Puccini's Tosca and Red Bull Crashed Ice

So another weekend has come and gone and I did a few interesting things this weekend so I thought it was time for another blog post. A good weekend started when we finished our last day of intensive Czech lessons on Friday. I am finally done with having 5 hours of Czech per day and as of today I actually started my normal classes. Friday night everyone in the CIEE program was given a ticket to attend Tosca, one of Puccini's operas being performed at the biggest opera house in Prague. I wasn't especially looking forward to the opera, mainly because it was an opera. But in the end the experience ended up being a pretty good one. The opera was entertaining, at least the second and third acts were, and the performers were good at what they were doing. Not only were the performers very good, the theatre we were in was beautiful.
This picture really doesn't do it any justice at all, but I forgot my camera and this one was on a friends facebook so it was easy to grab and put on here. The chandelier that is on top fit perfectly with the rest of the theatre, which was big and beautifully designed and decorated. The good performance and beautiful theatre combined with the fact that its always fun to dress up and go out with your friends made the opera a pretty good experience, despite the fact that I initially wasn't looking forward to it. We finished off the night after the opera by wandering around for awhile and then going to a really cool Czech bar called U Sudu, the only bar I have been to more than once since I've been in Prague. When you walk in it looks like a small restuarant but then you walk down a set of small steps and continue to walk underground until you reach a few big underground rooms that serve as a bar all night.
After a long night Friday night I was able to sleep in on Saturday as I had nothing planned for the morning. After laying around and relaxing for the morning and afternoon, at about 5pm I headed to the Red Bull Crashed Ice event that was conveniently taking place about 30 seconds from my school. I had never heard of Red Bull Crashed Ice until I saw advertisements about this event, but apparently it has been going on since 2005 in several locations all around the world. Essentially it is a downhill ice skating race on a track that is constructed just for this event and includes big hills, lots of turns and a few jumps. The competitors are dressed in hockey gear because inevitably there is some bumping and pushing and some crashing into the walls and ice. I had a great view of the part of the track I was near and was also very close to the big screen where I could watch the parts of the race I couldn't see. To give you an idea of exactly what I'm talking about I have included a video of one of the races (unfortunately I don't have any good crashes on camera).

This event was an cool experience and it was actually packed full of Czech people drinking red bull and jager so it was a fun time. As I was getting done with the crashed ice racing, Maude was returning from her overnight trip to Karlovy Vary, another town in the Czech Republic. To finish off Saturday night, we met up for dinner then went out to a club called Radost. Now Prague has very few minorities, but it was a rap/soultrain night at this club so I think that every black person in Prague was at the club tonight and combining this with the normal crowd and a large group of asian tourists made for an interesting mix of people. It was pretty fun though and apparently the upstairs of the club was a restaurant with a really good brunch.

Though you can't see a lot of the club, this is Maude and I in Radost.
This weekend is my 21st birthday and Valentine's Day, on Thursday Maude and I will be flying to Paris from Prague and spending the weekend there so look for an update next week on our trip to Paris.