PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Dobry den, folks! When I left you in my last column, I was in a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, groggy from Dramamine and contemplating rowing a boat from England to the Seekonk so I could return to a life full of Starbucks, classes in Smitty-B and CVS.
Needless to say, eight hours later my plans to escape this continent went kaput. I found myself putting down my bags in my hotel-cum-dorm and heading out with fellow weary travelers to a nearby German-style beerhall where drunken Czechs stood on picnic tables and sang drinking songs that all sounded like "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." I wasn't sure what I had gotten myself into in this oddball Eastern European country, but I was excited to find out.
My relationship with Prague has been very much like a Las Vegas marriage. It started off fast and wonderful, but soon the idea of four months here seemed more than a bit daunting. Certainly my honeymoon period with the city was thrilling. After traveling to a 12th century castle in southern Bohemia for an orientation with my classmates, I returned to my dorm in New Town feeling like I had the world at my fingertips. I went paddle-boating down the Vltava River, ate lunch at cafés in Old Town Square, walked the Charles Bridge at sunset and hit the discotheques at night - I couldn't help but imagine this was just an extended vacation to foreign lands. I was confident that with a few "survival" words and a quality map, I would figure things out little by little and life would be glorious.
I mean, think back to your own first few weeks on campus. You likely went through a sort of honeymoon phase with the University - you traveled in packs through the mall, you went to Antonio's with unitmates, you had parties and welcome events scheduled at every turn, and you were so busy you barely had time to digest it all.
But then at some point it all came crashing down. Everyone has a moment, a crisis period when the realness of it all hits you - the completely alien environment, the fact that you have to live in a 10x15 cinderblock room for nine more months, set your own alarm clock, do your own laundry and still succeed like you did in high school.
To top it off, everyone around you keeps saying everything is "wicked," but you can't fathom why a word with such sinister significance makes a good superlative. Suddenly you want nothing more than to pull up the covers and never wake up. You've fallen into a "crisis" mode, victim to a phenomenon known as culture shock.
This is not to say that there was a particular moment when my fun came crashing down or that I landed in jail for mentioning the C-word (that would be Communism) around folks for whom the political subject is a little touchy. But after trying to purchase a new memory card for my camera and ending up in broken English conversation which played out like Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First?" with a Czech cashier and simultaneously holding up an agitated line at an overly crowded multimedia store, I felt completely and totally out of place. I suddenly felt incompetent, unable to communicate on even the most basic level and exhausted from the effort it took to try. I was erudite, easygoing and as respectful as can be, but I couldn't so much as understand what was in the food I ordered. It was a mild crisis phase, yes, but to me it felt like Armageddon.
Fortunately, there was hope - that with time, I would reach the third stage of this culture shock: finding my own identity in this new culture while taking setbacks with a grain of salt, much like I did during my first months in Providence. All I needed was to find a place, a person or even a thing - some of you English majors might call it a noun - to make me feel comfortable even 6,000 miles away from my abode in California.
And I found it, in a glitzy Americanized coffeehouse called Star-Café; it wasn't Peet's, but they had a vanilla iced coffee with my name on it. The man behind the counter smiled at me as I butchered the Czech word with four consonants in a row and suddenly, I felt at home. It was 80 degrees and I was strolling down Wenceslas Square with an iced coffee, but more importantly, I was a local with a routine: tomorrow - and the day after and the day after - I would go to Star-Café before class and order a vanilla iced coffee. My crisis cloud was beginning to lift.
Courtney Jenkins '07 finally bought tapered, acid-washed jeans and is considering getting a mullet.
