Czech Curiosities, Part One

Swimming Pool Etiquette:  near non-existent.  Kids (and sometime teenagers and adults) will cannonball into the water a foot from where you're sitting by the edge of the pool.  Splashing is sincerely welcomed by parents.  Fortunately, it's been so crazy hot – today it's supposed to be 97 degrees out – that it feels good. 

Gum, toothpaste, etc., is menthol-, rather than mint-, flavored.  Orange Aquafresh, anyone? Unfortunately, my mouth's forever tasting like a cough drop. 

Every adult Czech male sounds the same.  It's true.  All of them. 

**I think this is just my host family**  They leave the shopping cart at random locations in the grocery store while they shop.  Seriously, we're examining taco seasoning while the cart chills in the refrigerated vegetables section.


Sweetened Condensed Milk...for a snack? It's sold in tubes by Piknik brand, and you chow down on it, tube nozzle-to-mouth.  Every six-year-old and Paula Deen's dream come true.

 Czechs eat ridiculously fast.  I don't even know where they put the food.  I am quite literally shoveling food in, yet I still finish minutes after the rest of my host family (and yes, we're counting in minutes, because here, a meal is gone in 5 minutes flat).  The other day we had sweet knedliky, or dumplings, that my host grandmother made.  I asked for three, received four.  Valentína and Martina finished all of theirs in a couple minutes.  About ten minutes later, I had barely finished my third.  Just so you know what a feat this was, the dish consisted of:

• 3 or 4-inch diameter dumplings stuffed with a peach and raspberry filling
• A good two-thirds cup of some sort of cheese curd sprinkled atop
• Roughly a quarter-cup melted butter drizzle
• A healthy dollop of cream
• Cinnamon-sugar over top,  to ensure we hit the 1000-calorie mark

Their drinks have magical disappearing powers, too.  Never do I see them take a drink, but their glasses are continually drained.

They can't get enough of Bruno Mars. Or Shakira and Adele.  Europa 2 plays Rabiosa, Someone Like You, and an array of Bruno Mars songs each hour of the day.  They some really great older stuff though, too.  

They're even more obsessed with the word "so" than we are.  The word is "tak" in Czech, and, like its English equivalent, it can be used as "So...what do you want to do today?" or as "Omg, you look so pretty!!" It's used ALL over the place. 

Everyone drinks flavored water.  Looooooove this.   I haven't had a glass of water straight up since arriving at my host family's home.

More to come later, I've racked my brain enough for now.

To give you a quick little update on what I've been up to lately, yesterday I went into České Budejovice  to report myself, and paid a man $150 to take my fingerprints and...yeah, that's pretty much it.
Today we are going to the pool again. 
We didn't go into Prague like I said we would because it's been too hot.  We are going on the 2nd, though, for a Simple Plan concert.   And possibly December 7th, for Rihanna?  Tickets are sold out here, but not in Austria, so we should get on that.  (I guess they make only a certain amount available to the Czech Republic.  Interesting.) 
School starts the first of September. Eeeeeek.  On the bright side, if I were in the US, it would have begun yesterday. 
I taught my host mother to make the "th" sound.  Although, now it kind of just sounds like she has a really gnarly lisp, haha.  She has a totally German accent when speaking English, I love it.  Valentína sometimes remembers to do the "th", and I think most Czechs can do it, it's just that it takes a lot of extra effort. 
There are still a plethora of Czech sounds I can't make.
Tic-Tac has released a new flavor, Grape.  It is delicious.  A strong competitor against Orange, I daresay. 

XOXO

NOOOOOOOOOO "Forget You" by Cee Lo Green just came on the radio.  My ears, my ears...What loony from the crazy bin sent this cross the Atlantic?!?!  Whoa, I've never heard it with the F-word before.  It so doesn't fit the beat of the song, haha.