"How to Prepare As Poorly As Possible For Studying Abroad" - Rough Draft

I haven't been this flustered and frazzled since April of my freshman year when I slept through my seventh and potentially flunk-inducing "Philosophy of Human Nature" class (Professor David Zoller, if you're reading this, you're still a douchebag) and spent the entire day shuffling between the Health Center, the dean's office, and David Zoller's office with a very fake sinus infection. But at least my 18-month-old flusters and frazzles paid off -- got medically excused (not surprising, considering my fat, high ass was assaulting my nasal passages with 4 grav bong rips per day at the time), didn't fail philosophy, and got a bottle of amoxicillin out of it, which I've actually been dipping into this week in order to keep the leg infection at bay. But really, it's been a very very hectic long-weekend.

First and foremost, to the masochist that manufactured the already blog-famous bed, fuck you. Today marks the fifth consecutive day that I've woken up two hours before I wanted to with an excruciating combination of numbness and soreness in every part of my body. I'm gonna find out where you live, track you down, and throw a patented Marty-Dolan-errant-roundhouse (a la the hurricane) your way. And unless you're a parapalegic, learning-disabled descendent of Joseph Stallin (which I think you have to be in order to create this fucking torture chamber of a bed), and unless my stronger, more agile friends are with me, you'll probably kick my ass. But you know I'm goin' down swingin'.

Today, I woke up at 6 am with said excruiating pain and rolled around for two hours before I finally surrendered and hit the shower. After a pleasant scrub in my very close-quartered shower, I started phase one of my extensive, multi-phased dental hygiene regimen. Had myself a hall-of-fame floss, a terrific tongue scrape, a rinse as good as any man could ask for, and then an uncharged electric toothbrush. I was so bummed I didn't even reach for the Listerine.

I don't know how many of my beloved readers have graduated to the electric toothbrush -- for your sakes, I hope most -- but once you've tasted the forbidden fruit of personal electronic dental hygiene, there is no going back to manual. Honestly, my mouth has felt plaquey and homeless all god damn day, and it will continue to feel plaquey and homeless because I'm pretty sure I blew a fuse in my toothbrush charger. Lesson 1 of "How to Prepare As Poorly As Possible For Studying Abroad": don't bother actually learning about european voltage, just buy some shit from Brookstone and do what feels easiest. With any luck, you won't be able to use your electric toothbrush, your lithium camera battery charger (ergo your digital camera), AND your beard trimmer within two weeks of touching down in the old country.

Dressed myself and walked over to the class building early for breakfast. I'd complain about how shitty the spread was again, but there wasn't actually anything there. I'm guessing word about the free, limp-dicked breakfast buffet got out to non-dormitory residents, because there were a whole lot of dudes in there I did not recognize. It took me a whole 2 seconds to decide to abandon the funky-ass basement (I'm working on putting a word to the smell, but I haven't hit it right yet. In good time.) cafeteria and headed just down the hill to the cafe/bar that sells decent coffee and pretty delicious pastries. 1 coffee and 2 pastries later, I was sitting in class mentally preparing for a new week of "Intensive Czech" lessons.

Now this Intensive Czech business probably deserves an entry of it's own, but the words are flowing like milk and honey right now so I'm gonna get right to it. In 6 days and approximately 32 hours of intensive Czech instruction, I have not absorbed a fucking word of Czech. Not one. My daily effort to learn this totally unlearnable language resembles the effort I've always not put into my Imagenes or Atando Cabos spanish workbook assignments, but with less thinking. And it's not only because I'm lazy and/or hungover, it's because this language will 1) never serve me any purpose, ever, 2) could not be any less intuitable, and 3) consistently features words with 3 or 4 consecutive consonsants, which require me to make noises that my tongue will never, ever be able to make.

Consider the word for "four/4": čtyři. How the FUCK is that a human sound? Phonetically, it's supposed to resemble: cheh-teer-ree, but it doesn't, because my romance-language-learned brain can't remotely concieve of how to convert the sound my professor makes into cognizant letter-form. Lesson 2 of "How to Prepare As Poorly As Possible For Studying Abroad": be sure to choose a country in which only 12% of inhabitants barely speak your native-tongue, and also be sure that the native tongue of your abroad destination is biologically impossible for you to speak.

Say that five times fast

In a word (or two), I'm perched on that chair for 4 and 1/2 hours each day like a confused parrot, mimicking the sounds that come out of my teacher's mouth while I pout about how I'll never learn Czech and try to compensate for my intellectual shortcomings by thinking up creative ways to rant about the language on my really awesome blog.

I wish I could school ya'll with lesson 3: how to not activate a Blackberry international data plan before you leave and spend $180 on prepaid credit in 14 days, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Brady's 21st birthday tonight at the drunken monkey, which will be a rip-roarin', inebriated, American time.

Brady's Czech accent takes us out...[totally using stool's one-liners until I think of something cooler] -- Oh, and by the way, makers of the Flip Video Camera, HD my ass. This shit looks like it was taken on the third iPhone ever made.