Last Thursday was probably the most stressful day EVER, however it had a good reward. First of all, I am an extreme worrier. Plain and simple. I could probably add many years to my life if I stopped worrying so much. Like I said in my last post, I had about 30 minutes to get from my first class to the Louvre. My prof for that first class just happened to let us out FIVE MINUTES LATE. oh man. Talk about stressed. So the two other girls and I jetted over to the Louvre and made it right at 11am. Fortunately, my prof let me go drop off my backpack at the coatroom so I wouldn't have to carry it all around the museum. The tour was really cool and I enjoyed actually having someone walk around and explain different pieces and give more of a background on them.
When we got out, I had to go across the street from the Louvre and wait at a random address that my host-dad had found for me to give to the taxi. So of course I sat there and worried about whether or not the taxi would actually come and whether or not it would actually find me because honestly, Rue de Rivoli is SUPER busy. But lo and behold, the taxi driver found me.
Here's where I was standing. You can imagine why I was just a tad worried he wouldn't find me.
Rue de Rivoli
On the taxi ride to the airport, I just sat there and stared at the clock. My ticket said that sometimes they closed the gates an hour before departure so I was super worried about that. I tried to calm myself down by listening to Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman on my ipod, but after about ten minutes, I realized I hadn't heard a word that he said, so I turned it off. To top it off, it felt like the taxi driver was going SO slow. People were passing us! Come on, man. This is Paris, right? You're supposed to drive fast! IT'S IN THE GENEVA CONVENTION!
We got to my terminal at about 1:55, and hour and FIVE minutes before my flight. I was super worried about once getting into the terminal, whether or not I'd find the place to check in with the company SmartWings. What if I had read the computer wrong and it was actually one of the other terminals?? So much could go wrong. What if there was a long line and I missed the hour cutoff? Yikes.
So I walked in the terminal, and the first kiosk I saw was of course, SmartWings. Huge sigh of relief. I checked in and then made it through security. I found my gate and even though my ticket said boarding time was 2:00, they didn't board us until 2:30 and incase you're wondering, they did NOT close the gate an hour ahead of time. Lies.
So we boarded the plane and I was kind of sad to see that my row was the one row on the whole airplane that didn't have a window. This would happen to me. However, a nice perk is that there were only two of us on the row made for three, so I got an aisle seat when I was supposed to be in the middle. Yes! I was really tired so I fell asleep for the first 20 minutes or so, during which I sadly missed the food! Sad day. However, I did wake up in time for the drinks. Helloooo Coca Light. I love it. Surtout when it's free. The flight attendants were making all of the announcements in Czech and English which I found really interesting. I couldn't fall back asleep so I decided to study some vocab for our test monday to calm my nerves. ça fait du sens, non? The best way for me to learn vocab is to write down the words/definitions over and over. So I whipped out my first list of slang words from a violent song that we studied. Honestly, I don't have a clue as to why Olivier (mon prof) wanted us to learn these words. About halfway down the list, after I had written down words such as bailloner and fumer quelqu'un, which mean to gag and to shoot someone respectively, I started to realize that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be doing this list on a plane...the people might think I'm a terrorist or something.
So I halted the studying and went back to worrying. What if I couldn't find Jacob once I got to the airport? Prague is a big city. What would I do? I had his number, but what if it didn't work? Well, we landed in Prague, I got out my phone, turned it on and fortunately I had service. When I went to call Jacob, the call wouldn't go through. UH OH. So I crossed my fingers and got off the plane. I didn't check a bag so I found the door for the exit, super terrified that Jacob wouldn't be outside and that I'd have to walk around looking for him and never find him. So I turned the corner and wanted to cry, because there Jacob was.
Moral of the story? STOP WORRYING. Facile à dire mais trop difficile à faire!
We used three modes of transportation to get to Jacob's apartment - bus, metro, and tram. Pretty cool. Their apartment is really nice. It's sort of like a dorm, but still an apartment. Hard to describe. We quickly changed clothes and headed over to the place where we were going to see the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. On the way over, Jacob taught me some useful Czech phrases, such as thank you, good day, good evening, excuse me, etc. So we got to the door, he hands me my ticket and says, just go up give them the ticket, say good evening(in Czech), listen to what he says and then say thank you (again with the CZECH) and walk away. Right after saying this, Jacob walked up to the door to hand in his ticket. I felt like I was being thrown to the wolves. I walked up to the guy, had this huge cheesy grin on my face, and completely forgot how to say good evening, so I figured it was best to say nothing. Then the guy said something and I just looked at him, probably with the most confused look on my face, to which he said, "to the right." Ah, english. I adore you. Of course Jacob thought this was hilarious.
So I figured my Czech interactions were over for the evening, but apparently we had to do the exact same thing once we got to our section. I was a little braver this time, so I walked up to the lady, handed her my ticket, she said something or another, and I took a deep breath and mustered up my best děkuju (thank you in Czech) and made it in. Although it was definitely rough, I think I get an A for effort. We went and sat down and the inside of the building was even prettier than the outside. Sadly, you couldn't take pictures. Sad day. Although I am no music connaisseur, I really enjoyed listening and seeing them play. Jacob's quintet director was playing in it so that was really cool. I lasted maybe an hour to and hour and twenty minutes. I can't really remember. It was neat though. Such a cool experience.
Here's the building where the orchestra was, taken the next day with better lighting.
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