12 November, Thursday.
After just a few days back in Rome, it was already time to jet around the world again—almost. I went to class in the morning and took a nap with Thuy in the student lounge during lunch, then suffered through someone trying to disprove William of Ockham, and Conty, in Mystics. Impossible. With a slice of half-finished pizza, I rushed to my Italian test, which was ridiculous as usual. Then, Genie and I literally ran most of the way home to pack and grab Katie, Adrian, and Cindy. We lost Cindy on the train and managed to grab her just before Termini, where we caught a bus to the airport, populated by other JCU kids also coincidentally going to Prague. Genie’s hair gel exploded in her bag so she, Adrian, Katie, and I added some texture to our hair in the security line before rushing to our flight. The plane was short and before long we were in Prague, surrounded by Czech signs. After picking up our koruna, the local currency set at something like 250 koruna to 10 euro (not as great a rate as it seems, when a bottle of water is 80 koruna), we hopped on a bus that we thought went to the city center.
Fail. The bus dropped us off at a metro station somewhere on the outskirts of the city. The other JCU kids, armed with their hostel map, headed off onto the streets, while we went to the metro station and headed to the main station. A man there who spoke little English told us what train we needed and we took it, only to find ourselves more lost than ever. After a frightening race across the six lane highway, we stopped at a gas station for water and hopefully directions. Just as we were going to give up and return to the metro, we ran into a young Accident Assistance worker named Jiri (yirzhi) gassing up his car. We offered us a lift and, desperate and exhausted now that it was almost two in the morning, we squished into his car. He wanted know why we possibly wanted to come to Prague, what we thought about Obama, and whether his English was alright. We finally reached the hostel several hours after we had planned. Jiri dropped us off and told us that his job was to find accidents and get help for the people involved. We thanked him and checked into our hostel, where we got our own six person room for the eight person price—score!—from a long-haired Czech guy for just 500 koruna, or 20 euro. The room was awesome and we were so exhausted that we went right to sleep.
