Academic Life

           In my last post, I briefly discussed my routine of sorts that I have made here over the past three weeks. One part of my routine that I barely touched though was the academic part. I may be in a different country traveling and having fun, but I came here to learn also. I know it is a little strange that I am updating twice in two days, but tomorrow we are leaving for spring break for almost two weeks, so I will not be updating my blog until I get back. So I thought it would be fun to update it again one last time before I leave.

           Our classes so far have been over a variety of topics that were presented on to give us an idea of life in the Czech Republic, both historically and currently. One class was over the process of the central and eastern European countries becoming part of the European Union after being under communist rule for so long. We had a class about life in medieval cities in Europe, which was very interesting given the fact that we are currently living in a former medieval city here in the Czech Republic. Medieval life is not anything that we have an example of back in the United States, so I enjoyed learning about how the cities were created and how they were able to function. Another class was about the country borders in Europe and how they have changed over time. One thing about the class that intrigued me was how the borders between countries are not the only “borders.” There are also historical, geographical, social, cultural, and many other borders that divide the people of Europe. One of our most recent classes was over the Czech-German relations and how although there were many problems in the past, the relationship between the two is now on very good grounds.

           Besides our classes that are one or two day lectures, we also have our Czech language class. That class, for me anyway, is probably one of the most difficult ones of the bunch. Learning new words is not really a problem for me, but the pronunciations of the new words is. There are around eight other consonants and six vowels that we do not, and how they are pronounced can be a bit tricky. And for many of their words, they have three or more consonants in a row with no vowels, so those pronunciations can be tricky as well. For example, one of the new consonants, ř, is pronounced “rzh,” so that means dobře (good) is pronounced “dobrzhe.” Even the vowels have slightly different pronunciations, but I won’t go into the grammar too much so I do not bore anyone who is trying to read this. So far though, I have learned to ask “What is your name,” “Where are you from,” “How are you,” “How do you say …,” and many other helpful phrases. We’ve even started learning numbers, which we had an opportunity to use when we went to Brno over the weekend and were trying to say we needed devět (nine) tickets for some of the places we went to, because there were nine of us that went there on Saturday.

This is my favorite Czech word at the moment. Not only is it
my favorite because it means ice cream, but it also has five
consonants in a row at the beginning of the word. I have not
yet seen a word with more consonants in a row than this one.

           Our last two classes are taught by our two Czech professors, Jan and Martin, who are the ones who take us on our field trips and who we interact with the most while we are here. Martin’s subject that he has been lecturing on is the Holocaust. We have not really discussed the actual event itself, but we have gone into the history of why the Jews were not highly favored by people throughout history and about how many different groups of people throughout history have been used as scapegoats. It has really been an eye-opener for me into how something like the Holocaust was able to happen. We’ve also talked about the stereotype of how the Czech Republic is one of the most atheist countries in the world. We were told that the statistics are actually not 100% true, because for many people here, religion is very private, and they are not in favor of sharing personal and private information like that to the government. Our other professor, Jan, has been lecturing about European history and how it has shaped Europe. We have talked about the Greek and Roman Empires, and also about how Christianity shaped the land.

           Although our classes have not been extremely difficult, they have been very insightful into the lives of the people who live here in the Czech Republic. I honestly knew very little about the country before I came here, but I have loved learning more about it, and I cannot wait to see what our next classes will teach us.