xin xao

the weather has been crazy lately--very cold and rainy and snowing...

i've been mostly working this week on my independent study project with the Vietnamese community. Having realized that my work at Vietnamese market places is tricky due to language barriers (most of the people my age working there have come very recently from Vietnam and don't speak English or sometimes, much Czech, and I definitely don't speak Vietnamese) I'm going to be trying to interview people directly from universities. Today I have an interview with Chris Nguyen, who came to the Czech Republic from Vietnam in the early 80's to study sculpture and Tibetan Buddhism and now runs "Maly Buddha," a pan-Asian restaurant near the castle. He is trilingual and a very interesting person and may have connections to other people for me to speak with as well. i've been reading a bunch of books about vietnamese history and culture and trying to pick up a few key Vietnamese phrases here and there.

i went to a Swedish jazz concert at the Lucerna music bar on wednesday night in the building that Vaclav Havel's grandfather built. it was the Esbjorn Svensson Trio and they were great.

i can't recommend the puppet films of Jiri Trnka enough. rent one of his movies if you can. they are seriously magical.

sometimes i get stereotypes of americans thrown into my face and it's nice when i can prove them to be wrong, like no, actually not all americans are ignorant of world events and history and geography, and we have problems just like everybody else, and we're not always "superficially polite" but rather sometimes GENUINELY polite.

my host mother said "you've lost weight, it must be my kitchen," and of course she was joking, but i don't know, the Czech lifestyle is pretty healthy (i mean unless you are hitting the pubs every night and eating lots of smazeny syr) with lots of grains and a lot less preservatives/packaged food and walking everywhere.

Czech music I would recommend:
Gothart
V+W (oldies but goodies)
Yellow Sisters
Jiri Korn (ridiculous but hilarious)
Plastic People of the Universe (a necessity)
Mordors Gang