A week full of stress and followed by the drinking holiday of the world...St. Patrick's Day!

Ok, so the last post ended on a kinda a depressing note, so I will keep this one lighter. Also, this one might be a little long, cause I am going to cover the whole week. I want to get caught up once and for all...minus the pictures of Poland that I intend to post soon. So, I left off last Sunday, when we got back from Poland. On Monday, in my Selected Topics of Forensic Psychology class, I had a group presentation to give. We were presenting on the different individual views of juvenile delinquency, and it was over an hour long presentation. The class wasn't until 2 p.m., but our group was up from about 8 a.m. on trying to prepare for it. A couple of of us were in Poland, so that is why we weren't able to work on it before then. Anyway, the presentation went pretty well I think. Forensics has actually become my favorite class. I hadn't ever really explored the idea of forensic psychology before this class, but I have seriously considered getting my graduate degree in something related to this area of study. I find it absolutely fascinating! To prove my point, Carly and I are giving our final presentation in this class on Psychopathic Personalities, and I am absolutely pumped about it. Our presentation has to be about an hour and a half long, and I am looking forward to it, and our 80 page article on the topic. Yes, I know, this makes me certifiably odd. Anyway, Tuesday wasn't much better...in fact it was much worse. I had to give a 50 minute solo presentation on Language Acquisition and Socialization of children...yeah I know, I didn't have any idea what that meant either. Regretfully, I now know way more than I ever wanted too. While I did make the time limit, I have to honestly say that it wasn't the most interesting presentation I have ever given. I made myself bored. When presenting, that is usually not a good thing. However, I gave it my best shot, and it is behind me now...I can only hope for the best.

Needless to say I got like five hours of sleep a night for like three days preparing for all of those presentations, so when St. Patrick's Day reared it's pretty head on Wednesday, I was ready to loosen up a little. There were half-off cocktails at an English bookstore/bar...and so a couple of friends and I spent our afternoon there...who passes on $3 mixed drinks?? Long story short, I left there feeling much more relaxed than when I arrived. I left the group a bit early because I had to go to another one of my mandatory theater performances for my Theatre Analysis class. We went to go see Fragile, a forty-five minute, non-verbal performance. It was physical theater, so there was a lot of...let's call it abstract...movement. It was all in all a decent performance, but I was still very "relaxed" during it, so that probably clouded my perception a bit. After the performance, I went back to the dorm...it was like 9 p.m. at this point...to take a shower before we headed out to SaSaZu for the night. SaSaZu was the place to go on St. Patty's Day because you got in for free before midnight if you wore green. However, since green is my least favorite color ever, I had to pay. This club was huge! It was my first time there, and there were probably over 300 hundred people in that place...and it was only like half full! I hung out with Stephanie, who is cool but a little awkward, and Robbie, who is probably one of the funniest people I have ever met in my entire life...no joke. I was with them most of the night, but it was a kinda lame night. I had more fun when we were pre-gaming earlier at the Globe...the bookstore/bar place. The music that they were playing was really terrible. It bordered on folk music sometimes, which is just unacceptable club music. So, Robbie and I decided to leave around like 2 a.m., we just couldn't handle the lameness anymore :) I am going to be really honest here, and hope that your judgement isn't too severe, but the next morning I had the worst hangover. I couldn't even open my eyes cause my head was pounding so hard. So, I ended up not going to my class on Thursday. I never want to be that hungover again...totally not worth it. I couldn't even function until like 3 in the afternoon. I spent the rest of Thursday in a cafe doing some busy work, like figuring out my schedule for next semester, and labeling some pictures that I had just uploaded. So, I had a semi-productive day. I went to bed super early that night.

Friday, I went on one of Z's tours. I don't think that I have mentioned this yet, but Z works with AIFS (the program I am here with) and every Friday he does walking tours of different parts of the city. Z is like a walking encyclopedia, so if you are going to go on a tour...go with Z for free and learn more than a guided tour could ever hope to teach you. I have been on one or two of these before, but this past Friday, Z took us to the National Military Museum, and then to this memorial on a hill...I can't remember what it was called, but the largest equestrian statue in the world was there. There were only four of us on the tour. Robbie, Brigitte, Elina (one of my suitemates) and myself. Z was actually telling us that he was really surprised at the lack of turn out there has been from our particular group of students. He said that never before have so little people turned out for the cultural events like operas, walking tours, ballets, and cafe outings. He said last semester they didn't have enough tickets for the students who wanted to participate, and this semester, they don't have enough students for the tickets. So, you can see a little bit the type of people that I am dealing with here. They like to party, but they don't really give a rip about the city. It is frustrating sometimes. However, Robbie and Brigitte are usually at all the outings, so the three of us have become pretty good friends. They are both from the University of Tampa. After the tour, Robbie and Brigitte and I had dinner at McDonalds and then came back to the dorm. I left shortly thereafter to see a movie with Carly. We saw Daybreakers...the vampire movie. Now, before you say anything, it was one of the only...and I mean the only...decent movies in the theater here. However, I will say this, Iron Man 2 comes out here in less than a month! That's right be jealous!!! Don't worry though, I promise not to spoil anything for you guys :) Anyway, Daybreakers wasn't terrible, and I like hanging out with Carly...so it was worth it. If you aren't already aware from my last post, I only got like three hours of sleep on Friday night because my roommate legitimately snored for over six hours. So, I was productive and updated my blog at around five in the morning here. So, following my three hours of sleep...and not consecutive hours I might add...I got up at 10 a.m. to go the zoo on Saturday!!! It took us about an hour to figure out how to get there, but once we arrived it was pretty great. We saw some pretty crazy things from both animals and people alike, and Robbie literally had us laughing for like five hours straight with his running commentary on everything we saw...the fact that I was to exhausted to think straight probably helped his cause though. The zoo here is pretty decent, we saw tigers, lions, polar bears, snakes, elephants...you know, the usual. But, I will say that there facilities are huge. It took us a solid five hours to see most of it. But, I had a great time! Spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and trying not to fall asleep on my feet. Got in bed around midnight after a very nice chat with my parents...who are still trying to set up skype...*sigh* But, it's cool.

Today, I wasn't very productive. I went to church this afternoon for the first time in two weeks, cause I have been out of town, and it was really good to be back. I saw Chris, who I haven't talked to in forever, so it was good to catch up with him and see how he has been. Then, I just came back to the room and chilled out for a couple of hours. I don't really have a lot of work this upcoming week, so I didn't have any homework to do. I went out for a glass of wine with my friend and her parents and a couple other girls. That was pretty fun. Her parents are funny and it was really fun making them laugh by telling them some of our ridiculous stories, like how you can buy beer at McDonalds. And, now it is really late...cause it takes me forever to write these posts, so I am going to head to bed. Sorry this is so long, but I just wanted to get everything said before the new week started. But I will say that I think spring has finally come to Prague!!! Stay tuned...