Life In Prague

"Dog Days"

In Prague, I was quite surprised to see that most of the dogs don't even have leashes when they are being walked on the street. Not only that, but there are so many dogs in general. Small dogs, big dogs, chihuahuas, docksons, and German Shepherds. The thing that makes this so remarkable to me, is that there are no leashes and the dogs are so well behaved. On the subway, they lay down on the ground next to their owners, while walking in the park, they don't stray too far from the path, and everywhere around the city the dogs in general are very well trained and well behaved. The funniest part about this whole thing is that Ekta and Zhou Lin are both afraid of dogs. And by afraid, I mean petrified of them. Ekta can't even walk on the same street as a dog, cowering every time they come near. Even for the smallest ones, she thinks they are vicious people-eating monsters. It's quite comical. Ana (from Brazil) always has to be her bodyguard when we are walking in public and the dogs come. She stands in between Ekta and the dogs, even though they never do anything more than sniff around and pee on trees. I don't think Ekta or Zhou Lin will ever get over her fear of dogs, no matter how many types we see or how many times we see them, but it'll never get old to see Ekta running around, avoiding the dogs path or to hear Zhou Lin squeek and hide.

"Morning Rituals"

One thing I wanted to talk about, was the morning ritual that we have to go through every day. With four people living in the living room of Jenny's house, we have three of us sleeping on the floor. We've removed all the cushions from the couches and use three to sleep on. This means that there is nothing to sit on when we use the couches and that the floor is covered by three makeshift beds. Every morning, when one alarm goes off, we all are forced to wake up to the other's schedule. Sometimes, the alarm is just snoozed, the person goes to shower, and then we really have to get up to turn off the ringtone. Speaking of showers, there are 4 people, using one bathroom, and none of us want to wake up to be the first to shower. This means that every morning, we wake up an hour before we have to leave, and somehow, one by one, we shower and get ready. Sometimes, we are forced to all get ready within 30 minutes because by the time we wake up, we've already wasted 20 minutes of the morning still laying in bed. It's the funniest when we wake up, and need to catch the train, and all of us are running around the living room, moving from suitcase to kitchen to bathroom to suitcase again. Each of us running into each other's path and getting in each other's way. There's also the fact that there are 4 girls and I. Which means that every morning, I have to deal with them doing their hair, picking their clothes and just taking forever to get ready for the day. I'm always shouting out "10 minutes left" or "5 minutes left" or even "Guys, we were supposed to leave 2 minutes ago!" I don't know how I survived the past two weeks like this...