Ahoj! (AH-hoy! That’s Czech for “hello!”) I’m Dominick, and honestly, if you told me when I was in school that one day I would be traveling over 4,000 miles from New York to study in Prague, Czech Republic, I probably would have laughed and asked if you had the right kid.
School wasn’t always easy for me. I learned differently, and my path to get here was definitely not a straight one. I spent more than 20 years as a chef before going back to college as an adult. Somewhere along the way I figured out that asking for help is actually a skill. I learned how to advocate for myself, but also how important it is to let other people advocate for me when I need it. Somehow all of that has led me here to Prague.
So now, I figure... we might as well go explore it!
For the next few months, I’ll be living and going to school in Prague, and I want to show you what I find along the way. Of course, we’re going to see castles and ridiculously old buildings, and I’ve been a chef for 20 years, so obviously food is going to come up. Probably a lot.
But I’m more interested in the stuff we don’t know yet. What do people in Czechia do for fun? What’s in their grocery stores? What’s down that random little street? What do people there think is completely normal that makes us go, “Wait... you do WHAT?”
At some point, I’m probably going to completely destroy the pronunciation of svíčková (SVEECH-koh-vah) or some other Czech word. We’ll survive.
The best part is that I don’t know exactly where this is going. You might ask me something I have absolutely no idea about, and then I get to go into Prague and try to figure it out. My road to Prague was definitely the scenic route, but I made it and the journey has been beautiful.
Now I have a passport, four months in another country, and a whole lot of questions. Let’s go see what we can find!
Want to know more about how you can study or intern abroad when you are a college student? The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). Learn more about the scholarship by visiting www.gilmanscholarship.org.
