I am a horrible blogger

I'm really slacking on this thing, aren't I?

Well, you're in luck. I just so happen to be writing a paper, and the paper is so incredibly boring to write that I felt the need to procrastinate in any way possible. Top of my list? Prague blog.

So, first of all, I don't think I'll be posting Budapest pictures. There are too many and it's a really big pain to upload them. Especially since the internet here has been so spotty. So, I'll go through a few and just describe them to you. You can find me when I'm back in the states, and I'd be happy to give you a very long, very boring slideshow of my travels.


One thing we did in Budapest was go to a basilica. It was a very beautiful domed building. Inside there was really pretty stained glass everywhere and pews. Also, there was a relic of some guys HAND! Yeah, you put a coin in a slot, and a case lights up and there's this dude's hand in it! So imagine a picture of that thing. It's kind of gross and cool.

Also, as I've mentioned in other posts, we went caving. Caving was awesome. Imagine a Hungarian Spider-Man. With long hair and not a scientist. That was our tour guide. And we got coveralls and helmets with lights on them and literally crawled through dirt and holes in rocks 25 meters below the Earth's surface. It took like 3 hours. At one point we turned off our helmet lights and just sat on the ground and listened and it was the darkest, quietest place I've ever experienced. So, imagine a hole in a cave that's so narrow I not only need to slide under it on my belly, but I need to turn my head to the side to get it through. And imagine a picture of me doing just that. And I'm covered in dust and dirt. Cool.

The other notable thing we did in Budapest was the thermal baths. Basically, there's a lot of thermal gas under Budapest. So they dug a bunch of pools out of the ground, and they're all heated naturally by these gases. And people pay to go. And there's three outdoor pools, one's really warm, one's pretty warm, and one's about 80 degrees Farenheit. And then you can go inside, where there are saunas and other pools with medicinal water. And one is like 40 degrees celsius which is really hot, and one's like 13 degrees celcius, which is really cold, and there are others in between. So we just went from bath to bath, getting a kick out of going from really hot to really cold. Seeing who could stay in a really hot/cold bath for longer. All good fun. I only have photos of the exterior of the baths, and some of the outdoor baths. Cameras in a place where people are wearing only bathing suits seems really creepy. But it was awesome.

Also I took pictures of food. I had really good food in Budapest. Fried bread and garlic soup and goulash and duck with honey sauce. Also, because of all the turkish food there, we had lots of doner kebabs and baklava almost every night. Mmmm.

Also our hostel was called Aventura, and if you ever go to Budapest, stay there. It was great, the people at the desk were super nice and super helpful, and the rooms are themed. That's right. Themed. Ours was "The Space Room." It was painted midnight blue and there were posters of planets and a little projector projected stars on the ceiling when the lights were out. It was great. I love space!

So that's Budapest.


Since then, we've had Fall break. We traveled to Milan (for a day), Madrid and Amsterdam. Although we heard that Milan had nothing much to offer, we had a great time there. There's a beautiful duoma and there was an outdoor science exhibit all about space! I'm telling you, I love space! Space is the coolest!

Also, Milan is the resting place of Da Vinci's Last Supper. Although, when we went to see it, the dossent laughed in our face. Apparently, you need reservations about a month in advance. They let 25 people in to see it for 15 minutes at a time. Lame.

Madrid was gorgeous and we were up to our ears in tapas every night and the hostel we stayed at was like a commune, with lovely people from Sweden and Australia and Alaska and England. It was the only hostel I've been to so far where we didn't mind actually hanging out in the hostel. In fact, they had a movie library, and on a rainy day we watched Back to the Future. It was great.

Also, this is the place where I witnessed the Phillies win the World Series. I never felt more homesick. (That's not true, but it sounds like it should be).

Amsterdam was kinda gross. But still fun. I'll have to write more about that later, cause it definitely deserves its own post.




Ok. That's enough of an update, no?



I feel ridiculous writing this paper. It's an interesting assignment, but you'll see how I made it riduculous in a second.

It's for Media and Society. We've been looking at how representations of things in the media are actually interpreted by the viewer, and therefore a message has more to do with the audience's perceptions, personal histories, culture, and biases than the media's goals. It's a good, interesting class.

So the assignment is to take some event or something and find photographic representation of it in a US newspaper and also in a Czech newspaper, and compare the photos from cultural perspectives. You know, analyze what they mean in each culture and what they say about both the subject and the culture itself.

So while most people in the class are comparing photos of big, serious, important things like 9/11, the Iraq War, or the U.S. 2008 Presidential Election, I'm writing about the respective photographic representations of Britney Spears' abysmal performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

So, I'm looking at pictures of an out of shape, barely clothed, struggling pop star and trying to put an academic spin on the media's love of tearing her apart.

Also, I don't speak Czech. So navigating the MF DNES website (the Czech Republic's most prominent daily) is really difficult.


But whatever, man. I'm getting it done.


I miss New York and Philly. I'll be home soon.