In the swing of things

I guess I'm fully back in my Prague rhythm now.

The first week back to work was, thank goodness, an easy one. I only worked Wednesday through Friday and nothing crashed or went crazy, and at times I was downright bored because there just wasn't anything to do so I just took calls and caught up on things with my colleagues.

Since I came back I had every intention of going out with Henrique and his friend on Friday night. But Friday rolled around and so did the snow. It was falling, but nothing was on the ground yet, when I left for work in the morning. It continued to fall ALL DAY, nonstop, and by the time I left work there were a couple inches on the ground. It kept going, and going, and going. Wild horses could not have dragged me out of my house. I don't know if Henrique ended up doing the same since I didn't hear from him even though we had plans to hang out (he was sick anyway) so he might have had the same feeling.

Saturday I got up relatively early and met Beliza at 1pm. I had to go to Ikea to take care of the final return (exchange) of my bed - I decided to just get rid of it and make a bed on the floor. Naima warned me about mold if you just have a mattress on the floor, but I have these wooden things that will let air in underneath the mattress so I think it should be okay. I decided to exchange the bed and basically get my money back, and then purchase another mattress in its place to give me more cushion between me and the floor, and to make my sleeping surface a big higher off the ground. I think it will be comfy - it'll be nice not to be on my couch anymore, anyway.

Anyway, Beli was coming with me to be my translator in case Ikea didn't speak English. We went out for Czech food (I had a hankering!) and the place we went was soooo good. I had vrabec, which Google translator says is 'sparrow' but it was definitely some kind of pork. It came with potato dumplings and red cabbage, with some kind of thin gravy over it. It really hit the spot, as the snow had continued and we were trudging through a snowstorm all over Prague. It was so hard to walk - luckily we both had nice waterproof boots to keep us cozy :)

After that we headed to Ikea and the exchange was really easy. The guy who assisted me spoke English perfectly well, and I just paid the difference of 800Kc since the mattress I picked was more expensive than the bed I'm returning. They'll call me about delivery sometime this week, so I'm all set.

We didn't quite want to go home yet so we went to Palladium mall to walk around a bit. Beli saw a dress in a window at Benetton in Novy Smichov mall, but they didn't have it inside the store. So we went to find it in this mall but they didn't have a Benetton at all, so we just had a coffee (an Americano for me, cappucino for her:) and we shared two desserts - chocolate mousse cake and cheesecake, which looked like American cheesecake from afar but it was not, and would have been delicious if it had fruit on it or something, but it did not :( Oh well.

We went our separate ways after that and I went home and bummed around, took a small nap, and then trudged through the snow to go out to a club. I left with plenty of time but just missed the tram that would take me to Starometska from Narodni Divadlo, so I figured, it's only one stop away, I will just walk and get there faster (I arrived at Narodni Divadlo at 11:10pm, was supposed to meet Katy and co. at 11:15pm, and there wasn't another tram until 11:29pm, so I had no choice!) Well, one stop was a lot farther than I thought. I ended up being pretty late anyway, and walking in that much snow is like walking through slippery cold sand, but it's ok, we made it. Katy, Derrick, and Katy's friend Denisa (a Czech girl who is SO NICE and a lot of fun!) were my party for the night. We went to a club called Lavka which didn't get too crowded but had a fantastic DJ and we had a blast anyway because we just danced with ourselves :)

After that we played in the snow outside a bit, then caught a cab to Rincon Latino, where there was still a big party going on. I danced with Denisa and Derrick passed out on a couch, and we stayed for about an hour or so before we decided we were tired and wanted to go home. I took a cab - it was so cold and so snowy - there was no way I was going to walk up my hill in that :) 140 Kc was totally worth it.

Today I was lazy almost all day. I got home around 5:30am and got to bed around 6, and I had to wake up at 9am to watch an auction from home (FML). After that I went back to sleep, then got up, decided I was still tired, went back to sleep again, then watched a movie. At that point it was 6pm and I had done NOTHING all day, so finally I got myself to get up, take a shower, clean the kitchen and reorganize some things, do some laundry, and cleaned out my closet to get rid of a few things I don't want anymore and reorganize that, too. Still to come tonight: cleaning the bathroom/shower, sweeping the floors. Tomorrow (maybe), scrubbing the floors.

That is, unless Beli wants to go see a movie, which I'd totally be down with :)