{"id":4028,"date":"2016-03-17T21:08:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T01:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thediplomaticenvoy.com\/?p=4028"},"modified":"2016-04-21T11:41:52","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T15:41:52","slug":"emily-balan-czech-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/thediplomaticenvoy\/2016\/03\/17\/emily-balan-czech-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Balan: Czech Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emily Balan<\/a><\/strong>
\nLayout Editor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It all started with an email from Anna Kuchta. As any member of the Slavic Club, for which she is the academic advisor\u2014no matter how minimal the membership\u2014can attest, my inbox receives more emails from the Polish powerhouse than I\u2019d care for (hint: You can\u2019t escape them, so don\u2019t try). One day, one email in particular stuck out to me. It was advertising a course in foreign correspondence.<\/p>\n

After exploring a myriad of specialties in college, journalism was the one that stuck. Now, in my senior year, I am an editor for two of the University\u2019s newspapers. My topic of choice is international relations, as being diplomacy major typically indicates.<\/p>\n

So, after reading the description of the TOL Education course, I was excited to learn more about blending my two interests into a career. The best part was that the course could also indulge my insatiable wanderlust: the course was being held in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

After living in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris for a month last summer I was missing Europe, and so I could absolutely not pass up the opportunity to visit the \u2018Left Bank of the Nineties.\u2019<\/p>\n

The application process was almost too easy. I filled out the form in October and within the week, the course administrator sent me a letter of acceptance.<\/p>\n

I did not know anyone else who applied. Due to visa complications in other countries\u2014cough, China\u2014there were only five other people signed up for the course. Three rooms at the Flora Marriot in residential Prague 3 held two Americans, two Canadians, and two Aussies\u2014all female. This did not come as a surprise, however, because at least two of the seminars were skewed for a feminine taste. Not to say that the boys wouldn\u2019t be interested in these topics, but a fellow female is likely to have more vested interest.<\/p>\n

The seminars included what it was like to be a woman covering an active warzone (as scary as it is for the anyone it turns out!) for the BBC, as well as two feminist Czechs\u2014who work for what they described as the Czech New York Times and the Czech Time Magazine\u2014who talked about reporting on women\u2019s issues prevalent in Czech society.<\/p>\n

The course ran the first full week of January. Over that week, more than several foreign correspondents working in the field for publications like the Economist, the BBC, Free Radio Europe, spoke to us in three hours seminars in the mornings. Then, we were free to explore in the afternoons and pursue feature stories that we were working on as a project for the course. I do not need the credits, so I did not participate in this project. I attended the course in order to find out more about foreign correspondence as a profession as well as to explore a new city as much as I could.<\/p>\n

Prague is breathtaking. The country\u2019s communist government fell in 1991, and, as a result, the city seems perfectly preserved with an old world feel. At the same time, no modern convenience was lacking. Though Prague\u2019s public transportation system is the highest ranked in Europe, I found myself walking almost everywhere.<\/p>\n

I must have walked 15 miles a day. The entire city is built on varyingly steep hills, so whenever I found myself atop one after navigating a labyrinth of cobblestone streets and snow-covered parks, I looked out at the buildings, astonished by the way one could capture the beauty of each all in one glimpse, and felt the many miles wandering were well worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prague is breathtaking. 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