fun with the animals :)

today was quality.

after our morning math lecture, we split up into different groups... there was talk of going to visit some caves, but martin suggested that was a better weekend activity when there's not a talk going on in the morning. instead, since both melissa and i wanted to check out the zoo, that's what we did. bill came along, as did matt, a guy who got his ph.d. from princeton several years ago and now spends his time travelling europe to math conferences on richer mathematicians' money...

the prague zoo is *absolutely fantastic*!... my dad would have been in 7th heaven. it's a little ways NW of the city, and on a huge hill. at the top of the hill is a huge "africa panarama" with giraffes, zebras, meercats, etc. all together on a large spacious range... other animals have really nice wooded lots, until you get to the hillside... it's really steep and parts of it are solid rock -- which make for amazing enclosures for mountain goats and the like... there's even a cable car system for people to get up and down without crawling down paths, which was fun both ways too... it took us 3.5 hours to go through and i don't think we saw quite everything either... anyhow, it was a highly quality stop for an afternoon.

tonight, one of the czech students has organized a pub crawl... however as it starts in 5 minutes a bit away from here, pretty sure i'm not going. melissa is tired and not really into drinking, and i enjoy having a few drinks but don't like more than that and i'm pretty sure that's not the spirit of the evening. after all, last night was exhausting too -- i got the laundry room reserved at the dorm to wash my clothes, but the washer took from 10-11:30pm and the dryer, after running for 2 hours, hadn't dried any of my clothes, so then i had to sort out the load and figure out how to hang it up all around my room to dry. that and getting up at 7 made for not much sleep... so i think dinner with melissa and then going back for an early night might just fit the bill.

tomorrow night should be awesome. martin got us NINTH row tickets to see don giovanni then. for all the american REU students except me, this will be their first opera (although i think it's in one of the local theaters instead of the state opera house, whatever). of all the places to see don giovanni, prague is the place to do it, as it premiered here in 1787... so how cool is that? :).. even cooler is that the math department will pay for any group events that are providing us with "czech culture", so these $50 tickets are on the department. :)

on friday, prof. nesetril, the prof. here in charge of the prague end of the REU, and both a mathematician and a very knowledgable artist is doing his annual tradition of giving a personal tour of the national gallery to the REUers... that should be quite quality too.

anyhow, done rambling. it's been another good day... tonight, though, i plan to actually get a decent amount of sleep, unlike the past week (avg. 5-6 hours a night)... this will be aided by the fact that all the payphones in the dorm are now broken, so if i want to spend time chatting with friends, i have to walk down the street (not too far to the first phone booth, but it's usually full, .... a mile to the next one) to make calls... when it looks like rain soon, i doubt that will sound like a good idea by the time i get to the dorm.

at any rate, dinner with melissa, then sleep... yay :)

later dudes