Happy Valentine's Day!

Kiss 'em if ya got 'em!

I should start with Monday night, when we had our first rehearsal for this play. As expected, it was a completely surreal experience being in a rehearsal with Dan and not being at GBN or in his basement or in my living room. The director is a nice guy; he's originally from North Carolina (and still has that fantastic accent, one of my favorites in the US), and he's been living in Prague for the past year working on assorted films (some major, in the SFX dept), but he'd like to get out of here soon. He's taking this whole thing more seriously than I (or Dan) had expected, which might get annoying since I certainly am not.

The script is pretty good (I might have mentioned that before), and it was fun getting it on its feet. Dan and I both have to make out with women significantly older than us, though my nearly-forty-year-old British woman definitely takes the cake. Dan's "wife" reminds us a lot of Natalie Boccumini.

I started running a fever during rehearsal, came home and slept, and you know all about yesterday (except that I watched Lost last night! A great episode!).

Which brings us to today. This holiday is very different in Prague, and not just for the expected reasons. Of course, everything people say about this holiday in the US is true: it's not even a big deal holiday, but gift/greeting card/candy companies have managed to make us believe it is (but is it so bad to have a holiday about love?). But there's more to it.

My study center (where my non-film classes are held) sits on the site of the magnificent Vyšehrad castle, site of several former Prague Kings and of course, home to a magnificent cathedral (which they light up at night like the Empire State Building). Apparently, every cathedral in CR (or maybe the world? not sure...) holds the remains of a particular saint (not necessarily the saint to whom the place is consecrated), and those remains are taken out and put on display one day every year.

So today, about 20 feet east of my classes, the remains of St. Valentine himself were on display all day. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to check it out, but it's definitely put a new spin on this holiday!

Today was the usual busy, lunch-less Wednesday, including my least favorite class, but ending with a great surprise. The one class that was canceled last week seems like it's going to be awesome. The prof told us all we were going to do was watch and talk about "non-Hollywood" European films. We started today with a Godard film, which I really loved and would never have watched otherwise, so I was very happy.

All of my classes were canceled tomorrow (love it), so I'll probably spend the whole day sleeping or walking around while it's still nice out (the weather here has been really strange lately...sunny and amazing until about 6pm, then rain all night). Or maybe I'll do homework. Meh, maybe not.