We made it to Praha (Czech for Prague). The flights were okay. We even got to watch a new Creature Comforts! It was a documentary on the differences between cats and dogs. Excellent as per normal for Aardman. British Airways also gave us dress socks on the flight from Chicago to London. I have no idea why. I can understand the toothbrush, but socks?

England was nice, but rather a long layover to not be able to leave the airport. I couldn’t find any Wispa (sp?) bars, but there was some excellent chocolate there. I had a good French sandwich and paid in American dollars. They gave me the change in pounds and pence. What could be better than that?

Sunday, we arrived in the late afternoon, and found a taxi to our hotel. Then we went to a dinner and check in. The dinner wasn’t bad, and they gave us lots of cool stuff at check in: a backpack, a jacket, and a hand bag, and of course the obligatory t-shirt. All of it conspicuously compliments of IBM. It’s all very nice looking though, so I don’t mind.

Breakfast was a buffet with lots of cheese, and bread. Let me just say that the United States is the only country that I have ever visited (with the possible exception of Canada) that doesn’t know how to make edible bread. They have some excellent mini-baguettes with seeds here. I could eat those all day. In fact I think I will tomorrow. The rest of the food here is also excellent.

Today, they gave us a tour of Prague Castle. It was very neat, but I think the best part was that we decided to walk home instead of take the bus. Praha is not big, so it wasn’t difficult to find our way home. We got to cross three bridges and see some of what real Praha looks like. All the buildings are very old. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Zona 1 in Guatemala. It even smelled the same in one part. It made me rather nostalgic.

We don’t have any proof that I am actually here. At least I don’t think that anyone has posted pictures yet. Over dinner today the group from MIT came and sat down by us. They were very nice. After we talked for a while Viper mentioned that he had only taken 2 CS classes, and not in a long time. They seemed to believe that, but when he said he didn’t know what Dynamic programming is, I don’t think that they believed him. He doesn’t and neither do I.

Well I will hopefully be able to write again soon, though I don’t think the schedule says we will be able to any time soon. I have eaten more in the past two days than in the rest of March. I hope that means I won’t have to eat again until school is done ;-)

Tomorrow is the Java Challenge, which is a sort of preliminary contest. It should be fun, but we don’t know exactly what it is going to be about yet. Wish us luck.