Our Olympic Team This morning we had our olympic games, which turned out to be lots of fun and a chance to meet some people from the other classes. We had 10 teams of 5 or 6 people selected by drawing colors out of a hat. Chance did not do well with age distribution and I was one of the youngest on my team. By contrast, some of the teams lacked elders. My group was 3 Americans, a Hungarian, a Venezuelan, and a Ukrainian who was our team captain. The Ukrainian only spoke Russian and Czech. The rest of us had English as a common language. Fortunately one of the Americans was good enough in Czech she could translate from English to Czech for him. The ten events were a variety of sport skills and Czech language knowledge trials. There were some standard things like a 3 legged race, a spoon/egg race, and a soccer slalom course, but there were some unusual ones, like having 2 people run to retrieve 20 halves of Czech proverbs while the other 4 attempted to match the halves into complete Czech proverbs. Having some advanced Czech students on our team for that one was very helpful. The results haven't been posted yet, but I'm guessing our team did reasonable well.
The Soccer Slalom Course 
Nové Město nad Metují This afternoon was a visit to the castle at Nové Město nad Metují, a town fairly close to Dobruška. It was a Renaissance building again with various owners and renovations over the centuries. What was different about this one is that it was privately owned until the communist era and given back to the family after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. So the family is currently living there with the interior still open for tours. Various rooms are furnished in Renaissance, Baroque, Empire, Louis XIV, and Art Deco. Picture taking was not allowed, so I planned to buy a book about the place, as the rooms were amazing, but the souvenir shop was closed by the time our tour was done! One large room with great accoustics had a Steinway piano in it and is used for concerts. My Czech teacher surprised me by having the guide ask me to play for the group.
At the Steinway Paula Eliska’s video of part of this improvisation
Frank Trnka en el Castillo de Nové Město nad Metují (very large video file)
Most people had not been at the museum yesterday when I played, and my teacher wanted the rest to hear. So I did some improvisation which was very well received. If I keep doing this every day, maybe my skills will come back, as I have been only marginally pleased with what has come out. It seems to work for the people listening, but I can tell I'm out of practice. We had dinner at a restaurant in Nové Město nad Metují, which had the best chicken I've had here, plus I ordered dessert - Palačinka s jahodovým - a strawberry crepe with ice cream and whipped cream! - a nice reward for having to stretch myself at the olympic games this morning!
Palačinka s jahodovýmMore on Nové Město nad Metují
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