And We're Off!

            On Tuesday, March 8^th I began my long trip to the Czech Republic with my best friend Emily and our travel companion George. We decided we would take four days to travel before the program started which in some aspects was a great idea. However, at the same time we had some struggles that we could have lived without.

            We arrived at our first destination on Wednesday, March 9^th. The flight to Dublin was pretty painless minus the fact that it was a six hour long flight from Philadelphia, which didn’t include the hour and a half flight from Denver to Philadelphia and a four hour layover. While the flight was painless the afterward was what began our stressful situations. Emily had left her phone on the plane and we searched for it for a little over an hour in the airport until we just decided to file a claim. However we still had a wonderful time. We stayed in a wonderful hostel and enjoyed the sights and attractions of Dublin, including a tour of Jameson Whiskey and a visit to one of their historic jails. Our time there was brief but then we were off for our next adventure.

            Our next stop was Glasgow, Scotland, here continued our trials. We had already lost Emily’s phone and as you can imagine where this is going I lost mine on a bus in Scotland. Unfortunately neither of our phones are anywhere to be found. Nonetheless, we continued on not letting our bad luck ruin our time. While in Scotland we visited People’s Palace, which was a huge palace that was built so everyone could have a place to stay in a time when there was a lot of people and not a whole lot of room. Scotland has a very rich history and we were able to see this during our visit. 

            The last stop on our way to the program was by far filled with the worst of luck. This was the stop we were most excited about, London. We got to see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater,  and much more. However, trying to do all we could in one day we jammed three days of fun into one, which would in turn cause problems. We did manage to get almost everything done, the problem was the one thing we should have made sure we completed, we somehow failed. Emily and I officially have missed our first flight and with the stress of having to find a way to Prague on time automatically made us break down. Right in the middle of the airport as we are struggling to figure what was going on we bawled. Luckily we figured out a solution and we even had a nice lady ask us if we were okay. In the end though we just had to keep looking at the positive. First of all we got to see everything in London we wanted to. Second, we made the trip up to Stonehenge which  is spectacular and ended up making our Puerto Rican friends, Emilio, Joel, Paola, and Adriana.

           
                                      

                                                     

            Finally, we reached Prague. We got here and took the four hour bus ride up to Olomouc. Our first few days were full of adventure and a lot of orientation and tours. We got the privilege of touring their city hall, as well as the university we would be attending, and the city as a whole. The fun continued during orientation week with a variety of welcome parties and fun nights out with our group. However, being the grown up college students we are we had to start class this week with the Czech language course. While this experience has been slightly stressful, it has so far been well worth it.