Orientation (Part 1)

Feb. 11, 2013
There was a knock at the door. I was just wedging my laptop into my backpack (which was remarkably still with me, despite the fraying straps.) I went to the door and answered it.

“Good morning, Zachary,” Ivana said. They pronounce my name something like “Sock-uh-REE.”

“Hey, I’m almost ready,” I said and, letting her in, I went back into my room to grab my pack.

“So many things you are bringing,” she said. “It’s really just my laptop and a note book. The bag is just kind of awkward.”

“And what do you call this type of bag?” she asked.

“Back pack,” I said.

“Back pack,”  she repeated. “And this type?” she asked pointing to the bag she carried over her shoulder.

“Purse,” I said.

We met up with Lad’ka and Kevin and caught the tram to school. Each time I road the tram I had to purchase a ticket from a small machine that only took coin money. The different colors and shapes confused me, so Ivana was still helping me figure out which coins to put in the machine. It would then spit out a ticket. When we boarded the tram, there was a small validating machine by each of the doors to punch the ticket.

“Today we get you student pass for tram, so no more tickets,” Ivana explained.

At the school, we were joined by Ivana’s roommate Susanna (or “Zooska” in Czech) and her exchange student, Samuel. Samuel is a master’s student from France working on his thesis work in Prague this semester. This is the second semester he has studied here.

In many ways, touring the school made me feel like I was back in High School. While they called each wing of it a “building” the entire thing was connected under one roof. It was perhaps a little larger than my high school, but not by a whole lot. The classrooms were lecture halls and certainly sat more people than a high school, but there were probably just as many classrooms. There were even lockers we could use if we wanted to.

Ivana again helped translate for me to get through the registration process. I had to get an ID card, a VSE city card (which is like a student discount card for restaurants in town), a club card (which is a student pass to get into clubs in town), and an international sim card for my phone. I ran out of money during these transactions, but Ivana graciously loaned me some.

Once everything was purchased, we planned to go into town to get the phone.

“I need to get online first to transfer some money around,” I told Ivana. We went to the computer lab to do so. I hadn’t been able to do so since I couldn’t connect to the Wi-Fi in the dorms. When I tried to log on to the schools network, it failed. We tried a second time, and it failed. We booted up my laptop and tried to log into the Wi-Fi. It failed as well.

Ivana logged me into her account on the network so that I could at least view my bank information. She then began tinkering with my laptop.

“I will take this to IT department and see if they can fix,” she explained. And like that, she was off.

Back in the US, I wouldn’t trust the Pope with my laptop. I have refused to let my brother use it for homework. I have declined to let my Dad use it for presentations with Boy Scouts. It is my baby, and now, once again, I was trusting someone I’d only known a day—along with an IT department I couldn’t communicate with—to work on it without me even being in the room.

I logged into the bank and noticed a few things I needed to check with my Mom on. She had replied to my email from Ivana’s iPad so now I could see what she was talking about, but it left me with a few questions.

“Zachary,” Ivana said, returning to the computer lab. “Can you come with me?” It was then that I realized she didn’t have my laptop!

I logged off and followed her to the IT room. I was oddly calm about not being able to see my baby. I guess the past few days were starting to breakdown my natural distrust of people. When we came in the office she introduced me to one of the support agents. He spoke broken English and, with some help from Ivana, was able to explain to me how to reset my Wi-Fi password. He had reset it once so I could get on, now I just needed to reset it to something I could remember.

Ivana and I went back into the lab and logged into the school network. The keyboard on Czech computers is slightly different than American computers. There are no numbers on the top row, and the location of “Z” and “Y” is switched (not real convenient for me.) Using a hunt and peck method to type, I entered in my username along with the illogical password he had created—ftL7uNc28.  It worked! We got into the user system and again I typed in ftL7zuNc28. It asked for a new password and I entered one.

“Now let’s try Wi-Fi,” she said. We opened my laptop. I found the network. I typed in ftL7uNc28. It failed. I tried again. ftL7uNc28. It failed again.

“Let me try,” Ivana said. She typed in ftL7uNc28. It failed.

Ivana went back to talk to the IT guy and returned with a web address we could look at on the school’s network. We went onto it and immediately discovered it was in (drumroll please) Czech. With Ivana translating and me working the laptop, we went through the steps to manually configure the Wi-Fi on my laptop.

When we had gotten through all the steps, I entered the password again. ftL7uNc28. It failed!

“I don’t know what is wrong,” Ivana said. “I am no good at IT problems.”

I typed it again. ftL7uNc28. Fail! ftL7uNc28. Fail!! ftL7uNc28. FAIL!!!

“I do not know,” Ivana said.

Suddenly it clicked for me. “I do.” I said.

We had reset my password just five minutes ago. ftL7uNc28 was no longer my password. I entered the one I had created—the one that was supposed to be something I could remember.

It worked!

“Oh ya!” I said, and held up my hand for a high-five. Ivana lightly touched it with her palm. She clearly got the idea, but I am assuming it may not have been the most proper in this culture.

I shut down my computer and we went to meet the others for lunch in the schools “canteen.” They were finishing up, but had some left overs that Ivana and I ate. It was a pizza like dish, made of flat bread, with a white sauce and smoked salmon.

“What was the problem with your computer?” Samuel asked in a French accent.

I bit my lip a little. This was such a classic “me” mistake to make. “I was typing the wrong password,” I admitted. They all laughed. “Not to prove the ‘stupid American’ stereotype, right?”

“He proves the snobby French stereotype,” Suzanna said.

We all laughed and enjoyed lunch. As I looked around the table, I realized that I was sitting with 6 people I hadn’t known 48 hours earlier. Now we were all on this adventure together!