Mittwoch

This morning smelled of weed, construction dust, and a sickly sweet floral perfume...

The first is an inevitable consequence of filling out the room-mate preference form based on what I can tolerate living with rather than what I would ideally live with. Next semester, I'm putting that I have zero tolerance for smokers and for dirty kitchens. Learn from my mistakes...this is an important lesson if you're allowing your school to assign you room-mates.

The second smell has been a constant (and probably will continue to be) since we moved in here because the sidewalk outside our dorm building is in the process of being torn up. They're going about it very slowly...I hope they intend to put down a new one at some point.

The third smell overpowered my morning. In all of the "Czech survival phrase" lists I've read, I've never come across the phrase for "call an ambulance," nor have I come across the number that one would call in the case of an emergency. The phrase one would need is "Zavolejte ambulanci" and the emergency numbers are 112 for a general emergency or 155 for a medical emergency. Now you know.

This came up as I was talking to a friend and waiting for the morning tram to campus. As we were standing there, a girl fell to the ground between us. At first we thought she had just tripped, but then she started convulsing. We both knelt down, but she was having a seizure... I tried to keep her head off the concrete, and my friend yelled "Pomoc!" ('help'). We remembered that the number to call is 112, but we were worried that we wouldn't be able to do anything once we called because we don't speak Czech. Luckily, some other commuters waiting for the tram came up and were able to call. The ambulance came and we got on our tram, but the feeling of utter helplessness and the smell of that girl's perfume stuck to my ribs for hours after.

The day did get better. For my Literature and Place class we went to the Havel library to see an exhibit about his life and writings. The exhibit was small but comprehensive and well organized, run by the Havel Library. One funny typo was a tag on the robe Havel wore when receiving his honorary degree from NYU: it said that the robe and degree had both come from Long Island University. Not quite what you want to tell a bunch of NYU kids...

A rather amusing incident occurred at Tesco after class: the British kids in line behind us tried to take more plastic bags than the cashier allocated them. She gave them a death-glare and started rebuking them in Czech. Maybe I'd have felt bad if they hadn't been so obnoxious...but it's funny to remember figuring out the cultural nuances of grocery shopping (including the bring-your-own-bags thing) just a few weeks ago.

Back at the dorm, Becca decided we should have a Jewish-inspired dinner of latkes and applesauce. Yummm. Then Sam and I went to the basement to play with the television. Czech children's programs? Yes please!