Weekend Recap

My weekend can be summed up by a Zen proverb that says, "Every step of the journey is the journey". While the actual events were a little disappointing, what led up to them was worth the while.

Saturday I went to Kutna Hora. A small little town south of Prague that is supposed to be adorable! As it was to be my first train experience in Prague, I looked up the schedule online, found the departures and arrivals, train station location, and allowed myself 1/2 hour to get there. This would not be the first time on my trip that I would underestimate the time.

Apparently, there is more than one train at the "main" train station! Who would've thought! So I arrived with 5 minutes to spare (that's 5 minutes to buy a ticket, figure out which platform to go to, AND get there) and ran to the information booth. The lady in the information booth sent me upstairs and then the lady at the upstairs booth sent me downstairs. This was my first moment of SEVERE frustration in Prague. I wanted so badly to yell "SO WHICH IS IT?!!?!?!?". Instead, I choose a smile that said "Wonderful! I love running up and down the stairs when I am late. Thank you for this opportunity" and went back down. Oh, I forgot to mention...the Kutna Hora train station is not called "Kutna Hora"...that would be too simple...and I didn't know what it was called, hence the trouble finding it. I decided to pull out my famous "Do you speak English" system and ask the other travelers. Except I forgot that when you are in a hurry, you lose all capacity to speak English. It looked something like this: "Do you speak English " (10 times)..."no...no...no...no...no...no...no...no...no...no". Finally...."NO...but how can I help you?" Sounded like English to me, so I went for it. Can we pause and remember I am still under the same 5 minute time crunch. Ok. This is the exciting part, he told me I was on platform 6 and so I literally sprinted a 5k through the train station. You should have seen me go!! Who knew I could run so fast!!! Unfortunately, this story has a very anticlimactic ending as I missed my train. Long story short (although it doesn't seem like I've shortened it much), I found a train that went to a station called Colleen (definatly not spelled like that though) that was close to Kutna Hora. Ok God, is this some kind of joke!! I missed my train out of lack of poor planning and now I am going to a station with the same name as my mother!! My EXTREMELY organized, NEVER late, ALWAYS planned out mother. Funny....really funny.

When I got on the train I heard some people speaking English...American English!! How sweet the sound! So I got up and went to say hello. As it turns out, they were in the same boat! They missed the train to Kutna Hora and were now going this new round about way. Guess what else? They were students from Western!!! Yeah that's right....Western WASHINGTON University. What a small world. We decided to spend the day together and it was SO much fun! We finally got to Kutna Hora and were all equally disappointed. This "adorable" town was more like a dumpy ghost town. We saw 5 people the entire time we were there. However, the big perk of Kutna Hora (rather, the ONLY perk of Kutna Hora) was....drum roll please....the bone church!!!

The bone church or Kostnice is a church filled with designs and...things...made completely out of human bones. The bones are from 40,000 humans that were piled up inside the church for years because they had run out of burial space in the cemetery. It looks like they hired the Addams family to decorate. SUPER cool and SUPER creepy all at the same time!!
The chandelier : contains at least one of every type of bone found in the human body.
Coat of Arms

Entrance to the church

After the church we went and had coffee next door, hopped on the train to go home, and then went to dinner back in Prague. It was so fun to be around a group of American girls that are my age!!

Yesterday, Sunday, was my big ski adventure. A couple of teachers from PBS were going skiing and invited me to come. We got on a charter bus that reminded me of an airplane. Let me explain: The flight attendant-like lady did a safety demonstration, she passed out headphones for the movie, she passed out beverages, and there were assigned seats. All for a 1-hour bus ride. Strange.

We got to the ski resort town of Leberec and found a place to rent (or "hire") stuff. I decided that since I already knew how to downhill ski, I would try x-country. DUMB idea. For once on this trip Kelsey can't you stick to what you know!?!? Nope! So I rented all the stuff (which, by the way, was only $10 for EVERYTHING...crazy!!) and we hopped on another bus and went up to the mountain.
The mountain (and weather) was BEAUTIFUL!! But the snow...not so beautiful...horrible actually. All of the x-country trails were iced over and I couldn't even stand up and I thought I was going to break something. I finally found a 100ft long trail that had ok snow and went up and down a couple times until I got bored. The good news is I brought a book...the bad news is there isn't a lodge...just an outside, stand-up PUB! I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting out in the snow reading and FREEZING my butt off!! I was very excited to get back to my flat that night and take a hot bath. Oh well, it was a funny learning experience I guess. I'm glad I went though, the scenery was beautiful and I got a chance to see another part of the Czech Republic.

4 things I'm excited about:

Short day at school because they have exams
I'm meeting up with my American friends for dinner tonight
The McMurray's got their pink slip to go get their Guatemalan princess Lucy Jane!
Martin and Jane come home today!!!!

Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers
Love Kels