Happy Birthday!

Today I turned 24! Oh my! So what's the first thing I do as a 24 year old? Wake up and go for a short run around the neighborhood. :) I put on my cold weather workout gear (some pants, longsleeve shirt, and some gloves) and I was off! The apartment is on this little mountain, which is great because there are stairs connecting one street to the other that I can run up and down. It's a great workout! 

Then my cousin took the bus into Prague to celebrate my birthday with me! I showed her my apartment where I was staying and she gave me my birthday present. :) We got on the metro and went downtown. We took care of some business at the vodafone store and then went to lunch. The food was delicious and it was really nice to just talk and eat. I had a spinach/pesto risotto. Yum!

(Mich and I at an little Italian restaurant near Palladium)

After lunch we went to Palladium to do some shopping because I needed to get a couple things. While shopping we had to take a small coffee break of course at Costa Coffee.

 (Enjoying my gingerbread coffee! Mmmm...Coffeeeeeeee)

 Not quite sure what to do next so we headed to the movie theater to go see the new movie Twilight. I've never read any of the books or seen the other movies but I thought why not? The movie was really good and I even learned some new Czech words while watching it because of the subtitles.  :) Once it was over, we went back home to get ready to go out and meet up with everyone else.

Overall it was a fantastic birthday and I'm very happy that I got to spend the day with my cousin!!

Later that night we went with the rest of the group to a bar downtown, a few blocks away from Wenceslas Square. The bar was great except for all of the smoke. It was mostly underground and pretty big. I had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone!!
 

I'M HERE, I'M HERE, I'M REALLY HERE!!!

I finally made it to Prague! Yay!
 

So it is the always-lovely jet lag that brings me to my computer at 4am Prague time of course but 7pm LA time. All I want to do is shower and eat! Haha. However I do not have any snacks/food with me other than some Herbalife tea (thanks Kady!) and I don’t think anything close by opens until about 7am. And it is still a little too early to shower because I don’t want to wake up my roommate. But at least it gives me a chance to update my blog and send some emails! Maybe I will even start unpacking in a little bit! 

Views from my apartment:

I landed in Prague around 8:45pm and then took a pre-arranged taxi to my apartment. There was some confusion of where to go and the taxi driver just dropped me off in front of the apartment with nothing but my luggage and no keys to get into the building. Ah! I was quite confused and probably shouldn’t have let the taxi driver leave. Not to worry though, I made a quick phone call and someone came to meet me with my keys and information. Apparently the driver was supposed to have me pick this up at a separate building close by but he didn’t do that. Anyway I got a quick tour of the apartment and surrounding area (metro, school, etc…) and then left on my own. I got settled into my room, chatted with my new roommate, and then off to bed!

Touchdown in the Munich airport!

Nothing but smooth sailing so far, well, more like flying...

The flight went by so fast! I couldn’t believe it, before I knew it we were landing. They served dinner right away and gave us a choice of salmon or pesto pasta. I opted for the pesto pasta. It was surprisingly pretty good. It came with a little salad, bread, desert, and some crackers. Then I watched the movie 'Chocolat', which I’ve never seen before. Not sure why, but it was listed as a comedy... Anyway, I also watched ‘What to expect when you’re expecting.’ I liked both of them. Then I slept, or at least tried to sleep. It was tough to find a comfortable spot though despite having such a great seat on the plane. No one was sitting next to me and I had an aisle seat with lots of leg room! Woohoo! For breakfast they served an egg omelet, not that good :( . Once I woke up a little and walked around a bit, I came back and watched Spiderman. I’ve never seen that movie either. Haha. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the very end though because that’s when the plane was landing. Man, I was so bummed! Of course we had to be landing at the best part and thus they stopped the movie! Guess I will just have to rent it sometime. 

Now, I’m sitting in the Munich airport at one of the café’s near my gate. I ordered a tiny bottle of sparkling lemonade and an apple for four euros. So far I have heard many French speakers. Oh how I miss French so much!! I will have to make it out there while I am here so I can speak some French :).

I love airports... I like people watching and hearing other languages. The prices for everything are outrageous of course but that is to be expected. I probably had the biggest grin on my face as I got off the plane. So excited to know that I finally made it and would be arriving in Prague shortly.

Anyway, off to catch my plane from Munich to Prague. See you next time Munich! 

ONE WEEK LEFT

Well in exactly one week I will be boarding a plane, landing first in Munich and then in Prague. Still can't believe that this will become a reality. This week I took care of the paperwork to apostille my University degree and transcripts. The process was actually fairly easy, just a little costly unfortunately :( Now the main thing that's left to do is just packing! 

 Tonight though I gave my final speech (at least for awhile) at my Beachcities public speaking club. It went pretty well, even though I didn't really follow the guidelines of the speech Manual. :/ I'm glad I got a chance to say goodbye though. I'm definitely going to miss seeing everyone each week!! I will keep you up to date with my new club in Prague and when I get my CC :) 

 On a side note: I'm glad the elections are finally over... I hated being bombarded with election ads every time I turned on some kind of media.

A WEEK OF LASTS...
I feel like I should be using this last week to do all of the "last" things that I can't do in Prague. lol For example, Eat In'n'out (which I did last night).  If you have others suggestions Please comment :)

Today was also my last day of tutoring-sad to leave all of my kiddos :(