Curry, tea, and catching up. . .

Saturday, I spent the day doing laundry. I think I am pretty good at laundry. . .I haven't dyed my clothes pink since I was in high school. However, somehow, I managed to get something in with all of my black clothes that has left teeny tiny white fibers everywhere. As I told Amanda earlier today, it looks like a mouse exploded on my clothes. Also, as my hosts do not use fabric softner, and we hang everything to dry, my clothes are incredibly stiff. I sort of look like a gingerbread man when I put things on because I cannot move and all of my limbs stick out to the sides.

I managed to get out of the house on Saturday night and had a fun and interesting evening in Prague with Amanda. We hit several bars/clubs, and I met two crazy girls - Gemma and Lucia - who are from England and Slovenia. They were extremely nice and hopefully I'll get to go out with them again soon. Gemma and I discussed our love of not speaking the language and she put my "peace" into wonderful words, "I don't get bogged down in the negativity of the mundane" meaning, we can make even the most boring, meaningless conversations in Czech mean anything. I managed to make it back to Uholicky by staying out until the first train left at 6:30 in the morning. As you can imagine, I slept most of the day on Sunday.

Today, I worked from home, finishing the grant proposal which was well received by the Burma Center. I have two great projects to work on for CEELI this week - one creating a new brochure for the center and its course offerings and the other gathering information on journalistic court reporting. I was most proud today when I was sent on the mission of finding a textbook on court reporting in Serbian and not only found one, but found one that is free in PDF form online. Of course, I have no idea what it actually says, so it could be a manifesto on how to create bias articles to mess with the government. Our Serbian partner is going to look at it tomorrow, so I'm hoping its legit and I did something well. :)

I also was extremely excited today as I figured out how to reload my cell phone with minutes. You can do it from the ATM here, and though it took me three tries and three different ATMs, there is now 250 kc. on my phone. So if I get lost, robbed, or kidnapped, I have a way to send a text message. Hooray!

I'm sitting here, looking out at the orange cat that lounges on the deck, listening to the windchimes and the constantly chirping birds, eating a Pot Noodle (which is WAY spicier than Ramen back home), and drinking the green tea that I literally drink by the gallon. Not a bad life. :) I'm also staring at my Flat Stanley, Flat Dean, and Flat Eric as I am getting ready to take them to a local school on Thursday where my host teaches art. We are going to make Czech Flat Stanleys and I am going to explain to them how I edit him in digitally to my photographs. I am excited to be around some kiddos which always brightens my day, and to be able to post some pictures of our big art project.

Other than that, Robert starts his big new summer job at the DAs office today, so I am thinking good thoughts for him.