CIEE
I study at place called CIEE, which is basically some kind of
way to American to reveal international relation and give their
citizens opportunity to study abroad. But in fact it is more like
a kindergarten for rich Americans in a mythological heart of Prague
called Vysehrad. Best thing about this place is that American
pay everything while Erasmus students don’t have to. God
bless America.
At CIEE we’ll get teaching that meets the western standards
because of big money they can spend on it. In some cases it’s
even better than standards. I’ve got many ideas that could
be used in Finnish education. One decisive thing is that they
have had money to hire very competent teachers. Well, at least
the best you can find from here.
Bad thing is that all others are native English speakers. Sometimes
it is hard to catch up with them because the amount of required
reading is huge. There is about 50-100 pages of reading every
week. So you shall not get easily through but on the other hand
you’ll learn something on the way too. I admire the library
that they have for students - enough books for each student from
right subjects. All the CIEE courses are worth 3 American credits,
which equals 6 Europeans, which equals 4 Finnish ones. I would
recommend CIEE courses for those who are up to their necks fighting
over their courses at their own faculty. At least here things
work the way they should be. Courses are mostly about humanities,
politics, sociology, history, art, religion and architecture.
Northeast Bohemia
A good example about mentality of CIEE is field trips that are
mandatory to every course. Everyone has to participate at least
two trips, which heads to small towns of Czech or to capitol cities
of neighbouring states. The field trips are very professionally
organised and they last from one day to one-weekend trips. I went
to two trips in one weekend. Both of them headed to northern Bohemia.
Both of these trips had about 30 signers but only 8 participated
them, which tells a lot of attitude of American child towards
these trips. Just what you could expect from american. So finally
at the second trip there was only three Erasmus students, two
students of Charles University and three CIEE students, which
didn’t bother us at all. On the contrary, nice americans
kids paid the trip and meal for poor Erasmus students and we had
just enough space in a coach. God bless you again.
Nelahozeves Castle
First trip headed to northeast Bohemia. We visited birthplace
of Antonin Dvorak in a town of Nelahozeves. We also got into the
towns renaissance castle that was originally founded in 16th century.
Well, after while being here you’ll get into a castle. In
fact there are so many that you’ll pump into them once a
while. After some time you’ll get bored of them. This one
was really worth visiting though. Castles are nice to look from
outside. It’s not necessary to visit every of them inside
– they look all the same. The matter is very similar to
gothic churches. Ones you’ve seen one you’ve seen
every of them.
Next we went to Cesky Raj meaning Czech Paradise. There is a
gem museum and school in a small town of Turnov. Within the museum
there is a shop worth visiting. There are some deposits of gems
in the area. And of course we poor Erasmus students got free meal
offered by americans. They haven’t heard that Marshal Plan
ended a while ago. Ou, but they never got chance to give it in
Czech. In Paradise area there are also lots of castles. We visited
one (again). This one was called Valdstejn and it was inside lovely
park area up at a hill. This area is famous about sandstone pillars
on which some of the castles are built. This Valdstejn is not
worth visiting inside. Not all you can see in Czech are so old
as you might suppose. Czechs are masters to use neo-gothic and
neo-classic styles. Most of the tourists fall in and leave the
country believing they saw buildings and objects of thousands
of years old.
Valdstejn fortress
Northwest Bohemia
The second trip headed to northwest Bohemia. Again nine out of
ten Americans were absent, which didn’t bother me. Curios
is that this trip was mandatory to my class and I was the only
one on this trip. Well, I’ll probably get punished for that
somehow. After all, it’s not fair against other students.
First place of this trip was town of Ostrov. There we met former
prisoner of communist time who were forced to work in uranium
mine. It was very interesting meeting. He introduced us to the
handling place of uranium, which was called the Tower of Death.
He also had many interesting and sad stories to tell us. Those
I shall tell you sometimes later.
Next we headed to town of Jachymov where same Mr Kycka introduced
us to the uranium mine he used to work. It is been restored at
the moment and should be open for public next year. Also Tower
of Death is closed for public. The mine was used already in 16th
century when they mined silver from there. At that time silver
lodes could be up to 20 or 30 centimetres thick and there were
no need to special separating methods.
Church of Assumption of Virgin Mary |
Last we visited town of Most where we ate for the Americans in
the Castle of Hnevin. We had a restored hall with long table.
I had to sit in the place of king. After this honour we visited
church that communists moved 600 metres in 1970’s. They
found coal underneath the town, so it had to be ripped. Only church
of Assumption of Virgin Mary was spared.
You might know that communist were officially atheists. So the
official reason for moving the church was to spare her special
gothic arcs. In real, communists just wanted to show the world
that they are capable to move churches, and that they have engineering
skills to do it. Costs were not an obstacle. The church was lift
with several hydraulic pumps and it glided down the hill on trails.
It was all propaganda. In the end they had destroyed town that
was over 800 years old. The coal deposit lasted 25 years. This
tells us how far-minded and brilliant the communists were.
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