oh.. the life of me

So, I made it through the first week of classes. We don't have classes on Fridays, which is definitely a first for me. At K-state we will always have studio on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 4 hours on each day and usually there is another class or two on those days. We are all trying to grasp how this semester is going to go. We get to pick from all these classes and we could probably take on a lot of classes and bring home a lot of credits. Most of the classes only meet once a week and studio meets twice a week, but from our understanding it's not all that important that you show up for every meeting. There are many classes that hold our interests, though, so we have to decide if we should be selective or try to take most of them. The classes such as photography, figure drawing, and sculpture all start next week, so I have yet to hear how those are going to go, but I'm sure I will be interested in most of them.

My studio selection has come down to two studios. One studio had a lot of different projects to choose from. The professor, Fanta, has many czech students as well as foreign students. So the day we went to the meeting he said he was going to speak to the czech students first. He ended up talking to them for almost an hour before talking with us. Once he explained the projects and looked at some projects for last year we could talk to him or his two assistant teachers about them. Allison and I talked to Fanta about a ceremony hall in a cemetery in a town outside of Prague. He sat down and talked to us for awhile and tried to explain how we could go visit the site. We nodded and all but really had no idea how to find the train stop he had said and it sounded so crazy we couldn't even attempt to try to spell it. He said he'd try to find some czech students that were doing the same project and we'd be able to join them when they visit. To my surprise, only a few hours later, as I was leaving another class, I got stopped by two czech students asking if I was American and taking Fanta and doing the ceremony hall. They said they were going to visit and I could come with them. So I was pretty impressed with how quickly he found two students for us to go with.

There is also another professor that I think I would enjoy his projects a little more, so I'm leaning towards that studio. He has an option between an architecture project or an urban design project. I've never done an urban design project so I am interested in that. It's hard to make these decisions! I almost want to do two projects!

Anyways, now Lent has started and this week I couldn't eat meat on Wednesday and can't today. This is rather difficult when eating at the menza in our dorm... Most czech food consists of a meat, a sauce, and either rice or potatoes or dumplings. We intend on starting to take pictures of the food. It all tastes good for the most part. Laura made a point after a few days after being here that there are many "czech surprises"- a lot of times with food, but basically with everything. We'll be eating something and all of a sudden -Surprise! - there's something completely random in the meal and we have no idea what it is. We basically just go by taste and assume we'd rather not know what we're eating. Yesterday, the day I could eat meat I was served the strangest meal I've ever seen here and it didn't contain meat. Of all days! Not the day I can eat meat! I have absolutely no idea what it was and it didn't taste too good.
Anyhow, I'm probably talking about food because I am hungry right now.

I just glanced out the window and noticed it has started snowing. I hear tomorrow is supposed to be cold and snowy. The plan for this evening was to venture out to a laundromat that's nearby and wash and dry some jeans. Laura and I and two or flatmates are going to combine our jeans together, because this is a rather expensive place to go. We can do laundry in our dorms, but we had to sign up at the beginning of the month and reserve the room on a day, which we did, but there are only washers down there and no dryers and we need to dry our jeans.

Sunday we plan on going to a hockey game - two czech teams are playing. Laura and Allison are currently getting the tickets right now! Next weekend we are going skiing and the next weekend (i think) we are going to Krakow, Poland. I just signed up for this trip- the international office is planning it for us. Some of us are also working on planning a trip to Greece! I am so excited to go to Greece! We know our Italy colleagues will be going to Greece for their Spring Break. We don't exactly get one here, but we'd love to go when they are. Unfortunately that is really soon, so we're not sure if we'll be able to get a good deal.

Well I better go!