It takes two hours to do laundry, so...

I have returned from Prague and am now back in Spain. I (sadly) was not in Spain when Spain won the World Cup, a tragedy that prompted my friend to email me the comment Vaya fiesta q te has perdido!!! ("Hot dang, did you miss an awesome party!") On the plus side, I did have a blast of my own. Here was our group of friends: A boy from Slovakia, an American cheering for Holland, a Ukranian gal, and me. I was in the middle of Old Town Square in the center of Prague, which, as far as locations go, was pretty killer itself (see image below). The sea of Spaniards (minus those from Holland) erupted in a cheer so loud, that I could have imagined that I was in Spain anyway. The only difference being that after the game, there were far fewer people out on the streets causing mayhem. The excitement was more localized to certain streets, and there was no dancing in public fountains (which I found out--via Facebook--is what I would have been doing if hanging out in Madrid with my usual crew of Spanish friends).

My proudest moment was teaching a cute Arabic-speaking guy from Saudi Arabia to yell ¡Vamos España! at the appropriate moments. He did me proud.


To draw this entry back to the theme of my blog, the language there was so interesting. Almost nothing looked familiar! I am so used to being able to sort of read signs, that it really threw me for a loop to have to try to recognize such drastically different words. Some of my new favorite words in Czech:

Ovoce (fruit) and zelenina (vegetable). Every good vegetarian should know these. I don't think those two words are in their plural forms because, as I understand it, that is done mostly by adding a "y" at the end of the word.

Pozor! It means "Careful!" "Watch out!" "Attention!" It was everywhere, and I made sure to exclaim it with enthusiasm every time I read it. I was talented at this because in Czech they roll the "r"s just like in Spanish.

As I said before, pluralization comes from adding a "y" at the end of the noun. That's how we get such awesome aisle signs in this supermarket: Crackery, snacky, and (my favorite) chipsy. Apparently, the Czech people, upon adopting the word "chips" did not know that it was already plural. So they have pluralized our plural form. Aside from these words that are obvious in meaning, I did have another very proud moment where I read a sign of about three words that I recognized... something like, "store open daily until 9." The best part about it was that the words for "store," "open" and "daily" were all words that did not look even remotely English, and required me to recognize them in variations of forms I had seen them in previously. Go me.

With that, I will do some yoga and check on my laundry. Then I plan to leave the house.

Hasta la próxima.

Spain versus Holland in the World Cup Finals, and I'm in... PRAGUE?!!

Hola amigos y amigas!

That's right. I'm in Prague (Czech Republic). The city is absolutely gorgeous and I have many pictures to document that fact. I have been busying myself with the task of figuring out simple, basic Czech words. The amazing and beautiful part about trying to read things here is that... I can't! Well, technically I can since the alphabet is the same roman alphabet that I'm used to. I just don't recognize more than one or two percent of the words. There are some words that I do recognize and I imagine that it is simply a matter of them having been appropriated and then integrated into the Czech language (like alkohol or fotograf, for example). I have also discovered a few words that I excitedly point out every time I see them, like the word for fruit and vegetable (ovoce and zelenina). My friend's challenge for me is to find the written forms of the numbers one, two, three, four, and five. I so far have successfully located two and three, I think. not sure.

Anyway, I also find myself in the predicament of being in Prague during the World Cup Finals of Spain versus Holland. Seriously? I missed my opportunity to be in Spain because I extended my stay in Prague? We will see if this situation can be worked out among my friends and I, who are also looking to last-minute book a ticket to either Madrid, Barcelona, or Amsterdam. I would love to watch the finals in one of those two countries (although preferably Spain).