Monday 2 July 2012

Daily Czech Life

I have now been in this country almost six weeks!  It's crazy how quickly time is flying by.

I think before I left a lot of people asked a lot of questions about what Czech was like as a country, about the little daily things that make somewhere familiar or unusual.  This is my fifth time in this country but I still wondered about the extent to which I'd experience culture shock.

Well, I'll start by saying that it took me exactly four weeks before I actually looked the right way when I crossed the road!  And now my co-leader has a car I regularly freak-out because I'm convinced he's driving on the wrong side of the road.

But other than that...

On Monday when I was in Prague I left the team, travelled to where I was meeting Maja and walked through Old Town Square with U2 in my ears.  When we got to the coffee shop I ordered in Czech and, after our wonderful conversation, when it came time to pay I knew which number the man said!  I then successfully bought a metro ticket, got on the right metro and got off at the right stop before heading to meet my team again!

On Thursday when I was in Cesky Tesin I had coffee one morning with Audrey, the amazing woman who is my mentor/encourager/coach this summer.  The team had already travelled to where we were working that day, the Dicksons' house, so I had to travel there alone.  I successfully bought my train ticket and got on the correct train and got off in the right place!

And now that we've got a car we're able to grocery shop in Tesco.. where they have Sensodyne toothpaste, Jamie Oliver pasta sauces and enough tea to keep me well supplied.

I'm learning to delight in daily Czech life.

No comments:

Post a Comment