I think the second week is harder.

So the exhaustion is starting to kick in--I'm getting like 10 hours of sleep a night and am still tired at the end of each day. I think the combination of just everything being foreign and navigating the city and forming new relationships and learning the language and doing my school work is just all starting to pile up and wear on me. But I think that it will all start to become more natural and I will adjust soon, so hopefully this is a temporary feeling. I do still love Prague, though. I feel very comfortable here--everyone seems to be very laid back. I am probably still in the "honeymoon" phase that will be over in a like a month, but it is still a nice place to be for now.

The last couple days have been fairly normal. We went to another play a couple nights ago by the same people called "Farm in the Cave." I did not like this one quite so much as the last, but it was still really good--very powerful. This one was about the waiting room of a train station in Slovakia that was a mid-way stop to Auschwitz (which we're going to go visit on one of our excursions), so it was more eerie than the other performance. But like I said, still very good. I have not met with the ceramics lady yet--next week for lunch worked better for her, so hopefully that will actually happen. But I am going to go with another girl on the program and her host mom to her host mom's ceramics studio on Sunday, so that is super exciting!

School has been good, but a lot. We read Animal Farm this week, which was very interesting. I was also able to talk to my host mom about it because she experienced a lot of it (she was 16 when Communism ended), so that was really good. I think by far the hardest part of school are the Czech language lessons. It is all just so foreign and we have class in 3 hour blocks, so by the end I always get so confused and frustrated. And we have a test on Tuesday, so that's also stressful. But I still think its good and important that we are learning this language.

I think probably one of the most fun things to do here is to experience all the little cafes and coffee houses around the city. I've probably been to 10 or so different ones already. Today after class most of us in our group went to a tea house and hung out for a couple hours. It's nice to be able to find that balance in our lives and I really do enjoy hanging out with all the people here, but it is nice to be able to go home separately.

Okay, I have to go.
Good luck to everyone dealing with Hurricane Ike!
Betsy