Laundry and a Cultural Mixer

On Monday, 9/20, I finally decided to do my laundry. This wasn't exactly a choice of my own volition, but instead one made out of necessity. I had heard the horror stories about Machova's laundry room, and I was about to face them first hand. First of all, I live on the 5th floor, so to get down to the basement, it's about 6 flights of stairs... one way. Well, I must have gone up and down those stairs at least 10 times. I had to do one load of my sheets and towels, and another load of all my clothes. The clothes load is where I ran into some trouble. It wouldn't start. This happened, of course, after the machine ate up my 20 Kc. Well, I finally figured out that I had put too many clothes into the machine, and somehow, someway, the machine finally started it's cycle. Looks like I'll have to be doing laundry at least every 2 weeks from now on... (At Bucknell, I do laundry about every 2 months!) The machines are so incredibly tiny! Also, they take an incredibly long amount of time. It takes 3 hours for one load between the washing machine and the dryer - twice as long as back home! In short, laundry is quite the task over here.

Inside the laundry room

Inside of the TINY washing machine

 Yesterday evening, 9/21, one of the RAs had organized a "cultural mixer." We all met in Old Town Square and then she led us to a cozy coffee shop called Mama Coffee. The place was two stories high and had a warm atmosphere. We talked to and hung out with Czech kids our age about life, living in Prague, and just about anything! It was fun to finally meet "the locals," and they were incredibly nice. And despite their modesty, their English is quite good! Also, I discovered that the Czech version of a hot chocolate is basically melting a candy bar into a mug. I had to literally eat my hot chocolate with a spoon, it was that thick and delicious!

The best hot chocolate with whipped cream I've ever had