An Ordinary Day

“Isn’t it remarkable? Like every time a raindrop falls, it’s just another ordinary miracle today.” ~Sarah McLachlan, Ordinary Miracle

March 18, 2013
First off, I’ve loved Anne Frank’s diary. Her voice and her wisdom are incredible! From her poignant observations about friendship, to her innocent naiveté about the events unfolding around her, the book has entirely captivated me.

I read last night until about 12:30am. Afterwards, I turned off the light and had a bit of trouble falling asleep. I’d guess I drifted off within half an hour. Aaron arrived home from Berlin about 6:30am. His bus had been delayed by a snowstorm in Hungary. I heard him come in and noted the time, but went right back to sleep.

Waking up about 9am, I reviewed some of my notes for intro to Czech class. For whatever reason, the language just isn’t sticking the way I want it to. I probably need to make more flashcards. I’ve always been a flashcard person—at least through High School and College.

In class, we went over conjugating verbs. Much like Spanish, all of the verbs end in three different suffixes (-at, -et, and –it.) By changing the ending, the speaker can indicate the tense and object of the conversation. There is also a class of stem changer verbs (the root -ov- gets changed to -ju-.) It all made a lot of sense, and I found myself making verb tables just like I did in first year Spanish class.

Dr. Antosova—which I have been informed by several people it is rude to refer to professors in this way. They are only to be addressed as “professor” and never by their name in anyway. Across the European cultures, it is seen as too casual—also taught us some restaurant vocabulary. We didn’t really learn many food words, but did learn a number of phrases such as “I’ll have” and “the bill please.”

Ironically, supply chain management felt like just as much a foreign language today as Czech. We started getting into taking derivatives and forecasting lot sizes. I joked that, “I’m majoring in management so I don’t have to deal with numbers anymore. Can’t I just pay somebody to do this someday?” (I’m kidding of course.)

I was the only one in class participating, and I don’t blame the other students who didn’t. I only stayed engaged, because if I didn’t my brain started to check out and I was off somewhere strolling along the Charles Bridge again. I certainly didn’t understand it any better than they did, but guessing at the questions he posed to us made the class go faster.

Not fast enough though…when the break came at the 90 minute, I caught the tram back towards the dorm. Hoping off at the Ohrada stop, I went to Polo for lunch. It was fairly crowded, and the bar tender (the same red head who’d seen me there the first time I came in) saw me fumble around to find a table. I don’t know if the fumbling gave me away or if she just recognized me, but she brought me an English menu—which I learned has more expensive prices on it than the Czech one I’d ordered off of last time.

The dish I ordered still had a Czech name I didn’t recognize. When it came, it was kind of like a stew. It was similar in color and texture to gulaš, but the flavor was very different. There were peppers—and I think even mushrooms—in it. I’m not entirely sure what all I ate, but it was a great blend of rich spice and sweet flavors. It also came with a side of these tasty potato cakes. They were so fried they were nearly black (although not burned by any means) and had a very strong garlic seasoning on them.

As I enjoyed the food, I tried watching the sequence of trams outside. It was starting to rain and I wanted to figure out when a 9 would come by again so I didn’t have to wait outside too long.

When I finished eating, it took me awhile to get the waitress/bartender’s attention for the bill. Having eaten here three or four times now, I knew that she would bring it to me at the table, but she didn’t seem to notice I was done. When she brought a man at the booth next to me his food, I caught her eye and asked for the bill (in English—the Czech phrase totally escaped me.)

After I’d paid, I checked my watch and saw that I had 30 minutes till class started. I went outside, caught the 9, and rode it back to school. As soon as I got to school and took a seat in the hall outside the classroom, I realized I’d messed up. I’d actually had an hour from the time I’d left the restaurant. Now, I had about 45 minutes. It wasn’t enough time to go anywhere and do anything, but it was too much time to just sit here. I pulled out my ipod and started making notes to prep for my upcoming trip.

When the class in the room got out (about 20 minutes later) I went in and took a seat. Lourenco came in and sat next to me. “Did you hear our final paper for this class has to be 20 pages?” he asked.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Yeah,” he responded.

“Well,” I said, after thinking for a minute. “That’s how long my blog posts about Kutna Hora were!”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said proudly. “I guess I’ll just have to get the right inspiration to crank it out!”

Our professor was late returning from the break and I spent some more time playing around with my ipod. The wifi on it doesn’t work in the dorm so I haven’t been using it very often. Lourenco had sent me a friend request on Facebook, and I accepted it so he could check out the blog. I also started blogging on the mobile app I have on the ipod. It doesn’t work real well, but it let me make some preliminary notes about the day.

When our professor arrived, the gibberish continued as he wrapped up the forecasting formulas and then turned us loose to finish our case study. Lucas—my partner for the final project—was back today after being out sick for a few weeks. He joined me and the two Swedish students I’d worked with the week before. The calculations were long and cumbersome and we didn’t finish before time ran out. Our professor told us to email it to him by Sunday so he could get it back to us on Monday.

By the time class got out, the rain had turned to snow. We all caught the 9 back to the dorm—minus Lucas who went to meet his girlfriend—and agreed on a time to meet on Thursday to finish the project.

Back in my room, I took a brief nap until Aaron returned from class. I needed to finish some laundry, so I went to book a washer and took my whites downstairs to wash. Aaron also did laundry, but something malfunctioned with the machine, and his clothes were dripping wet when he pulled them out of the machine. As he hung them up around the room, they left quite the puddle on the towels we place around to soak up the water.

I made some soup and then went to get my clothes out of the wash. When I got back to my room, I saw I’d missed a Skype call from Bryan. I called him back and we chatted while I stretched and hung my wash up to dry.

After he and I hung up, I finished blogging and went to take a shower. It was another ordinary day, but it was also the last ordinary day I’ll have for a while. Tomorrow, a mentor of mine from back home is in town and we plan to get together for dinner. On Wednesday, I am planning to go to Thibaut’s birthday party (he’s turning 26 which reminds me I really am the baby of the exchange program.) Thursday will be a busy study day with a couple of students, and Friday, I leave on the first of my back-to-back trips that will fill much of my time in April!

I am so excited to begin!