Things That I Learned While Working at a French Restaurant:

• You can skin anything. If it has a skin and you have a knife than what are you waiting for?
• "Chaud!" means "Hot! [Move if you don't want to be smacked in the face with a pan of fish!]" not "Maybe kinda sorta warm-ish."
• French people do not like strong spices. They are all about subtlety. And meat.
  
• A "tarte" is really more like a sugary quiche with fruit in it. Skinned fruit of course.
• Nothing is wasted. Chocolate didn't turn out right? Turn it in to a cake!
• Real chefs cook in clogs. See my clogs bellow.
  
• Mistakes are meant to be eaten. Especially smashed creme caramel.
  
• The metric system is so much more convenient.
  
• Even real restaurants use microwaves. And buy pre-sliced potatoes.
  
• How to separate egg whites from eggs yolks. I am a real pro now.
• Orange and kiwi slices make an appropriate garnish for any desert. Except for the deserts that don't get garnishes.
  
• Don't ever let a plate leave the kitchen without a generous handful of parsley sprinkled over it.
  
• If something falls on the ground you really can just throw it back in the pan.
• Really. You can (and will) skill anything. Ever skinned a rhubarb? A pumpkin?
  
• Cutting yourself is just a matter of time. Same with burning.
• Salad always comes with pieces of lettuce that no normal person could fit in their mouth. The chef said this gave the salad more volume. I don't really understand the logic but I know it's less work for me while I'm making the salad so whatever.
  
• Creme brullee normale, creme brullee vervine, and creme caramelle each have a distinctly different way of assembling essentially the same ingredients and no matter how many times they tell me I will always mix them up and look stupid.
• Information (like directions) is much more difficult to retain when you're not sure if you entirely understood it in the first place. This might explain both my issues with the various cremes and my math grades in high school.

Ok. That's all I can think of for now. Let's just say that the book that I'm currently reading "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" is starting to feel a lot like deja vu. Minus the pasta. And the Dante. And Tuscany.

The Treasonous Post

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about all the things that I miss from home (the first on the list probably being chocolate peanut butter milkshakes from Tios and followed by my dog). So today I decided instead to focus on some thing more positive...

The Great Big List of Things That I Don't Miss About America

1. Strip malls, parking lots that could swallow humanity, and bad architecture in general. Buildings in France are just so much nicer to look at.
2. Bad cheese. It will be a long time before I am able to just eat handfuls of Kraft shredded sharp cheddar like I used to do.
3. Wal-mart. Oh how I hate Wal-mart. While I do not miss Wal-mart in the slightest, I almost miss being consumed by a fiery hatred for the evil institution and it's shady business practices.
   
4. Bad television commercials. I don't really watch television here in France. Problem solved.
5. Roadkill. I don't know whether wildlife is smarter here in France or what but I have yet to see any roadkill. However, it is fun to try and explain to French people that Michigan law states that if you kill a deer with your car it's yours to take home.
   
6. A certain leader of the free world and his robot cronies. 'Nuff said.
   [To be fair I don't really miss Hilary or Obama or the never-ending debate about which one will really screw-up first either.]
7. Celebrity tabloids. It's nice to finally be free of the antics of Paris and Lindsey (are they still alive even?).
   
8. The miles and miles of corn fields. They're really just sort of creepy when you look at them up close.
   
9. KFC. Oh wait, I saw more KFC's in Prague than I've ever seen in my life. Vicious tentacle of the capitalist empire...
10. Hummers. (www.fuh2.com)
11. Side-walk preachers and door-knocking evangelists.
    
12. Fox News. I don't watch it but it's nice to know that I am safe from a tragic channel surfing accident. All television media outlets for that matter.
    
13. The fact that Southern Michigan is the cloudiest location on the planet. (Seriously, it took the Google satellites something like 4 tries before they could get clear pictures of SE MI.)
14. Carrot Top.
    
15. Ok. I'm starting to get desperate...

But you get the point.

The wonders of Skype.

Here's what my family looks like when they finally decide they love me enough to get online and talk to me...
Think it's funny? I did. Here's what they have to say to that...
Skype is a wonderful invention.

Sanksgeeveenghg Re-cap, Music

Hey everyone, check out the cool slide show thingie I added to the side of the blog! Now all you lazy folks don't even have to click on the photo link.

French Thanksgiving (Sanksgeeveenhg) turned out to be pretty yummy. I got to skin the pumpkin at the restaurant the day before and the mini-tarts weren't nearly as bad asI thought they were going to be. There was even cranberry sauce and a strange attempt at stuffing. But it wasn't really the same withough the parade and football on TV and the great DeChants-Bolz tradition of playing Cranium and SceneIt. It was also very dificult to try to explain to French people the concept of Black Friday. Apparently it's not culturally acceptable for them to trample eachother at 4 in the morning to get the last Tickle-Me Elmo off of the Walmart self.

Other than trying to celebrate American holidays in self-exposed exile, life has been pretty boring lately. But in a nice, relaxing kind of way. I have found time to listen to a lot of music and to do some pleasure reading.

I have been experiencing a Bob Dylan craving lately. I think it's because we're actually surrounded by American music all the time but it's a very narrow selection of American music. You know that you're experiencing the opposite of culture shock when you start singing alone to Hillary Duff at the grocery stop just because you know you're the only one in the whole store who will be able to correctly pronunce all the words (which you are ashamed to know). Or when you get excited when the coffee shop plays the English version of "The Way I Are".

So if anyone has any music suggestions I am open to them. In return, I would reccomend Andrew Bird to anyone who has not yet discovered his odd glory. "Scythian Empires" is my current favorite.

Do you think James Blunt is going to be sad in 15 years when someone with a half-decent voice redoes his songs and they sound a million times better?

Thanksgiving Trivia

Did you know?

The French word for turkey is "dinde" which literally means "from India". This is thanks to Christopher Columbus' refusal to believe that he was not actually in India. What a cad.

Hark! A Revolution!

So I found out what exactly what general strikes means. I was sitting at a computer at the school when I thought I heard yelling and I thought to myself "Hark, I believe I hear the sounds of revolution." So I went outside and discovered that there were lots of people in the street yelling things and waving brightly colored flags.

Then Amel showed up so we decided to follow the protesters. We listened to them yell things and play German 80's music (99 Luftballons makes me want to change the system too?). Then we went to Amel's house and got her camera and she took the following photos of the mayhem...

Don't they look menacing and serious?

There was also a dog with a red ribbon around his neck wandering around the crowd. Amel and I christened him "The People's Dog".

It was really just like a big party in the street. Kids got to skip school because they're teachers were striking. Students physically blocked the universities. Angery train workers burned things on the tracks.

All so that construction workers can retire at 55.

What a country.

Yay Socialism...?

They're striking again. The public university students are on strike and blocking the universities too. (But at not good ol' ESC.) This time they might turn it in to a general strike or as my host father calls it, "greve a la francais". I don't know exactly what happens in the event of a general strike but I think the world might end.

And it's all really because they hate this guy...
Seriously. I have yet to speak to a French person who likes him. Or at least who will admit to liking him. I don't understand how he got elected by a significant majority. The ironic part is that he came to America and everyone loved him because who loves America and because he's fiscally conservative (for a French guy) but now everyone in France is going crazy because they think he's too conservative.

Also, can someone please do something about the dollar? Merci.

Weekend lunches in France tend to be a bigger deal than those in America. This usually just means that the food portions are bigger and everyone gets more cheese. Today I sat down to lunch and my host mother placed a steaming plate of meat on the table and I immediately thought to myself, "Where did she get that elephant meat and why are we eating it for lunch?"

The elephant turned out to be a pig. I put lots of mustard on it.

I met my other host sister yesterday. Her and her "copain" (boyfriend) came over for lunch. She is a medical student in northern France. She seems very nice but she was only at the house for maybe 2 hours so I didn't really get to talk to her much. She also speaks very quickly and does not enunciate. I did find out though that I am staying in her old room. She asked me if I liked it and I said that I did.

I have to go home and work on my presentation on "Waiting for Godot" for tomorrow. I really didn't like the book so we'll see how that goes...

Since coming back from vacation we've all been trying to get back in to the routine of France. So far I think we've been successful.

Tonight we are having a wine-tasting party with our Program Director to celebrate the Beaujolais. The Beaujolais is apparently a relatively new holiday in France and it's to celebrate the end of the harvest by drinking a lot of wine. My host father said that the wine industry in France so that everyone would have an excuse to drink the wine that's not going to age well anyway. So it should be great fun!

Last weekend my host parents took me to see a castle. It's the oldest surviving castle in Auvergne and it was actually destroyed durring the Revolution (death to privilege!) and reconstructed by some crazy old man in the seventies and eighties. That man's son and wife still live in the castle and the son gave us a tour. It was very interesting. I guess once the king of France once spent a couple of days there. They're still taking about it. It's sort of a big deal. The castle was small and cute and reminded me of the PlayMobile toy castle that Charlie had when we little.

A word about Pepiniere

<- Here's a photo of my school. I don't know who those students are though. It's an old photo that I found on the internet and they look nothing like the students I have to shove past to get to class each day.

So the only class that I am taking here that both 1) has real French students in it and 2) I will (hopefully) receive academic credit for is a class called Pepiniere. I think I have mentioned it before but it is worth discussing again. This class is actually a very large, year-long group project. I am with a group of 5 French students and our task is to research and develop a marketing strategy for a new "Institut de Formation de Coiffure de Estetique" (which can be loosely translate as "Beauty School") in Clermont-Ferrand. The project is also a competition since there are 3 other groups working on the same marketing strategy.

I was originally nervous that this experience was going to be too intense for me. The first two sessions where long lectures in technical French about marketing and then group meetings with French students who speak incredibly quickly and use large amounts of "argeau" or slang. I was most scared when I realized that the material was the kind of thing that I wouldn't understand even it it was in English. I was worried about being a burden to my group both because of my poor language skills and because of my lack of business knowledge.

My experience so far has actually been the exact opposite. I don't know what these kids do with their lives, but it is certainly not worry about or work on Pepiniere. They also, despite taking classes in Economics and Marketing, do not understand the business aspect of this project any more than I do. They also don't have the slightest idea how to work in groups.

Don't get me wrong: my group has been very very kind to me. They also slow down and explain thingss to me (even if this means that they have to teach me colorful vocabulary) and they always include me in what they're doing. They just don't do very much.

For a while I thought that they were meeting and working and not inviting me (which I was fine with). But no. They show up to meetings having done nothing since the last time they met. They schedule extra meetings on the weekend but only a couple of them show up and then they sit there and talk about working while working very little. Seriously, they go on Facebook. I myself have wasted many an hour of my live on Facebook, but I have never done it during a meeting to work on a project. They are also mildly computer-illiterate. They type so amazingly slowly. I want to say to them "Tu tappes comme ma grand-mere. Peut-etre pire." ("You type like my grandmother. Maybe worse.") [No offense, Grandma!].

I thought things would change when the professor in charge of our project told them that they needed to work and that: (I paraphrase for the sake of translation) "It would really suck for you if you had to do this project again next year". But instead they had the audacity to tell her that they "didn't have time". I was amazed.

I still am amazed.

I miss peanut butter. And candy corn. And crunchy leaves on the sidewalk. All the leaves here are wet and not at all satisfying to step on.

I miss breakfast cereal. And Law and Order: SVU. And taking a real classes where I learn things.

I miss Hollywood video and the Rave Theater at Kalamazoo with $5 student tickets.

I miss popcorn. And Borders'. And Starbucks' Mint Hot Chocolate. And Chai lattes.

I miss ramen noodles and eating pasta four times a week. I miss bagels and cream cheese.

I miss driving. And Ultimate Frisbee. I miss reading the New York Times in paper form.

I miss my really comfortable mattress and my room where the floor doesn't creak.


But watching Eddie Izzard on YouTube makes me feel better.

Ghost of Communism Past, Part 2

Whew. Summarizing my vacation is almost as much work as the vacation itself.

Tuesday October 30^th was our last day in Prague. We got up early and went the Czech National Museum. After getting off the Metro on the wrong escalator and walking all the way around the museum we finally found the front door. The building itself was quite beautiful, both the outside and the interior. The exhibits themselves were honestly a bit disappointing. There was an out-dated exhibit on Archeology with artifacts from places like “Rhodesia” and most of the artifacts were in fact copies. The labels were a little bit vague; they tended to claim that chips on bones “may be evidence of cannibalism”. There were also a lot of creepy-looking dead and stuffed animals. There was a collection of every rock or mineral known to man, save one. We searched through all the cases but we couldn’t find a Petoskey stone. There were some rocks from Michigan and even a “Grand Rapids Stone” but no Petoskey Stone. So before leaving the museum we signed the guest book like this…
Where is the Petoskey stone? Don’t worry, we’ll send you one, along with a real squirrel. Michigan. They didn’t have a normal squirrel. There aren’t squirrels in Europe. I almost miss the little buggers.

We then grabbed some lunch and tried to visit the two big churches in Old Town Square but one was closed and the other cost a bunch of kronners to get in so we decided to skip it. We then wandered around and did some souvenir shopping. I was running out of Kronners so I just got a bunch of postcards. After much debate we then decided to head back to the hotel since we were all exhausted and we had an early morning the next day. So we went back to the room and played some Euchre before heading over to the real Top Hotel Praha and having some dinner at the buffet. Then we came back and went to bed. (We are such losers.)

The next morning we got up at 4:30 in the morning. By 5:00 we were waiting for the bus to the Metro and by 5:45 we were at the bus station waiting for our bus to Budapest. I think all of us were a little worried about sitting on a bus for seven hours but our bus turned out to be quite luxurious. We pulled out of the station at 6:30 and were served our first cup of hot chocolate by 7:00 which is about the same time the sun rose. Our bus even had an attendant, Eva, who was really nice and who became our friend and hot chocolate provider. She also spoke excellent English. We even got to watch movies on the Bus and we started with “The Girl With the Pearl Earring” and some episodes of Friends before concluding with “Miss Congeniality 2” (turns out to be better in Czech) and “The Whole Nine Yards”. About 4 hours in to the journey we crossed the border in to Slovakia and we stopped in the capital, Bratislava to pick up more passengers and grab some lunch. I had been very excited to see another country but truth be told Bratislava mostly reminded me of Detroit or Gary, Indiana. We then crossed the border in to Hungary and passed through Hungarian customs with no issues. The one glitch was that our 7-hour bus ride was elongated to 8 hours when we finally arrived in Budapest but sat in a traffic jam for almost an hour. It was almost worth it though when for some reason Eva gave us all free samples of Antonio Bandera’s new perfume. It was really quite random.

We did have the good fortune of meeting another young American on the bus. His name was Josh and he told us he had been visiting friends in Prague for a couple of weeks and he was now traveling to Romania to work at a bar in the Carpathians. He had traveled extensively around Europe and had some recommendations for things to do in Budapest. It was also nice to speak English with someone other than Kalamazoo people.

Once we finally go off the bus in Budapest, Danielle was waiting for us and she helped us buy some transportation passes and brought us to our hotel which was actually in the same building that she is staying for her study-abroad program. We were all really hungry so we dropped off our stuff and had dinner at a grill-type restaurant. On our way to the restaurant an interesting thing happened. We were walking on the Metro platform minding our own business when we suddenly witnessed a little old lady get clotheslined by a couple holding hands. The couple raised their arms to go over her head but didn’t raise them high enough and ended up whacking the woman in the face. They completely knocked her off her feet. They immediately helped her up but it was still quite shocking to watch. We then came back to Danielle’s room and hung out before going to bed.

Thursday was November 1^st and therefore both the actual day of All Saints’ Day and Juli’s birthday. We got up early and tried to visit the House of Terror but discovered that it was closed for Toussaint. That was when we realized that most of the things we wanted to see would probably be closed that day and maybe the next day. Nonetheless we continue to St. Steven’s Basilica which is a beautiful Baroque church. We climbed the tower and went inside but the main interior was closed because there was a Toussaints Mass going on. We still got some amazing photos and but some cool stuff at the gift shop. We then had a good idea and decided to visit the Great Synagogue, thinking that a Jewish institution would be open on a Catholic holiday. We were wrong. But we were still able to see the synagogue from the outside and the beautiful Holocaust memorial.

As we ate our delicious falafel pitas for lunch, we realized that almost everything was closed so we decided to head to the park on St. Margaret Island and take advantage of the beautiful weather. Once we reached the island we rented a 6-person bike and did a tour of the island. We were quite a scene: five American kids on a huge bike swerving around all the Hungarian people and yelling at each other in English.

Here’s a video I took…

After the island we headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. For Juli’s birthday we decided to go to a sushi restaurant that Danielle recommended. It was one of those places where the food comes out on a conveyer belt. It was lots of fun because we all got to try lots of random things. We ended up sitting at the restaurant for three hours in order to get our money’s worth. Afterwards we were tired and sore from pedaling so we went back to the hotel.
The next morning we accidentally got up late because no one set an alarm clock. But we decided to try the House of Terror again and were delighted to find that it was open. The House of Terror is actually the building that was the former headquarters of both the Hungarian fascist party and the Hungarian Communist Party and was the place where political prisoners were jailed, interrogated, and executed. The building has been turned in to a very moving memorial and museum. It was very educational and very interesting to see how Hungarians are dealing with the more painful parts of their past. The most moving part was the very slow elevator ride to the basement where prisoners were held and executed where they showed a video of a former prisoner described the execution process. It was certainly the complete opposite of the light-hearted-ness of the Museum of Communism.

We then got some more falafel and made friends with the owners of the falafel store who were an Iranian couple who spoke excellent English and who appreciated the fact that we ate a lot of sandwiches and raved about the falafel. (French people don’t eat falafel- it’s too spicy. Silly French people.)

Then we visited the Hungarian National Museum which had a wonderful exhibit about Hungarian history. I really didn’t know much (or anything) about Hungarian history but they had all sorts of beautiful historical artifacts. Then we went to the Parliament building and looked at the outside. We even took the Metro to the other side of the Danube so that we could get a better view. For dinner we went to Danielle’s favorite local restaurant and it was delicious.

The next morning we got up early and Danielle, Juli, and Tessa went to a local bathhouse (Hungary had mineral springs) and Jon and I went to go see the Chain Bridge. The Chain Bridge is a really old suspension bridge that was the first connection between Buda (one side of the river) and Pest (the other side) and it was almost destroyed during World War II. There were some beautiful views.

Then we met back at the hotel before taking a taxi to the airport. Our taxi driver almost killed us he was driving so fast and weaving in and out of traffic, but we eventually got there safely. We bought some lunch and used the last of our Hungarian florins to buy snacks for the plane. We flew back to Paris-Beauvais and Tessa and I were quite nervous about trying to re-enter France with our expired visas. We had even planned to go to Brussels if they deported us. But all our worry was for naught. The customs agent read my passport, including my expired visa, and just let me right in. I was almost disappointed. We then caught a taxi to the train station, a train to Paris, another taxi to the other train station, and the train back to Clermont-Ferrand.

Once in Clermont-Ferrand it was raining and we got lost trying to find the closest tram stop. Our good luck had to run out somewhere.

The Ghost of Communism Past: Part 1

Our journey to Central Europe began Friday October 26th when we boarded the train from Clermont-Ferrand at about 5 in the afternoon.

[Side note: Carolyn, you might be asking yourself, why Central Europe? Why the Czech Republic and Hungry? Why not Italy or the UK or even Germany? The answer, my dear reader, is quite simple: communism. I am fascinated by communism. Actually it would be more accurate to say that I am fascinated by totalitarianism, because that's what it really was. I don't really like communism or totalitarianism, but I happen to think that they make for some interesting history. And I was right. Truth be told, former communist states are also a lot cheaper to visit. Anyway...]

The train ride was uneventful (other than the fact that Juli and I lost a shameful number of games of euchre) and when we arrived in Paris we grabbed a taxi to take us to our hotel. Our driver turned out to be a very nice guy who told us we spoke good French and who dropped us off at the Holiday Inn near Charles De Gaulle Airport. We walked in to the hotel and were looking around and remarking on our good taste in hospitality when the very nice concierge informed us that we were in the wrong place and we needed to go to the Holiday Inn Express down the street. Upon arriving at the more modest (but still nice) Express version we plopped on our beds and proceeded to stay up late watching strange French television.

The next morning we got up early and took the hotel shuttle to the airport where we found the line for our flight was already quite long. Jon used his American ingenuity to stand at the desk until they opened up a new line but unfortunately waving your hand is an international signal and Juli, Tessa, and I were prevented from joining him in that line by the rushing hordes of French people who pushed past us before we could pick up our bags. After standing in line for another 30 min and then going through both passport control and security we finally boarded the plane. 2 hours later we arrived in Prague and decided to try and get to the hotel. 2 buses and 2 subways later we arrived at Top Hotel Praha and again were impressed by our fine taste in hotels. We were then, for the second time in 24 hours, informed by the concierge that we were in the wrong spot and redirected to Top Hotel Praha Garni. I can only describe the Garni version as "Top Hotel Praha's Red-headed Step-child". It was actually the former Top Hotel Praha that they decided to keep around after they build the newer (and much nicer) Top Hotel so that they could rent the old rooms to American college students and Czech construction workers. Regardless, it served our purposes perfectly and as an added bonus we were allowed to eat at the free breakfast buffet at the real Top Hotel. We were, however, in the middle of nowhere as you may be able to tell by the photos I took of the depressing looking apartment buildings that surrounded us. After some refreshing naps (excluding the interruption of the maid dropping off our towels) we took the bus to the Metro in to downtown Prague and did some exploring before finding a very nice little restaurant and eating our first real Czech meal. Then we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

I might as well admit right now that we went to bed before 9:30 every night we were in Prague. In our defense we got up early to eat our free breakfast and then walked around all day so we were really really tired.

The next morning we got up and were delighted to discover that the breakfast buffet included hard-boiled eggs (the French only soft-boil, if that). Since it was Sunday we decided to try and avoid the crowds and visit the Jewish Quarter so we hopped on the bus and the Metro and headed back downtown. We visited several beautiful old synagogues (I think the final number was about 4) and the Old Jewish Cemetery which has several layers of graves from the city's ghetto dating all the way back to the 1400's. We learned a lot about Jewish history in the Czech Republic and my favorite site was probably the Spanish Synagogue because it had a beautifully decorated interior. We weren't allowed to take photos though, so unfortunately I don't have any.

Sunday also happened to be a national holiday for the Czech Republic, celebrating the short-lived Czechoslovak Republic so we were lucky enough to stumble upon some celebrations in the Old Town Square. We watched a military marching/jazz/performance band and a choreographed rifle-dace thing with a soldier doing some Irish dancing to musical hits like "Eye of the Tiger" and "Pump It". It was quite interesting to watch and I think we were more enthusiastic than most of the Czechs in the audience.

After taking a "beer break" (I'm told that the Czech Republic has the best beer in Europe. I don't really like beer so I got a Diet Coke) at a pub we wondered around and tried to decide whether or not we wanted to take a horse-drawn carriage ride before wandering in to a very new, very large, very shiny, and very capitalist shopping mall. I kid you not, the capitalism was overwhelming. There were stores floating above other stores. It was magical. We eventually decided that we were hungry and found a restaurant in the Old Town Square where the celebrations were still going on. I had an interesting encounter with our polite but inflexible waiter that went something like this:
Me: "I'll have a water please."
Waiter: ". . . Sprite!"
Me: "Sure. Sprite."
After enjoying our meal, and my Sprite, we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

The next morning we got up and went to the free buffet and discovered that the mullet is apparently making a come-back among Russian youths (scariest realization ever). We then took the Metro downtown and wandered around until we found a garden which turned out to also be the fastest and the most picturesque way to climb the hill up to the castle. So we took our time and took a lot of photos and climbed the trees pick not-ripe figs and when we finally got to the top of the hill we realized that we were on the opposite side of the castle as the entrance. So we walked around and went inside. This turned out to be somewhat anti-climatic since we realized that the inside of the castle looks almost exactly like the rest of Prague. But we joined the line to get inside the Cathedral of St. Vitus and we were not at all disappointed when we got inside. This cathedral was a gorgeous Gothic church that we unanimously decided is even better than Notre Dame. This is mostly because it has huge glass windows that light up the whole church. It's difficult to describe but the photos speak for themselves. I would highly recommend this church to anyone who is visiting Prague. We also climbed the 287 steps to the top of the tower and enjoyed some amazing views of Prague.

After an unsatisfying snack of hot dogs and "cheese toast" and an attempted visit to a closed church we descended the hill and found ourselves outside the oldest pub in Prague. We took this as a sign from a higher power and took another beer break. The pub was pretty cool, it has been serving Czech pilsner since 1423 and it had swords in the middle of the tables.

We then visited the basilica of St. Nicolas which was another fantastically beautiful church, this time of the Baroque style. Again, the photos will just have to speak for themselves.

We continued to the Charles Bridge which is a very old and very famous bridge across the Vltava River. There were some more excellent views and some very interesting street performers. We then wandered through the touristy part of Prague and tried to avoid being run over by large tour groups.

We eventually found our way to the Museum of Communism which, I have to say, was just as amazing as I had thought that it would be. First of all, the museum itself is located in the same building as a McDonald's. If that's not both ironic and hilarious, I don't know what is. Secondly, this museum had the best sense of humor ever. I bought a postcard at the gift shop that has a picture of a woman marching and smiling in a Communist parade and it says "It was a time of happy, shining people. (The shiniest were in the uranium mines)". It's totally irreverent and totally hilarious. The museum itself was mostly a collection of old communist propaganda and paraphernalia. I didn't really learn that much but it was definitely interesting to see the Czech perspective on the Soviet Union.

Then we found a restaurant and some dinner. I ate Czech goulash. It was delicious. Then we went home and to bed.

This is seriously all the writing I can do for now. I'll have to continue later.

Photos Teaser

Ok, so thanks to restrictions in time and internet access, I am going to delay the posting of the Toussaints re-cap until later this week but I wanted to let everyone know that I have posted my photos (all 330 of them) for everyone to see. I also switched photo-hosting websites. The old site was Shutterfly. The new one is Picassa. It helped me create the cool slide show you see above.

To see the album in more detail go to my new photo site and select the "TOUSSAINTS!" album.

I would also just like to say "I told you so" so my dear father who insisted that I download Skype so that we could communicate when I said that we should just use AIM.