Mega-update part 1!

Sorry I've been so horrible about updating this thing, there's just so much going on all the time! The last thing I talked about was the end of the 2 week intensive Czech language course and our celebratory night afterwards. I had a chill weekend, then my regular semester classes started on Tuesday, which was nice. We (as in most people in the program that I'm here with) went to this American bar called The Drunken Monkey for Superbowl Sunday, which was a really place and we all had a really good time! I only have class Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday here, so the 4 day weekends are the best, but the classes themselves are really cool and all have to do with Prague and the Czech Republic to some extent. It's awesome to live in the same place that I learn about in all my classes, especially when my professors tell me awesome places to go and things to see, such as free concerts and amazing restaurants.

At the end of the week, we took a program field trip to Lidice, Litomerice, and Terezin, small towns in the northern Czech Republic. Lidice was a village that was completely razed by the Nazi's in 1942 as retaliation against the assassination of the head Nazi official in the Czech Republic. They destroyed everything, murdered most of the men and sent the rest of the women and children off to concentration camps. There's a museum and a memorial near the site of the village now and then you can walk through where the village used to be and see commemorative statues and memorials set up to remember all of those who died at Lidice when this happened. It's a truly humbling experience, standing in the middle of a barren field where an entire village once stood.

Next, we went to Litomerice for lunch and some free time. It's this quaint little town north of Prague with tons of cool things to see, including their historic town square. After getting lunch and walking around for a little bit, we all filed back on to the bus to head to Terezin, which is a town that was converted in to a ghetto under the Nazi occupation to house most of the Jews of the Czechoslovak region during WWII. It's crazy walking through a town that used to be an overcrowded ghetto, seeing it still function normally. We visited the crematorium that was built near the town to burn all the bodies of the dead that accumulated because of the malnutrition and unsanitary living conditions, which was another humbling experience in itself. Afterwards, we took a guided tour of the Gestapo prison that was built in the Small Fortress just outside of town, where they held political dissidents and other POWs, as well as many, many Jews. The prison was truly like a concentration camp, and all the conditions were very poor. We also saw a movie about the Terezin ghetto and the Gestapo prison which was mind blowing. Overall, I think everyone had a very somber and humbling day, and the bus ride home was eerily quiet.

The rest of the weekend is kind of a blur. Nothing of much importance happened, we just went out and did some more sightseeing and such, and went out at night, but it was a very chill weekend.

I'm also hoping to stay longer after our program end date and travel around Europe for a couple weeks, so we'll see how that works out, and I've been putting more and more thought in to studying abroad again next spring. I can't bear the thought of going home right now, so I think that's what's bringing all of this about. I love all of you back home, but the thought of leaving and going back to Maryland is a frightening one that I'm just not ready to face yet, so I'm putting all of my energy in to these options, instead. I found this awesome program called SIT that has programs all throughout the world, but mainly in developing countries where students get the chance to work in the community and help with ongoing projects as well as take classes and do research. I'm really looking to go somewhere in Africa (Ghana, maybe?) through this program next spring because it seems like such an awesome opportunity! We'll see what happens though.

This last week and weekend will have to come in another post tomorrow hopefully, so keep tuned!