Praha 4, or A Pot of Complaints
(Written on 1/22/07)

I’ve been pretty much alone tonight – I cooked for myself while my roommates went out to dinner. I’ve eaten nearly every meal outside of my apartment since I got here, and this strikes me as incredibly stupid. I’m a totally competent cook, with a Vietnamese-run (here, an influx of Vietnamese immigrants have set up a bunch of very reputable veggie stores – known for good quality and good prices) vegetable stand up the street. Why, exactly, am I eating in restaurants? I know it’s a good way to get to know local culture and everything, but at this point, I don’t have enough Czech to eat in a restaurant that other Czechs eat in – only in places where they have menus catered to tourists. And the food is mediocre in those places – lots of pastas and pizza, and things they think Americans want to eat. So I made a giant pasta dish with beans and leeks and garlic and mushrooms. And ate it by myself.

I can’t wait to make friends. Some of the kids here are nice – actually, nobody is mean, just nobody is very friendly in my direction. I’ve become incredibly quiet – Smith/Northampton crew, you guys would absolutely not recognize me. When I ate dinner with the whole group, I was appalled at the way the boys at my table dominated the entire conversation (and talked about football most of the time), but was equally angry with myself for not speaking up. Yet something is keeping me silent. I think I’m scared.

My mom called while I was making dinner, and we got to talk for a few minutes before one of her clients showed up. When I hung up, I started crying. Crying like I rarely do, with lots of tears and noise. It didn’t last very long, but it startled me. I never get homesick, even when I’m in unfamiliar places. I was a really good camper that way, a good traveler.

I tried to wash my clothes tonight. The washing machine (there is no dryer) in our apartment is so small; I filled it with just three shirts, a sweatshirt, and a few pairs of socks. None of it is priceless clothing, but when I took it out of the machine, it was discouraging to find everything hot (when I thought I’d read the machine correctly and done a cold wash), wrinkled, and covered in lint. It didn’t look like it had been cleaned at all. If it hadn’t been for the sick-sweet smell of detergent (milk-almond, says the bottle. It’s for babies; I bought it so it wouldn’t have tons of chemicals), I would’ve guessed something had gone wrong – pieces of my clothes were still dry, as if the water had never reached them. They’re drying on a makeshift rack over the bathtub. At least the previous tenants left their iron in the closet.

The incident with the laundry didn’t make me cry, but I wanted to. I’m trying to breathe, to keep my priorities straight, to remember that this is part of being in a foreign country…

I signed up for an economics class today. Can you believe it? I was all set to take the Jewish-only courses, but suddenly they opened up some of the secular ones for us. I opted out of Holocaust History and instead went for this class about how the Czech Republic is in transition from a communist economy to a capitalist one. The professor is kind of what sold me on it – her syllabus includes an independent project that consists of interviewing people who work for NGOs in Prague, and writing a research paper about an economic problem as a result of the transition. It actually sounds exciting, and she sounds like the opposite of traditional Czech professors. Her class seems like it will be more discussion than lecture, with lots of critical thinking.

My roommates just came back, and the echo-y apartment is flooded with voices. They all have red balloons with them. The balloons say TGI Friday’s. One of my roommates is not with them – she went off and had Indian food instead. It seems like they’ve had fun. They’re pretty tipsy, anyway.

I still want to cry, but at least it’s less lonely.