August 23, 2009 - Upcoming performances and Opočno Castle

This morning we had make-up grammar classes again because our teacher is leaving early and won't be with us after Monday. We also began to prepare our presentation for the final event that the classes put on for the community and officials on Thursday afternoon. My class will be doing 3 short poems in Czech and singing two songs with one of the other classes. Right before class this morning, the music teacher took me to the classroom with the piano and had me play for him - I think so that he could see for himself if I was worthy to play at the Thursday event, since he hadn't heard me before. I now will have the chance to perform on his five octave keyboard, hopefully with a little time to get used to it. This is 28 keys less than a full piano, so I may be going off the ends accidentally if I don't get much time to prepare!

After lunch I wrote an e-mail to a CD and DVD store in Prague that seemed to have a large collection of traditional music and older videos, and gave them a list of what I have been looking for. I hope to hear back from them and pick up what I can when I'm in Prague on Friday afternoon, then have whatever else they can find for me later mailed back to the US after I'm gone. My goal is not to have lots of frantic shopping to do Friday in Prague, so I'm hoping this store has some answers on the things that everyone seems to know about, but not know how to find.

Opočno Castle

Our Group on the Garden Steps

This afternoon we toured the Renaissance castle in nearby Opočno - another elaborately decorated place with large collections of hunting trophies from Africa and North and South America, as well as weapons and armor from many places and time periods. We had a chance again to have the local ice cream, which is very good and tasted great after the long walking tour. There was also a stand selling and giving out samples of various flavors of honey wine and honey liquor, also called mead - a name I remember from old English literature.

More on Opočno Castle

I stopped by the concert in the square in Dobruška for awhile after we got back, but didn't locate any of the firefighters that we had meet earlier in the week.