Naomi on the Go

walking the green line

2008-06-03T10:12:00.001-07:00



06:00	Leaving Jerusalem for Mt. Gilboa – the most northern part of the Green Line. During the trip explanations will be given and material will be distributed.

08:30-09:30	Breakfast overlooking the Green line by Kibbutz Mairav overlooking the Palestinian village of Jalboun

09:30-12:30	Walking along the Green Line and the Separation Wall overlooking the Palestinian village of Faqua and the gilboa forests.

12:30-14:30	Lunch (if raining we will travel to Um el-Fahem; otherwise we will picnic in the forest by Mt. Barkan on the Gilboa

14:30-16:30	Walking on the Green Line by Mt. HaGiborim until Sandalah

Evening	Driving to hotel in Nazareth. Evening meeting with politicians.

Day Two: Friday, May 30, 2008
07:00-07:30	Hotel check-out, pack equipment in the bus, and breakfast

07:30-11:00	Driving to Uhm al-Fahem – if visibility is good, we will go to the Sheikh Eskander lookout. Otherwise, we will travel directly to the Um Rechan Nature Reserve and walk to Barta'a.

11:00-11:30	Free time in the Barta'ah market

11:30-13:30	Lunch in the village and meeting the mayor.

13:30-14:00	Traveling to Baqa al-Gharbiyeh

14:00-15:30	Meeting with Israeli Jewish and Arab social justice NGO’s (Shatil)

15:30- 16:00	Walking along the Separation Wall between Baqa al-Gharbiyeh and Baqa al-Sharqiyeh

16:00-18:00	Traveling to Bil'in and meeting with activists.

18:00-19:00	Traveling to Bethlehem hotel check-in

20:00	Dinner in a Bedouin tent – meeting with Palestinian politicians

Day Three: Saturday, May 31, 2008
07:30-13:00	Walking from Batir to Wadi Fuqin - meeting with residents of Wadi Fuqin and neighboring Tzur Hadassah

13:00-14:00	Lunch in Jerusalem – meeting with Jerusalem experts

14:00- 17.00	Traveling to Abu Dies – walking along the wall, meeting in Al Quds University with staff and students

18:00-20:00	Dinner and meeting with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists

20:30	Returning to the hotel in Bethlehem. Summary discussion and farewell

Above was the itinerary. I put it there so I can remember what happened and thus be able to write about it. (there is also a webpage- walkthegreenline.org)
We had a group of 15 people overall, being joined by people here and there along the way. Our group consisted of Sue from Cleveland, who is active in Muslim-Jewish dialogue groups there, Jethro and Leo (father and son) from New York, Patrik from Sweden who is writing a book for teenagers on Israel, David from Boston with a daughter also named Naomi, Amoreena from Oregon who is interning with IPCRI (the organization) and living in Bethlehem for the summer, my friends Alyssa and Leah from my program, Riman and Hann'a from east Jerusalem, Gershon and his daughter Elisha, a journalist named Daniella from New Jersey and Scott from Iowa, a pastor. Along the way at various points we were joined by wounded Israeli soldiers, a Palestinian politician and professor, and an activist from Bil'in. We were in a million different places, and I saw most of the West Bank, which I had never really been to before. I saw Al-Quds University, the barrier wall, agriculture, villages, schools, social actions centers; ate the most delicious food and had hookah in the Bethlehem tent restaurant, thought and thought and thought some more. I played at the Al-Quds interactive science and math museums, tasted freshly grown zucchini from a resident of Wadi Fuqin, passed through many checkpoints, walked on Mt. Gilboa and looked out at the land, hiked, drove, took the Arab bus, talked, thought some more.

2008-05-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

i have learned many things,

about pitching tents and health insurance and all the different things to put on your pita,
about buses and how jerusalem stone is just SOOO last 2000 years ago,
about academic values and loneliness and independence,
about airports and national holidays and extended family,
about taxi drivers and prayers and exchange rates,

about myself,

i think it is time to go home,
at least for a little while,
and look at the bay while the sunlight shines,
and then again at night,

and breathe a little bit
and learn some more.

so i was in cairo

2008-05-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

yes, ladies and gentlemen, last weekend i was in, well, Cairo. Hamdul'lah!
After a mayhem-filled experience getting to the plane I finally boarded an Air Sinai flight where the flight attendants looked straight out of the 1950s. There was a crying baby on the flight and everyone banded together to calm the baby down and I was sitting next to a fascinating and friendly Palestinian woman and her daughter who was my age. They ran a theater in Ramallah and both of them were in university and they invited me to an Egyptian wedding (alas I didn't make it, but that would have been quite an experience). I arrived in Cairo around 1:30 in the afternoon and met up with Elie and after buying my visa we took a taxi back from Heliopolis, where the airport is, to his neighborhood. I can't really say it was in downtown because there really is no such thing. Cairo is HUGE. And when I say huge I mean it is one of the biggest cities in the world, both physically and population wise. There are tons of people and they are everywhere at all times. At 4 in the morning the traffic and people on the streets aren't quite as intense as they usually are, if that gives you any idea. We went to his apartment to put my stuff down and the boab (the doorman, every Cairo apartment building has one, they get paid 7 dollars a month by each tenant to drink tea and do nothing) was mightily confused by this white female presence (which got more hilarious with each day as the next day another girl was entering the building with us and the second day there was a 3rd girl so the boab probably thought Elie was running a harem; but it's Egypt). Both of us were feeling a bit hungry so I had my first taste of fuul falafel which was tasty and then we did the most Cairo ; we went to a cafe for tea and sheesha. The sheesha cafes are absolutely prolific. Every street you walk upon you can see men in either secular dress or a galabiya puffing away at their water pipe and imbibing a nice cup of tea or some fruit juice. (Remember it is a Muslim country, alcohol is technically verboten but that doesn't stop most people, you can buy cheap knock off brands in sketchy corner stores or go to a hotel if you can afford it. But mostly people drink a lot of tea and coffee.)
Following this we went to the Ibn Talun mosque. It's one of the biggest mosques in the world and it is in the Islamic part of Cairo. We took off our shoes and were promptly charged money for Allah but whatever, and then we went to the very top of the minaret. Getting up was extremely "Vertigo" but once we were at the top we had spectacular views of Cairo and the mosque is stunning. Then we walked through Islamic Cairo, through alleyways of the souq where everything is sold. In Cairo, there is a shop for every item one can imagine. There is the egg shop. Then there is the pickle shop. Then the chair shop. Then the roasted nut shop. And so on and so forth. Specialization to the MAX! I particularly liked the chair shop. This guy sits out in front of his shop weaving chairs all day. All shops are mostly open 24/7 (except during prayer times on Friday and such) probably because, like in Greece, no one really seems to work. It's a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern thing, what can I say. I would probably do the same, I suppose. Also many shops will have 5 or 6 people doing what one person could easily do. At one point we had to buy baby powder and this woman just followed us around, reading aloud the names of the baby powder brands.
We went over to Elie's friend's house where her boab taught me how to count to ten in Arabic. Arabic is somewhat similar to Hebrew so the numbers weren't too hard and I could pick up other words here and there. Mostly though my Arabic knowledge is limited to a vivid slew of Allah-related phrases and "no," "thank you", "where" and "yes." Then we all ate yummy food at a Yemeni restaurant where we were the only non Egyptians or Yemenites there. Clearly we were such an oddity that everyone stared at us the entire time and one guy even took our picture. (I particularly stood out a lot in Cairo in many parts often being the only white, secular girl around). And for such a delicious meal it was super cheap; being a foreigner in Egypt works in your favor in terms of the exchange rate. Later that night i got to see Makan, where Elie is shooting his film. It's a cultural center for traditional Egyptian music and it's a pretty cool place.

The next day we were planning to go to the Museum of Islamic Art but alas it was closed for renovations. But no matter. We went off to the Citadel. The first thing we saw there was the mosque of Mohammed Ali. (No, not the boxer!!) Again, another gorgeous mosque. Some woman put a cape over me because I guess I wasn't being modest enough. I love the shoe removal thing. I think every time I enter any building I would like to take my shoes off, but I don't think people would understand. There was another great view from the balcony outside the mosque; you could see the pyramids in the distance. Then we saw the Military Museum which aside from Prague's National Museum (funny in a different way) was the most hilarious museum I've ever seen in my life, mostly due to the English "translations" of things. We paid a stop at the most famous bazaar in the city and at one point in a rather surreal manner as we were walking through, buying chickpeas, suddenly we were the only foreigners for the rest of our market stroll. It was incredibly bizarre. The tourists literally disappeared; it was like some invisible wall had been crossed.

We met up with Elie's friend Aisha for some more sheesha and a delicious fruit shake. Fruit in Egypt is scrumptious, particularly the melons. Every street has a juice stand where they will make any fruit into juice. I tried sugarcane juice and really enjoyed it. Later on the other friend, Grace, joined us and we all went out to a fancy and scrumptious Indian meal. Luckily being Egypt, it wasn't very expensive and it was my first Indian meal this entire semester. YUM. After hanging out with Elie's friend Mahmoud, who was quite the character, we finally went to sleep.
We woke up earlyish the next morning because it was pyramid day. Getting there was quite the adventure. We took a taxi to the metro--taxis worldwide are always a crazy experience--then took the metro to Giza and walked to the pyramids at Giza. This year has definitely been a year of seeing all this architecture I have learned about my whole life and it's always very different to see something in person. It was a bit trippy to see the pyramids by that reasoning. We even went inside of one, Khufu's pyramid (I apologize to Elie because I know Khufu is some Anglicized pronunciation). Inside the pyramid it was cramped and humid. It was my favorite pyramid at Giza because of its white cap. The Sphinx was striking to see in person too. So many tourists though! It's funny, because though I am a tourist, I guess I never actually feel like one. The only time I really felt like a tourist was in Petra. Hmmm, something to contemplate.

Then we had another crazy adventure getting to Saqqara. First we walked the long path to where the microbuses go. (Yes, microbuses. No, not minibuses. MICRO. Yes.) Then we boarded a microbus. Ah, the madness of Egyptian driving. Ah, the Middle East. Allah u akbar. I love it. Eventually we got somewhere that pointed to Saqqara. The drive was beautiful, filled with agricultural landscapes and plenty of donkeys. (Seeing donkeys, camels and horses walk in the streets is now incredibly non-exotic in my eyes.) We ended up walking two miles or so to the Saqqara site and finally made it to the step pyramid. Gorgeous! I actually liked it better than Giza. We went inside 2 tombs, one with old style hieroglyphics and pictures which was very cool to see. The other was the Titi Pyramid. Unfortunately, I am still too immature not to laugh about its name, but it was also fun to see. The sand was like sand on the beach. I like pyramids. Elie and I talked about how concerned the ancient Egyptians were with the afterlife and compared it to modern religions today. Jews-not concerned, Christians-concerned, Muslims-concerned, Eastern religious a different story altogether. There were a lot of good conversations about religion, definitely a topic thrust into my face all year.

After some bargaining and further escapades we made it back to Elie's apartment and rested a bit, had some more cafe time with Aisha and went to do the koshari thing. Koshari is Egypt's unofficial national dish, sort of like falafel in Israel. Koshari is lentils, chickpeas, pasta, fried onions and tomato sauce mixed together and you can put chilli oil and lemon juice on it too. Filling and cheap. We ended the weekend with felucca, which is ingenious. A felucca is a small catamaran you rent with some other people and go out on the Nile. It's about 40 pounds overall for an hour, which is basically renting a boat for 7 dollars total. It's very chill and relaxing and seeing Cairo at night was great. Our boat driver blasted the usual Arabic pop music and we shared our drinks and snacks with him and just had a nice time. Though Cairo is loud and polluted and insane, I really liked it a lot and it was great to spend quality time with a good friend and be in another country. I was sad to leave, but that's always a nice indicator of time well spent. Salaam and good night.

greece is the word and matzah is everywhere

2008-04-23T03:44:00.000-07:00

More details on Greece, then. Basically when in Athens I really did get to see (and know) the city. The central part of it is small enough to be highly navigable. I have gone from the girl who got lost all the time and couldn't read the map to showing up in a brand new city and taking buses and walking everywhere and it all just working out all right. Athens, though maybe not the most aesthetically pleasing city, does have a lot of character to it. Athenians like to go out drinking and partying at night in the Psyrri district and the men spend hours in front of the kafeneios (coffee houses), talking and smoking and drinking coffee. There are lots of museums and we can't forget the Acropolis and the Agora and lots of Roman ruins in between. The Plaka district was pretty touristy but still quaint and adorable. I did really enjoy the taverna thing; eating platters of mezzedes washed down by the house wines that come in large wooden barrels. Everyone I interacted with was very friendly, something I've definitely learned to appreciate as a traveler. It was really nice spending time with Rory, too.
The day trips I had were mostly great. Sounio was particularly stunning, even the bus ride there. The Temple of Poseidon is atop a hill covered in green grass and wildflowers overlooking the ocean...actually, the hill is really more of a cliff. The views are spectacular, and Lord Byron even graffitied his name right onto the Temple. Way to go, Lord Byron. I always knew those Romantic poets were all good-for-nothings.
Nafplio was a long bus ride, nearly three hours, and it passed by ancient Corinth, Mycenae and Argos. I didn't make it to the temple of Epidavros unfortunately, but oh well, guess I'll just have to go back to Greece. Nafplio is sort of a tourist sea-town, but the tourists it attracts are mostly just Greeks and a few Scandinavians and Japanese (everywhere I have traveled this year there have been Japanese tourists, literally everywhere!). First thing I did was climb the Parampali fortress which was built a few hundred years ago, I think during the Ottoman era. One thing I learned about Greece is it isn't just the "ancient" stuff, there's the Byzantine and Ottoman stuff too that's also everywhere. Really great views and I literally met the only other American tourists during my entire trip-it was a family from Spokane taking a ten week vacation. (I know, ten weeks?) Greek teens obviously never go to school because they were everywhere I went and it was definitely not vacation time for them. Ha. I saw some crazy costumes at the Peloponnesian folk art museum and tried to go to the archaeology museum but it was closed. I walked around the wharf and visited the worry bead museum and tried to find an elusive gelato place Rory told me about.
Aegina was sort of a dud- I took the ferry from Piraeus, not a very attractive city, and unfortunately the weather wasn't that great and I didn't make it to the temple on the other side of the island but at least what I did see was nice; ruins of an old synagogue and some Ancient Stuff and took a nice walk and ate dolmades. Aegina is famous for pistachios. Hmmm.
All in all a rather wonderful trip. Passover was nice, I had two seders even though I'm in Israel, both drastically different from one another- got through the Haggadah in 10 minutes on the first night and then in 2 1/2 hours on the second, so there you have it between Israelis and Americans! On Monday Elie and Arielle and I journeyed to Abu Ghosh, which was lots of fun and yesterday I saw Scarlett Johansson's latest film. Pretty awful but I still love Scarlett. Friday and/or Thursday I will hopefully be at Rainbow Gathering!

greece is the word (first part)

2008-04-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

so after another visit from the hospital I am ready to write about Greece! (don't worry, it's all good now. Oh, and happy Passover and soon-to-be-Greek Easter.)

Here is the rough itinerary of stuff I did. I'll put it here and break it down.
Day 1: arrived in Athens, met Rory's friends, ate true gyros for the first (but definitely not the last) time in Greece though mine was sans meat
Day 2: Monastiraki, Psyrri, introduction to the magic of Greek bakeries
Day 3: Saw the Parthenon and the Plaka district, big taverna dinner as a going-away pary for one of the CYA kids
Day 4: Visited the Agora and a Byzantine church with one of Rory's classes
Day 5: Explored the Temple of Poseidon at coastal Sounio
Day 6: Rode the bus to the idyllic seaside Peloponnesian town of Nafplio
Day 7: Took the ferry boat from Piraeus to the island of Aegina and ate at the cutest taverna ever

Here were some highlights among many (I'll write more about stuff in the next post):
-the yayas aka Greek grandmothers
-the ridiculously blue and beautiful ocean
-Greek food: saganaki, tzatziki, eggplant salad, dolmades, fluffy pita, baklava, souvlaki, need I say more? Oh and bakeries and pastry shops and street vendors...
-old Greek men fiddling with their komboloi (worry beads)- I even went to a worry bead museum in Nafplio
-the views from Sounio and Nafplio
-walking peacefully along the coastline of Aegina
-actually getting to see the Parthenon in all its glory after endless discussion of it in AP art history back in my high school days
-Greek clothes ( a welcome relief after the eurotrash styles of Israel)
-taverna dining (and the wine)
-the Athens metro...so clean, so pretty, so efficient
-I'm not sure if this was a highlight, but constantly getting lost in the sketchy Botanical Gardens and "zoo"
-Greek Orthodox churches
-um and ICONS...I am such a sucker for Orthodox iconography
-the blooming wildflowers
-seeing people get ready for Easter
-Greek coffee (if you call it Turkish coffee they might shoot you...also, it's Greek delight, not Turkish delight)

more to come!

springtime my friends

2008-04-04T03:53:00.000-07:00

I'm in Tel Aviv right now in my cousin Gershon's apartment as I write; tonight is Tom's 21st birthday party.
Backtracking in time a little:
Back to the acupuncturist. I really like it.
Wednesday: after environmental science class we went on a field trip to a climate change conference at the Notre Dame Hotel (a hotel owned by the Vatican!). The conference was being sponsored by an Israeli-Palestinian organization that works towards peace, cooperation and resolving environmental issues within the country, and an Israeli and a Palestinian speaker each spoke about the affects of climate change in the world but specifically the Middle East-- where of course the effects are particularly harsh; desertification, food shortages, water crises, you get the idea. Actually, I'm writing an article on the environment for the j., so more on that later, I think. I'm not sure when the actual article will be published but I'll let you know.
Yesterday after Hebrew class, Riki and Alyssa (two of my friends from the program) and I went on what turned into a Christian-pilgrimage-adventure in the Old City. We walked through the Muslim and Christian quarters, stopping at Al-Jafar's for some khabbiyeh, down Via Dolorosa where we saw some of the stations of the Cross and walked to the roof of the Austrian Hospice where you can basically get the most amazing view of the Old City. The Dome of the Rock was so close that it looked small. Then we walked out the Lion's Gate to hike up the Mount of Olives. Passing by the massive Jewish cemetary we headed first to the Church of All Nations where there was a Coptic service taking place. To be honest, the church is really cool-looking from the outside, but the inside was kind of strange. We passed through the garden of Gethsemane where there were groups of pilgrims from all over the world. Alyssa is Catholic so she gave us short rundowns of the meanings of all these places.
We tried to walk up to the Russian Orthodox church but it was closed-- some other time, I guess. Our final stop was at the church shaped like a tear drop, which was very peaceful and had another amazing view. I saw so many monks, so basically I am set for life (I give myself twenty points every time I see a monk and I get ten bonus points for Armenian priests). From there we walked all the way back to Hebrew U, passing through residential east Jerusalem.
After a nice lunch at Giraffe with Gershon I think I'm ready for a nap or something like that. This weekend, alas, will be spent mostly working on/studying for midterms. My very first college midterms. Ah, Sarah Lawrence and the lack of midterms...kind of spoils you...now I've kind of forgotten how to study for tests.
Next time I update this I'll be in Greece!

stuff you can do while here

2008-03-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

first thing you can do: go to the hospital
step one: wake up at 2 in the morning and not be able to move your face. panic a little bit. step two: then have your housemate very kindly go to the hospital with you. step three: get pumped full of antihistamines and steroids and then go home the next day.
second thing you can do: have awesome dance hour with autistic kids
step one: put on music for half an hour. step two: rock out.
third thing you can do: spend time with lovely friends of your grandparents
step one: go over to the ein kerem neighborhood near the israel museum. step two: eat fresh artichokes and other delicious delectables. step three: have an enlightening conversation. appreciate them.
fourth thing you can do: tmol shilshom
step one: meet up with riki from vancouver and micah from florida. step two: go to tmol shilshom, the israel answer to praha's literarni kavarnas. be surrounded by books. step three: eat shakshooka and bread with tapenades. step four: talk for hours.
fifth thing you can do: go to the mall
step one: hate it. step two: yuck. i hate the mall. step three: eww.

rekafot

2008-03-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

Purim:
went to an ulpan party with Aurora on Tuesday and befriended Ruth, dressed extravagantly as a peacock. Lots of costumed small children roaming the streets, haredi children smoking their first cigarette, drunken yeshiva boys and mishloach manot, gifts of wine and snacks. Too many oznay haman/hamantaschen. Hard to find the ones with the poppy seeds--halva, chocolate and dates much more popular. (Why? Poppy seeds are the proper way to do it.) Two-year-old Anat with red hair dressed as a queen.
Playing with the first graders at the school I work at, singing the morning song, having six-year-old Renana (high functioning Asperger's) tell me that in a few year's time she would become a cat. Really speaking Hebrew. A lot of it.
Went to Haifa to stay with the Nirs. Visited a kibbutz where the wildflowers grow. My favorite flower in Haifa: the one native to the Carmel, it's lavender and blooms on trees. Homemade wine and labbaneh. Driving through Daliyat, the Druze village; the roadside stands with olive oil and Druze pita for sale. Rummy and bridge. Turkish coffee. (The caffeine addiction cannot be cured, especially not here.) People who used to live in Palo Alto, where the Israeli exodus descends.
Soon: Greece with its temples and the poet who makes leather sandals in the agora, and Egypt, with pillaged pyramids, mezze and merrymaking.

seeing and being et cetera

2008-03-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

Went to Netanya yesterday with Leah, David, Carol and Alan; (that makes four Americans plus one Argentinian) to an illegally built golf course on a kibbutz. There are only two golf courses in the entire country and this is one of them...an illegal one that is probably going to get shut down in September. Leah was writing an article about this golf course for the Jerusalem Post. The owners of the course gave us a free game of golf- I just caddied about because I don't know the first thing about golf. (I'm pretty good at mini-golf though.) It is such a Posh sport with a capital P that I don't think I could ever become any sort of player.
Then it was on to Tel Aviv University to see a...professional handball game, which David needed to write an article about. Yes, I am serious: professional handball. What a bizarre sport. It's like if bowling, football, soccer and dodgeball mated together and had a child. A very strange child.
It was off to the tayelet to join up with a bunch of Tel Aviv hippies on the beach having a drum circle, where we rocked out and watched fire jugglers and people living it up with djembes. I definitely got my hippie groove on. The night was ended with shakshooka and gelato and the sketchiness of sherut (shared taxis) and the nightmarish concrete acid trip that is the Tel Aviv central bus station.
Internship has definitely been improving my Hebrew but is challenging and draining. We studied the effects of religion on environmentalism this week as well as the effects of Zionism on the environment. Hooray for learning about fascinating concepts. On Monday, our architecture class is taking its first field trip: Hezekiah's Tunnel. I am pretty psyched to wade through cold water in a dimly lit underground tunnel. Sweet. And guess what is this week? Purim. You gotta love Jewish holidays. Purim? "Let's dress up as crazy characters, drink lots of wine, make noise, eat triangle-shaped cookies and read from a scroll!" The question is, what will I dress up as for Purim? It's still unclear.
Today I had Indian food and appreciated the sunshine.
An alphabet of Israel:
A is for Attempting to speak Hebrew in an American Accent
B is for Bargaining with street vendors and taxi drivers
C is for Churches that are really awesome
D is for the Dollar of America which does badly in Israel these days much to my Detriment
E is for Egged, the bus company
F is for Fresh fruits and vegetables
G is for Galgalatz, the terrible radio station that absolutely everyone listens to
H is for Hasidic Jews that are everywhere and also H is definitely for Hummus
I is for Ibexes, the little goat-type animals that frolic in the desert
J is for Jerusalem stone that blinds you
K is for Karaites because I didn't know what to write for K and Karaites are Kool
L is for Laid-back
M is for the Muezzins in the Mosques that call you to prayer 5 times a day
N is for Nargila in a hookah
O is for Olive trees that make Olive Oil
P is for Pita which is best when fresh and Piping hot
Q is for Questions of which I often have many
R is for Riding on camels which people do here especially the Bedouins
S is for Shabbat where in Jerusalem everything Shuts down and you can walk in the Street without fear of getting run over by a car which is usually the way life is
T is for Tramping which means hitchhiking
U is for Umm Kulthum
V is for Very awful Israeli pop music
W is for Water, always a controversial issue in the Middle East
X is for X marks the spot where maybe some ancient Israeli pirates potentially buried their treasure...
Y is for Yeshiva boys who are so cute with their glasses
Z is for Zed which is the way French and Canadian and British people and basically everyone but Americans say the letter "Z" and there are a lot of French and Canadian and British people here

city streets and kibbutz quiet

2008-03-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

I really want to start this off by saying something obvious: I HATE THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. It is really one of the most tragic and stupid things going on in this world right now. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. Stop the hatred and the anger and the racism and the...I don't even know. It's just such a mess. It sure puts people on edge here, I can tell you that. Okay. But enough.

I spent the weekend in Tel Aviv with my family there. It involved lots of delicious food, of course (one of my cousin's wives is Brazilian and she made flan!), good company, spending the day on the kibbutz Sde Yoav and seeing the wonderful cows, going out on the town with my cousin Tom and his friends, walking on the tayelet (the promenade) by the beach at night, nargila in old Yafo (that's Jaffa),a swanky Asian restaurant that you can't get over here in Jerusalem, and mostly a lot of pleasant weather and relaxation. Basically it's really key to get away for the weekend and being with family is so nice.

My classes are in full swing now. I put in eight hours a week working with autistic 5th-grade boys in a school near Hebrew University. They have their own class but the school itself is integrated. The boys are all very challenging and intense but lovable. Hebrew is getting easier and easier, and I really like architecture of Jerusalem and environmental science of the Middle East. Next week we're starting our Jerusalem field trips for architecture class. Outside of school I always enjoy my yoga/pilates/dance classes. It's starting to get mad warm here. Today was "hamsin," i.e. hot and a bit humid.

Happy exciting news: for the first week of spring break I'm going to Greece! I'll be staying with my good friend Rory from school. We're going to try and go to a smaller island for the weekend and then I'll spend the week exploring Athens and hopefully beyond too. Crazy crazy!

vagabonding amongst donkeys and old russian women

2008-03-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I could've sat around watching movies on the computer, or bummed around in cafes drinking cup after cup of coffee, but really I didn't want any of that. So naturally, the only alternative was to go to Jordan. (Obviously.)

Aurora and I planned it all ahead during the week and on Friday we were set and raring to go. We took the bus down to Eilat--a very scenic route that passes by the Dead and Red Seas, respectively. We got there in the late afternoon and the sun was pleasantly shining, so we dropped off our stuff at the hostel and went to the beach for some swimming time. Not only did we swim, we did some calisthenics with some old Russian women, who might just be my favorite kind of people in the world, because they are prepared for everything. They bring around all sorts of items and devices in their giant foldable bags and wear big golden necklaces and have oddly dyed hair and speak loudly in Russian with voices as thick as the sour cream in the borscht they often eat. Anyways, I am getting a little sidetracked. After eating pizza and getting carded at several different seaside cafes, we retired pleasantly at an early hour to prepare for our epic Tomorrow.

We arose in the wee hours of the morn and were picked up by a jeep in the parking lot, along with two other girls who happened to be from Hebrew University and a German guy. We were driven to the border crossing to meet up with the rest of the tour group, which included a bunch of Norwegian Presbyterians, Italians, French, Israelis and Canadians, and we met our guide, Ali, who was probably actually Borat because he looked and sounded just like him. After the shenanigans of the Jordanian border crossing we drove through Aqaba to Petra and saw the most amazing desert landscape I've ever seen and probably will ever see. I felt like I was on Mars because it was that surreal and beautiful. Jordan is definitely a pretty poor country though, which could get a little depressing at times.

Finally around noon we arrived to Petra. The first part involved walking down to the siq where Ali talked about the ancient Nabateans who built the city and the Romans and the funerary places as well as the aqueducts. The rocks are golden and spectacular but they keep getting more spectacular as you walk towards the siq, when they start turning red. Suddenly you turn a sharp corner and arrive at the treasury, which is rather jaw-dropping because it is built right into the red stone. You could see current excavations going on all around us, and we only saw a fraction of the city of Petra, all things considered. We ate a nice Jordanian lunch and walked back (some people rode donkeys or camels) to the entrance at our own pace. We all really lucked out with the weather, which was perfect, and it wasn't tourist season, so nothing was all that overcrowded. The only negative part is all the little Bedouin kids who try to hawk you cheap goods, which is also pretty sad.

We got back to Eilat in the early evening. Aurora and I went out for some British pub food and checked in early again. It was back to Jerusalem the next day for another scenic ride. My classes have been going pretty well now so far. I love my environmental science and my architecture classes and I'm starting my internship tomorrow working with kids in special education. I also had dinner tonight with one of my former camp counselors which was quite nice.

I miss and love you all. I'm sorry it's been taking me a while to get letters and postcards out but I promise they are coming!

sipurim sheli

2008-02-26T12:32:00.000-08:00

As of when I last wrote...

on Saturday, Aurora and I walked around the Old City. We went through every quarter. In the Armenian quarter we saw part of the Armenian monastery which is gorgeous. I'd like to go back. There is an Armenian museum (I think it's about the genocide) and we saw a few monks (score twenty points). Then it was off to the Muslim quarter where we wandered through the souq, which is very intense because of all the raw meat hanging on hooks in narrow, damp quarters. I could smell pickled turnips, fava beans, all kinds of mezze, lemons. Wandering over to the Christian quarter, at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I ran into one of my Micah campers, there with her parents because her dad is a rabbi and was leading a congregational trip to Israel. Small world, really. The church is beautiful and haunted and full of conflict and shrines and pilgrims and candles. I want to go on a pilgrimage. This country makes me wonder about spirituality; what is it that makes people feel so intensely about an ideology, a dogma? I see so many people who outwardly show their religious practices with the way they dress and the way they sit on the bus fervently muttering prayers under their breath from small worn books. I watch them buy cheap modest clothes from streetside stalls and discount loaves of bread and think and think. On Sunday I went a photography exhibition of an alternative magazine, Eretz Acheret. The exhibition was called "Mashiach Lo Ba" which means "The Messiah Isn't Coming." It's a parody on all the Lubavitch Hasidic posters that say "Baruch Haba Melech HaMashiach," meaning "Welcome, the King Messiah." I started classes this week. Well...sort of. I may not even be in 2 of my classes because the school is so disorganized. All I've had so far is Hebrew. Tonight I had a really nice dinner with our family friends, the Brautbars. We went to a great classic Middle eastern restaurant with oven-fired pita and lots of babaganoush and baklava to go around. People here sure know how to eat. I love the freshness of the produce. Well, hopefully tomorrow I'll have my environmental science class and get my internship interview. More to come, probably post-Petra...

kefi kefi

2008-02-22T06:31:00.001-08:00

Shalom, and also salaam, after returning from the picturesque Arab village of Abu Ghosh 20 minutes outside of Jerusalem. Our friends Shavit, Gozlan and Haim picked up Aurora and I and we drove to a hummus joint called Abu Daoud where we reclined on cushions like kings of old and feasted on tea, coffee, pita, hummus, khabiyyah, and a hookah full of apple nargilah. We also checked out this cool baklava and halvah bakery. Last night, Aurora, Ilai and I baked an amazing pie. We're not sure how or when, but it was baked, and it was good, (in the words of Aurora: "Vayehi pie, tov me'od"), and we watched Across the Universe which we loved. Tomorrow we are going to do a walk in the Old City, probably the Armenian Quarter. I hope we see lots of monks.

Thursday was my last day of ulpan and we had a small party and a high school marching band came and played. My classes start on Monday. And, exciting news, next week I am going to Jordan-- to see the city of Petra for the day! (and also spend a bit of time down in Eilat. ) Adventures will be had, I'm sure.

sheleg sheleg al ha col

2008-02-18T08:11:00.000-08:00

Ulpan ends on Thursday, classes start next Monday, hooray! We were supposed to go on an archaeological tour today with class but for some reason it didn't work out which was quite the bummer. Oh well. i got myself a pair of Naot today- I've been wearing them for the past several years of my life and they are so comfy. They're kind of like Israeli Birkenstocks and last for quite a while and are of course cheaper here then back in the USA. I got them on an adventure to the mall with my friend Leah from ulpan and it started snowing/raining/ish on our way back. Tomorrow, therefore, will be a snow day. Nothing as extreme as in Canada where I learned that sometimes the army is called in to shovel snow (thanks Seth) but the whole city kind of shuts down because Jerusalem doesn't know with itself in any kind of "extreme" weather (even if "extreme" involves like an inch of snow).

Events of last week...hmm. I went to Aryeh's army- unit-end-of-a-certain-time-period-that-i-don't-know-the-name-of party in Rishon Letzion which was a bit disastrous because apparently Israeli men cannot hold their liquor very well. Let's just say "gross" and leave it at that. But at least Aurora and I got really good gelato. That tends to make things better. Then on Saturday I got to spend quality time with my Israeli cousins at Modi'in. It was my cousin Noey's birthday party so the whole extended fam was there and we ate lots of delicious barbecue and other delights and I chatted with my awesome cousin Gershon and his sons Avidan, Omri and Uri. Gershon lives on a kibbutz so I plan on visiting him there sometime and my cousins from Tel Aviv also nicely invited me to spend a weekend sometime with them. Also I got to play the keyboard with some of our friends which was a good time.

pictured below: my new naot

i decided to teach myself the polish language

2008-02-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

Bardzo mi miło! I'm quite serious about the Polish (I hope). There is a Polish girl who is teaching me a little.

some notable events of past days--

food related, I ate at Hummus Abu Rizek, an amazing and cheap Arab-run pita-and-hummus joint in downtown. nice spicy homemade hummus and fluffy pita. YUM. i have also become addicted to kumquats. they're really bizarre but somehow delicious. also: date spread. mm mm.

riding the bus to school can be kind of a drag, but the views from the bus are pretty impressive. i pass through most major streets of downtown, all these intriguing-looking cathedrals, the Old City with all the gates and I can see Al-Aqsa from the bus, the British military cemetary and my personal favorite, Naomi Street. I really need to go take a walk down my street one of these days. The architecture in general is most awesome. i do hope i get into this architecture class which goes on lots of field trips including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which I have always wanted to see.

Other places to check out that I have viewed from my bus and from Hebrew U: the Russian Orthodox church, opulent as they always come, the Mormon university, the Italian Jewish museum and the Great Synagogue. plus i need to get over to the old city to do some slick bargaining for Armenian pottery. i was going to go to the shuk (the big crazy marketplace) today but we did a rain check because well, it was raining. hopefully i'll go tomorrow to get the best halvah in town. also, this Ethiopian Jewish woman gave us a talk today about the Ethiopian trek to Israel. basically the Ethiopians are the coolest. i aspire one day to be as cool as they are.

this saturday I am going to Modi'in to visit the Israeli extended fam for a birthday party. (Historical interlude! Modi'in is Hanukkah Town, basically. that's where the Maccabees rocked out. Wouldn't it be crazy if it was Hanukkah there all year long? you would eat latkes and sufganiot every day! everyone would be fat and happy and gamble with dreidels all the time and have melted wax all over the windowsills year round, and presents every day...alas no. it is apparently extreme suburbia now. But still.)

i'm not going to lie, i am getting kind of homesick, having been away for the majority of this year. Israel is such a politically-and-otherwise charged place which makes it ridden with emotional rollercoasters. but i am mostly very glad to be here. and i really appreciate getting mail from all you superstar letter writers out there. take care of yourselves.

Also, I've got some photos, you can see them here:
http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015773&l=004aa&id=28601169

mishenichnas adar marbim b'simcha...hopefully

2008-02-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

So I went to Caesarea today and saw the Roman ruins. Man, the days when they had gladiator fights and chariot races--that's what it's all about. The Mediterranean is pretty great too. I do miss the ocean living in J-Ru (Aurora and I have, Bay Area style, taken to calling Jerusalem that). The rest was pretty touristy and we had to eat overpriced food, but such is life.

Ulpan is still long and boring--five hours of Hebrew every day can really eat you up. To be fair, though, I am learning stuff, and the teachers are nice and I like some of the people in my ulpan. I joined a gym, but not to use the gym stuff, more so I can take lots of yoga and dance and use the sauna. Last weekend we celebrated Aryeh's 21st birthday with a board game about his life.

The weather has been sunny and pretty nice as of late, so I hope that keeps up. It sure beats the bitter cold. I've been enjoying some rather Israeli delights such as halva spread, 3% milk, yummy pomegranates and dates, and marzipan shaped like challah (I know, amazing, right?). The classes I'm hoping I get are a class on environmental policy in the Middle East, a class on the architecture of Jerusalem, and an internship class where you meet twice a week to learn about the sociology of the workplace and then do 8 hours per week of the internship. I either want to work at the center for autistic kids or do this sociology project interviewing Palestinian teens in J-Ru. In the words of dear old Theodor Herzl, im tirtzu, ein zo agadah. If you will it, it is no dream. Ah yes.

Some places I'd like to visit in the upcoming weeks: Tzfat, Abu Ghosh, Beit Jaan, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Akko, Ein Gedi. If you have any must-dos let me know.

Shavua Echat

2008-01-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

Hello friends and family. I've now been in Israel for almost a week now and let me just say that it is currently SNOWING here (so classes are canceled for the day); unfortunately, it's also raining, so that's no good. In any case we are having a fun snow day though. I woke up really late and Abi and Aurora and I made hot chocolate and waffles with our nifty waffle maker and maybe I'll even do some...gasp...homework. Who knows? School might be canceled again tomorrow too.

So far ulpan (immersive Hebrew) has been pretty good. I'm in advanced Level Bet so I think it's a pretty good level for me, it's intermediate-ish and a lot of it is grammar which I am terrible at to begin with so it's good for me to actually learn it. I understand everything the teacher says though. We had an extremely intense experience yesterday when a large blond Israeli woman came in with a piano to have a Hebrew singalong with some of the classes. She was very dramatic and played lots of the songs lounge-style. Oh, Israel. I'm getting pretty good at taking the bus (except, well, I'm only taking one bus, so it's not that complicated yet). Sometimes I get confused with money because I think that shekels are agurot and vice versa and it's also obnoxious that the American dollar keeps dropping as it has been doing all year. Sigh. I've also been meeting some nice people from ulpan. It's mostly Americans with a bunch of Canadians, a handful of Russians and South Americans, and a couple Japanese students for good measure. I might be starting yoga and/or dance classes sometime this week which should be fun. Also there is an ulpan trip to Caesarea next week- that sounds fun too. Stay warm, all of you. I miss you.

Brucha Haba'a

2008-01-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

Shalom y'all, I'm now in a land flowing with milk and honey (I have a small river of cream in my room just now...ha....not really...but I do have AURORA sitting next to me!) The plane ride itself was long but without event except that I sat next to my dear friend Sarah G's cousin and her boyfriend and I beat the airplane computer at backgammon on the "hard" level. Finally we arrived in Tel Aviv, where luckily my luggage had arrived. Cracked out and jet lagged, we were somehow transported to the Hebrew University student dorms, where I don't live, which I finally was able to communicate and explain to the madrichim in charge, so eventually I stumbled down a hill with my luggage and asked these guys if they were in fact the shuttle drivers to the Rothberg school where I had to register. They shrugged and smoked their cigarettes and told me "Lo meveen" (I dunno) so I stood around awkwardly for a while until a guy came down and told them to drive me to Rothberg, which they eventually did. I did all the registration and spent way too much time at the school until 4 o'clock when Abi picked me up. (I haven't seen Abi since 2001 but I recognized her by her unforgettable hair).

Our apartment (myself, Abi and Aurora) is in the Bak'a neighborhood of Jerusalem, right by Emek Refaim. The place is gorgeous. We each have our own room and there is a living room, kitchen and bathroom. It's very cozy and intimate but yet spacious and "slightly luminous" (Aurora's term). Today Aurora showed me around the neighborhood and we did some shopping for Shabbat and an upcoming Tu Bishvat celebration with pizza and empanadas. The weather was quite nice, a little cold but very sunny, and the neighborhood is scenic and charming with a diverse population (I sound like I'm writing a travel brochure). There is an orientation sort of thing on Sunday but otherwise my classes don't start till Monday. Then I have ulpan (Hebrew immersion) for a month and then academic classes start in March. On Sunday Aurora and I were thinking of going to the Israel Museum since neither of us have been, where we will immerse ourselves in decadent culture and stare at the Dead Sea scrolls for a long period of time. At this moment, I'm sipping tea and unpacking, and of course, writing this entry.

I hope you are well. I should have a phone by Monday at the latest. I'd love to hear from you all; write me a letter (ask me for my address or ask my parents or facebook) or email or whatever because I really like letters. A lot.

going back in time (literally and figuratively)

2007-12-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated in quite some time and many travels have ensued since then, so here goes--

My last days in Praha were too short but wonderful; I went back to Petrin and finally got to go up the the pseudo Eiffel tower and into the mirror labyrinth, and also finally went to the castle and saw some of its innards. I got to bake vanocka, the Czech braided Christmas bread studded with raisins and almonds--DELICIOUS. My host family made me a good-bye party, which was very sweet. They baked my absolute favorite, palacinky with tvaroh (pancakes with cottage cheese and also marmalade) and we exchanged holiday gifts and all played cards together. I miss them already.

I flew to England rather early on a Sunday morning and proceeded to take a very nice coach bus to OXFORD where I was met by my dear friend Gwen who is studying at Wadham (one of the colleges at Oxford) for the year. We went back to her flat, a very lovely flat, where we met another dear friend Sarah. The next day I got a grand tour of the city (village? town?) of Oxford, which is old and beautiful. First was the Botanical Gardens, which are enchanted and make you feel like you're in The Secret Garden. We went into Wadham to see the grounds and the cathedral and the "lingering tree," a tree you are not allowed to linger under, so naturally everyone does. I walked around the Bodleian Library, had a cream tea, went into St. Mary's cathedral and explored Blackwell's Booksellers. For dinner it had to be something quintessentially British, so we went to the kebab place. (Yes, kebab places have truly supplanted fish and chips as Britain's late-night food of choice.)

The next day another dear friend, Abby, arrived from Manchester and we did some more exploring of the town, mostly going to Christchurch college, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland as well as Hogwarts, and stopped at the Wadham pub, the King's Arms. The day was finished off with a bang with high tea, which involves scones, clotted cream, jam, cucumber sandwiches, cake, and of course, tea. Tres elegante. Alas, I had to leave early the next morning, but I would definitely like to go back to England someday and explore more...London, Canterbury, Stonehenge, York...

I went back to California for a short few days and am now in lush and tropical Kauai with the family. I'll be back in California in time for New Year's. Next semester: the Middle East!

konec

2007-12-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

the last blog entry from the Czech Republic...short but sweet....

Germany was wonderful, I was in Goselhuring, Spauding, Regensburg and Nuremburg, all part of Bavaria, and saw many Christkindlmarkts (Christmas markets) and amazing cathedrals and cemetaries and explored the Nazi heritage of Nuremburg.

The independent study project is over and it went well, including the presentation...

We just got back from "Czech Switzerland" in northern Bohemia where I played with kittens and explored the Sudetenland and rode a horse.

Emotions are twisting and turning.

I will be in England on Monday, California on Thursday, and Hawaii on Sunday.

prace a hra

2007-12-07T01:17:00.000-08:00

Finally done with my paper! Huzzah! Now, onlz the presentation to go next Tuesday...I hope that goes all right...I'm off for Germany later today so more on that afterwards...

But it was not all work and no play. On Monday I went to the National Museum with Tom and truly, it was all a National Museum is supposed to be. The building is absolutely opulent and stuffed to the gills with busts of old dead men, pseudo-Greek pillars, chandeliers, gorgeous murals and well tiled floors. Score ten points for Narodni Muzeum. Then, it to make it even better, it is truly a proper Olde Naturale Historie Museum because it has 4 rooms filled with absolutely nothing except cases and cases and cases of minerals, gems and crystals. FANTASTIC. We spent maybe forty minutes perusing the minerals and arguing about which minerals are the superior ones. THEN there is the zoology display with cases and cases of expertly taxidermied animals posed in the most ferocious and/or adorable positions one can imagine AND there is a dead whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling AND a dead MAMMOTH HEAD MOUNTED ON THE WALL. PLUS a buffalo. DEAD. YES. Then there is the Ye Olde Anciente Slavs and Celtics display, title my own, with tons of bronzeware and pottery and cult figures and Olde Toys and random artifacts from Greece and Italy strewn around for good measure. There is also a ridiculously awesome paleontological display that consists of jazillions of fossils crammed together in glass cases. YES. I LOVE THE NARODNI MUZEUM. And best of all, Czech museums all feature security people dressed in dapper suits who INSIST you follow an exact route of museum viewing and sometimes they will just start giving you the lowdown in Czech and you just have to say "Yo, yo, dekujeme, uh huh, vyborně."

I also went to the Zbraslav Asian art museum which was great and a Beethoven string quartet concert in an old monastery.

How can I leave this country? Sigh...

český znamký, židovský v praze, miminko, hudba, lanovka a vietnamska

2007-12-01T04:23:00.000-08:00

I have been rather delighted with the weather lately. Cold and crisp! The project is progressing steadily as I´ve now begun work on the paper. Hopefully it will turn out well.

Christmas fever, aka "Vanoce" has hit the country. On December 5 there is St. Mikulas (sp?) Day where an angel, a devil and St. Mikulas visit each child and ask them if they have been good or bad so I'm pretty excited to witness this. Obviously, I have been good. Musicians are preparing the music for the midnight Mass and there are Christmas markets around Old Town, selling mostly kitschy stuff BUT also roasted chestnuts, which are pretty great. All sorts of yummy smells are in the air from mulled wine to Christmas bread with raisins and cinnamon and though there is definitely commercialism it is far less pronounced than American Christmas commercialism.

On Thursday I had several notable adventures, the first of which was a trip to the Postovni Muzeum which is the museum of postal history in the Czech Republic. Iťs housed in a former mill/mansion with paintings on the wall by Josef Navratil, so definitely a beautiful building on its own accord. The official librarian there was thrilled that someone was at the museum, especially a young person, so I got a personal tour of the entire museum, all in Czech. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to realize how much of it I actually did understand. Czech stamps are mighty classy, by the way.

Then I went to Chabad of Prague to pick up my free chanukia, candles and dreidel, because Chanukah is creeping up quickly. They had a nice facility and also a preschool for little kids run in English and Hebrew and naturally the rabbi and his wife knew all the Bay Area Chabad people, so there you have it, small world. There is even a giant chanukia lighting in front of the Rudolfinum next week.

Finally that night there was the baptism for my host cousin Nela, the one born on my birthday. All the extended family showed up at the church where the priest baptized her and then we all had wine and medovnik at the parish house and I played with 2-year-old Emma, who is learning her numbers and makes me super happy because not only is she ridiculously adorable, we are also at a similar linguistic level of Czech, so we understand each other very well.

Yesterday I went up to the castle and saw one of the big cathedrals there and will have to go back next week to get the full tour, because it's sort of crazy I've been in Prague this long and haven't toured the castle, and then went to Petrin where unfortunately the pseudo Eiffel tower was closed but I got to take the lanovka, the funicular railway, back down the hill. And tonight, after working on the paper, a piano concert at the Rudolfinum and maybe ice skating tomorrow (and more working).

Be well.

velky snih a pili jsme pro becher

2007-11-26T01:14:00.000-08:00

What a weekend it has been. After two successful interviews v patek it was off to Prebuz, a former mining town near the German border (the German name is Frehbuss). It was a lengthy trip due to several car accidents that continuously rerouted traffic, but eventually we arrived. Aaaand...it was snowing. Following a dinner cooked by Dedecek, a toast with Fernet, and a blissfully peaceful sleep we awoke to blankets of pure white magic surrounding our chata. Snidane (that's breakfast) was filled with bread and honey and cheese and marmalade washed down with tea we shoveled some snow and put up a fence around the hedges out in front so the hares wouldn't eat them. Then it was time for a walk. We walked past the old school that hasn't been used in decades and a building where you could see the old German words peeling off of the front facade. Snow was glistening all over the evergreens and the fir trees and the air smelled so fresh as we walked past the old church, still used once a year by Germans who come back to the Czech Republic for a mass.

(I should probably stop and explain a quick history lesson. During World War II, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and made it into a "Protektorat." The Sudetenland became part of Germany, where most of the German minority had lived in Bohemia. After World War II, President Benes issued a special decree expelling Germans from Czechoslovakia and essentially stipulated in his decrees it was okay to kill Germans or take German property. During the years of Communism, many Czechs bought properties in the former German Sudetenland villages for their country homes, but most of the villages are much emptier and sometimes even abandoned than pre-World War II. There has been a lot of soul-searching done throughout the past decades by Czechs and Germans and now relations are fine, but you can't ever escape history, and it seeps throughout central Europe.)

We went into the Prebuz cemetary for a while and then walked into the forested area, part of the Czech-Bavarian geopark, to look for the old remnants of the mines. At the top of the hill the view was beautiful and we wandered through some of the former mineshafts and threw snowballs (and in my case, munched on some snow). Then we journeyed to the only business in Prebuz, the local hospoda, or pub if you will, where we met the biggest character in the area, a talkative alcoholic named Pepik. Back at the chata following lunch/dinner, uncle Michael and Dedecek ("Grandpa") played some tunes on the accordion and washboard. I tried my best to sing along in Czech to the few tunes that I knew ("John Brown's Body," "Drunken Sailor" and "Yellow Submarine"). Kaca, Stepan, Honza and I went back to the hospoda for some pivo and Fernet and had another wacky encounter with Pepik, who refused to believe I was an American and told me that the Czech police were very helpful.

The next morning after cleaning up Honza and I set off for Karlovy Vary ("Karlsbad" in German, the Californian city of Carlsbad is named for it). Karlovy Vary is full of opulent buildings, Russians, hot oplatky (yummy spa wafers), slightly kitschy cafes, and above all, the odd-tasting spa waters which you drink in a special cup called a becher. So naturally I had to try the waters with my new becher. I'm not going to lie, they're warm and funky-tasting, and do strange things to your digestive organs, but apparently they're extremely healthy and full of minerals, so who knows, maybe I am healed of all ills. We also got to see the Russian Orthodox church which was gorgeous. A rather amazing weekend and I'm sad it is over.

There are photos, too. They are here:

http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014264&l=f929b&id=28601169

xin xao

2007-11-16T01:16:00.000-08:00

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

sprechen sie deutsch?

2007-11-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

So I got back from Dresden late last night and it was snowing!! (Snih)
But.
Anyways.

Germany was fantastic. It rained the whole time, but it was fine. I stayed with some German friends of my Czech friend. They're in medical school and just the nicest people with a gorgeous apartment. They were having a soiree that night so I got to talk to lots of German people around my age about life and politics and everything else and eat delicious vegetarian chilli and have German beer and bread (mmmm). There were even some little babies around that belonged to some of their friends that were totally into the music.

The next morning, after a great organic (here they call it "bio) breakfast, Honza, Michael, Tina, Katarina and a few other German friends plus a baby set out for the zentrum (center) of Germany. It was fun to hear the Saxon accent which is made fun of by many other Germans. Even the buses were stereotypically German--clean, timely and efficient. Dresden is an interesting city because it was pretty much destroyed by firebombing during World War II. Therefore, a lot of the old buildings are in the process of being reconstructed to look as they did previous to being destroyed. We went into the Frauenkirche, another church (Catholic) and also a Lutheran church whose names I don't remember that had just been completely rebuilt. The Frauenkirche was a little odd because it just looked too new and they used rather pastel colors to do the frescoes. I also saw the famous fresco of the 12 dukes of Dresden, also reconstructed and painted on china from a village nearby.The city was getting ready for its Christmas fair, where apparently all the storekeepers dress up in medieval costume...maybe I'll go back for that! We ended the day at a cafe sipping coffee and hot chocolate and gnawing away on cake...

drak

2007-11-05T05:43:00.000-08:00

This weekend I got to fly a kite...drak. I went to the top of a hill on Smichov where lots of other people were gathered flying their draku, and the sky was foggy and white, and the drak flew till it got caught in some bramblebushes, and all the trees were so red and yellow and brown and green (cervene, zlate, zeleny).
I ate at a vegetarian Indian buffet restaurant and drank at Meduza, filled with smoke and lively chatter.
I drank Kofola for the first time, the Czech answer to Coke. It's sort of spicy and full of caffeine and you can buy it at cafes on tap, like beer. Kofola was created during Communism when Coke was hard to come buy and was created with surplus caffeine gleaned from the production of instant coffee.
I also made palacinky with tvaroh (cottage cheese) and povidla (prune preserves). Mmmmmmmmm.
My host family, except for Petr, just came back from Rome. I wonder if they ran into the pope?
I have been meeting with the person who will be my advisor for my independent study project. Her name is Petra Mullerova and she is a professor of Vietnamese studies. Extremely intense and smart.
The Vietnamese are the third largest minority population in the Czech Republic, having arrived during the 70s and 80s for several reasons. More on this topic later, as it will be consuming me for the next several weeks.
This week: three exams and two projects due. Ouch. Domaci ukol.

minuly tyden

2007-10-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

some excerpts from my life as of late:

I saw the most intense Czech film ever, Skritek. Elves, a slaughterhouse, marijuana plants, nosy neighbors, a supermarket and absolutely no dialogue. Crazy and sad but amazing. Go see it.

I went to a Halloween party given by the Danhelovis' family friends, who have an American father. They set up a haunted path in the woods and at the end of the path there was a graveyard where they hid candy for the kids to find.

I found out that I am now at the Czech speaking level of a 2 year old, so my host cousin Emma and I understood each other perfectly. She also taught me some words for colors.

What is Central Europe? I may never know.

I ate french toast at Kava Kava Kava, one of the few places in the Czech Republic that serves peanut butter and maple syrup.

My host mother bought me an avocado. Isn't that just the sweetest thing?

I like discussing American elections and campaigns with all my Czech acquaintances.

I am going to Germany, specifically Dresden, in 2 weeks. Needless to say, I am excited.

I am studying the Vietnamese immigrant community in the CZ for my study project. I!ll keep you posted.

last of krakow and also zilina

2007-10-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

The morning after, the group went to the Bunkier, which is one of the few contemporary art spaces in Krakow. There were 2 exhibitons going on: one of an artist from Albania about fleeing the country that consisted of various video pieces, and the World Press Photo exhibition, which is a surefire way to make yourself depressed about the state of the world. Following lunch I tried out the Krakow arachaeology museum, which was a strange combination of dioramas of ancient Poland and a random assortment of ancient Egyptian mummies. I also tried to go to a museum that showcased an 15th century cult group that worshipped a silver chicken (seriously) but it was closed for repairs. Sigh. I did a lot of walking through a beautiful park that runs through the center of Krakow, though, which was great.

For our last morning in Krakow I went to the old Jewish district, Kazimierz. I say old because there definitely aren't any Jews there anymore, or for that matter, in most of Poland. Kazimierz is now a large tourist attraction--half of it is filled with trendy pubs and clubs and the other half is basically a Jewish theme park without the Jews. This all sounds very negative, I'm sure, and Kazimierz is beautiful, but the whole sense of it is just rather depressing when you see restaurants with names like "Alef" or "Rubenstein" and contrast it with the anti Semitism that is still strong in Poland today. It's a little weird, and probably the reason why I never felt totally great about Krakow or all of Poland.

The next morning we went on another 5 hour bus ride, back to Slovakia to visit the city of Zilina. Our penzion was kind of creepy and the proprietor bailed out on us and said we could only stay there for a night. While our academic director pondered this dilemma, we ate traditional Slovak food at a restaurant that looked like a place Daniel Boone would have eaten at--animal pelts, log cabin, fake guns. I had ovoce knedliky, which are fruit dumplings. Day two in Zilina: we went to Stanica, the objective for our visit. Stanica is a train station that is simultaneously an art space. It has a gallery and a space for kids' workshops and a beautiful theater. We got to help out by doing various chores. I raked leaves and it was a blast. That night we saw an amazing dance performance in the Stanica theater with music by Godspeed You Black Emperor. (I didn't sleep too well due to a disco party being held in our hotel that night, but oh well.) Áfter some mishaps the following morning I eventually found the train station and it was snowing! Beautiful! And now back to Praha.

more of the regional trip

2007-10-23T12:13:00.001-07:00

Our second day in Bratislava, I went to the Bratislava castle, which is not very attractive (it was mostly reconstructed in the 1950s, actually), but there was beautiful weather, and I got to witness the Slovak national dish, halusky--it's gnocchi covered in sheep cheese and bacon. Intense, no? But the Slovaks love it. That night I got to see a wonderful modern dance performance at A4 involving witch-like costumes, pseudo-strangulation, and blips and beeps. (Modern dance is always a little hard to describe. I should probably post my review here sometime.)

The next day we got on a five hour bus ride to Krakow in Poland, where we got to stay in a pretty swanky hotel. I ate traditional Polish barley soup, but really, traditional eastern and central European cuisine, let me tell ya, they are all about the potatoes and the bread and the meat and the onions...yes. We went to Nowa Huta the next morning to see the community theater. What is Nowa Huta, you may ask? It was a "Socialist paradise" suburb of Krakow built in the 1950s, which means that it's a huge group of massive concrete panelak. A neighborhood of identical apartment buildings, if you will. Now it's pretty run-down and considered a sort of "bad neighborhood," which it really isn't, just kind of unattractive and industrial-looking. Anyways, this community theater is objectively trying to bring the people of Nowa Huta together--old and young, Roma and Polish. (Speaking of Roma, we have been learning a lot about them. More on that later, I think.)

I learned that everything in Krakow closes really early. The only thing that was open after our late lunch was a Japanese museum, which turned out not to be a Japanese museum because it was apparently getting repossessed by the Polish government or something. So instead, they had a display of art from Java. Hmmm.

So, feeling a little confused, Tom and I went to see Wawel Castle, the big castle in Krakow. Of course, everything there was closed, but the castle was very beautiful and provided some great views of the city. There is a legend in Wawel Castle that a dragon called Smok lived there and ate young maidens till some brave Polish warrior slaughtered him and everybody celebrated. I mean, who doesn't love a dragon story? Krakow is really into Smok. You can buy stuffed dragons everywhere there. Afterwards we got Indian food, which is always really funny in central Europe because all the waitresses are obviously very Slavic but wear saris and bindis as if they are Indian. I also went to some interesting pubs, including one called the "Tram Bar," where the menu is the tram line of Krakow and every stop on the tram line is a different beverage. A thing I find hilarious about many pubs in this part of the world is they tend to play American music, but the weirdest variety imaginable. They'll start playing Celine Dion and then a grunge song and then a rap song and then suddenly a central European techno song. It's a little crazy, but you just have to go with the flow. After visiting the pubs we wandered the streets of the old town and found a weird cathedral that looked like Haunted Mansion from Disneyland. (Maybe an inspiration?)

Don't worry. More to come soon, yet again.

finally updating!

2007-10-21T02:03:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, we took a field trip to Josefov, the Jewish quarter of Prague, where I saw the old Jewish cemetary (where the creator of the Golem is buried) and various synagogues that were ancient and beautiful. Kind of depressing though, because most of the people who used all these synagogues were all killed, as is the case with all the Jewish sections of the Central European cities we see.

Then on Friday we left for Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. It was a five hour train ride and it's always a thrill to get a new stamp on your passport. We arrived at Chez David, a pseudo-Jewish themed penzion, got a brief tour of the centrum, and went to dinner with a group of Slovak students in a cellar hospoda. The next day Tom and I hiked up a tall hill to see the incredibly ostentatious Soviet war memorial and cemetary, which had a great view of the city and its castle. Later that day the entire group went to A4, an "alternative" art space in Bratislava, to make arts and crafts out of used computer parts. I definitely am not artistically gifted when it comes to handicrafts. I got a lot of glue on myself, which was fun. Three of us met with a man who runs an NGO for the Roma population--very enlightening---and then we went back to A4 for a "retro party" where people watched old Communist music videos from the 70's and 80's. I will try and post links to some of these videos, because they're hysterical.

To be continued!

this and that

2007-10-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

...on Monday, we had an SIT birthday celebration at the Alchymista (the cukrarna next door to school). We had an entire medovnik to ourselves and I got to drink yerba mate and also received a stuffed goat that looks....well, you'd have to see it for yourself.

...on Wednesday night, I saw a one-man performance at the Archa that involved puppets, trampolines, beer, acrobatics, candy, dance and video. I followed this with a visit to Cross Club, the most surrealistic place possibly ever--it is filled with spinning gears and sculptures and looks like the interior of a Disneyland ride.

...on Thursday, Tom and I went to Zoo Praha. It was pretty great. The best part of it was the Indonesian Jungle, where we innocently stood in a dark tunnel looking at nocturnal creatures when suddenly---whizz! We saw and heard something fly past our heads. Slightly terrified, we walked a little further when we realized there were bats just flying around the exhibition not even inches from our heads. The strange thing about the zoo compared to American zoos was that all the walls in the various habitats were very, very low; anyone could hypothetically have reached and grabbed an animal and picked it up. I even got a shirt that says in Czech that I am an anteater. Later that night we had a discussion and debate with Czech students and one of the members of the Plastic People of the Universe (look them up on Wikipedia---they're very important in Czech history).

cesky krumlov and a czech birthday

2007-10-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

Cesky Krumlov was marked by a delicious arrival at a pub that was built into the castle ramparts. We ate in a small cozy room with wooden benches and stone walls while bagpipe and Indian pop music played quietly through muted speakers and had an absolute feast. The next morning I went to the cathedral, a marionette museum and a great English-language bookstore where I bought some Flannery O'Connor. It was freezing cold, but we all went to tour the restored Baroque theater (one of two in the entire world) and the Krumlov castle, which was also amazing. Throughout the day the St. Wenceslaus (Vaclav) Fair was being held, which involved lots of arts and crafts booths, people dressed in medieval costume, folk dance, and Czech street fair food. Cesky Krumlov may be touristy, but it's gorgeous. I'd recommend going there.

My birthday celebration was kicked off with my arrival to the Danhelovis’ (my host family) house in a small Sudetenland village called Zderaz. On the way to Zderaz from Prague my host mother, Kristyna, gave a vague explanation of how Zderaz used to be a German village but the Germans “had to leave” after World War II. I didn’t ask any further questions because I got the sense it was an uncomfortable topic, however, I would be interested to know the full story behind Zderaz and how the Danhelovi family acquired the house.The moment I arrived at the house I was immediately presented with a cake that my host sister Anna had made for me --it was a very unusual cake made from jello, mandarin oranges and vanilla wafers and was delicious.

Every member of the immediate family, extended family and family friends kissed me on each cheek and wished me happy birthday in Czech and then sang “Happy Birthday” in English. Though I had been told ahead of time to expect this, it was still a little bit unnerving to receive kisses from some of the guests who were absolute strangers (definitely not the American “norm”), yet it did make me feel like I was truly part of a large and warm extended family. The Danhelovis presented me with a CD by a Czech group called Gothart and a calendar of Prague. After a dinner of knedliky and mushroom sauce we all moved to the family room, which had a beautifully painted ceiling (painted by a French man) that was 100 years old and in excellent condition because, according to Kristyna, the house wasn’t used much for long periods of time. This family room also had a fireplace and a piano and was extremely cozy.

One of Kristyna’s father’s friends played the accordion and Kristyna’s brother-in-law Pavel, who is in a band, played the piano and they all sang Czech songs that sounded to me like songs one would sing in a hospoda. I was plied with lots of vino and pivo and after a while I got drowsy, feeling like I was in some kind of strange surrealist dream, surrounded by all these people speaking Czech in a warm room…but I digress.

The next morning I woke up to a long, relaxed breakfast, where we all sat in the equally cozy kitchen and drank cup after cup of caj and ate lots of toasted chleb. Around noon everyone gradually began to move outdoors to the yard and Kristyna came out of the house and announced that her sister Gabriela had given birth to a baby girl, Nela. We all gathered in a circle and everybody but me sang a congratulatory song and then I was plied with even more alcohol, this time slivovice. I ended up spending a lot of my time with one of the cousins, Stefan, who is four. We bonded over the broken bathroom door because we were both trying to fix it.

It was actually quite nice to spend time with a Czech person where there really was no language barrier; because Stefan was so young, he was very content just to have someone to play with and he led me around by the hand and talked to me in Czech. We drew pictures and he showed me all his favorite toys and where all the bikes and the apple trees were and it made me feel good to be able to make somebody happy. I even learned some Czech from him, like “shneck” (snail) and “velka sestra” (big sister). My host brother Ondrej very kindly gave me a tour of the grounds in his best English, showing me where the cow pastures were and where the horses and sheep used to be kept. (Ondrej always makes me happy because he is always trying to communicate with me, even if he doesn’t know the right words, and is always friendly and sweet and funny; he’s a terrific kid.) I also talked with one of the family friends, Karel, who spoke eleven (!) languages—Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Bulgarian, English, Slovenian, and a few others I don’t remember. I have been continually impressed by how many languages many people in the Czech Republic can speak, even if it is rather broken.

After a late lunch I went with the Danhelovis, who stopped in a larger village to go to Mass while I received some phone calls from my family back home and ordered jedna horka cokoladu from a highly attractive waiter at U Zlate Slepice (I promised myself I would remember the name of the kavarna because of the waiter). Following Mass we all drove to the hospital in Prague to visit Gabriela and baby Nela. The hospital was in a building so beautiful it seemed odd there would be, of all things, a hospital inside. I am so accustomed to seeing white, sterile, ugly hospital buildings that it just felt unreal to have a hospital amidst great beauty. I was also surprised that there were no sanitary regulations about all of us going inside to see a newborn baby, unlike back home where they are quite strict about sanitation inside hospitals. I’m not sure how to explain this sort of cultural difference; perhaps it is because I am coming from an overly sanitized environment in general (i.e., air fresheners, highly toxic cleaning powders, Windex). We didn’t wash our hands or anything like that and there was even another woman and her newborn in the same room as Gabriela, and baby Nela was passed around to everyone for kisses. She was small and had a large tuft of dark hair on her scalp and was sleeping peacefully and it was an unusual and remarkable birthday that was literally a birth day.

part dva (two)

2007-09-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

(It's my birthday today. More on that later-)

I'd rather not spend too much time commenting on the negative aspects of Slavonice, but I must mention an instance where our contact person gave us a very vague "trail" to follow and we ended up wandering through haystacks and dirt roads and flat fields of the Sudetenland, encountering a group of local boys at one point and truly understand the phrase "no man's land." On Wednesday we visited Telc, another UNESCO city, which was quite pretty but it was a day full of rain and therefore a lot of sitting in cafes drinking videnska kava.

The other girl and I left Slavonice on Thursday, which was quite an endeavor. We had initially planned to take a bus straight to Budejovice, but Czech-style, it never showed up. There was another English-speaking traveler--an architect from Portugal--waiting for the same bus, and we ended up going with her to the Telc train station where we proceeded to travel for six hours on five different trains to get to Budejovice. I didn't think it was humanly possible to take so many trains in one day, but there you have it, and definitely a full view of the southern Czech countryside.

Finally we arrived in Budejovice and met up with another student who had also traveled there early and proceeded to have a veritable feast at an Indian restaurant. We had to specifically ask for spicy food because they usually cater to the Czech (read: bland) palate and it was delicious--mattar paneer, naan and kulfi made it a good night except maybe for the rain.

The next day in the early afternoon the three of us went to the Budweiser brewery for a tour (not American Budweiser, which is pretty awful, but the real Czech stuff) which was very interesting and smelled like bread and was full of free samples. I even ran into some Israelis and, ridiculously excited, talked to them in Hebrew.

Anyways, I'm twenty, and it's time for me to go to bed and continue blogging later.

regional homestay, part jedna (one)

2007-09-29T02:34:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in Cesky Krumlov (I'll get to that later) but I just spent almost a week in a small town called Slavonice on the border of Austria. Slavonice is famous for its well-preserved 16th century architecture and "sgraffito" (frescos on the sides of buildings) and has a bit of an artists' community from artists who moved there after the fall of Communism. Most of the other people there come from families who were border guards during Communism. I was with one other girl from the program and we stayed in a hotel because our contact person, who was ostensibly supposed to host us, didn't. (She was a pretty awful contact. We had lots of miscommunications with her.)

We did have a few interesting and lovely adventures while there. My favorite was probably the day we crossed the border and went to Austria, to a village called Fratres. I found a sign that said "Museum Humanes" so we went there. It was an old Baroque house run by a tall, gangly, frizzy-haired man named Peter, who was clearly a superhero. He was a political scientist who had traveled around the world and collected the most beautiful pieces of ancient art I had ever seen--from China, India, the Middle East, and central Europe. Peter spoke eloquently to us about his museum and it was obvious how passionate he was about his views on art and humanity. Later that night we went to a Czech rock concert, which was quite an experience. There was everyone there from an 8-year-old girl to a 70-something-year-old man. Lots of people were dreadlocked and trenchcoated and the room was pungent with cigarette smoke. One thing I'll say about central Europe, my lungs will probably never be the same.

Another really positive experience we had was on Monday with a ceramics artists named Tereza Kuhnova. We got to go to her big yellow house, which also happened to be her studio. She talked about her work and showed us around and explained the process of making stoneware and raku pottery. Later, she taught us how to throw a basic object on the pottery wheels and we got to try it. Eventually I got the gist of it, but I didn't end up making anything because I would always make it too thin at the last moment. Oh, well. I drank hot mulled wine later and felt a little better about my lack of ceramics skills.

There were quite a few negative experiences in Slavonice, but I'll get to that in the next entry. I'm going to go watch another folk dance performance in the Cesky Krumlov main square. Be well.

2007-09-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

So, before this entry begins, I have photos:

http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012698&id=28601169

Last weekend I was able to paddleboat down the Vltava river with Meghan from SLC, see a free performance by a Turkish band with Niko from the Bay Area while eating 25-crown (that's about a dollar) palačinky, and attend a Czech Catholic Sunday service. I was also able to experience the joys of the Czech pasttime of gathering houby (mushrooms) with my host family on a lovely Sunday in the forest. They showed me which kind of houby are good to eat, the ones that are poisonous, and that ones that just aren't tasty. The ideal fresh houby are moist and have a yellow, smooth underside. Ones with polka dots are automatically bad. We brought them back to the apartment and cooked them in a delicious sauce and ate them with knedliký (flour dumplings). I also got to drink a lot of burčák, the first pressing of grapes from Moravia to be made into wine. It's yellow and resembles egg liqueur. It's not bad, but real wine is better, to be honest.

We've been learning about Communist sanctioned and non-sanctioned art as of late. We watched a movie about censorship (it was banned back in the day) and watched a Communist-era newsreel and listened to Communist-sanctioned pop music from the 80's. On Monday we discussed Kafka's book America at a café, and I hadmy first Czech language test (first test I've taken since high school--yay Sarah Lawrence!) and I think it went okay. I also acquired Harry Potter in Czech. I collect Harry Potter in different languages and now besides Czech, I have it in French, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Hungarian. Today a famous performance artist named Tomaš Ruller came into class today and showed us examples of his art and in a few hours we're going to Cafe Imperial and then to see a play by a Slovak group. A strange thing about Cafe Imperial, apparently, is that they keep a bowl of stale donuts at the counter and you can pay 1000 crowns to throw the donuts at fellow customers. It's a strange country.

On Friday I'm leaving for the week because all of us are getting sent around the country for regional stays. I'll be with one other girl and we'll be in Slavonice, a Sudetenland village right on the Austrian border. Then on next Thursday we meet up with the group in Ceske Budejoviče, where we'll travel again to Ceský Krumlov to see the famous castle and the St. Wenceslas Fair and finally get back to Prague on Saturday. More to come on all that.

Here are the things I miss the most about the United States:
-FRUIT. Specifically fresh avocados. I'd give anything for a Haas avocado.
-DIVERSITY IN ALL WAYS. It's a very homogenous country, and that's hard to adjust to. There's still a strong sense of xenophobia and racism.
-THE OCEAN. Enough said.
-SMILING. People don't smile at you in the streets. I feel awkward sometimes when I smile now.

ja jsem studentka

2007-09-15T02:44:00.000-07:00

On Thursday we went to Praszky hrad (Prague castle) to see an exhibition by a Czech Cubist painter and sculptor, Emil Filla. I didn't like all of his work but I liked a few pictures in particular. That night, my host family had the mother's two sisters, their husbands and all the kids over--it was a full house and a lot of fun. Families are very close-knit here and the family is of utmost importance. In some ways it dates back to the Communist era because you really couldn't trust everybody, but you could always trust the family.

Yesterday was my favorite day in the Czech Republic so far. After Czech language lessons in the morning, we drove two hours to a village in South Bohemia called Horazdovice to visit the Art Mill. The Art Mill is a 500-year-old mill and farm that is now an organic farm, art gallery and summer arts camp run by an American artist named Barbara Benish and her Czech husband Petr Kalny, who's an architect. They live there with their two daughters Gabriela and Natalya and a slew of horses, rabbits (they eat them), chickens, a goat (they milk it) and my friend from Sarah Lawrence, Annie Rudnik (she just graduated) is living there and working as Barbara's assistant. It was really great to see her. She's assisting Barbara and getting to create her own visual art and dance pieces as well.

Barbara, Annie and her daughters served us a delicious lunch made with food they grow on the farm and we played with their dogs Flicka and Lady. Afterwards, Barbara showed us around the Art Mill. We saw her galleries and her working space and the rest of the farm. She does a lot of interesting work, often inspired by Albrecht Durer and the Book of Revelations and her hometown of Newport Beach, California. It was beautiful and idyllic. I'm sure I idealized the Mill a lot, but it was pretty magical. Speaking of magical, we then went to the village of Techonice and saw a local production of Maly princ (The Little Prince) in a theater that was a converted barn. I indulged in Indian dal soup and medovnik, a mindblowing Czech honey cake.

I feel like the more and more I travel, the more familiar every person and every town and every building seems. I can't tell how I feel about the nomad lifestyle. Is it for me? I'm not sure.

Some thoughts

2007-09-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

-Palacinky are thin Czech crepes filled with cottage cheese and marmalade. They are rich and sweet without being overly sweet, and I like them, a whole lot.

-My host brother and sister, Annicka and Ondrej and I, made felt pillows and filled with them with hops (chmel) and sewed them up on a Communist-era machine.

-Last night our group saw a theater/dance piece performed by a Slovak group inside a dance club called the Roxy. It involved a trumpet, drums, a suitcase, singing, shouting, and contact improv.

-Today we watched a movie about a Czech work camp.

-The most popular names in Czech seem to be Jiri, Vladimir, Jana, Hana, Jaromir and Lida. In Czech, I'm "Noemi".

-The sun came out today, and on Friday we're journeying to an organic farm and seeing "The Little Prince" performed in Czech.

-I have a phone number. Ask me about it.

a czech week

2007-09-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago myself and a group of others got very lost late at night looking for a restaurant in the Hradcanska (castle) district. It took hours to find the restaurant, but we found beauty everywhere, including an overlook view of all of Prague. All the castle grounds looked like fairyland.

Yesterday we had our "drop off" to complete missions in Prague. The four people in my group went to a Soviet-era metro station, a dimly lit basement creperie with a vegan (!) waitress, the Narodni gallerie (National Gallery) where we gaped at Miro, Picasso, Schiele, Klimt and a lot of Czech artists I was unfamiliar with. The museum is in a former Communist-era mall and all the security guards smile at you and try to get you interact with the art. (Smiling is rare here. You have to "earn" your smiles.) Then it was off to the park where we played on an old Communist-era playground with a Sputnik slide.

Last night I met my homestay "mother," Kristyna, at a party for all the homestay families. She is the most lovely person; very smart, open-minded, funny, easygoing. Her children are Anna (12) and Ondrej (10), but she said Ondrej prefers to be called Andrew because it is more "worldly" than Ondrej. They live in an apartment flat, but they also have a cottage out in the countryside where they go on most weekends, so I will get to go and meet all the extended family as well. Nicely enough, Kristyna is vegetarian, so it's a non-issue, AND I will get to learn how to make Czech poppy-seed cake, which I think is rather exciting.

I get picked up in an hour to go out to lunch with the family.

I miss all of you.

an entry, in all actuality

2007-09-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Came into the Czech Republic with the nipping cold, continued thusly. Currently staying in "Pensions House," and we all ate at the pub last night, where I learned the word strapacky. (Strah-PAHTCH-kee)--cheese covered gnocchi. Praha food is heavy and rich and portions are large; beer (pivo) comes in glasses as big as my head, wine is vino and it's prosim (please) all the time. "Pivo, prosim." Cobblestones line the ground. Tourists in stilettos seem to have a difficult time of it. The facade on every building is decadent and covered in statues and gold and filigree and the beauty is so overwhelming and the Czechs are elegant in their scarves and coats, waving cigarettes around, smirking at the British men there for stag parties --strip clubs and cheap booze. The orloj , the astronomical clock in the center of Wenceslas Square, "performs" every hour, and I tried Algerian coffee and talked about global warming with a Czech professor of womens' rights--she doesn't believe in it...

2007-09-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

I am in Praha...it is full of alchemy, tastes like butter and coffee and sugar, smells like smoke filled pubs...
more to come.