Don't Worry, Mom: Final Field Trip in Bohemia

Last week our little group of twenty-three friends took our final trip. We started on Tuesday and went to Kutna Hora and saw some pretty interesting places. We arrived, settled in our rooms, and then we were set free to find something to eat. Some of us went to a little pizza place that was pretty good. After that we ended up walking around and looking around this little town in the Czech Republic. On Wednesday, we started our tour of the town starting with a really pretty church. Last week was pretty chilly and rainy, but it turned out to not be a problem. After the first church we moved on to the Bone church. This church has the remains of thousands of plague victims. It was a very creepy place. We were able to walk around in there for a while and once we left that church, we made our way to the cathedral. It was very beautiful, it kind of reminded me of the cathedral in Prague. We were cut loose for a few hours until our tour of a silver mine. At 2 that afternoon, we went underground and had to navigate in very tight walkways. We were only down in the mines for about forty minutes. The guides gave us little white coats and hard hats with lights on them. Once we came out of the mine we were able to walk around and mess around for the rest of the day. A few of us went out to eat and then we took it easy and just spent time together. The next morning we woke up and made our way to the Budweiser factory. That was a very cool place to see. We got a full tour of the factory and we saw where the beer was made and the process for the bottles. We even got free beer! That was really cool. We spent a few hours there and when we were done we looked around the gift shop for a while and then got back on our bus to head to Cesky Krumlov. This was our last town we would see together as a big family. When we got off the bus we were already soaked. The rain was coming down hard and we were pretty far away from our hotel. It was a lot of fun running through all of the rain and trying to not get too wet, but that didn't work our for most of us. When we finally arrived at our hotel we were completely drenched. Our clothes did not dry until later the following day. I also took one pair of shoes and there was nothing dry on them. The funny part of that was right when we got to our rooms it pretty much stopped raining. Once again we were set free for the evening and we found some dinner. This town was pretty pricey when it came to food, but we finally managed to find a cheaper place to eat. I didn't do a whole lot the first night there. I just sat around with some friends and we talked for a few hours. The next morning we started our class tour of the castle, which was spectacular, and then a really cool theatre. We spent most of the morning in the castle and the theatre. Once our tours were over we were set free to find something to eat and change for rafting!! Dane, Kody, and I started walking around and found a cool little market area and spent some time there. We ate an awesome cafe and then changed into our swim trunks and tank tops. The rafting started at 2 and ended at around 6:30. We did get one break about an hour into the excursion. We sat for about forty-five minutes and then hit the water again. The river we were in was pretty shallow in some places and we got stuck on countless rocks. Once we would get unstuck and kept going it was only a matter of time before it happened again. At the three hour mark our raft started singing and annoying our friends in other rafts. Probably our greatest achievement on our raft was getting through 99 bottles. We sang that for half an hour on top of the forty-five minutes of singing random songs that we came up with. So singing took a up a good chunk of time in the raft. After that we noticed that the wind picked up and there was some pretty dark clouds rolling in. Once we saw that we started rowing really hard trying to get out of the water. We were close to the stopping point so we didn't have to go too far. Once we got back to the rooms and changed we went out to eat and then just spent the night chatting in the hotel. The next morning we met to go back to the bus and head back to Olomouc. It felt like a normal bus ride, but it was our final time we would all be together on that bus. It was about a four hour drive back home and we said some pretty emotional goodbyes to everybody who was leaving Saturday night. We tried to have dinner with as many people as we could and then parted ways. Sunday rolled around and about half of our group had left and half of the remaining people would leave Monday. Now it's Monday night and there's only a few of us left here in Olomouc. Some more will leave tomorrow and Thursday. It's crazy thinking that just three months ago, 23 random people were throwing into an airport in a new country. We have all grown to care about each other and always be there for one another. Over these past months we have become one big family and I am proud to be a part of this family. We really had a lot of fun here and learned a lot about each other, and how not to get too lost in new places. We still got lost countless times though but that's what made the trip fun, getting lost together. It sure has been a crazy trip but there were tons of memories made here.