Jessica in Prague

Well, called American Airlines, which was an ordeal in and of itself... not because of AA, just the phones and phone cards. Anyway, the nice lady with the southern drawl said two hours should be plenty of time. Didn't think to ask if I could check my bags all the way through. I could ask when I go to drop Mandy off Thursday (she's leaving early so sad...), and see what Lufthansa says then. I'm not sure what you meant by rechecking my luggage, Meems. Besides, now everyone here is telling me I'm golden on time, one girl only has an hour to do all that and she's not too worried. Anyway, she seemed to think two hours was fine, so I'll just wing it.

I booked my flights to and from California! To those of you who don't know, Mary and Laura live in Cali and Jamie and I are going to fly out in June to see them! June 13-20!!! I'm so excited. Mandy may come join us for the weekend from Idaho, too! They live in the San Diego area, so we're going to make plans to go to the zoo, maybe a Padres game, then the BEACH!!! Never been near the Pacific before! I noticed all my sentences end in exclamation points!! This way I won't miss them all so much when we leave here because I already know I'll be seeing them again. It's great!

More good news: the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, my internship peeps I'm applying for, emailed me and said they want to do a second interview, a face-to-face one when I get back!!! WHOO HOO!!!! May 9 or 10, in Columbus, Yeah BABY!!! I may get this thing yet! My life rules. I'm so excited! Now I just gottta guilt trip Jamie in to moving in with me if I get the thing so I won't be by myself in Columbus (I know I have Jennifer and Brian, and Andy and Susan... but I won't be LIVING with anyone). YAY!! Am I cool or what?

Mandy, do you still want that pink piggy thingy? I believe I found it and it costs around $20, which isn't a problem, just letting you know. Pink on top, clear on the bottom? I never would have taken you as a piggy lover!! Let me know, sorry about it being the last minute, just with all the traveling and me being lazy.... sorry!

Unfortunately, everything I'm doing was said in the last post. I'm just hanging out with my friends here, soaking up some sun, seeing things I haven't seen yet, eating food I know I'll miss, etc. We did go out for Mary's birthday on Tuesday... stayed out until 3 in the morning and had to take the night tram home... FUN! We were dancing to 80s music... see you can have fun completely sober! Anyway, I believe my interview went well, they asked me a lot about Prague, which was nice. One subject I know more about than they do, right? I have been taking lots of pics, but too lazy to post them, etc... may get around to it. I'm done with all but one class: history. I believe my Marriages and Cultures final went well, but my Czech final was horrible... spatny. I've started packing, and actually have maybe half packed! I'm taking a suitcase home for Shelly, as well as her lap top, which she'll pick up later this summer after she comes back from backpacking Europe. I've been told I will have no luck in catching my flight to Detroit from Chicago with only a two hour layover. I'm basically screwed. I'll try anyway. Does anyone know whether or not I can check my luggage straight through to Detroit and go through customs there? That would completely save me. Otherwise, trying to pick up my luggage, go through customs, go from Terminal 5 to 3, find my gate, check my luggage back in and get on my flight in only two hours in one of the nation's largest airports... gonna be tricky. Oy. Well, that's all I got.. gonna get going to some sight-seeing! Talk to you all later!

Yay! My last trip outside the city is over and done with. Karlovy Vary ain't that great a place when you can't seem to find anything... sigh... it was a big waste of time. I didn't get any massages or facials... did go swimming in a not-so-thermal pool. But I had a blast with the girls anyway... Laura, Mary, Mandy, Jamie and I all had so much fun in the little apartment we rented for the weekend.

Those crazy girls... sigh, I'm gonna miss them

Now we're all back into the grind of finishing papers and studying for exams... some of us have started packing and figuring out what's getting left behind. We're all planning a potluck at the end of the semester to get rid of all the food we still have. Tomorrow we're having a fajita night for Mary's 21st birthday on Tuesday. We planning to go out dancing on Tuesday night, too! Everybody's doing everyone favors, taking stuff home for them, trading clothes, giving food and passes to people who will be staying here longer, etc. I'm taking a suitcase home for Shelly, which is also good for me, because then I'll have more room to pack! We're all excited about coming back home and are trying to squeeze in some last minute sight-seeing around our busy exam schedules. It's finally getting pretty here and we're all too busy to enjoy it! We're going out to eat more, we're all visiting things more... we're all going to miss each other terribly! We've grown so close now that it's time to go.. it kinda sucks. Some of us are going to see each other this summer (Yeah Cali!!), but the rest of us? We may never see each other again. How sad.

On a lighter note... It IS prettier here... some spring storms to break up the sunny days, but even those are nice because it isn't snow. I have a couple finals this week and one next week. I also have my phone interview with the Ohio State Legislature Commission so everyone wish me luck!! My camera isn't getting along with the computer so it's getting harder and harder to add pics and keep up with it. I'm trying, but it's not priority for me right now. I hope to get everthing up on snapfish and then re-invite everyone to it. My blog is kinda getting left behind, sorry. My memento book just got caught up, as did my journal, but my memento book is huge and I don't know how I'm going to get that thing home... I may come back through and put pics up later, so keep looking, and have faith. Talk to you later... we're in the final stretch!

Yeah I know the title doesn't quite make sense... oh well!

Oy, what a busy weekend! It was great, it was beautiful, I LOVE PARIS! I'm going to give the day-by-day schedule, but don't get disappointed when you see that I didn't accomplish much. This was our first non-school-related trip and we wanted to relax and enjoy it. We (Amaanda, Mandy, and I) only scheduled three or four sites a day, and saw many things two or three times instead of trying to see everything. Here it goes:

Notre Dame

Day one: St. Chapelle's Cathedral, incredibly beautiful because the second storey is mostly all windows and thus looks like it's floating with no walls; Notre Dame, we weren't all that thrilled with it because we didn't go in it and we approached it at the wrong angle... we found out on Monday how beautiful it actually is, but the park behind it is very pretty; the Louvre, on Fridays the museum is open until 9:30 and the tickets are only 6 euro after 6 p.m. (we didn't notice until it was too late that students under the age of 25 get in free after 6 p.m. but at least we got a ticket stub!!), we saw Mona Lisa (got in trouble trying to take a pic), Venus di Milo, some Michaelangelo, Napoleon's digs, and so on. That and I had my first crepe!!! Yummy!

It's the Mona Lisa, I swear!

Day two: Moulin Rouge, kind of a let down, but it's pretty neat I guess, it's way too expensive to actually go and see a show (80-100 euro), so we just took pics outside; Champs Elysees, big shopping area that none of us could afford so we just walked through it and up to the Arc d' Trioumphe (sp?), that was spectacular... once we got up the fifty million stairs to the top, good panoramic view of Paris! Eiffel Tower, we finally walked to it and it was kind of overwhelming, we stopped to have dinner and came back when it was dark and all lit up and sparkling... it was amazing! I took probably at least 50 pics of the tower alone, and some video. We rode a carousel underneath it and it was all so magical... if only I were in love in Paris... at least I could feel like a kid with the carousel and a crepe!

Me and the Arc

Day three: We went to Versaille, it was great that so much was open and doable on Easter... a lot of the castle was under construction which would have been fine were we going inside. I had planned to just walk the grounds and look at the buildings though because that's free. We had to sidestep some construction areas and avoid all the frenchmen at gates keeping us out... sigh. We lost Amaanda there too, but we're big girls and she found her way back fine and we saw her at the end of the night in the hotel. Mandy and I went back to the Eiffel Tower and then on to Notre Dame again to do some souveneir shopping... we think that's the best place to go selection and price wise.

Eiffel Tower... all lit up!

Day four: Saw Notre Dame and actually went in it this time... it is really pretty inside. Then we decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower from there, which I don't recommend because it's a freaking long walk. Got there with no time to go up it... so no I haven't been up the Eiffel tower.... I'll do that on my honeymoon :o) We had to get going to the airport so... we did that. Got into Prague about midnight and promptly left my wallet at the airport (no money or cards, just my transportation pass and phone card... ugh). Good news? IT'S BEAUTIFUL HERE IN PRAGUE! That and the people I applied for and internship with emailed me to set up a phone interview, YAY!!! Step one to being accepted. Sorry this is so long, and I hope to add pics and videos soon... all updated at snapfish already, but w/o captions. Getting ready for Karlovy Vary this weekend which is a spa-like town to the northwest of Prague.... getting some massages and facials! Man, am I spoiled or what? Talk to you all later!
Ha, ha just kidding! I found my wallet in my dirty laundry, which I had checked, just not well enough I guess. This is after I bought another transportation pass for $9-$10. UGGGHH!

Well, I had a blast in Krakow... unfortunately, my camera batteries died and I have no way of recharging them and thus, uploading pics, for awhile. But just believe me, I had fun..

Don't ever get bored in Krakow!!

This time we got a real bus to ride in for only eight hours. Plus we got Jaroslav back, he was our bus driver for the five-day trip and he's a genius. He backed into a parking lot in Cesky Krumlov with inches on either side with no problem, he even got a standing ovation! Anyway, the drive there and back was definitely more comfortable than Venice.

We had breakfast at some random hotel in the morning and went on to Auschwitz. The tour was about four hours long, but it flew by. Unfortunately, we stayed in a large group tour and there were some fifty other large tours going on as well. So there wasn't any alone-thinking time. There were two camps there actually: Auschwitz and Auschwitz II - Birkenau (there's a third Auschwitz, but we didn't go to it). A-I is actually really small compared to A-II. There were lots of sites to cover and I wished I had had more time on my own. I would recommend it to anyone who is able to go there, to do so, but on your own.

Afterwards, they took us to Krakow (Auschwitz is the name of the city... separate from Krakow). We were kinda abandoned at our hotel for a couple hours with no knowledge of the language, transportation system, where we were on the map, or way of exchanging money... and we were all hungry. It kinda sucked. Mary, Mandy, Jamie, and I decided to walk to the city center rather than risk getting caught w/o passes on the tram. Our hotel was way out in boofoo and we just headed in a general direction of big buildings. An hour and a half later and two-three miles father along, we finally get to a currency exchange place and grabbed some food from a street vendor (BAAAAD idea). We bought tram passes and worked our way back to the hotel where we met the rest of the group for an organized dinner.

I can officially say I had a real Polish pierogi, just don't know how to spell it. I also had sadlo... before I knew what it was (pure animal fat that they spread on bread). It's actually really good if you add salt and don't mind shaving off ten years of your life. We went back to the hotel and ate chocolate and went to bed!

Street where much of Schindler's List was shot

The next day we had a guided tour of the city, which was awesome. I didn't know this is where they filmed Schindler's List, or that it even mostly took place here. Anna was the best tour guide, showing us things we actually wanted to see, and guiding us towards other places. The only bad thing is that it's a Catholic country, and thus, everything closes really early on Saturdays... museum- and church-wise. We ate at a real Pizza Hut (THE BEST EVER!) and wandered around shopping and trying to sneak into churches. We saw the Pope John Paul II memorial (he was from the area and it's the one year anniversary of his death). Then we got really tired and decided to go back to the hotel early... and got extremely bored, man if you could only see the pics. We actually got yelled at for being too loud, but once Eva (our group leader) saw why we were laughing... she kinda gave up yelling at us. We ate more Polish chocolate, no not that great, and watched Pretty Woman dubbed (horribly) over in Polish.

Statues in salt mines.... made of salt!

On the way back the next day, we stopped off at some salt mines and traveled 400 feet below the surface... it's really interesting down there... kinda neat! Got back, and have basically been vegging out ever since. Finished my paper for Marriages and Culture class (last paper of my college career!!!), ate some more chocolate, avoided the salmonella plague that's going around, and am now looking up stuff for Paris. Almost there, guys, three weeks left!! Miss you!

Just real quick, on my way to class... I'm back from Krakow. It was pretty neat, but everything closes rather early on the weekend because it's a Catholic country. Saw Auschwitz, Wawel Castle and churches, and some salt mines.. all very entertaining or enlightening. I won't be sharing the pics to Auschwitz on line because they are rather personal for me, not to be selfish. I'll gladly show them to you in person if possible, when I get back. Off to class now!! Miss you all!

Four more videos from the traveling whirlwind known as Jessica...

"Here are some more videos... there should be four all together. One's of a pretty walk through Vienna, another is of the night time views of Budapest from the Fishermen's Bastion, another is when we are at Devin Castle in Bratislava... and basically of my friends!!, and the last one is a short one of a Venetian gondaleri singing.. my battery died in the middle of it!!"