my day

happy monday?

this morning was good... instead of 4 hours of research math talks, the rest of our stay in prague, we have *a* math lecture aimed specifically at the undergraduates at 10am for about an hour from one of the czech university faculty. today's talk was about geometric graphs... instead of lecturing though, he asked three extremal graph questions and had the students work them out together and prove the correct answers as a group, then he gave a related proof that he called "biological" because he made it really cute with hens and eggs sitting on the graph... anyhow, it was quality.

for the rest of our stay, there are two students from slovenia who will come on our talks, etc. too so we met them today.

after lunch, the slovenian students, martin, jan, bill, and me went to the royal terrace gardens on the slopes below the castle. they were awesome and i had no clue they existed before... steep stairs overflowing with fountains and fruits and grapevines and roses and cool statues all down the side of the hill that the castle is on... i took a LOT of pictures. after the gardens, jan and martin were taking the slovenian students elsewhere so bill and i wandered together.

i spent yesterday with bill and mike too -- they're two other rutgers math grad students who were just here for the weekend for the saturday/sunday conference here... mike flew out this morning.

this afternoon, after the gardens, bill and i hiked across town and visited the museum of communism. it was interesting to read it all over again from the czech perspective after originally learning about eastern europe's communist era from hungarians. there's enough in parallel that it's different strands of the same story, but enough different to be fascinating to go through again.... the most interesting part of this museum that brough all the displays home was the tv room with a documentary playing about the final years of communism in the czech lands and about the velvet revolution. it was quality.

after museum of communism, bill and i ended up with ice cream snacks sitting in a garden in the middle of a block near wenceslas square (there are lots of little gardens hiding inside city blocks around here) and chatting for a bit. somehow or another it came up that bill isn't really religious and he's always hesitant to discuss religion with other people because he doesn't want to sound rude or critical of them when he doesn't agree... to me that's an invitation to discussion.

so over ice cream we dicussed why bill isn't religious. his claim is that he finds it plausible to believe God exists, even though he doesn't believe in God. however, if one does believe in God, he finds it impossible to decide which is the "right" religion because they're all enacted by people who can't possibly capture God accurately, so who's to say that any of them have things down pat anyhow. i told him what i believe makes Christianity stand out in response to the questions he brought up. not that i've changed anything he ever though before, but from his reactions, i'm pretty sure i made comments that had never crossed his mind before, so at least it's hopefully fuel for thought in his head that'll last longer than the half hour we discussed it.

i don't know how i get myself into these chats, but i seem to do so naturally with anyone i spend a concentrated amount of time with... i find it interesting.

while we were at the communist museum, my grandma's funeral was going on in pittsburgh. my mom was incredibly surprised to see roommate last night at the wake. she told me (via email) that only two things made her cry yesterday (1) the fact that our memphis church sent flowers when they had claimed they were giving her money for her trip to pitt "instead of flowers", and (2) seeing roommate come in to visit and pay respects. roommate got to go to the funeral today too. i'll call mom for sure, and possibly roommate too (depending on how many minutes are left on my phone card) later tonight... in the meantime, dinner with bill and laundry time... woohoo.

later dudes.