cultural events

my study abroad program finds and pays for events for us. so far, we've been served dinner twice, taken to moravia (brno, to be exact), and taken to a ballet (swan lake, last night) and a hockey game (sparta vs. slavia, the night before last).

at the hockey game, we learned how czech people root for sports teams. they acquire large phallic yellow balloons that say 'seimens' on them and bang them together in rhythm to early 90's american music (nirvana, g&r, etc.). then they jump up and down like they are on pogo sticks and keep banging their balloons together. we were rooting for sparta, because that was who we were told to root for. but, unlike my previous impressions of sparta (as a highly organized and effective militaristic society), the sparta hockey team players were sub-par. at one point, the goalie got knocked down and just stayed on the ground, like he was taking a nap or something. the cheerleaders were even more ridiculously lazy. the first thing they did when they came out was lift one knee up, and one of them fell down. then she got up and shrugged. i wish i could show you, rather than describe their dances, because i don't know how i could translate this into words. they stood with one foot pretty much in place and did sort of half-assed squats and turns and then would lift one arm up at a time, like monkeys. they'd also quit dancing mid-move sometimes. in other words, they were incredible. the hockey game was superfun, even though my favorite hockey team (sparta) was demolished by slavia.

then last night, when we went to the ballet, i was again totally riveted by dancing, but this time it was flawless. i'd never seen a ballet before, and though i couldn't really figure out what was happening in swan lake, i wasn't bored for a second. i kept thinking of hal in 'henry IV' mainly because he was a prince who wanted to spend his leisure time with his subjects (like falstaff). i thought that our study abroad field trips would reflect a typical week for hal, if he were alive today. we did the hoighty toighty high art ballet thing, but we also didn't leave out the dirty, primal sporting events. the thing about swan lake is that i really couldn't figure for the life of me what interest the swan lady could possibly have in that boring, over-sentimental, not very manly man. but i guess she liked him a lot, otherwise she wouldn't have flapped her arm-wings so violently when, for some reason, she had to dance in the opposite direction from him.

oh i forgot to mention this. at the hockey game, we couldn't find our seats, and the directions they gave us were to 'go behind the sausages.' so we went look for sausages, only to find that they were EVERYWHERE. we were in a stadium full of sausages. literal sausages, not metaphorical. though i'm sure there were several of those too.

i wish that rhys could come with us on all of our field trips. i've been scoping it out, and i think that he may be able to come on some of them for free, and others he may just have to pay a little bit to come. it would be fun to have him at the events.

i know it doesn't sound like it from his blogs, but i think rhys will end up having a really good time here. we're getting along great (as far as i can tell) and my friends really get along with him too and i don't think he feels unincluded or anything. and we're in prague, for ****sake. it is beautiful here.

so we're all starting to plan out our spring breaks. i'm between going hiking on trails in slovakia (you can stop in towns every night and i hear there are also hot springs) or going to croatia. lots of folks want to go to budapest too, but that's so close that we could go there for a long weekend. i guess slovakia is close too, though, huh?

okay okay. i have things to do.