Exicting travel news!

It's finally official that the two travel excursions with my class will be to italy and greece!
And we are leaving really freaking soon!!!!

The dates are as follows:

September 23: Leave Prague, arrive in Venice mid-day

September 24: Spend all day in Venice

September 25: Leave Venice, Arrive in Florence mid-day

September 26: Spend the day in Florence

September 27: Leave Florence, Arrive in Rome

September 28: Spend the day in Rome

September 29: Arrive in Athens

September 30: Spend the day in Athens

October 1: Spend the day in Corinth

October 2: Leave for Delphi

October 3: Spend the day in Delphi

October 4: Go back to Athens

October 5: Spend the day in Athens

October 6: Return to Prague


VERY EXCITING STUFF!! it's kind of unfortunate that we are covering all that so quickly, but it's awesome we're getting to go to all these places!

Also, our first big assignment for the program is to divide into 3 groups and plan the itinerary for each italian city we visit. I am in a group with two girls, Lauren and Tricia and we decided to do Venice. We are in charge of planning half the day of the 23rd and all day on the 24th. We are to focus on our class themes of sacred communication, religion and art and the vision of christianity so, we will obviously structure a large part of our itinerary around visiting cathedrals as well as comparing the different architectural styles in the city, primarily along the grand canal. This is probably the coolest school assignment I've ever gotten, but on the other hand it's kind of scary having the travel experience of 10 other people in your hands... so, we'll see how this goes.
Hopefully this means that I will get to know Venice fairly well and be able to be a tourguide for my parents and siblings when they come vists, haha.

So, that's the big news as far as school goes--
as far as exploring prague goes... this weekend was pretty good, but full of a lot of catching up on a lot of reading for my classes, but the four day weekends make this much easier.
I did have a lot of fun at a really strange/hillarious club here though, called chateau rouge. we randomly went to this place after we saw a jazz/blues band at a small venue near old town so it was a bittt of a change of pace..

It was just what i always hoped a european club would be: a lotttttt of techno music, fog and interesting people

The first floor was your average bar, but there were two levels underneath in the basement-- the first big room at the bottom of the spiral staircase had a windy hallway with one end leading to the bathrooms and another staircase to the lowest level, and the other end leading to a large dance floor, with a seating area and big bar.
We checked out the lowest level first, just to see if it was playing different music and different people and what we found was about 7 people frantically running in circles, rigidly moving their arms up and down, and singing along to the song playing... what song was that, you ask? "la cucaracha."
funniest thing evvvvvvvver!!!!!!! in case you don't believe me:



So, we quickly ran back up the stairs and encountered the bathrooms...which basically served as re-chargers for a certain type of strange, sweaty creatures who often piled in each stall 4 people at a time, and exited with fanny packs in hand, giggling with their newly found glowing eyes and headed for the dance floor... which was a wholllle nother story!

when we first got there, we all got a beer and tried to feel out the place, and at that time there was just a small group of guys dancing-- we started talking to them and found out they were all international students-- some from the states, others from australia-- and my group quickly stepped onto the dance floor... and we were ATTACKED my the fog machine!



and there was the token guy who was in outerspace, fist pumping by himself for about 2 solid hours. it was wonderful:



it was so funny! suddenly i couldn't see further than 3 feet in front of my face, just barely making out my friends hysterically laughing, just like me, and dancing to the pulsing techno. we ended up dancing for like 3 hours and tons of people starting dancing too... we didn't meet any puppies, but all in all it turned into a really fun night, and by far one of the best experiences of prague yet.

i tried to make this one shorter, and failed miserably so i'm sorry about that.
to make up for it, here is a picture of me and barty:



and the trailer for the phenomenal film i went to see downtown last night-- Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens--- (they are having 'top doc's: best of sundance' here for the next week)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEjho8I8XBY


i admire her so much, and highly recommend this film!


i hope you are all doing well back home, and please send me e-mails, skype calls and comments here to let me know how you guys are doing!