Friday, March 30, 2007

Daily Puppy Fix

If you aren't charmed by Annabelle the Basset Hound at the Daily Puppy, you are the
most hard-hearted person ever. Look how cute!



Thursday, March 29, 2007

Happy Hands Club

I was at the office today, when I noticed that there is some kind of Christian concert going on in namesti Miru. I heard the song, "Blessed Be," and managed to look out the window to see what was happening. There was a group of Czechs doing either interpretive dance or sign language to the song--I didn't get to see much of it, just the end. It's so wonderful to see something like this here in Prague, when the majority of the population are atheist.

It did, however remind me of the scene in Napoleon Dynamite with the Happy Hands Club. I managed to track down an image, just for you. :)



I promise that I will post pix of my parents trip to Prague soon!

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Amsterdam by way of London

My parents left this morning for Amsterdam for a few days before going back home. We had a lot of fun while they were here--stay tuned for pictures. :)

Monday, March 26, 2007

I've been incommunicando for awhile, all because my parents arrived in Dresden with friends in tow last Wednesday. We've been playing tourist for the last 6 days, and I will post later about that whole experience with lots of pictures. Right now, I have more important things to post about. ;)

ETA: Posts with pictures starting on March 22!

By request of Sunny, I'm posting a picture of St. Patrick's Day at Pasticka. Someone brought a green wig, and a few of us gathered there tried it on (not including me! I wore green on St. Pat's like any self-respecting Irish person would). This picture is of my roomie Alice and her boyfriend Jay, also an English teacher here in Prague.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Prague Visit-Day 2



Thursday morning started off chilly, but we braved the weather and traveled to the city center. We took in Wenceslas Square, Old Town Square, Charles Bridge & Prague Castle.

We also made many stops to what has turned out to be one of my favorite places in Prague: Coffee Heaven.



We went to dinner at U Fleku, where Chrissy met us. It was a night of firsts for my Mom & Dad and Margie & Mike: first time tasting Czech food, first time drinking the black beer at U Fleku, and their first experience with Becherovka. The band at U Fleku played "Home on the Range" when they discovered we were Americans. It was a most enjoyable evening.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Prague by Way of Dayton



This is what the train station (Hlavni Nadrazi) looks like at 6:15 in the morning. I took the train into Dresden to pick my parents and Margie & Mike up at the Dresden airport. My Mom & Dad's flight was delayed in the states, so they arrived at 1:30 instead of 8:30. I got into Dresden airport around 9:45, and made my way to the Arrivals gate. I wasn't sure when Margie & Mike's plan was landing, so I sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Eventually we caught up with each other. It turned out that their plane had landed before I got to the airport by about 10 minutes, and we just missed each other. We had been sitting on opposite sides of a barricade in the airport. Mom & Dad got in, we got the S-Bahn train back to the train station, and took the 3pm train back to Prague.

We got into Prague around 6pm, and hopped onto the metro first thing with our luggage during rush hour traffic. I'm sure that we were beloved by all. ;) By the time we made it to the Czech Inn, checked in, and had time to catch our breath, we were in no shape to go back out. We had dinner at the Czech Inn and an early night.




Thanks to everyone at the Czech Inn. It made the trip!

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Slainte!

For the non-Gaelic speakers out there, Slainte (Slan-cha) is the toast you say when drinking. :)

Last night, we ( Sunny, Red and I ) went to Pasticka to meet some friends for St. Patrick's Day. It's not exactly an Irish pub, but it did have Guinness on tap, which was what counted.

It was an odd sort of St. Patrick's Day for me. I didn't dance at all, I didn't have my shamrock garland on, and there was no Irish music at the pub. Instead, we were treated to Rammstein all night long. hmmm. I kept imagining the song, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other." But I was with good friends, and we had good fun, which is what is important.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy St. Patrick's day!

Friday, March 16, 2007

This little piggy . . .

Today was a light day of classes for me. Each Friday, I finish work at 9:30 in the morning. Sometimes I have the best job EVER! To reward myself for finishing the week alive(!), I went to the shopping center in the area I teach.

Ok, really, I needed to stop at the Tesco to get some lightbulbs. I did, however make a detour into Sephora, as I needed to pick up some black liquid eyeliner. I have been without since I got here in Prague, and I felt I needed to remedy the situation. I also picked up their #11 deep berry-burgundy nail polish, as I wanted a change from the red and pink that I brought with me in the international move. It looks nice in the bottle, and on the actual nail. I did my usual base, 2 coats of color, and top coat routine. The color deepens dramatically from the first coat to the second. The first coat of polish is true to the color on the website, but when you add a second coat of polish, it becomes an almost black cherry/purpley black. I quite like both colors.

It is 3:30 in the afternoon, and I have spent the last hour or so giving myself a mani/pedi. I love Mary Kay's Satin Hands. It makes me feel so pampered! Ah, the simple things in life are the best. :) I feel so girly

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Promise Delivered

I babysat tonight for Petr & Rebekah's daughter, Magdalena. She was a perfect angel, and slept the entire time. These are the best babysitting nights. :)

While babysitting, I got a chance to start reading Lost Women of the Bible by Carolyn Custis James, as chosen by Shanna for her (our?) brand spanking new women's only bible study to start this coming Tuesday morning. It's very engaging and engrossing, not to mention thought-provoking and interesting. Thanks for choosing such a wonderful book, Shanna!

Getting back on topic (title), as part of my payment for babysitting tonight, Rebekah introduced me to the wonderfulness that is Coffee Heaven. She brought back a White Chocolate Mocha for me, and boy did it deliver on the name! I really was in Coffee Heaven. This makes up for the fact that there are no Starbucks in the Czech Republic. This could be dangerous for me . . .

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

daily puppy

I have an addiction. It's always a good thing to admit to yourself that you have an addiction, so this is what I'm going to say:

My name is Elizabeth, and I am a Daily Puppy-a-holic.

I have their rss feed on my google homepage, so everytime I open firefox, I see the puppy of the day. And if it's cute enough, I go to the website and check out the other pictures of the puppy. This happens almost every day. And then I plot as to how I can steal the puppy from it's owners. It's a sickness really. But who can resist today's puppy, Benjamin the Golden Retriever?
Certainly not I.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

spring cometh

Spring has come to Prague! Even though the equinox is a few days off, temperatures have started to rise and trees and flowers have started to bud. I'm so excited to be in Prague in the springtime, and to be able to show my parents and their friends around Prague as well. In fact, they will arrive on the equinox. How appropriate! I wonder if the beer gardens will be open when they are here.

This picture is of a couple of small trees in Karlovo namesti that I spied yesterday.
Check out my flickr page for some more of my shots of Karlovo namesti.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Pubbing it, Prague Style


Last night, my roomie Alice, her boyfriend Jay, one of Jay's Czech friends, and I took in the U Vejvodu pub in Old Town. It's such a misleading building from the outside. At first glance, you'd think that it would be very small and cramped inside, like a typical small bar. You'd be wrong. Apparently, U Vejvodu consists of two gothic cellars that originally belonged to two separate buildings. It can seat 400 people total, divided into 3 parts. There is a restaurant that seats 320, a Czech Alehouse/Pub (where we sat last night) that seats 60, and a salon that seats 20.



We sat to the left of the bar here--it looks like a beer brewing vat! I wasn't a big beer drinker in the States (which could be due in part to the fact that American beer is horrible), and I'm not so much one here either but I have to say the quality and quantity of beer in the Czech Republic is awesome. The typical beer size is 1/2 a liter. Now, U Vejvodu is kind of touristy, so things are more expensive here than they would be in other parts of Prague, but one beer was around 30 Czech crowns, the equivalent to $1.50. For 1/2 a liter of beer. Craziness!

I think that I will bring my parents here when they arrive in 11 (!) days. I can't wait :)

Thursday, March 8, 2007

I am slow on the uptake for this blogger thing, but I promise to post more often. I guess that when I feel the need to blog, I default to livejournal where I have kept a blog since I was in college. I don't post anything too interesting, mostly about tv and my random obsessions. This week, I am fixated on the new All-Stars edition of The Amazing Race ( check out my post about it here ).

Sunday, March 4, 2007

And I'm Telling You . . .



My friend Sunny and I went to see the movie musical, "Dreamgirls" last night. It was wonderful. I had some doubts about it initially, but I wanted to see it, partially due to Jennifer Hudson's awards--to see if she lived up to the hype. OMG, it was so good! Everyone was phenomenal--Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover, Jennifer Hudson, Anika Noni Rose, even Beyonce. I had my doubts about her, as I had only seen her in Austin Powers: Goldmember before. She blew me away--her transformation from the meek Deena at the start of the film to the Deena who stood up for herself at the end was great. I also really enjoyed the actor who played Effie's brother C.C., Keith Robinson. He was not only wonderful, he's gorgeous! Plus, any movie that can have both Urkel and Jim Halpert in it is wonderful in my book. ;)The music and choreography in this film is phenomenal. I want to see it again, so that I can pay more attention to it, especially the choreography. What a film.

When Jennifer Hudson sang "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going," I cried. She has a phenomenal voice, and this was a standout performance. It reminded me, briefly, of one of my favorite movies, "Camp". It's also a musical (I'm sensing a theme here) set at a summer performing arts camp. Throughout the film, they stage different numbers from
Broadway shows, including the number "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from "Dreamgirls." The difference in this film, though, is that the girl playing Effie is a 17 year old white girl wearing a huge beehive hairdo, and she's singing to an 8 year old boy. ;) Not exactly in the same vein as Jennifer Hudson's performance, but I enjoyed both. If you love musical theatre, you should check out "Camp".