I made it to Scotland. I’m on an internet terminal in the basement of a McDonald’s. Not an ideal blogging location. More later.

Almost everything is packed but my laptop now, and I am about to head for the airport. Graduation went well yesterday, and now everyone is saying their last goodbyes. I’m going to catch the bus to the airport with Myles, a classmate of mine from the Air Force Academy.

I just finished my economics final exam, meaning I have completed all of my academic work in Prague. This afternoon I will take care of my last erands, and at 6:00 we have our graduation. The Prime Minister of Croatia will be speaking.

I leave Prague Saturday around noon. From there I will head to Edinburgh, Scotland for two nights before going home. I still have photos and content to post from Prague, but that may not happen until I get back to the US.

Tuesday night the majority of our group took a boat trip on the Vlatva River. It was about an hour long, giving us nice views of the Charles Bridge and buildings along the shore. With the breeze from the boat, the weather was ideal. I think we were all glad to be able to do some of our touring sitting down.

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Monday night the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic hosted our group at his residence. After classes, we went back to the dorm, dressed up, and walked to his residence. Arriving at the residence I was impressed by the large and elegant property. The house is beautiful, and the back terrace and lawn look like a set for a Hollywood wedding. I think I could get into being an ambassador in a stable Central or Eastern European country (somewhere with lots of nice old architecture).

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On Sunday I went to International Baptist Church of Prague. I went with a friend from Albania and an acquaintance of his who is living in Prague for several months working for Radio Free Europe. International Baptist Church is a large, multi-faceted ministry with services in Czech, English, Spanish, and Chinese. The main auditorium at IBCP (pictured above) is devoted to the Czech service, so the English-speaking congregation meets in a smaller auditorium on the second floor. The compact meeting space gave the service an intimate feeling.

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Saturday evening we had our country presentations dinner at a Crown Plaza hotel (with distinctively Communist architecture) within walking distance of our dorm. We ate a tasty traditional Czech meal while a Czech band played. During dessert each of the countries gave a brief presentation about their country. This was a little harder for individuals who were the lone representatives of their country.

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The legislative simulation Saturday went well. We debated bills on four different matters for about four hours. My group’s bill was defeated, but not as badly as I had expected. Four bills were passed. An additional amendment guaranteeing hot water to our citizens was proposed and overwhelmingly voted into law.

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This morning I was able to shave and take a luxurious shower with hot water. I showered again this evening. It feels great.

It was good and bad that the hot water moratorium happened during record high temperatures in Prague (hottest in 141 years). It was good in the sense that a cold shower sounds good when you are hot, but bad in the sense that in hot weather you need more showers. Even on the hottest days, Prague’s cold water can make grown men shriek. People came up with various solutions, like putting water bottles in their window to warm or heating water and putting it in a bucket.

My essay test this morning seemed to go well. We are all glad to have it behind us.

As I mentioned before, we’ve finished our first week of our economics class. It’s taught by Mike Veseth of the University of Puget Sound. He’s personable and a good lecturer. I would be interested to know more of his opinions on some of the economic ideas we discuss. Dr. Veseth has agreed to meet with me so that I can ask him questions about graduate school and how he balances teaching and academic writing. Dr. Veseth has been an important person in the relatively new field of International Political Economy. The IPE textbook he coauthored is a standard for introductory IPE classes. I’ve appreciated how aware he is of his students. It’s obvious that he works to keep up with the things we are doing with AIPES outside of our economics class. He weaves things like the hot water situation into his examples (even though he doesn’t live in our dorm).

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I’ve posted a second gallery of Prague photos. In this gallery you’ll see a little of how old and new mix in Prague. If you’re just joining us, you can catch gallery one here.

Both of our classes run for two weeks, overlapping for the middle week. Thus, tomorrow is the final exam for our politics class, and today we are all focused on preparing for it. Next week is our last week, when we will finish our economics class. Next week we will also be joined in Prague by students here for TFAS’s European Journalism Institute.

This week we added our economics class to the schedule, so I’ve been pretty busy trying to keep up with the academic load. Hence, the blog has fallen behind.

Sunday I had a chance to attend The International Church of Prague. The church meets in a Seventh Day Adventist church building about 25 minutes from my dorm. The church began as a Bible study meeting in the British and American embassies shortly before the fall of communism. After the Velvet Revolution this small group organized into a church.

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Saturday morning we had our first legislative simulation. My class was split into committees to draft legislation which will then be debated and put to a vote before the whole group. My committee was assigned to decide what the maximum punishment will be in our fictional country and when it will be used.

After the simulation our group was scheduled to go by bus to Plzen. Our plans changed and we went to a music festival in the very small town of Bechyně. A three piece jazz band played us into town in what was called “the parade.” Still and video journalists recorded our arrival, since our 111 students pretty much made the event. The festival was disappointing, but it was nice to get out of Prague and see some Czech countryside.

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When we arrived we received the finalized schedule for the institute. On Saturday, July 15, the schedule says **Hot Water Ends for 1 Week**.

Apparently in older buildings like our dorm there is some sort of hot water reservoir that must be changed every year. Naturally, they do it during the summer when the dorm is empty occupied by foreign students. So, this week our showers will all be cold showers! Last night I got my last hot shower and shave with the already waning hot water supply.

Last night AIPES rented a bowling alley in a large mall, and we had an institute-wide party to celebrate the end of our first week. It was lot of fun. I bowled some and got to know classmates and program staff better. I coached a Croatian who had never bowled before on technique, and he end up beating me. After bowling I went downtown with a group of students who weren’t interested in going to the clubs that most of the students were heading for.

On Monday afternoon my group went to Prague Castle. The castle is famous as the site of the “Defenestration of Prague” which started the Thirty Years War. I didn’t see the spot where the Catholic messengers were thrown from the window, but I may look for it if I go back.

Our Czech liaison for AIPES knows someone who works in the president’s office and was able to arrange for us to tour the State Rooms. Apparently this is a privilege not available to all visitors, and even our Czech students had not been in this part of the castle before. After touring the State Rooms we met with a young, but high level staffer to the President of the Czech Republic. He had good English and was enjoyable to listen to.

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Earlier I posted about the trucks I’ve seen driving around Prague spraying a mist of water. It turns out that those trucks are primarily used to keep the tram rails cool. When it hits a certain temperature in Prague they use the trucks to insure that the tracks don’t expand too much. The first truck I saw wasn’t driving above the rails as the others I’ve seen have been doing.

Tuesday after our guest lecture I went with a group of my classmates to the Museum of Communism on Wenceslas Square. The museum consists of only a few rooms, but they have plenty of interesting exhibits and information. The museum’s examples of Communist propaganda are audacious; its accounts of individual courage are inspiring. My time at the museum helped me better understand bits of Czech history that are often mentioned in passing but that I had never heard explained systematically. I still have a lot to learn, though.

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