Czech Mate - 7/9/09

i can hardly believe the week is almost over. after the first day, we had done sooo- much, we were all shocked we had only been here only 24 hours. now? it's almost over. and i don't believe it. 

we had class this morning - false confessions. the whole story behind false confessions is quite intriguing. many people might thing - why the heck would you confess to something you didn't do? but, there is truly a unique reasoning behind it. many times, police departments are so set on getting their man, they simply twist the suspect's arm into it. before you know it, he or she is sitting in the chair giving intimate details about how the whole crime went down. some of the details, however, are completely false! do these situations hold up in court? absolutely! ok, ok... don't freak out. they don't always hold up in court - but sometimes, they do. if the prosecution is strong enough, and the defense is weak enough, and there is no expert witness to educate the jury on the peculiarities of false confessions... an innocent man (or woman) could go to prison for a crime he didn't commit. 

whew, i could go on forever - but you see the dilemma. the innocence project does a lot of work with victims of false confessions. if you're interested in the psychology behind it, consider this. 

i'm not sure if i mentioned - we get sweet coffee breaks between lectures. i'm not a big fan of european coffee, but we also have juice and cookies and crackers and such. there are close to 40 of us and when that time comes around - we all head for the snack table. 

after dinner at "houpacka," our dining hall for the trip, we took a metro ride down to the river. we took a sweet ride on a big boat down the vltava river - the major river that runs through the czech republic. it was absolutely amazing. 

we all joked on our way down there how we hoped it was a booze cruise. we were kidding. (not really.) turns out - it was totalllyyyy a booze cruise. 

anyhoo, after the (booze) cruise returned to the dock, we took a walk along the edge of the river and made our way into one of our favorite dance clubs. i love that everybody on this trip is totally down for dancing. i feel right at home with all of them. :)