Classes, church, bus fail, food

Well, classes have started...  9am every day this week we have Music with a professor from Houghton who lectures via Skype.  So far it's been about music in general rather than Australian music in particular, which I think is a little weird since it's only a week-long class.  But it's been pretty interesting.  Some of it just goes over my head, and sometimes there's this horrible echo on Skype so you can't really understand anything, but there have been a lot of YouTube clips of different types of music from around the world, so that's been cool.  In the afternoons we have another class, Engaging Australia Culture (I think...), but we don't really know what we're doing for that one yet.  Yesterday we talked about different stages of adjusting to a new culture and intro stuff like that.

Let's see... on Sunday we went to church, not the one where we had youth group but a different one, Southgate Wesleyan Methodist, I believe.  It was kind of in the middle of nowhere and was a big square building, not particularly church-like.  There was a peacock in the front when we pulled up--they're wild here.  The service was pretty normal; we sang some familiar songs and some new ones, Prof. Kettelkamp preached, and that was about it.  Afterward we had snacks and tea and chatted with the Australian people.  An older man told me about his grandsons and how to make pumpkin soup.

Back here that afternoon, we didn't have anything to do and wanted to do something exciting, so we decided to try taking a bus for the first time.  We walked to the bus stop and waited 10 minutes or so for the bus to Victoria Point, where we'd gone shopping the first day.  When the bus was in sight, we all watched and waited expectantly for it to pull up and stop.  But, as we all stood there, waiting and watching, the bus drove right by us.

Of course we were all like, "What?  What was that?" especially because the next bus wasn't for another hour (they run the least on Sundays).  Then we saw that on the sign for the bus stop, beneath a picture of someone waving to the bus, it said "Hail driver."  So, realizing our mistake, we headed back the way we'd come to the other close bus stop, deciding to take a bus in the other direction, where there's another shopping center.  When that bus came into view we all waved frantically, and were very relieved when it pulled over and stop.

But then, after talking to the driver for a minute, we realized that that bus wasn't going where we wanted to go; the bus we wanted didn't run on Sundays.  So we finally gave up and headed back to the college.  It was pretty sad.

But after a little while of sitting around in the lounge area, some people got a ride to Victoria Point with one of the Australian students here, and Adam, Nora, Bekah and I ended up biking there, led by the only American student here, who's really into biking and was happy to show us the way.  It was a nice ride there, all downhill.  We bought a few groceries--everything was closed but the grocery stores and Kmart; things shut down around 5 here, it seems like--and then we had to bike back.  All uphill, this time, with our groceries.  It was exhausting, but we made it (walking up the last hill helped).  And we'd had our adventure for the day.

Yesterday Prof. Kettelkamp drove us to Victoria Point--he'll be doing that every Monday and Thursday, which is nice because I was expecting to have to pay for the bus every time we wanted groceries--so Nora, Adam and I went and got even more food.  The three of us have decided to cook together, and now we should be set for a while with food.  There was a community dinner last night for everyone at the college, and we ate burgers with fried egg and beetroot.  It was different, but good.

Class time... more soon.

Part of Prague

It was cool driving through Germany and the Czech Republic on the way to Prague.  It was funny, there would be all these signs/ads in German or Czech and then randomly one in English.  Germany had lots of pine forests, France had lots of fields, and when we reached Prague I found that it had lots of cool buildings.  The bus station wasn't in the best shape, though.  Because it had been hard to sleep on the bus, when we arrived at the station, a little before 6am, I was exhausted and couldn't wait to get to Nora's friend's house, where we were staying.  But that wouldn't happen for over an hour.  For one thing, the bus had gotten in a little early.  Worse than that, though, I had told Nora's friend the wrong time to meet us at the bus station.  I had assumed there was a time difference between Paris and Prague, and I didn't find out otherwise until right before the trip.  Consequently, I'd had Nora tell her friend the bus would get in at 7:15, when it was actually supposed to arrive at 6:15.  We had no way to contact her, so we just had to wait.

We sat inside the bus station, but it was still cold.  Around 7 the bus station food shops began to open.  I kept watching the people who came in, wondering if each woman was Lucie, Nora's friend.  At 7:30 the real Lucie came, and we took the Prague metro to her apartment (which was on the other side of the city from the bus station).  Once there we ate breakfast; I was so tired I ate with my eyes closed, practically sleep-eating.  Afterward I took a much-needed nap.  A few hours later Nora woke me up so we could go into the city center.  I was still pretty tired, but the sleep had definitely helped.

Lucie had the day off from work, so she took us around, which was good because I at least wasn't up to navigating a new city by myself (Nora was much more awake that day than I was).  Now that the sun was up it was really hot out.  First we went to the castle area, which was a complex of buildings (like a palace and a huge cathedral) and not an actual castle.  It was on a hill, so we had a good view of the city.  Later on we walked across Charles Bridge, which has lots of statues of saints on it.

I don't really remember a lot about that day except walking a lot and being tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty.  Besides Czech Lucie spoke Swedish and English, and since her Swedish was the better of the two, she mostly talked to Nora in that language.  Because I know absolutely no Swedish, I couldn't really follow the conversation, so I didn't always know what we were seeing or where we were headed.  Eventually we went to a pizzeria for lunch.  I was so looking forward to drinking a glass of water--but when the water came, it was fizzy water, which was pretty disappointing.  Apparently that's the norm there, and regular water is pretty expensive.  I swished it around to take some of the fizz out, and that helped, but it still wasn't the same.

After lunch we rode around on trams some and got gelato at one point (I had peach, which was awesome) and later got citronada, which was like lemonade.  At 5-something we headed back to Lucie's apartment.  We got back to her neighborhood after the long metro ride and went to the grocery store.  Although Lucie only got a few things, we were there for a while because the checkout line was so long.  When we finally made it out we went to the post office to buy stamps for the postcards Nora and I had bought in Paris.  Again, we had to wait a really long time, although there we at least got to sit down.  At last we got the stamps and went back to the apartment, around 6:30, and Nora and I both lay down and went right to sleep.

I woke up several times while it was still evening, once because there was a thunderstorm, but I always fell back asleep quickly.  I also woke up a few times overnight and early in the morning, but I ended up sleeping past 10am, and the only reason I woke up then was because there were lots of noisy kids outside (there was a school next door).  I must've gotten over 12 hours of sleep, maybe as many as 13 or 14.  I felt really weird when I woke up, but that wore off, and I felt so much more awake and alive than the day before.

Getting ready for London

I've been shopping . . . and shopping . . . and shopping some more. And soon I'll have to start packing. Fun fun. Since I don't actually have much to say, I thought I'd give you all an overview of what exactly the London Honors Program is.

According to Houghton's website . . .
"Houghton College's London Honors Program combines an integrated curriculum with a European experience. This course of study in the spring semester for selected first-year students merges a traditional humanities curriculum with the opportunity to study in London. Combining history, literature, philosophy and the fine arts, this curriculum is a connected narrative of western ideas and culture from the ancient Greeks through the 20th century, affording students a thorough preparation for more advanced study."

In other words, lots of work but also lots of fun! A five-page paper due every week, three-hour lectures, tons of reading, museum visits, trips to the theater . . . For more info, visit http://www.houghton.edu/admission/fyhp/london_honors/. And you'll certainly learn all the details once I get there!