memo to self: remember to update blog!

i've been seriously slacking in the blog-updating department. my apologies!

i went to vienna last weekend for my birthday with whitney and rachel. the experience as a whole was infinitely better than budapest, reason being that we were traveling with 14 fewer people. who could have predicted that? pictures can be found below.

this weekend is my first full one in prague in a month. a month! all this traveling has caught up to me big-time, and i really needed this weekend to rest up and actually enjoy this city. pretty much my entire dorm is gone (including the 4 other girls in my suite) this weekend, so it is blissfully quiet here. two of my friends have people visiting this weekend, so today i got to see some touristy things i haven't had the opportunity to really appreciate yet; we walked across the charles bridge, stumbled upon a street fair, and saw the castle (again). i'm sure that when mollie/jerry and mom/dad come to visit i'll do even more touristy crap; i'm not complaining, though! it's nice to play the tourist card every once in a while.

our spring break is in three weeks, and earlier this week, i bought a plane ticket to rome! we're planning on spending a couple days in rome, taking the train down to naples, and seeing vesuvius/pompeii/capri before going back up to rome and flying home. i'm really excited; i've always wanted to go to italy, and when else will i have the opportunity to bum around my motherland for a week? some people are planning on using spring break as a chance to sit on a beach and get a tan, but you can do that anywhere! i don't need to go to egypt or croatia (true story, some kids are planning on going to both those places just for the beaches! bizarre) to sit on a beach. that's what summer is for back home. if i'm going to go on a spring break trip, i'm going to do what i've always wanted to do - and that's see italy.

pictures from wien:

also - instead of posting all my pictures here all the time, i created a webshots account for my semester here. i'll continue to post a couple with each update, but if you want to see the rest of my pictures, go here:
http://community.webshots.com/user/emilymarie217