Festive Fasting!

It was pretty relaxing to walk soberly to class this morning. That and the fact that I had more than 5 minutes to get there of course. It was far from relaxing, however, when my Czech teacher gave us a quiz. Our whole class had been told that past tense and prepositions would be covered. No one was informed that giving/getting directions would be too, and everyone failed that section miserably. I stupidly decided that it wasn't worth wasting her time since I knew i had no idea what random combination of letters I would write; unfortunately, hearing later that everyone else did that, I probably could have gotten credit for 'svsdfjlks.' Oh well. After breakfast, I began my first of 2 field trips of the day. The first - the Jewish Quarter. The second - the Museum of Decorative Art. The Jewish Quarter was pretty neat, and I got to go to even more synagogues than I had last week during Rosh HaShannah. After going inside the Spanish Synagogue, I even decided to change my Kol Nidre plans and go there instead. Being of Islamic design, it has tons of intricately beautiful designs (and probably tons of TNT wired into the walls). The Spanish Synagogue is only about 140 years old, but it is fantastic and recently renovated, making all who walk in stop in awe. I apologize for the terrible photo of it, but I was getting chased by an old woman with a beating stick for taking a camera out, and she made other people delete the photos off their cameras. I was lucky to snap a photo [right before my camera died] - even if its blurry and has a finger in the way.
Our second stop might have been even cooler. Possibly the best exhibit I've seen in a museum, the Eames brothers' 'Evolution of Chairs' was crazy. The Eames revolutionary advances in chair design have influenced much of the development of chairs since World War 2, and their exhibit is crazy. After walking through their exhibit, we walked through different 'progression' exhibits. These included such things as watches and clocks from the 15th through 20th centuries, glass and ceramics from the same time period, wedding dresses over the last 200 years, and more. It was really fun, and as boring as my teacher may be when she lectures in class [luckily I have MS Paint to keep me occupied], she makes up for it on our Wednesday tours I think. I raced back to the Study Center after the museum tour, only to be so bored in Economics that within 10 minutes, I had to 'go to the bathroom' to splash freezing cold water on my face. At least that kept me up the rest of the class. I have since decided that from now on, I will always make sure to have my computer with me in Economics.
Economics always runs late, and as much as I wanted to walk out of class, I felt that that would be too impolite [after already doing that and having gone to 2 classes in 3 weeks]. I left at 5, and knowing that I had to leave my apartment for services by 6, stopped at the grocery for the last supper. I had endulged in a slice of chocolate cheesecake at lunch thinking that would have had to be my last meal, but having a little extra time and a raving appetite after just 4 hours required another meal. Being the luckiest bread buyer in the world, I again got hot rolls, fresh out of the oven with my chicken cold cuts and radishes. I also got a banana, an apple, a yogurt, and a chocolate wafer bar [can't tell that I haven't eaten in 6 hours and am already getting hungry and thirsty can you?].
So I hurried off to services, this time at the Spanish Synagogue, and met up with 3 girls from my program and 5 that I had met who are also studying here. Unlike the Old New Synagogue, women are respected here and given equal treatment (up for debate among all) here. The service was led by a rabbi who had been flown in from the States, so it was your traditional reform-conservative blend Kol Nidre, filled with many songs and your trying-hard but hardly-succeeding singer of a rabbi. It was still nice, although quite different.
As I type this, I'm doing a pretty good job of not doing my homework. As I've previously stated, Yom Kippur - being a Jewish holiday - does not get me an excused absense, so I must go to Czech in the morning [although my other class was cancelled thankfully]. Thus, I have a posterboard + presentation on my favorite place in Prague due in about 9 hours. Luckily, I saw a poster of someone who had already done the project [in a different class] up on the wall, so I took a picture of it before leaving class today. I then cut some pictures of Old Town Square out of my Czech buddy's travel books (Shhh...) and some squares out of different maps he has. Hopefully he won't notice, and will even help me make sure that the photo of someone else's project has decent grammar that can 'inspire' my own words.
I am also including some recently uploaded photos, although these and more can be seen on my Flickr account. Below is a picture of the nightline of Olomouc, me and a midget-servant statue in a Moravian castle, part of the castle, and the crazy Kafka statue outside of the Spanish Synagogue. Enjoy.