my mouth can't form these sounds!

today was our third day of intensive czech classes. this language is as hard as you think it is; there are sounds (and letters!) that exist in czech that do not appear in any other language in the entire world. crazy, huh? my czech teacher is really understanding about how much we are struggling with the language, and praises us when we get even remotely close to pronouncing things correctly. for example, there is this ridiculous letter "r" with an accent above it that looks like an inverted "^". one would think that the sound of an "r" is pretty similar across languages, that when you hear it, you think, "oh, that's an 'r'." not this one. it sounds like a combination of the english z and j (that's not even an accurate description). and the kicker is that this is really common letter in the language, too! it is present in the numbers 3 and 4 (tri and ctyri - try pronoucning those! nearly impossible), the words for "well," "chicken," and "pepper," and pretty much every other word i encounter. this letter does not make our lives as novice czech speakers easy. not at all.

after class 25 of us went on a guided tour of the jewish quarter of prague, josefov. i went because i had heard great things about the guide, and that one of the sites is the old jewish cemetery. this graveyard is like nothing i've ever seen; it contains approximately 14,000 bodies (yes, i said fourteen thousand bodies - they are buried in eleven or 12 layers that go down 10 meters deep) that were first interred there in the 14th or 15th century. it's really hard to believe that there are layers upon layers of people buried there:





tomorrow and friday we are going on two more tours - one of the old town (where the nyu center is) and prague castle. i'm really excited for both; i've seen snippets of old town just by virtue of going to class each day, and prague castle is supposedly gorgeous. i'll post pictures of those tours this weekend.

na shledanou a mejte se hezky! (czech for "bye, and have a good one!" my repetoire of this language is rather limited, haha)