Stimivani

I may not walk around with "Edward Cullen is my boyfriend" t-shirts, own all the Twilight Flair on Facebook, or want to take a pilgrimage to Forks, Washington - but don't let that fool you into thinking I am any less obsessed with Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga than the average 15 year-old girl.

Thanks to Carolina L., I discovered these books just weeks before moving overseas. I read all four 500+ page books in the last two weeks we were in Gainesville - between helping with Theta recruitment, packing, saying goodbye, etc. Everything else was pushed aside once the first sentence had been read.

While the movie release date was November 21st in the US, I was devastated to find out it wasn't coming out over here until January. So I did what any logical Twilight fan would do - I looked to see when it was coming out in France, Belgium, Germany, etc. I soon discovered the earliest release date in a country where I could find cheap plane/train tickets was the Czech Republic. And so our trip to Prague was born.

On our first afternoon in Prague we headed to the movie theater to buy our tickets for Stimivani - which fortunately was showing in English with Czech subtitles. (I'll have to be honest and say I would have still gone to see it even if it was in Czech with no subtitles.) Loving the Harry Potter books but hating the movies made me worried about how I would feel about the Twilight movie. I was pleasently surprised; even Matt enjoyed the movie. It was different enought from the book to be engaging while still capturing the feel and allure from the original story. (Although I don't think Bella's father could have been casted more poorly.)

I think it was fitting we saw Twilight in Prague - it is considered the birthplace of vampires by many horror films, has dug-up vampire graves in the city, and is the setting for many vampire movies.