my friends circled around me in what seemed like the same order they'd been sitting in seconds before. it seemed like someone had rolled up the background of inside like a classroom map and rolled down one with a picture of the outside in its place. a bleach-blond gentleman whom i'd never met was handing me three huge, white tablets.

"eat these, they'll make you feel better."

isn't that what guys say to girls just before they try to date rape them?

at first, no one would really tell me what was going on. just that everything was okay and that i should eat the tablets. sugar tablets, apparently, not giant roofies. so i started sucking on one and it made me feel terrible. i was hot but the blond gentleman insisted that i put a jacket on.

so here's what happened (as i was told): i remember all of a sudden feeling very high. i wanted to get up to use the bathroom but thought pretty confidently that i wouldn't be able to walk the 5 feet between there and my seat. i leaned my head on my hand, which drew the attention of my friends (as i seemed to be lapsing into my usual state when under the influence of any sort of drug - sleepiness.) as i listened to pleas to "make it a happy high," i tried to comply but instead fainted.

apparently i went forward first, putting my forehead on the table, arms dangling at my sides. my friends thought i was joking, and the friend to my right nudged me so as to persuade me to sit up. i did, but not on purpose - and slumped back in my chair, mouth open, eyes closed, white as a sheet. that's when everyone panicked.

my five friends went five directions to seek help, and finally the bartender (the nice bleach blond gentleman with the pills) picked me up, chair and all, and took me outside. i was out for about four minutes.

so my fears of looking like a novice were verified. i got so high that my blood sugar dropped (something that allegedly happens quite often, even to large men with much more body mass than me), and i passed out in a coffee shop in amsterdam, the smoking capital of the world.

enough to make me not want to smoke for quite a while. that, and the terrible four hours i spent coming down from that high, of which about fifteen minutes were pleasant. i was in "funny" high mode, sitting in my chair outside the coffeeshop, wrapped in my coat and someone else's pashmina, from about 9:30 to 9:45. i was fed crackers, trying to muster up enough confidence in the ability of my legs to hold my weight, and for that time it was fun.

i convinced my friends that if the cracker was too small, i shouldn't eat it because i would bite my fingers off. "teeth are sharp," i told them. then i described the scene from batman where the penguin bites off someones nose.

"like mike tyson and evander holyfield," someone added.

"yeah! hey, if mike tyson had a mini-me, its name would be "tyke myson," i said.

so after nearly scaring everyone to death, at least i was able to entertain them nonsensical statements about popular culture. and smart ass remarks.

"hey," i said to the bartender, "do you think if i bit my fingers off, that would raise my blood sugar?"

amsterdam

amsterdam was wonderful. i expected it to be dirty and seedy and altogether uninhabitable, but it was the opposite. it's clean. it's cozy. the people are in good spirits and ride bikes everywhere. and, dutch is way easier than czech.

we were on approximately hour 1.5 of our bike tour when i realized that i could probably live in amsterdam forever. i can't put my finger on why, just like i can't picture why i liked boston so much when i first visited, but it might have had to do with the weather.

it's unfortunate that opinions of places have to do with something so uncontrollable, but if it's pleasant outside (60-70 degrees F) it seems to be perfect weather to fall in love with a place.

since i've been back to prague i've been trying to find a way to move to amsterdam. it's almost impossible to teach english there (because most of the dutch speak better english than i do), but "mike" of mike's bike tours told us that holland and the US have some sort of agreement where they will grant visas as long as you invest a certain amount of money each year into a business (the figure is around $5000).

so i'm thinking, the dangling conversation in amsterdam? sounds perfect. plus i think in the two days i was in amsterdam i learned more dutch than i've learned czech in the 7 months i've been in prague.

so lace up your wooden shoes, let's move to holland.