Ethan Frank: Blog Post #2

Adjusting to Life in Prague

I’m a week and a half into my study abroad experience, and while Prague continues to blow me away with its beauty, adapting to life here has been a process. It turns out adjusting to a new country isn’t just about switching to an eSIM card and learning hello and thank you in Czech. It’s more like standing pissed off in the dairy aisle after a long day of travel, staring at 15 different cartons and containers of yogurt, milk, or cottage cheese and having absolutely no clue which one is which.

Grocery shopping here is humbling. There’s nothing like spending 10 minutes trying to figure out if you’re holding Greek yogurt or sour cream. The Czech language has a lot of consonants, a lot of accents, and not a lot of clues for someone whose foreign language experience has mostly been ordering tacos in Spanish. I’ve got the grocery store figured out now, but I never thought I would have felt genuine frustration in a dairy aisle.

On top of this experience, there’s the time change. I thought I had it under control after the first two days. I was feeling energized, which I now realize was just the excitement of being in Prague. Then the weekend hit. I forgot to set an alarm and slept from 9pm to 11am, or 14 hours. That one mistake pushed my whole adjustment back by a few days — my body was confused whether it should be tired, hungry, or alert. But honestly, it’s all part of the journey. No growth comes without a little discomfort, and it’s like a breath of fresh air to have a new routine here in the Czech Republic.

Despite the chaos of grocery store confusion and delayed jet lag recovery, Prague has had a quiet way of grounding me. I’ve walked across the Charles Bridge, been towered over by the Prague Castle, and wandered through the alleys of Old Town. These places are truly timeless. A memorable experience was the St. John of Nepomuk statue. It is said that if you touch the bronze plaque on the bottom of the statue and make a wish, it will come true in a year. However, there’s a second bronze plaque to the left that has a dog on it. People rub that one too, not because of luck, simply because it’s a dog and something about that makes me smile.

It’s in these quiet realizations where I am surrounded by structures that have stood longer than anything I’ve ever known that I’ve found myself thinking deeply about the concept that if we find the right why, we can endure almost any how. There is no doubt that there will be struggles in life. But recently, I’ve come to understand that they start to make more sense when I connect them to a bigger purpose: growth, exploration, and the chance to understand more about the world and myself.

This idea comes from the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl also writes that suffering is a necessary part of life, not something to avoid but something to find meaning in. And honestly, if misreading a label or sleeping through a morning is the form that suffering takes for now, I’m perfectly okay with that.

Prague isn’t just a backdrop for a study abroad program. It’s an active force in reshaping how I see the world. While I’m here, I’ll still be doing what I love to do — working out, cooking food, and hopefully playing guitar. However, I’m excited to do these things in a way I’m not used to. I have a trip to Budapest on the horizon and much more of Prague waiting to be discovered. As much as I look forward to what’s next, I’m trying to slow down and appreciate the meaning of each unique moment I spend in Prague.