Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Praha and I are in the first stages of courtship. We really know nothing about each other, yet we can't manage to be apart for any amount of time. I do long for refuge from such a new, vulnerable relationship within something familiar, but regardless of her circular streets, her indecipherable language and general lack of warmth (in Celcius), I am quickly learning and yearning to have her in my life.

I arrived in Praha after twenty hours of traveling, first through Cincinnati and then, Paris. I cried a lot of the trip. Whether it was due to my unexpected hormonal imbalance, my extreme anxiety or my anticipation of being away from everything I know and love for four months, I would have moments of complete, unapologetic weeping. Not that this amount of time is anything new to me, I just became overwhelmed by the idea of going to a foreign place by myself and couldn't stop the tears from falling. Watching Proof and In Her Shoes on the plane did not help either.

I finally arrived in the Czech Republic with no problem. The scary Policie at the airport checked my passport (I did not manage to get my student Visa in time for my departure) and let me enter the country. I grabbed my suitcases from the conveyer belt and stumbled out to the lobby. Several large, strong men watched me struggle and didn't even consider helping me with my luggage. Welcome to Eastern Europe.

I met with my Czech flatmate as soon as I got to the lobby. Her name is Pavla and she is a Law student at Charles University. She is tall, thin, has dyed blonde hair and salsa dances once a week. She knows nothing of art or theatre but she is sweet and treats us like a mom. She always asks us if we have our keys when we leave for the study center and also has created a flat cleaning schedule for the semester.

I met one of my flatmates and two other girls in our building at the airport. We all took a cab to our new home and I got my first taste of Praha. The castle, the Charles river, the Communist housing units, and the massive amounts of grafitti impressed but did not mesmerize me. I think the jetlag really killed my enthusiasm. I did not really pay attention to anything during the drive. When we got to our new home, we struggled with the doors opening out instead of in and vice versa, and with the dumbwaiter-like elevator that only holds three people at a time. When I finally got up to my flat and pressed the doorbell for ten minutes before our early-arriving flatmate woke up to open the door, I was in awe. The flat has a large entry area, a huge living room/kitchen/dining room, two full baths (only one with a working toilet), and two bedroom (one that is long and narrow like a corridor and one that is larger and has a balcony). I chose to live in the smaller (or what I like to call, cozier) of the two rooms. The positives are that Jessica (my roommate) and I get along very well and that we have a massive amount of closet space. We settled in and I took a nap on my hostel-style sheets. I felt like I was sleeping on a towel washed in starch. But I needed the sleep like nobody's business. That night, we all (Pavla, Jess, Mara and myself) joined two other flats at the pizza place in our building. I did not really get the chance to talk to the other people at the table other than my flatmates and Rachel and Lauren, who live below us, but I noticed one girl who had really short hair and had henna tattoos running up halfway up her arms. She had come straight to Praha from India and I knew I would get to know her. This was my first venture out in the world of ordering in a language you don't understand. The waitstaff does not know English, because we do not live in the tourist area in Praha 1 (I live in Praha 2), and the menu is completely in Czech. What do you do? All I can say is Thank God for my Czech buddy. I ordered a cheese and tomato pizza with my roommate and a bottle of water. I was having stomach pains (and still am, actually), so I did not eat a lot. I did not order a beer, unlike everyone else, but I needed a day to get settled. Well, I did not order, say or do a number of things because I did not know how to say it. Even "thank you," "please" and "goodbye" were a struggle for me to remember. After dinner, we went up to our flat to relax and I fell asleep to my new DVD of Saved! on my laptop. I had only been in Praha for a few hours and I already needed to be pacified by something familiar from home. I knew the transition was not going to be an easy one. I thought the first night sleeping at the Radisson freshman year of college all the way in Los Angeles was difficult; it does not hold a candle to the tossing and turning I did on my two upolstered cardboard boxes they call my bed.