oi...

today has been a bit of a "nothing happened the way it should day"...

* we all showed up for the math lecture of the day by 10... the lecturer showed up at 10:30 (he had called first at least; we just didn't find out until we got to the math building)

* the lectures so far have been about 1.5 hours, which is about the limit of a normal person's attention span... today's lecture was over 2.5 hours... NO ONE was paying clear attention after about 1.5 hours... clear lecturer, good topic, just waaaaaay too long

* i decided to check out the prague university botanic garden this afternoon... in and of itself, a free and good idea... although there were occasionally grey clouds, by and large they were white puffy ones... i got halfway through when it started pouring... so i headed for the nearest tree, and got wet, but not nearly as wet as i'd have been if not hanging out with the tree... a i'd guess 40ish year old czech lady made a running dive for an even shorter tree near me, and we both ended up laughing and just enjoying the rain... not as planned for the afternoon (spending a chunk of it under a tree in the rain with someone i didn't share a language with), but laughing at the rain together was at least a good result :P

* as mentioned earlier, it dawned on me yesterday that my 6 digit atm pin might be a problem in budapest... bank of america's email customer service was prompt with responding, but unfortauntely the international debit card services can't change your pin over the phone for security reasons (so although they were as helpful as they could be, i'm still kinda stuck)... i've hatched a plot to (a) call up my one paid off credit card and tell them i'm in europe so don't flag my card for unusal activity if it starts getting used as an atm card in budapest... and (b) get my mom to put some cash in my memphis account i share with her... since i know that atm card works in europe just fine. we'll see how it all works out. just frustrating that it didn't cross my mind earlier.

at least we have electricity in our room again... that much is good although it shouldn't have been out in the first place!

what to do with my last night and day in prague?
* tonight, all the REU folks are supposed to go out to a pub to hang out... should be fun, as long as we all find each other to meet up... especially fun now that i've decided i like beer here. ;)
* tomorrow, final lecture... hopefully not more than an hour and a half long... then i'm just relaxing and making sure my stuff fits in my suitcase again..
* wednesday i have a 7:30am train... what's going to be fun is getting my 60 pound suitcase down the front steps outside the dorm, maybe 500 feet down the street to the bus stop, on and off the bus, down a mega flight of stairs into the metro station, switching metros with it, and then getting it not only onto the train, but onto the rack above my head in the cabin... it would be slightly easier if i didn't have a heavy carryon and a purse to keep track of simultaneously as well.... the waking up at 5am will be entertaining too... many of you will still be up at 11pm or midnight tuesday night your time while i'm up and trying to lug luggage across prague at the start of morning rush hour.... aren't you jealous?

i think i'm done rambling for the day... annoyed with finances, but the laughing at the rain in the garden makes up for it a little :P

later dudes