Malachai

For months now, I have been constantly pestered by the question above.  When I first began to mention to people that I was going to be living in Prague, I found that the response was mostly the same from almost everyone I spoke to. First they’d give me an “oh, thats cool,” and a moment later would be “wait, why?” I took to simply replying “why not” or if I was feeling inspired at the moment I’d try to mount an explaination, that usually didn’t end up asessing the question. I recall a dinner conversation from the week before I left in which my stepmom commented on the uniqueness of American exchange students from our area. I believe she said something along the lines of “it’s just that people in Greenwich have everything, and it is unusual for them to want to give that up.” It was a very valid point, and has been one that I’ve thought about for quite a while. In the weeks since I’ve been here, the question has become even more frequent. The kids in my class for example are somewhat confused as to why an American would want to come to the Czech Republic. They tell me that even if I learn Czech, there are only 10 million people world wide who speak the language.  Also, why did I come here when I could have gone to say France, where I could have learned a more important language. Again, very valid points. I have thought a great deal about this in the past weeks and I have finally formed together some sort of answer, that I feel is good enough. I came to the Czech Republic for these reasons:

1) I wanted to leave home (get out of Greenwich), and experience some of the world. And from this initial desire, I decided to go on an exchange program. (Well, it’s actually just me coming here, but it’s the same idea)

2) I wanted to go somewhere off the beaten path(only 6 people from the United States other than myself are in the Czech Republic) , and learn about and live in a culture that I knew nothing about. I knew absolutely nothing about the Czech Republic before I chose it. (I knew that it existed, thats about it)

3) Learn a new language- even though Czech isn’t widely spoken, it still opens up opportunities for me if I can master the language.

There are even more, lesser reasons for my coming here of all places. Truth be told, my intial choice was somewhat abstract, and now, it is also the randomness of my choice that is making my experiance that much more. The culture here is simply different from what I know, and it is causing me to accept more of the abnormalities that keep popping up in my life.  I can find no specific reason alone as to why I chose the Czech Republic, but almost three weeks in, I’m quite pleased that I did.