Dobrý  den! 

We’ve had a busy first week here in Prague! Our week included moving in, getting to know the city, starting classes, and even an exam!

On Sunday we spent the day exploring Prague through a scavenger hunt. Starting in Wenceslas square, we visited places like the Lennon Wall, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, the Dancing House, and even Vyšehrad cemetery to see Dvořák’s grave! We began the scavenger hunt in the morning and had all day to run around the city taking pictures in front of different landmarks and finding answers to Czech trivia questions – all without using the internet! As a result, we ended up talking to many friendly Czech people along the way to answer these questions. By the time we reached the final dinner destination at 6 PM, we were all exhausted! I think everyone met their step goal for the day.

My group’s shot in front of Charles Bridge

Two rival groups bumped into each other and took a picture (:

The winning group with their T-shirt prizes

Monday morning we started our classes at CET. We are all taking a course on Czech Politics and Culture taught by a Czech professor as well as Cross-Cultural Psychopathology which is taught by our program director from Carleton, Ken. In addition, students chose to either take a course on Czech Art and Architecture or on Czech Language. It has been a hectic week, as first week always is, but our classes are extremely interesting and I’m excited for the term ahead of us!

Sam and Ali matching at CET!

In addition to the start of classes, we also went on two walking tours this week. We walked around Old Town and New Town on Monday morning, and on Wednesday we headed over to the other side of the river to see the Prague Castle. It was a lot of fun to get an overview of the city, and it gave us a lot of ideas of places we want to go back and visit!

The tour at Prague Castle

The tour at the Lennon Wall

The last few days we’ve spent a lot of time reading and studying around our apartments and CET. So far, we’ve learned a lot about Czech history to give us a solid background for our coming studies. We also were studying for our final exam on the directed readings course we took over the summer, but we took the exam on Thursday afternoon and now have the long weekend ahead of us! I anticipate many of us will take this three day weekend (we don’t have classes on Fridays) to explore more of Prague – updates of our adventures coming soon!