Arrival at Masaryk and Orientation Week

My first full day in Brno was Monday, Sept. 9.  That first week was the international student orientation.  We had a lot of stuff we needed to do.  We also didn't have Internet access in our dorm the first week, which made a lot of things very hard.  

The first few days had really good weather.  It even was hot; it was definitely T-shirt and shorts weather.  That didn't last long.  It started raining in the middle of that week and has been rainy and cold ever since.  Some of the people took pictures of the sun the other day because we hadn't seen it in so long.  I plan to take pictures of Brno, but I will do so later when it's not overcast all the time.  

We had several things to get done the first week, including signing up for many things and figuring out how to do basically everything.  As international students, we had to register with the Czech police.  

Banking was another big hurdle.  For some reason, they run on a reimbursement system for international students here.  My fees for the entire program have been paid, but for some reason, they have us pay everything again and we will get reimbursed later.  We have to pay a monthly rent for the university dorms (which doesn't make sense).  The rent is 3000 Czech koruny, or crowns, a month, about $176.  We are also given a meal stipend to cover our meals. I will talk about the meal system later.  Back to the banking.  To get this housing and meal stipend, we have to open a Czech bank account, where the university deposits the money so we can pay the university (does that make any sense?).  Our program fee also covers things like 4 trips, some of our books, and a few other misc. expenses, which we pay and then get reimbursed for.  That first week, to pay for the housing, meals, trips and everything really depleted my banking account at home, so if you are feeling in a charitable mood, donations are accepted :) .  We have to set up online banking for this account to get our stipend and pay, which was a headache.  I have been to the bank so many times to take care of everything, I could probably get there blindfolded by now.  The cool/scary thing is since the exchange rate is $1=17kc, I feel really rich when I withdraw money from my bank account.  I got my first stipend paid into my account a couple days ago and some more should be coming soon.  

During the orientation week, we also had our first Czech language courses.  The class had about 20 Americans and Canadians in it.  The first day was just normal pronunciation and the normal first day stuff, so not really exciting.  The next day, about 6 people showed up.  I missed the days that week because I was either at the bank too long or I was in Prague at the end of the week.  I still haven't been to the class because they forgot to tell us when and where it meets.  I think I will just audit it--show up and learn when I feel like, but not actually register and do the homework if don't want to, just learn the language.  More information will be coming about my room, the food, classes and other things.