I suppose I should start with something like, “Well, I’m in
Prague now. Look at that!” But it seems a strange thing to say. I feel as if
I’ve been in Prague forever, though it’s only been about a month. I’ve been
awfully lazy about updating my blog, and for that I apologize. I know I
promised a few people I’d keep them updated, but I by the time I got a
converter for my laptop so much had happened that I didn’t know where to start.
So I just downloaded the NYU proxy and watched old Barbara Stanwyck and Fay Wray
movies on Netflix when I was in instead.
Though I’ve been living in New York, these weeks in Prague
have been my first time really frequenting the nightlife. I’ve been to a
several clubs, even more bars, and a few that crossed somewhere between a bar
and club. On our first night, we accidentally wandered into a strip club, where
serious looking dancers swung around lazily while stern-faced Czech men watched
in silence, frowning at us over their bekarovka and tonics. We didn’t stay
long.
We’ve been spoiled with full-bodied beers and clean vodka
shots – that is, until the recent hard alcohol ban. That ban has been all I’ve
seen in the papers – 20 hospitalized, now 38. Dozens dead. I probably won’t
drink another shot the whole time I’m here, just because I’m now so terrified
of becoming blind off bad moonshine masquerading as legitimate liquor.
My classes have been enjoyable. My most serious class is a
course on international reporting. People rarely mention how small classes can
get while studying abroad. We had four people in our class until last Thursday.
Now there’s only two, including myself. The teacher is a gloriously abrasive
Argentinean with a New York accent, blonde highlights and 7-month-old twins. She’s
reported all over the world for everything and everybody, and though I’m
intimidated by her I’d love to be just like her, which is a problem because I’m
absolutely nothing like her. I’ve realized all of a reporter’s greatest
attributes – forwardness, self-confidence, and an ability to remember facts
from hearing them once – are my weak points. I’m the anti-reporter in all but
the ability to write. But what else am I to do with my life? Write poetry? I
don’t think so. Well, the matter of my future career will come later (I have a
few months before I have to choose what I’ll do for the rest of my life.) For
now I’ll focus on turning my weaknesses into strengths, if just for the class
I’m in.
My Kafka class has been surprisingly disappointing. I love
the work – I’m sorry I’ve never read any Kafka before. It was because I was
reading “The Trial” that I decided to write this blog post. It’s the kind of
writing that makes you want to write yourself. I guess in the future I’ll have
to start keeping Kafka around just to make me want to work. But the teacher is
incredibly dull. He’s a young Czech man with a Tony Stark beard and a monotone,
mumbling voice. He punctuates every sentence at the beginning and end with a
low, grumbling “uuuuuuhhhhhhhh.” But that wouldn’t be a problem if he
understood what literature majors… well, do. My roommate, who’s in my class
(for the time being – she doesn’t like this professor much either) tried to
analyze the text, bringing in other examples from Kafka’s contemporaries to
punctuate her point, and the teacher interjected saying, “I think you are
adding your own ideas.” Which is what we do – we analyze the text and come up
with new ideas about the text. This teacher prefers us to simply regurgitate
what we’ve read, which could have passed for English in, say, 7th grade. I don’t
even know if I can do very well in this class if I’m expected to do that.
Czech class is very difficult for me. The teacher is
wonderful, and teaches us conversational Czech instead of trying to explain
everything through grammatical terms like “past participle” or “future perfect
indicative” or whatever. He’s Czech, but speaks perfect English, and this NYU
teaching job is only one of his many translating/teaching jobs where he teaches
English speakers Czech or Czech speakers English. He’s tall with high
cheekbones, probably about forty years old, and everyday appears sincerely
happy to see us.
Finally, I have my Cultures and Contexts course, taught by
my orientation leader Mucha. He’s a distant relative of the famous Mucha,
though he won’t tell us exactly how they’re related. While he was a college
student, he was also one of the dissidents who organized the Velvet Revolution,
and was a personal friend of Czech libertarian, playwright, and president Vaclav
Havel. He’s also damn precious. He must be in his forties as well. He has a
broad, little boy smile and breathes in sharply in between each of his
sentences, giving the impression he’s extremely excited about absolutely
everything he’s saying. He also seems thrilled about the course he’s teaching,
and makes us powerpoints in (admittedly a bit poorly translated) English before
taking us outdoors for field trips. And whenever we go out he puts on an
adorable blue pageboy hat, which absolutely kills everybody in the class. We’ve
only had two class periods (it’s a long, once-a-week class) but he’s gained the
loyalty of all of his students, party through his history as a dissident and
partly through his supreme cuteness.
I suppose I’ll write about my roommates and some friends I’ve
made here next time. It’s lucky I don’t have anything bad to say – otherwise I
wouldn’t be able to write about them. This is the internet we’re living in,
after all.
