Sunny Side Up

We had truly gorgeous weather today - mid 50s and sunny. It was a good day to walk around in outside, which I did since our site is Letna park. I saw a guy who had a wind sail attached to a skateboard and he was riding around on one of the parking lots. It looked like he was having a good time.

Easter is in a couple of weeks and all of Prague is ready. Markets are set up in Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, and Andel plaza. There are lots of pretty painted eggs for sale, which I may have to look into purchasing. When I was wandering around Wenceslas Square today, I smelled fried pastries and meat on the grill. It was all I could do to resist buying something as I had already had lunch today.

The picture to the right is the "Easter Tree" in Wenceslas Square. I hope those eggs are hollow, because if they fall I bet they could do some damage.

Only a Picture Today, Folks

This thing is a beehive. No kidding.

The Coldest Bathroom in the World

The coldest bathroom in the world exists in our studio. I freeze every time I go in there. It almost makes me want to buy a space heater for the bathroom, but there is no place to plug in one.
It also doesn't help that we've had a batch of cold weather this week (appropriate for the start of Spring, I think). There is even a chance for snow not once, but twice this week. Some parts of the Czech Republic have already had 10cm of snow this week.

Not much else has been going on, although last Wednesday I went to the opera and saw Madame Butterfly. It was in Italian, the subtitles were in Czech, and I didn't understand much of what was being sung. I was able to read the summary of the story beforehand, so I wasn't completely lost. I made up my own lyrics for the songs, most of them being, "Pinkerton is a man whose parents aren't married" (substitute words for yourself).

Buzz Buzz

"Buzz" just might be one of my favorite onomatopoeias, right along with "thwack" and "foont," the latter being the sound a Nerf ball or arrow makes when shooting out of a Nerf gun. Buzz, however, is the topic at hand as I am taking Bees & Beekeeping this semester. Today we saw the inside of a beekeeping supply store where you can buy smokers, hives, frames, and face protection gear (one of which could double as a fencing mask).

Bees are interesting little creatures; probably one of the most remarkable things about them is that while they "dance" to communicate to the rest of the hive the location of pollen and nectar sources, they used the position of the sun as a marker. If the bee's head is up (relative to the hive, I suppose), then the food sources are in the direction of the sun, usually south. According to some people, bees can even calculate the sun's position on overcast days and when it's on the other side of the world. It is slightly less impressive if you think of it this way:

Alan Davies: Why is so remarkable that they know where they live?
Stephen Fry: Because they only have 950,00 neurons as opposed to our 10 billion neurons in our brains.
Alan Davies: But they've only got one thing to remember: where they live.
- "Q.I."

Germany, the Netherlands, and Thoughts on the English Language

Greetings from Germany! At the moment I am using a German keyboard, and not all the letters are in the same place. The spot where normally the letter 'y' is for me the letter 'z' is, so if you see me referring to the mountains in Germanz, it's not a new country, it's just because I didn't catch my typing mistakes.

So anyway, Spring Break '07 had a couple of things in common with Spring Break '06, in that there was a lot of walking and hiking involved. The main difference was that '06 was in North Carolina and Virginia and '07 was in two different countries - Germany and the Netherlands. I took my shortest plane flight yet to get to Dortmand (about an hour - I only got to listen to three songs on the iPod before we were told to prepare for landing and to shut off all electronic equipment), and Julie's friend Jens met us at the airport. It was our first car ride since we left the States in January. I refuse to count the van ride from the airport in Prague to our hostel the first night.

We traveled to the Netherlands on Thursday (I get to cross another country off the list of places I've visited), and we went to Burger's Zoo. It was in some respects like the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, or at least the indoor parts were like the Aviary and the African Pavillion. They even had a section for the Sonora Desert, so I got to see some familiar faces. We walked around the city the zoo was near afterwards which had a pretty lively street scene. There was a guy playing guitar on the street singing the song 'Torn' from a couple of years ago, and I prefered his version to the original. On Friday and Saturday we hiked in the German countryside and saw the Rhine and some castle ruins that were really fun to climb. Needless to say, this has all left me very tired and not looking forward to waking up at 6:30 to get to the airport in time tomorrow morning.

I think being in countries where you don't speak the native language, or when people are asking you what you call things in English makes you more aware of the idiosyncrasies of the English language. For example, when I was standing on the bus at the Prague airport, I realized that we say get on a bus, or on a plan, or on a train, but get in a car. In reality, you are getting inside all of those modes of transportation, but you never say 'I'm getting in a plane.' I was relating these thoughts to Julie and she informed me that I should find some better way to spend my time, or at least keep such thoughts to myself.