To: sister, For: Yisha

The card I received from Colin:

Oh boy am I loved.

Dear Santa...

I would like to make a strong case for getting me an iTouch. Here's just a small sample of all the advantages an iTouch would give me:

-Being able to play Solitaire during Cultural History class with the rest of my iTouch owning friends

- Being able to read books without having to carry the extra weight in my backpack

- Getting wi-fi access without fear of something blowing up (aka my constantly overheated laptop)

- Being able to see what song you're listening to (not so much on the Shuffle)

But most importantly...

The ability to play songs out of order without having to skip through your entire playlist! It would help immensely during finals/paper time. Here's a sample of what would be playing..

What got me through my International Finance term project...

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room by John Mayer - total play count: 65

Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie - total play count: 11

Fidelity by Regina Spektor - total play count: 20

I want you back cover by KT Tunstall - total play count: 41

What got me through my Environmental Econ term project...

Whatcha Say by Jason Derulo ft. Imogen Heap - total play count: 88

Izzo/In the End by Jay-Z/Linkin Park- total play count: 38

Numb/Encore by Jay-Z/Linkin Park- total play count: 22

With or without you cover by Penn Masala- total play count: 28

What got me through writing my Cultural History Paper...

Songs Like This by Carrie Underwood- total play count: 45

This Time by Carrie Underwood- total play count: 18

I can break your heart any day of the week by Mandy Moore - total play count: 39

Love,

Yisha

P.S. I even help you out by circumventing CPang's pesky questions of "Why does Santa use the same wrapping paper as us?". My answer: duh, clearly Santa has a supply contract with Superstore where we get our paper.

I'm alive and done Eurotripping

Now I know I've neglected this blog for the entire month of November, so I'm going to do a couple of posts now as a "reward" for finishing the work for my environmental econ course here.

So I'm back in Praha until I leave and done my travels. I'm very satisfied with myself as during my semester I've been able to hit:

- Dublin

- Berlin

- Trnava & Bratislava, Slovakia

- Vienna

- Leiden & Amsterdam, The Netherlands

- Brugge & Brussels, Belgium

- Krakow & Auschwitz/Birkenau, Poland

- Rome

- Brno, Kutna Hora, Plzen, Bohemian/Moravian countryside all within the Czech Republic

I have not gotten enough of this continent and here's the map of the Eurotrip I'd ideally like to do summer after graduation. Any takers? Give me a holla.

So my tech skills kind of really blow. In order here are the cities on the map: Edinburgh, London, Paris, Barcelona, Marseilles, Nice, Bologna, Rome, Sicily, Venice, Athens, Istanbul.

Yogurt Apricots

Yes, dried apricot pieces covered in vanilla yogurt is what I bought at the grocery store. Not yogurt peanuts like I thought I was getting.

Other "surprise!" moments that I've had with my food since getting here:

- Getting potato taters instead of croquets.

- Oh, so maso IS meat

Although on the bright side, we did buy actual chicken at the grocery store. Gooooodbye pheasant.

Na zdravi!

In Czech, that can mean either cheers or bless you! There are many things the Czech like, and among those is liquor. And beer. But akin to the list "Stuff white people like" (see: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/) I have started to compile my own "Stuff Czech people like". I have not placed these in order of importance, simply the order that comes to mind.

Drinking

Beer here is cheap. REALLY cheap. Like averaging $2 a pint cheap. Like $1 at the grocery store cheap. Alternatively, you can also obtain booze at cafes, chinese food takeout places (I saw a couple walk in, buy 10 bottles of beer and then leave a "Cinske bistro" here), or any other number of locations. To date I have already had: Staropramen, Starobrno, Krusovice, Budweiser Budvar, and Pilsner Urquell.

In addition to beer though, the Czechs have a whole array of their own liquors: absinthe, becherovka, slivovice, and something labelled as "Fernet stock" that I'm still not what it quite is, just that it burns like hell going down.

How I Met Your Mother (and to a lesser extent the Big Bang Theory)

It is quite often when chatting with people you've just met about movies, music, TV shows, etc. and it is also quite often that How I Met Your Mother will inevitably come up. A discussion will then follow about which character you like the most (if you exclaim Barney this will extend this topic of conversation by approximately 3 min. at least), and your foreign friends complaining about the length of time it takes to subtitle the new episodes. They will also lodge a complaint about how lame the best lines are translated. For example, Barney's "Legen...wait for it....wait for it...and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the last part is .... DARY". That does not translate as such. I have not obtained the exact meaning of the translated phrase, but I do know it is "lame".

Once How I Met Your Mother has been exhausted as a topic of conversation, it will move on to the Big Bang Theory. In lieu of discussing characters and funny lines, the conversation will probably drift in the direction of how many you friends you know who are exactly like the characters in the Big Bang Theory.

Non-stop! (Casinos...bars...etc.)

Here they don't seem to use the phrase "24 hours". Instead they have stumbled upon the phrase of "Non-stop". You will see this plastered all over bars and casinos across the city. I still mentally chuckle a little when I see it.

Hockey

Like Canada, hockey (along with soccer) rank as the most important athletic endeavours here. If you ask any Czech person who follows hockey, they will probably be able to give you 3-5 names of Czech hockey players who were formerly or are currently in the NHL. The only name I have recognized to date is Jaromir Jagr. Although I think I was told that there is currently a Czech Flames player.

Czechoslovak Superstar

All I really know is that this show is the equivalent of the Idol show franchises. I realized this liking for the show after spending time with my buddy and her friends. Needless to say, I only knew it was about the show, not the specifics of the conversation that were occuring.

A terribly tempting but really bad for you diet

They eat a lot of meat here. There doesn't really exist what we would consider salads here, their salads usually consist of pickled cabbage and carrots (it's better than it sounds). They also have fried cheese here. It is essentially a block of cheese, rolled in bread crumbs and fried. SO good, but so bad for you.

Attempting to speak their language

When you use fairly tourist-y lines such as "Djekuji" (thank you), or "Dobry den" (good day), most people smile and seem like they're humoring you. When you move onto more advanced lines such as "prominte" (excuse me, I'm sorry), "mluvite anglicky" (do you speak english) they are fairly amused. When you really start speaking whole phrases in Czech, that's when they get excited. They might proclaim "aww, you're so cute when you try to speak Czech" or "whoa, are you learning Czech?". Mainly because it is kind of an insane Slavic based language and rather difficult to pronounce for native English speakers.

I miss CPang

There will be an epic reunion involving the watching of Blue Planet when I see CPang again. I do not fight the mother image. Some would say it's an asset.

Among other things I miss:

-My rice cooker (the pot I have here just doesn't cut it sometimes)

- Peanut butter

- Reeses pieces

- Pancakes

- Craisins (and dried blueberries too)

- Spinach salad with almonds, strawberries, mushrooms, and a light vinaigrette

- Ribs

- A good bacon cheeseburger

- Fruit smoothies

- An oven

- Regular sized paper

- My Nine West black purse that fits any occasion

- My Crackberry

Yes, I realize they were almost all food related. There really is only so much you can do on a hot plate folks.

I <3 Berlin

I went on an absolutely fantastic walking tour while I was in Berlin and I think our guide described it the best: Berlin isn't one of those visually stunning cities to just look at, but once you know the history and the stories behind everything, that's when you're amazed at what the city has to offer.

If you are ever in Europe the company (Sandeman's) runs free walking tours in Dublin, London, Munich, Berlin, Prague, Madrid, and Amsterdam. http://www.neweuropetours.eu/ The guides only work for tips and I had a former Model UN-er with a wicked sense of Irish humor. That being said, I'm going to do my best to re-create the tour for y'all.

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Brandenburg Gate

Now whoever thinks the Germans don't have a sense of humour should really check out the story of the statue on top of the Brandenburg Gate. The statue was originally called the Quadriga, however when Napoleon invaded Germany he took the statue to Paris. But alas in the early 1800s karma decided to be a biatch and the Prussian General Pfuel invaded Paris and brought the statue back to Berlin. It was then renamed Victoria, the goddess of Victory and now faces the French embassy. Pretty nifty.

Hotel Adlon

Do those balconies look familiar? It should, Michael Jackson infamously dangled his baby out on one of those balconies.

Reichstag

This is the house of the Bundestag, the German parliament. The lineup you see on the lefthand side of the picture is the lineup to go into the dome of the Reichstag building. It overlooks not only Berlin, but the chambers of parliament below as well. It's design was built to symbolize transparency and accountability in government.

Holocaust Memorial

This is also known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It is comprised of over 2,700 slabs of concrete of varying sizes arranged in a grid. It is not meant to represent any object in particular. Rather, the design is meant to evoke uneasy and confusing emotions that make the viewer unavoidably acknowledge and remember the victims of the Holocaust.

Hitler's former bunker

Below this very plain site lies Hitler's former bunker and where he commited suicide. There was a lot of debate in the German parliament as to whether a memorial sign should even be erected at the site.

The former largest office building in the world

This is the propaganda mural on the outside of the office building, upon its completion it housed the Nazi Air Force. It was replaced as the largest office building in the world a week after completion when the Pentagon was finished. I think it definitely says something about our world that the largest office buildings at the time were both occupied by military personnel.

Although now the building amusingly houses....

The German Finance and Revenue Agency!

Berlin Wall

The area behind this particular section of the Wall used to house the headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo.

Checkpoint Charlie

Where the world almost ended and the cold war almost become HOT.

Gendarmenmarkt

When Louis XIV of France evoked the Edict of Nantes, 5000 Protestants were uprooted to Berlin. The French cathedral was built to honor them. The square was named after the Gens d'Armes regiment that were deployed there until the late 1700s.

Memorial of the Nazi book burning

In May 1933 students burned more than 25,000 books by "un-German" writers, scientists and philosophers such as Kafka and Einstein.

The plaque next to the memorial reads "Where they have burned books, they will in the end burn people: - Henrich Heine

Heine had originally been referring to the burning of the Qu'ran during the Spanish inquisition.

Church across from the old National Parliament

This church amazes me because it wasn't actually built until the 20th century. This is where we also sat on the steps and concluded the tour with the story of how the Berlin Wall fell.

----

I hope I did the tour some justice and that you all get to see Berlin at some point. There is a story in every part and place of the city that won't cease to amaze you.

Willkommen in Deutschland

I've come to the conclusion that everything is just cooler in Germany. Here's just the tip of the iceberg...

Their advertising

Their cars

(That's a smart car! Convertible!)

(That's a Bugatti...I'm told it's like one of the sweetest cars around)

EVEN THEIR MANHOLE COVERS

It's really too bad there aren't any German princes left for me to marry into the royal family and escape there.

Women don't get beer bellies right?!?!?!

Czech food consists of 4 categories:

- Meat

- Carbs

- Beer

- Other

And more often than not the other is some sort of cheese. Potentially fried cheese. I need to find the gym, ASAP.

Our meal in, only the pesto pasta is missing. Made of course by my Italian flatmates.

Very good Kozel dark/light beer mix. Akin to a crown float but much better and a bit stronger.

A very traditional Czech dish. It is meat swimming in sauce made from veggies, topped with whipped cream and cranberry sauce. The side is what they call "bread dumpling".

There is a vast amount of Italian food here, and it kind of confuses me.

Those were advertised on the menu as "potato brownies".

My mailing address

MY MAILING ADDRESS

Yisha Pang

Central and East European Studies Program

University of Economics, Prague

nam.W.Churchilla 4

130 67 Praha 3, Czech Republic

MY TELEPHONE NUMBER

00420775443958

International texting is I think the same price as local texting for me.

PLEASE SEND ME MAIL AND MAKE ME FEEL LOVED!

My adventures with the Czech langugage

Czech [chek] - noun - the language of Bohemia and Moravia, a Slavic language similar to Slovak.

What it should read is:

Czech [chek] - noun - the Slavic language that has too many consonants, impossible pronounciations, and sounds really angry when used by old Czech women

That being said, I love some of the words and REALLY want to stay in the Czech language course I'm registered in. So far here's the Czech words/phrases I've learned (sans accents cause I don't know how to do those on Blogspot).

Dobry den - Good day!

Ahoy - Hi

Djekuji - Thank you

Pristi zastavka - next stop (on the tram)

Potraviny - mini market

Jsem Yisha, Jsem Kanadanka - I'm Yisha, I'm Canadian

Mluvite anglicky? - Do you speak English?

Nevlumim Cezky - I don't speak Czech

Namesti - Square, as in large area, not the shape

Zmrzlina - ice cream

Cavu/cava - coffee

Chaj - tea

Husinecka - My tram stop for school

Here are also the Italian words I've learned from my flatmates:

Arrivederci - Goodbye (I love saying this word, it just sounds sooo pretty to me for some reason)

Buongiorno - Good day!

Buona sera - good evening

Mi chiamo Yisha - My name is Yisha

Prego - thank you

Stracciatella - the gelato flavour, but w/ the proper pronounciation

Funny story from taking the tram

So a really old lady got on the tram and I got up to offer her my seat not knowing there was an empty one behind me. So the old lady realizes this and this is the interaction that occured:

Old woman: Speaking in Crazy Czech I don't understand, blah blah, THANK YOU (I catch this phrase)

Me: Ahh...you're welcome (realizes she can't understand me), *Nod head* *wave hands as if to say no problem*

Old woman: more speaking in crazy czech

Me: uh...*point at myself* anglicky! (English!)

Old woman: ah *nod*

*Mutual staring and nodding for 2 minutes*

P.S. Just the Tran #9 here kicks the butt out of our entire C-Train system back home. It takes me like everywhere I need to go.

I NEED to go back to Ireland

So I really don't know where to start with my blog, so I'm just going to go through what's happened chronologically.

6 hour layover in Chicago

- Nothing eventful

- 4 hours into layover I realized I packed all my socks into

the suitcase I wrapped and couldn't really open until Prague

- an hour before takeoff Stephanie Mah (the good intelligent friend she is) reminds me on MSN that there is in fact a time difference between Calgary and Chicago and that my laptop time was incorrect and I pack up and hurry to my terminal

Dublin

DAY 1

-Take a quick catnap to recover from jetlag

- Hit up Dublin Castle, Chester Beatty Library, St. Stephen's Green, and Grafton Street (to buy socks, they were even on sale!)

- It's raining non-stop all day so I prepare myself for a wet week only to be pleasantly surprised by 3 whole days of non-stop sunshine

DAY 2

-The National Museum, the National Library, the National Gallery, Trinity College

DAY 3

-take the train to the town of Howth which is north of Dublin along the coast

-do the 4 hour "easy" hike on the cliffs behind the town of Howth

DAY 4

- Guinness Brewery, Custom House

- So I tried to go to Kilmainham Gaol which is an infamous prison on the outskirts of Dublin. Now my guidebook called this part of town "salubrious" which I took to mean "colorful" or like "eccentric". Actual meaning = SUPER SKETCH. I walked about halfway there and got sufficiently sketched out enough to start walking back towards the non-sketchy part of town. I turned around after I got to a mental institution. No joke.

My favorite picture of the trip was my view from the top of the Cliff of Howth where I took an hour long break and had my "picnic" lunch.

View:

I will post more later about my adventures thus far in Praha.

I'm all packed...sort of

Packing ground zero, my mother kindly volunteered to help, probably speeding up the process by a good 1.5 hours

I'm done packing! My checked pieces of luggage anyways, it was a slight miracle I managed to fit my carry-on luggage into one of my checked pieces of luggage, but now I will have an almost empty piece of checked luggage that I can fill with stuff while I'm there.

I'm now printing/organizing all necessary docs and wrapping up life here so I feel somewhat ready to leave. T-minus 13 hours until I am at the airport!

I figured it out guys!

So it's 11:41 pm. I've just booked my hotel in Dublin: http://www.trinitycapitalhotel.com/

I'm supposed to be studying for my TOUR 309 block week final, but have opted to instead figure out blogspot instead. Saying bye to everyone today was a little bit emotional since I didn't realize how many people I know in Calgary and how they know all my idiosyncracies, and the rituals I've developed with everyone, and the inside jokes/stories they know about me. i don't think I'm going to miss Calgary, but I am going to miss each and every one of them.

I'm not going to make firm promises, but if you leave your mailing address I will do my very best to mail you all postcards semi-regularly.

P.S. I really hope I haven't effed up blogspot and thus you have all received the link to this blog and are reading this. Someone say something so I know my tussle w/ technology hasn't foiled me again!