It's Been A While

Sorry to disappoint my loyal readers by waiting so long between posts, but I just wasn't spending much time on the internet the past week. Anyway, in this blog I will touch on three--perhaps four--significant topics.

1. Schedule

Here's a list of the classes in which I'm enrolled (in order of length of course title):

Beginning Czech
Modern Czech Literature
Topics in Avant-Garde Cinema
Collective Identity in a Totalitarian Regime
Europe and the United States: Transatlantic Relations Past and Present

2. Opera

Last Friday all the CIEE students went to the opera at the National Theatre, which is a really amazing place, so amazing that it's where they filmed the premiere of "Don Giovanni" in the film "Amadeus"--despite the fact that "Don Giovanni" actually premiered at the Theatre of the Estates (also in Prague). We saw Antonin Dvorak's "Rusalka," which is basically the same as "The Little Mermaid" only the songs aren't as good.

3. Football (Soccer)

Last Saturday I went to a soccer game. It was Sparta Praha vs. someone else. And Sparta killed 'em 2-0. I was surprised thatthe seats were only about half-filled, considering it was such a nice day and tickets were so cheap (around 5 dollars for our seats). But some of the fans who were there made up for it, screaming at bad calls and constantly chanting Sparta :: PRAHA. I also had a cheap sausage, which are ubiquitous here.

4. 9/11

One of the four channels we get in the dorm is Deutsche Welle, a German 24 hr. news station that alternates between German and English broadcasts. Monday night they showed a brief documentary on America, 5 years after 9/11. Particularly interesting were the fact that they keep in the original audio of the video of the attacks, people screaming "Holy Shit!," Jesus Fucking Christ!," etc. Also, the assumptions made are somewhat different, although perhaps more accurate. For example, when talking about the War in Iraq, it simply stated as a fact that the Bush administration was planning the attacks prior to 9/11/2001. It was an intriguing example of culture clash, rivaled only by the new Rammstein video "Amerika"--which includes the chorus
"We're all living in America,
America is wunderbar.
We're all living in America,
Amerika, Amerika.
We're all living in America,
Coca-Cola, Wonderbra,
We're all living in America,
Amerika, Amerika.

This is not a love song,
this is not a love song.
I don't sing my mother tongue,
No, this is not a love song."

Truly a chilling exposition of America's global cultural domination.