Move in Day

I guess NYU described my neighborhood as ab “up and coming” area, but I think it still needs a little more work. It is situated in a residential neighborhood that is filled with other apartments like ours. The surrounding area has lots of bars, mini, markets, and fruit stands, but no real restaurants. Or at least restaurants/anything that aren’t open on Saturday. I arrived at Jauriscova 6 and after ringing the bell for about 10 minutes the door man (who doesn’t speak English) finally opened the door. The Veronika, the building manager, met me there and helped me bring my bags up stairs. The apartment is basically a suite. There are two triple rooms and two double rooms on my floor. All ten girls share a kitchen and two bathrooms. The rooms are really big, they have high ceilings, and enough storage space for all my clothes! Also there is a great view into the apartments across the street where a really fat man who likes to wash his windows wearing his boxers lives. I think the entire building saw him today because he was talked about for 20 minutes on our walk to lunch.

I have two roommates: Vanessa and Alisha. Vanessa is a senior from NYU who wasn’t able to go abroad her junior year because she had to finish her major, so she’s here now. Her boyfriend is actually here also and both of them are very nice. Alisha is a sophomore transfer student into NYU whos acceptance to the school was contingent upon going to Prague first. That seems really weird to me. I think this semester might be a little rough for her because this is her first time ever being away from home, and now she’s in Europe. There are about 5 other clusters of rooms there two more for boys, and 1 ½ for girls. Upstairs there is also a computer/study area. Even though the rooms are finished I think we are planning an Ikea trip to get some new pillows and other necessities

This evening we met up with a two of the other dorms for an NYU sponsored pizza dinner, they paid for dinner and we paid for drinks. I’m learning that most of the NYU people know about as many people as I do. Though they may share some similar experiences, they don’t actually know each other. This is kind of a relief because I’ve pictured coming here as the only one who didn’t know anyone. After dinner a bunch of us in my apartment decided we wanted to leave the restaurant and go search for a new bar. I think we may have been in the only part of Prague that doesn’t seem to have a bar every two feet, because the only place we found that wasn’t closing as we stepped in was the Casino Royal, a bar that also functions as the local strip club/herna bar. We went in and awkwardly stood around and decided that with 15 of us we couldn’t just walk out. It was such a weird place! They had two strippers that kept on passing by us to go change over and over again, and we couldn’t figure out why. After we had finally had enough of the casino royal and the sketchy old men there we left and took the metro home. We found out later in a lecture about living in Prague that these herna bars are where all the “dirty” people go and should avoid them at all costs….woops!

After the first day I’m feeling really positive about what the next 16 weeks will bring.