Czech out Prague

The day has been much, much better from this point on. We're certain this had much to do with the prayer we offered once we got off the underground. We checked into our Prague hostel (Charles Bridge Economic Hostel) and found it to be better than expected. The people who work here are so happy, helpful, and honest.

We had a fantastic lunch /dinner at a fancy Czech restaurant. It was my first time eating duck and I it was my favorite of all three meats we had. Later on we went to the bakery next door and I had a sweet bready thing cooked on a spit. It too was delectable.

               

The best part of this hostel is that it came with a free tour of Prague. Monika, our guide, did an excellent job at showing us around the city's cobblestone streets. We all signed our names on the John Lennon wall, saw the bridge with all the lover's locks on it, and got to look inside the coolest ever art piece in the library, built entirely of books. Up a hill, we were interested in a wall and why it was there. Monika said that King Charles hired a bunch of men to build the "Hunger Wall" soley for the purpose of giving them jobs. I looked it up and others are doubtful that's the only reason, but I'd still like to believe it's the main reason. Everything in Prague was beautiful and the weather was really nice. It has rained a little, but not too badly.

Lennon Wall

 I'm on the wall!

Lock Bridge

 View from Lock Bridge

Amazing book tower

Getting There

No, this is not a post on the worst Mary Kate and Ashley movie ever made (whoever wrote the story line is even too embarrassed to have their name shared on IMDB).

It's about getting to Europe!! Much better, eh?

(Disclaimer: I know that writing should stick in the same tense, but I wrote my notes throughout the trip so it changes from present to past to future tense quite frequently.)

I woke up to my mom ringing the doorbell. Ahh! I slept in! It was just like a scene from Home Alone. Only I didn't have a fallen power line to blame. She was there to take me to the airport for my flight to Prague (via NY) . That was the fastest I have ever gotten ready in my life. And as far as I can tell, I didn't forget anything.

I am now on the flight to New York. I was reading The Book of Mormon and the guy next to me started asking me questions about it and the Church. I have always heard stories about people talking to their seatmates about the Church and I always felt kinda left out, but I guess I just wasn't sitting by the right people.

Getting ready to take off from NYC to Prague with Liz, Katie, and Kristen. I love how Katie described our friendship on her blog:  "The only thing we had in common before this trip was our individual friendship with Liz and now we’re all friends together. It’s facebook official. It was the perfect group of people to travel around Austria with." 

Michael Cera  (or his lookalike cousin) is sitting right by us on the plane. He totally knew that we were talking about him and trying to get photographic evidence he was there.  Thus, he dodged my camera in all my pictures.

Turns out that our take off took over two hours.  Let's just say that I'm really not a fan of JFK airport (this has happened to me before) and the Delta crew did far less than a satisfactory job of making our time on the tarmac bearable.

Note to self : Bring some heavy sleeping medicine next time I go on an overnight flight.  Or start saving now so that I can upgrade to nicer seats. Or both.

During the night, dreadlock man sitting next to Katie spilled his beer into her bag sitting innocently on the floor. He was too afraid to tell her and ended up ruining a bunch of her stuff. :(

Well, we got ripped off only 5 minutes after exiting the Prague airport. A shady man who worked at the airport sold us invalid tickets. After being on the bus for only 5 minutes, the ticket checker showed up and informed us of how naive and foreign we were. We had to pay a fine of 400 Czech crowns apiece (approx. twenty bucks). We are learning lessons quick in this country.

The Hills are Alive

I am about to be here, doing this...

I'll miss you all greatly! 

Workin' in a coal mine

Now that summer is finally here (yay!), I have been getting more sleep.  More sleeep=More Dreams=More Blog Entries. It's a win, win, win.

I should have written this earlier today when it was more clear, but you'll just have to deal with what is still in my head.

I was preparing to enter a mine shaft.  I had to get all geared up.  We needed special clothes and head lamps and all that jazz. My favorite part now that I'm awake was a tight material that covered my hair.  It was very similar to one of those things you use to cover your own hair before putting on a wig.

Later we were being trained on safety procedures.  To warn us about the dangers of using a certain drug, this guy started eating this nasty green stuff and then ended up puking it up all over the place.  I was beyond disgusted (as I would imagine you are right now).

I never actually got to go down into the mine.

I was probably worried about getting the black lung, like this guy:

Chips

Favorite end of school gift:

"Your all that in a bag of chips."

Moved

By "WE," I mean "I."

And by "moved," I mean "relocated to a new house 6 miles away."

Anyway, if you want to send me any mail or packages or mail-order husbands,

you'll have to ask for my new address.

More Diary Entries

Here are some hand-picked highlights from my childhood diaries:

March 26, 1995
Dear Diary,
Jonathon  Taylor Thomas is so cute.  He is in a new movie called “man of the house” and I saw it.  Stephanie got a poster of him and Jessica got a magazine about him.  I wan’t to get the new magazine about him.  I got a “Boys 2 men” c.d. and last night I got a “Mariah Carey” c.d.

July 8, 1995
Jonathon Taylor Thomas grew his hair really long and not cute anymore.




January 15, 1996
I like everything we are studying in school now except for math because I hate Mrs. ______ , our math A.L.P. teacher.  She is teaching us things I learned in 5th grade. (I’m in 6th grade and ALP stands for Axelerated Learning Program)


Side note: Now that I work in the district I grew up in, I have taken classes from this same lady as an adult. I still don't enjoy her teaching.


2-15-96
I like the pen my mom gave me. It is a really nice pen and it was $4.00.  Can you believe one pen that is not gold or anything.


2-22-96 (The dramatic entry)
What I write from now on shall be written into a book: It is 5:00 AM on Thursday morning.  My stomach is in knots and its turning in every direction that is possible.  I am sicker than a child who has been in the rain without food for several months.  It is almost impossible to describe how much pain I am in.  It hurts so bad that I am crying.  My father enters wondering why I am groaning, moaning, and crying.  I am in desperate pain. ”What’s the matter,” he asks as if I had only had a bad dream.  I tried to answer clearly, but all that will come out was “It hurts.  It hurts bad. It hurts.”  “What hurts,” he asked, not knowing anything.  “My stomach! It hurts! It hurts! oww!”  “Do you have to throw up?” he asked.  That’s it. My father had solved my problem. I needed to barf! I think! Well I know what I have to do and I better go do it.  I raced toward the bathroom.  My only challenger was what was going to come out of my mouth in a couple of seconds.


My 23, 1998 (Junior High Graduation)
On graduation day my friend Laura Lameroux took me and my friends to the lake on her boat.  We had a fun time, but it was too late for me to get a tan-dang it!  That night we spent the night at her house and partied.  Her mom gave us a bottle of sparkling cider that looks like champagne and we drank it in fancy glasses and each made toasts.  We also burned Tawna’s PRIDE CARD (a card that keeps track if we did our homework), put the ashes in a box and buried them.