School starts on Monday!!

On Thursday we had more excursions to go on. I went to Kutna Hora, this town maybe and hour and a half away. They have a castle and a lot of historical sites, and used to be Prague's competitor in all ways. It was freezing and really hazy gloomy outside, but we were determined to have a good time. The castle was, as castles are, amazing. We only got to tour part of the first floor though, because people still live in it! How cool! it must so expensive to try to heat a castle, seriously. After the castle we walked around the town and basically were in lecture with our tour guide. He was really nice, but very long winded and gave us more information about everything than we would ever want. By lunch time we were all frozen, these past couple of days have been very very cold. After lunch we went into St. Barbara's Cathedral, it was beautiful. Most of the churches here are more of a baroque style, but this cathedral was textbook gothic. They started building the cathedral in 1388, but the work on the cathedral was interrupted several times, it wasn't finished until 1905. Work on the building was interrupted because of the Hussite Wars for more than 60 years! After walking around the town more, we got back on the bus for 20 minute ride to Sedlec. Now, Sedlec is where Sedlec Ossuary, the "bone church," is located. This cemetery was a very holy place and a very desirable place to be buried. The cemetery filled up very fast, and later with the Plague, there wasn' t room for everyone. What ended up happening was, well, they used the bones of 40,000 people to decorate the chapel. I don't know how to explain it, and I don't think I understand it. It was kind of uneasy to walk around inside, fascinating, but sligthly uncomfortable for me. After the Bone Church every silently boarded the bus and we drove home, the entire bus napped. It was a very strange Valentine's Day. When we got back we had dinner and called it an early night.

Friday was a very calm day, the best part, 2 best parts...first, we bought our bus tickets to Vienna. Bus tickets to the Vienna airport, where we are flying to GREECE for a week in March, pretty excited about that! Not as exciting, but I found a glorious grocery store with so much KINDER chocolate, for a cheaper price that we haven't been able to find around "home!"

Today we walked trying to find where are different classes are, but didn't have much luck. Our classes are spread all around the city. Starting school on Monday is going to be strange, it has been vacation this whole time! Having a real schedule will be nice though.

Always,

Roxanne