1- if you need a visa, do it as early as you can.
2- when you apply for the visa, don't screw anything up, there's no room for it.
3- photocopy everything you could possibly need (birth certificates, health insurance, blah blah blah) at least five times.
4- give your mother anti-anxiety medicine
5- people will start to ask you all kinds of questions, so maybe you can just prepare a speech to give
6- actually tell people you're leaving the country
I bought my suitcase, knocked down from Macy's from $300 to about $80. I just have to get my hiking pack fixed. Still waiting on my visa. That was an ordeal. I took two trips to the city, a few stops away from Hunter College, and on my first trip had to run around to a hundred different places and didn't make it back in time. The second time around, I had to make two trips back home (missed the train twice too) because I left something at my house, and the other time I left my passport. Alas, I made it to the consulate, sat next to a sleeping cat, dealt with an annoyed Czech woman, and got lunch after. Apparently it takes about 60 days to process, and I'm leaving on the 30th so I'm cutting it close, but I can pick up my passport if it's not approved in time, and then do it when I get to Prague.
The classes I'm taking are really interesting. Czech and European Art and Architecture, I don't think I need to elaborate on this, but I should mention it consists of a tour of the hot spots throughout the city. Alternative Literature, Music, and Lifestyles (I may have typed the order in wrong), which is just a class about, well, alternative literature, music, and lifestyles. Literature of Central European Coffee Houses, definitely the one I'm most excited for, pending I get into the class (actually I'm waiting to get into all the classes), is a literature class about famous coffee house writers from Central Europe and the professor takes us to different coffee houses in Prague. From Kafka To Kundera, another literature class about different influential Czech writers. I also have to take a Czech language course for about a month so I don't actually start my classes until March, but I'm not complaining.
Other than that stuff, I'm just hanging out on Long Island right now, seeing my friends and family and all and working at the gym until I leave. I'll probably head to New Paltz soon, but I have to make the effort first to actually leave my house and drive. I bought this cool book from Barnes and Noble, its a moleskine notebook that you fill in yourself, oriented for people going to Prague.
Here's some good reads that I'm into now:
Allen Ginsburg, Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Yorker, and my MEDEX card, which will ensure that should I manage to die in Europe, my body will be sent home or that I will be repatriated to the US if there's civil unrest! Exciting!
