Every Thursday, other days if we're able, three of us meet for two hours of squash, a two player game (we cycle through in a rotation to possibly win one and most likely lose the other to Tom, Lord of Squash). Squash is similar to racket ball: played in a rectangular room, the object of the game is to hit the ball against the front wall in a way which prevents your opponent from doing the same, using the sidewalls to your advantage. After the ball has hit the front wall, it can bounce off the others any number of times but the floor only once. First to nine wins. The ball--golfball-size, rubber--has less elasticity than a racketball (i.e. it bounces like puddy thrown against a brick wall). The serves got to come halfway back on the court before it touches the floor, and the first time I played my shoulder was aching from trying to swing the racket like a Louiville slugger to get it there and back again, Tom returning it with a slight swoop at the elbow and flick of the wrist. But I'm getting the hang of it: if he's at the back of the court, I lay it lightly up against the wall; if he's at the front, drive it to the far back. Even mastered a deadly strike to the corner--front wall, sidewall, floor. Unreturnable. The game is all sprint and stop, sprint and stop, sprint and stop. For the past week or more, for sitting, standing, and even walking, I've really needed a cane.

It was beautiful today, so a friend and I went on a walk all the way through Old Town Square and across the river to Letna, a park area on the hill, at the top of which is a giant lance and box (I thought it was a crane or an abstract knight) but it's actually a metronome.

What it was or is she couldn't tell me. I imagine--and I could look this up and learn the truth but I like to imagine--that the metronome was built in the communist era by a party-hired artist to regulate the beat of the city at precise intervals, keep them ticking away like a machine. Letna is great of skateboarding, drinking from the looks of the wine bottles,a nd simply looking. You can see all of Prague as it slopes up the banks of the river, then down slightly, then up again. The gold trimmed dome of the National Muzeum. Far away, the two spires of the church at Namesti Miru, close to where I live. Rudolifnum right by the park. A few bridges up river, the National Opera House.

She was trying to teach me Czech pronunciation while I was making calls to possible flatmates and schools. To one school, I started by saying "Dobre Denh. M-loo-vee-te Angliski?" When I got off the phone, she said I didn't know you knew that much Czech. I can't play all my cards at once I told her. If there's anything I learned working out in the trees all summer, it's to not let them know you speak the language.

Halloween's celebrated in the Czech Republic, or rather expats in the Czech Republic celebrate Halloween, catching the locals off guard as they parade down the street dressed as zombies. I went to a zombie party in a flat Saturday, BYOB, gruesome make-up at the door, Thriller playing on someone's laptop in the corner. Oh, I almost forgot--I met two girls from Lincoln City. Lincoln City! The LC. I know, wild. At around one, we were told to get out, so everyone went to the same bar--fifty zombies winding through cobblestone alleways in the rain. Must've been scary, or very, very funny, their walk probably very true to character.