Election

It's 5:06am here in Prague. I napped from 9pm-midnight to stay up all night for the election - and it's over! Obama just won. MSNBC is having a great time and Chris Matthews is going completely insane.
Night!

Midterm Week

Midterm week is over already - can you believe it?
The answer is no, you can't.
I had three midterms - Media & Democracy, Czech, and East/Central European politics. They were all ridiculous and not too hard. A bit upsetting that they weren't what was advertised, and thus not what I studied for... but it'll be fine, moving on, moving on.

I didn't tell you about this weekend: it was nice, we went to Cesky Krumlov, which is a UNESCO-protected heritage town. Very pretty. That's pretty much what it was. Pretty. Look at our happy faces blocking the view of the pretty town.

(Whitney, Cassie, Me, Allyn, Ali, Breanne)

After that trip, I studied and studied until about 2 hours ago when I went in for my last midterm, and now I'm done.
We had a guest speaker in Media & Democracy on Monday - a former reporter for Radio Free Europe who talked to us about how the current state of Europe can be best interpreted whilst remembering the history (Hitler and Stalin, in particular). But we did get her to talk about as well RFE - of which she is a fan - and she believes (as many do) that we should have more independent, external journalism not financed by companies. RFE didn't have to make money, it just wanted to tell the truth (of course a somewhat subjective and pro-America truth, but it balanced Soviet propoganda well). We just need some other planet to come in and finance some media for us, so journalism can have some of the economic pressures removed. I will be working on this for you. You're welcome.

So... break starts now! Friday Allyn, Breanne and I are supposed to be leaving for Athens. However, Greece right now is in a bit of a... well... this:
which is somewhat discouraging. There is a strike, there are riots, protests, throwing of things, tear gas... we will hope this calms down, and that there are flights flying. On a brighter note, the weather's in the low 70s.

Partyin in Bayern

Things are going great in Bavaria, Germany, where I have been for two days visiting Karin, my exchange partner from summer 2006.
She picked me up real early in the morning in Munich, here are some pictures:


The past two nights, Karin and I have gone to birthday parties for her friends. The parties are really lovely. There are lots of fresh pastries, and people sit around and talk and laugh and courses of food are gradually brought by the host(ess). On Thursday night, it was a rather small party, and we took a little stroll around the neighborhood - it was totally quiet and peaceful and we looked at the stars. Last night, our host showed us pictures from her trip to India, where she was a visiting doctor in a small hospital. Then we went swimming! Super fun.
We also went shopping yesterday in downtown Passau, at H&M, with Karin´s friends Benni & Stefan. I also bought my train ticket to Prague - with Karin´s translating help.
Yes, so.
Karin and I are speaking German to each other, mostly (although the language here is really bavarian dialect - which is like German, but I can´t understand it). It's pretty cool to be in a country where I can understand the language... the signs, the people, all that, makes me feel pretty smart... and pretty worried about Prague... where I don´t know the language at all, despite my attempts at learning...
Today Karin and I are chilling out, since the weather is not very good and we are quite tired.Tomorrow we must wake up very early, to go to the castle Neuschwanstein, a 4-hour drive away. (just because I said I wanted to - Karin is great!)
I had a great time last night talking to the Germans about politics (gasp) and such. It always comes up when you tell people you are studying political science... Yeah, so what´s up with the situation in Russia? And the Germans are watching our election closely - some said that they do not know McCain very well, because a lot of media coverage was devoted to the Hillary/Obama contest.
This reminded me that I´ve been completely out of touch with news since I got here... so I´ve got to go read the news. (Biden, really?)
Servus! (that´s goodbye in Bavarian..)

Timing and Missiles

Today it only took me 8 minutes to walk to work-Amazing!

Barack Obama won the nomination of the Democratic Party last night... hooray! Even the people who get money for reporting on this race were getting tired of it months ago. On to November! Speaking of November... I've been thinking about the big events I'm going to miss while I'm in Prague. The election-that's a big one-it'll be the first Presidential election since I turned 18. I'll also miss-on a slightly smaller scale - two Supreme Court justices coming to my college (link) - which would've been cool to see.

But I'm sure I'll keep up with exciting news when I'm in Prague. For example, big in the news in the past few months has been the agreement between the US and the Czech Republic to install US missiles in that country (link). This has upset peace people, and of course has upset Russia, and it's very interesting.

Hopefully I'll get internet at my house soon, so I can start posting some photos!

I am learning Czech through my iPod... here are some great words:

• Praha - means Prague
• Dobry den! - good day!
• Jak se mate? - how are you?
• Velmi dobre, dekuji (velmee dobjay, de-kooey) - very well, thank you
• ano - yes (I'm also told that they abbreviate this to just 'no'... how confusing is that?)
• ne - no
• cukr (pronounced like "zucker") - means "sugar"
• mysl (pronounced like "missle") - means "mind" - I like this one.

Czech is so hard!! Thanks for the book, Grandpa & Nana!