Arrival in Olomouc

We finally arrived at our school in Olomouc!  We met a representative from our school, Palacký University, at 2:30 pm at the Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague.  Our journey was about 174 miles, but it took us about 3-4 hours on the bus to arrive in Olomouc.  The road system here is quite different than that of the United States.  Instead of the highways going directly from point A to point B, the roads here curve to accommodate the many different towns and cities along the route. I have never appreciated the interstate system of the United States more!  It was a very interesting and beautiful drive though, it is so different from America!  The weather right now is kind of comparable to that of Oregon or Washington and there are a lot of green fields and pine tree forests along the route.  There were also a lot of towns and cities along the way, and the architecture of the buildings is so incredible!  Many of the buildings appear to very old, and many of them remind me of what you would see in a movie about the communist Soviet Union.  However, many of the buildings have obviously been remodeled or completely rebuilt since the end of communist rule and they are built using a modern arhiteture style.  It is so interesting seeing so many different styles of architecture right next to each other.  I am absolutely loving the difference in culture.

Some other things that I found interesting about the Czech Republic is how popular KFC is here. They are EVERYWHERE!  Something else that really grabbed my attention is that McDonald's are actually good here.  I absolutely despise McDonald's back home, and I very rarely will ever eat there.  We have ate at McDonald's twice since being here, as they are pretty common and fairly cheap.  They are so much nicer than they are back home!  And some of them even have a coffee shop inside of them, called McCafé, and they are set up to be kind of like a Starbucks.  One additional thing that's different here is that you have to pay for ketchup and other condiments!  It costs 6 koruna, or about 23 cents.  And that's just for one ketchup packet!  I guess my days of eating my fries with an ungodly amount of ketchup are over.

We got moved into our rooms today, and somehow I lucked out and got a room to myself!  However, unfortunately, I do not have any American suite-mates.  I've only met one of them, a Syrian, but I did find out I also have another suite-mate from Manchester, England, and I think I have two other ones as well.  My apartment style dorm, or as we call it, a flat, doesn't appear to be very sociable... hopefully I am wrong though.  I don't think I'll really be spending too much time in my room though other than sleeping so everything should be okay if its not too sociable.  So far I am really liking it here, but it is definitely different than being back home.  

Let the journey begin!

Tess, Emily and I are currently on an airplane from Omaha to Atlanta, where we will then have a connecting flight to Paris and then to Prague.  Thank god for in-flight wifi!  I've never flown from Omaha but it was by far the friendliest airport I've ever been to.  My checked bag was supposed to have a weight limit of 50 pounds, and it weighed 53 pounds and they didn't charge me an extra fee! Also my carry-on bag was WAY to big to fit their requirements, but they still let me take it! I'm not really sure how my carry-on was so much bigger than it was supposed to be, I measured it probably four different times at home and it fit the size requirements perfectly.  I'm just happy everything has went so smoothly so far.  Saying goodbye to everyone back home for so long was super weird, especially for my parents, my brother Sam, my girlfriend Jess, and my best friends Charley and Erik.  I'm so ready to get to Prague, 23 hours of traveling (including time changes) is waaaay too much time for me to be spending in airplanes and at airports.  I am so excited to get there and start this amazing journey!