In the news...

So, Walter Cronkite died. :( He was 92 years old when he passed away on Friday. How sad -- he was an honest, trustworthy news anchor that America actually trusted. RIP, Walter Cronkite.

Yesterday, two rail cars collided in San Francisco and injured 44 people, but there were no fatalities and none of the injuries were considered especially serious.

Police shot and killed 12 in the Uyghur ethnic riots that occurred earlier this month. The 12 were supposedly "mobsters" who were not deterred by previous shots into the air. It's not clear whether the men were Uyghurs or Han (the two groups the ethnic riots are happening between -- Uyghurs are predominantly Muslin, and Han is pretty much the majority of China). This situation isn't being helped by the fact that Seyfullah, the leader of the Turkistan Islamic Party is encouraging the Uyghurs to "kill the Chinese Communists...ambush them wherever..."

As far as Iran goes, the situation isn't getting much better. Students are countinuing protests at a university in Shiraz, and now an opposition candidate has come out and say that he is "embarrassed" by the "thoughtless and clear lies" that the government and military is feeding to the world. Maybe it's a good thing that someone other than students and Moussavi is saying something now though. Also in Iran, the last British Embassy worker was finally freed after being held for about a month. He and nine other workers were arrested after the elections last month for supposedly trying to incite protests. As the unrest continues, human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr was arrested according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Other lawyers have been being detained and around 40 other demonstrators were also arrested on Saturday. Sadr is apparently in poor health and due to have surgery sometime in the next week.

In the news...

United for Neda -- More than two dozen Iranian superstars have united to spread the message of non-violent resistance against the human rights violations by the Iranian government. The music video was recorded in both English and Farsi using only cell phones and can be found on YouTube.

Okay, I’ll try not to rant with this one: Leave it to Texas to attempt to politicize education. Conservatives in Texas are trying to “shift focus of state social studies lessons” away from ‘liberal’ ideas toward much more obviously conservative ones. The article, of course, doesn’t say that, but read it and you’ll see what I mean – Anne Hutchinson, Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, and Cesar Chavez have all been deemed “overrated” by evangelical ministers and Republican social conservatives. Instead of these people/events that helped end segregation, start women’s rights movements, and end abuses in the labor force, they want us to focus more on Ben Franklin (because we clearly don’t know enough yet), Roe v. Wade and how evil abortion is (okay, they didn’t say that, but let’s face it, they were thinking it). The article also mentioned how “the Founding Fathers wanted a distinctly Christian nation based on biblical principles.” Wrong – not all the Founding Fathers were Christian. Their beloved Franklin, for instance, was actually a Deist. I’m a Christian, but REALLY, Texas? REALLY!?

Police are calling Steve McNair’s death a murder-suicide, which I think a lot of people suspected from the beginning. Evidence says that his mistress, Sahel Kazemi (20), had snapped over fears that she was losing him so she shot him four times then shot herself. McNair’s wife and four children are in my thoughts.

The Group of Eight (G-8) meeting (it’s a economic summit between the world’s leading industrialized nations – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the US) going on in Italy today is focusing on working with representatives of up-and-coming economies (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) to fix global warming. They eight have pledged to make huge cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, and 80% reduction by the leading countries – but the article mentions that it may not work out. G-8 leaders didn’t actually call on those other developing counties to set specific goals, instead asking them to “undertake quantifiable actions” to cut back, meaning it probably won’t actually happen. Hooray for publicity stunts.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni is going to try to ban female circumcision, also known as female genital cutting or female genital mutilation. It’s meant as a rite of passage into womanhood, but it mostly causes complications during labor, is extremely painful because it’s typically done without anesthetic, and makes any sexual activity extremely painful. Good luck Museveni, I honestly hope you succeed.

Now, just days after US troops handed security control over to local forces, bomb blasts killed 64 people in Iraq. Watch, someone will blame the US for this even though it’s due to increased political tensions between Arabs and Kurds in the area. Bombs also killed 25 in Afghanistan earlier today in what was supposed to be an attack on NATO, but didn’t result in a single injury to coalition troops.

Prague it up, baby!

June 20, 2009
Today, we arrived in Prague at about seven pm after a nine-hour flight to London, a four-hour layover, and another two-hour flight. My first impression of the country is one of beauty: I’ve already taken dozens of pictures since getting here and I can’t wait to take more. If only I’d gotten the Canon Rebel XSi before coming. :[ But my little Sony CyberShot will get the job done. And I will have the Rebel XSi in time for Buenos Aires for New Year’s Eve.

We stumbled across a little pub near the hostel where we’re staying and ate there around nine pm. The owner (we assume) looked surprised that American tourists had stumbled across his little place but served us great food and beer that we happily inhaled after so much less-than-delicious plane food. We paid in Czech crowns and called it a night. (A picture of the pub is below.)

June 21, 2009
So, apparently today is really the only full day we’re spending in Prague. But, what a full day it was.

After leaving the hotel at nine, the whole day was just go, go, go. We walked to the main squares in Prague, shopping as we saw shops that interested us (I got a quite fabulous bracelet, boots that should have been $200, but I only paid $45, and a scarf), going to open air markets that sold the freshest fruit and best candy I’ve ever had in my life (pictured left), talking with random locals and attempting to learn a few basic words in Czech, taking too many pictures on random benches and in front of random fountains (that's Mandy being very excited about Prague to the right), and finally making it to the main tourist attractions by around two.

We walked by the famous Astronomical Clock, getting very lost on the way there (but finding cute little churches and cafes during that time), ate a late lunch on the river, crossed the Charles Bridge (or Karluv rnost, pictured right and below) to St. Nicholas Church and Prague Castle. We didn’t go to the Frankz Kafka museum, which would have been cool, but the Castle (and the palaces surrounding it) amused us for too long. We didn’t get to go inside, but the courtyard was absolutely stunning – the private chapel and all the fences were gilded with gold, enormous statues were everywhere, and non-smiling guards were standing solemnly by. In fact, we tried to make them laugh, and someone succeeded, but I’m ashamed to say it wasn’t me. After seeing the castle and taking more pictures than will ever make it onto Flickr, Facebook, and this blog combined, we started wandering around, stopping at a Starbucks to listen to people speaking in dozens of different languages, going in search of a little bar I had spotted on the way that was serving free drinks if you were cheering for the right team during the football (soccer) match (Brazil v. Italy) but never finding it. Instead, we stumbled across a Hard Rock Café, which was extremely exciting. We went in and got a few drinks and hung out with out waiter, who was a cool blond Czech boy named Honsek (pronounced: On-seek), who encouraged me to try a Sex on the Beach, despite my misgivings about peach schnapps. The drink ended up making it onto my list of Top 5 Favorite Drinks. After that, we grabbed some pizza at a nearby restaurant (we wanted local food, not American food) and by the time we got finished there, it was past eleven and we started the thirty-minute walk back to the hotel.

All in all, it was a pretty great day; we’ve kept our phones off and avoided TV as much as possible, but one thing we’ve still been paying attention to is the whole mess in Iran because the two women traveling with my mom and I are actually Iranian. In fact, I just watched the video clip of Neda’s death (graphic – don’t watch if you have a weak stomach) on CNN and I’m realizing how out of control this whole situation is. Moussavi is preparing to become a martyr and encouraging his protestors to not lose their temper yet (supposedly – no one is sure since international media is barely allowed to report anymore and all our information comes from social networking sites) thousands are dying in Iran every day. I wish there was an easy solution to this whole situation, but there never is. There’s never an easy solution for anything. (Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/son_of_persia/3652037011/ )