On Wednesday, 11^th December, the K4 student club changed into one of the 25 places in the Czech Republic where you could have participated in a Letter Writing Marathon “Write for Rights”– one of the world’s biggest human rights event organised yearly by Amnesty International to mark International Human Rights Day (10^th December).

On the evening of 5th December the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague held a special event to celebrate St. Nicholas Eve. The evening was aimed at families with young children, and planned give them a fun night whilst encouraging them to take an interest in science. The students and staff of the faculty ran the stalls which each had a different activity.

To celebrate Christmas, the Erasmus students gathered at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts building for the special Christmas themed evening prepared by the Erasmus Club of Faculty of Arts. The event started by decorating gingerbread biscuits with white icing, whilst listening to traditional Czech Christmas carols.

On Thursday 27th February 2014, Charles University students stepped back in time at the Faculty of Art’s annual ball, which was held in celebration and commemoration of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, covering the period of 1918-1938. Complete with a swing and jazz band and a dance floor ready to be filled, we headed out to the fancy dress shops and slipped on the suits and flapper dresses…

How do we achieve the most beneficial and educational system for university students? I attended a talk hosted by the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague to look in to assessment methods in higher education, specifically focusing on Mathematics, and to find some answers concerning the current state and future of our marking systems, approaches, lecturing styles and learning by framing the state and effectiveness of our current educational models.

Over the weekend of March 22 and March 23, the Faculty of Arts at Charles University was host to the conference ‘English in business and commerce: Interactions and policies’. The conference was part of the English in Europe project, an academic project sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust and coordinated by the Centre for Linguistic Research at the University of Sheffield, which aims to investigate the role of the English language throughout Europe.

The ‘Česká mše vánoční’ (Czech Christmas Mass), also known as the ‘Rybova mše vánoční’ or simply ’Rybovka’, is a lively, uplifting and moving Christmas Mass composed by the Czech composer Jakub Jan Ryba in 1796. It is considered to be an integral part of any Czech Christmas, like carp and cookies, and is performed annually in hundreds of churches and halls all across the country.

Saturnin, the 1942 novel by Zdeňek Jirotka, has proved to be enduringly popular with Czech readers, and it's not hard to see why. The novel tells the story of a well-to-do young man and his mischievous, quick-witted servant, as they encounter demanding family members, charming young women, escaped lions and troublesome plates of doughnuts. 

For the official 2014 Charles University Calendar (sadly not on sale to the general public or students); it was decided to accompany the dates with beautifully designed high quality prints taken from theses and dissertations submitted by students  of the university from centuries ago.

At the end of October, the International CUNI Club offered students the opportunity to venture outside the city of Prague to rural South Bohemia and experience a different aspect of Czech culture on a three day excursion.