My family came to Prague this past weekend and will be staying for the week until I have to go. It has been refreshing to see a person that knows my history, and has known me for longer than a month. The first day my parents came, my mom (who does not believe in jet lag) went on a walk in a park nearby. It is actually 10 minutes away from my apartment and the place I journal. In this park, there is a man made waterfall, some cool structure, a restaurant overlooking Prague 2, and never ending hills. My mom and I took a walk breaking down my recent heartbreak and the I have begun journey took to heal. She told me some realizations and thoughts she had about my ex boyfriend that I did not think about. She told me the ways to move on: I could either forgive him and blame it on his childhood and his mother, or I could forgive myself and not just move on but grow from the experience. My cottoned up throat has is getting unclogged. It is almost like the wound of betrayal is still in me but its starting to heal a little bit more as the hours pass. That night my parents and I went to sightsee as the dusk grew in the centre city of Prague. The European yellow street lights went so well with the dark waters and the electric blue sky.

The next day, my parents, brother and I went to Berlin. My dad rented a car because he wanted to drive on the German highways, which supposedly have no speed limit. I spent most of the time in the car sleeping the night before off. Once we got to Berlin, my family and I walked down museum island going into every museum, church, flee market, and souvenir shop. My brother and I got overpriced matching shot glasses, my mom got an overpriced tote bag, and my dad got an overpriced t-shirt. I fell asleep early that night (no, I did not go clubbing). The following day, my family and I went on a Berlin Wall walking tour. I did not pack the right clothes again and was dripping in sweat from head to toe. Was a great tour despite that.

The days leading up to my parents arrival, my abroad friends and I celebrated going back. For the past few blog entries I have been going on and on and on about the dread I have for my friends to leave. It almost has not hit me yet because in my mind they are waiting 2 floors up from my apartment. Maybe I will accidentally text them after work if they want to get dinner at our favourite restaurant. We mourned a few weeks ago, so we decided to celebrate the end by walking around Prague in I heart Prague t-shirts. Most of the reactions were asking us if we are from Prague or reading the t-shirt back to us confused.

Communicating without language is very important skill to have. As people may forget sometimes, English is not the most spoken language in the world. In my workplace, it seems like my co-workers like to stray away from talking to me too much because their English is not good. Anytime I talk to someone in Prague they always apologize for their English, and I have to apologize for myself because I am in their country without knowing their language. When a language barrier does arise in the workplace, my co-workers usually ask around how to say a word in English. Usually answered with shrugs and pulling up Deepl on Google. (Deepl is a good translator website/app) In the outside world, I usually can not ask for other people around to help, or have the time pull up Deepl, so I usually rely on hand signals and physical attributes. For example, today I went to a different grocery store and it was not the usual grocery store I go to. I went to go get a bag of carrots during my lunch break. Anyways, I wanted to pay with cash because my usual grocery store you can pay with cash at self checkout. I get to the self checkout and checkout my carrots and there is no cash button to tell the computer I want to insert cash. The helper comes up to me and starts to speak in Czech, I pretend I know what they are talking about, and go to where they pointed to me to go. I did the same thing and I finally paid for my carrots.