First week of classes is done!!

We have successfully survived our first week of classes at Charles University! It's nice to have it be the weekend because even though all my classes are interesting having to sit through class for 4-7 hours a day is completely exhausting and reminiscent of high school. yuck. Yesterday after class we went to the Palladium which is a mall about a 10 minute walk from school that has over 200 stores. I liked seeing all the different styles Europeans wear. They had a much better H&M than KOP. Oh, to the left is a picture of the dorm that I keep forgetting to post. It looks incredibly depressing from the outside I know but the inside is fine.

For dinner we went to a pizza restaurant and then we decided to stop by a pub for a while. We went to this place near our school called "The Pub" run by the beer company Pilsner. Every table has their own tap and in the middle of the table there is a mini computer so whenever you want beer you select your number and then pour your beer. This way the computer tracks how much you personally have to pay for and how much the table has collectively consumed. Then on the wall they project the top 10 tables in the pub so people get kind of competitive over trying to get their table on the board.

Today we just had European Integration and the language class. We started going over facts about the Holocaust for our trip to Terezin and Lidice tomorrow. In Czech class, we watched a movie about the rise and fall of the Communist regime in the Czech Republic. It was fascinating and extremely powerful. It's crazy to see how much Prague and Czech Republic have grown since that time even though it was only twenty years ago. We all want to ask everyone we see so many questions about what it was like to live under a Communist regime and where they were during all these major events, but people don't like to talk about those days so its a difficult subject to broach.

After class we just relaxed and then took a tram down to Mala Strana by Petrin Hill for dinner. We found a cute little Italian restaurant where you could sit outside and watch people and cute dogs pass while we ate. I had fantastic penne with chicken and broccoli for a reasonable price. I would definitely go back there.

Laura and I went to see if we could find the Lennon wall after dinner. The Lennon Wall is this wall tucked behind this church that has been filled with graffiti ever since Lennons death. To the youth of Prague in the 1980s Lennon represented pacifism. This wall has been used to write odes to Lennon as well as grievances against the government. Even after being painted over multiple times the wall quickly fills up again with paint. The wall was covered with sayings in many different languages about love, hope, government and everything you could think of. It also included many Beetles lyrics as you would assume.

When walking to the river we also found a bridge covered with love padlocks where lovers lock their lock onto the bridge and then throw away the key to symbolize their love will last forever. It was completely packed people had started adding in bike lock chains just so they could add more locks to this bridge it was crazy.

Tomorrow we are going to a concentration camp, Terezin, and Lidice which was a town that was completely eliminated during the Holocaust. It is also supposed to rain all day. No one is especially looking forward to it, but we know that it is something everyone should experience.

Here are some more pictures from the Lennon Wall and the locks: