Feeling even more at home

I find it amazing how quickly I can switch "modes" back into the way I am and always have been back in LA. I mentioned how in the next two weeks, I have a moderately large amount of work to get done, and the pile just keeps getting bigger. With that comes me feeling myself beginning to time-manage my days again, planning out exactly what I need to get done and how I'm going to do it.

To that extent, I knew I had a lot of class today (I always do, but my last class was a double today, so we weren't going to finish until 10pm), so after waking up at 9am for my Art and Architecture tour, I decided that twelve hours of class just didn't seem right and I went back to sleep until Czech class.

I think I should take a moment to write a bit of an ode to my Czech class, probably my most enjoyable class here. There's just such a fantastically colorful combination of people in the class that every day is nothing but a fantastic time. If someone's not saying something hilarious ("statistics don't exist") or doing something ridiculous (like falling out of a chair...and taking the table with), then at least I always have Stephanie right next to me to make delightfully malicious fun of other people ("ohhhhh, MO!" but seriously she's going to get a shoe thrown at her one day).

Take today, for example. We're all putting together these presentations to help the class review for our final next week, so each of us is in pairs and we're leading the class in a game to review our grammar and vocab. Today, my friend Steve, a quiet but goofy guy from Colorado with a soft side I discovered one day as we sat by a lake and talked about fishing, and Katherine, an incredibly friendly and cultured art major who's a chain smoker and always looks well dressed even in pajamas, led the class in Czech Fear Factor. Get a question wrong, and eat some funky Czech spreadable meat. We laughed so much, I really don't even remember what part of the language we were supposed to be reviewing.

Rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Watched a Hungarian film in my last class called The Red and the White, and I actually stayed awake...because I had taken a half hour nap while he was talking about something else.

I'm hoping that when I go home I can retain at least some of the carefree spirit I've had here. My life needs more trips to the park with a book (and MacArthur park is right up the road from us, too). That said, tomorrow I have class, followed by FedEx drama, then project finishing, perhaps paper beginning, and then certainly Brave New World finishing, and packing. I'm going to Berlin this weekend!