Day 3 – Poděbrady (4th July)

Today was my first lesson in B1. It was surprisingly easy to get moved up, we merely found the lady in charge and asked! I found the lesson much more productive. Although the teacher spoke a lot faster, we covered topics I hadn’t done before, such as the vocative and when to use various words over others. I felt I learnt a lot, and even better, I feel as though I’m at roughly the same standard as the rest of the class, shown by a game we played at the end of the lesson, when we were given a piece of vocab we had learnt that lesson and we had to make a grammatically correct sentence that made sense with it. It was great fun, despite the fact that only person managed to do it! (Not me haha!)

After lunch we went to a lecture on the geography of the Czech Republic, which was really interesting, and I was surprised by how much of the lecture I could understand. Hopefully, after a yummy lunch and in a warm room, I felt really sleepy and almost feel asleep several times. After the lecture, I bought some cute, dark blue shoes, as my black ones were still squelchy from getting soaked the day before. I could hardly believe they cost less than £6!!

Following the lecture, we thought about going swimming in the nearby lake, but got distracted by the thought of a drink in the park. The park was absolutely gorgeous, and I had some amazing conversations about the British sense of humour and Russian paranoia with the usual gang (Jones, S, Mike and Sheffield!Nick) and a Russian girl and a Slovenian girl. I love being here, having great conversations with people of all nationalities about subjects I love, such as language, history and foreign politics. I also tried my first beer. It was lemon flavoured, which meant for once I could actually stand the smell, but to be honest, I’m still not sold on the taste. It’s a shame, because the Czech Republic beer (or pivo as it is called) is a big thing and is really cheap, often cheaper than water!

For dinner, we went to a Chinese restaurant. I ordered spring rolls and stir-fry pork and noodles. It was interesting comparing Czech Chinese food to its British counterpart. The Czech version had a lot of carrot and cabbage in it, which I guess is to be expected as they are local vegetables and easy to get hold of, whilst in the UK we tend to have more peppers and onion. All the same, it was delicious!