Dancing Queen

Today was quite fun! This morning we toured the castle at Český Krumlov which dated back to the 1500s. I loved the artwork and decoration of the castle. I can't even imagine people living there ever!! There are bears in the moat of this castle...sweet. After that we bought garnets! :-D I got a ring and a bracelet, Jenni got two necklace pendants, and my mom got some small earrings. (Plus the other stuff we were supposed to get people back home.) Our lunch was delicious, ending with fruit dumplings that were SO tasty with blueberries inside. I'm definitely going to learn how to make those at home. So after the castle we went back to our hotel area in Ceske Budejovice and to the grocery store. It was fun trying to figure out what stuff was there because nothing's in English. My mom did get some houska (not decorated) but we havent tried it yet. Tonight for dinner we went to the Budvar restaurant and this was the first time we had potato dumplings instead of just bread dumplings. The pivo is great! Krušovice is my favorite beer so far. The food is delicious too but the portions are huge here! I rarely finish a whole meal. So at the Budvar restaurant there was a polka band for entertainment and I figured hey, why not polka. So I got to dance with Ted, Janet's (our American tour guide) husband, our bus driver Mílan (he is so smooth!), and then I pulled two men out of the bar to come dance with me. The first one couldn't polka at all (disappointing!), and I'm not sure if he could speak English or not. Very little I think. The second one was from Germany and could speak English pretty well. He didn't really know how to polka either, but he picked it up very quickly and turned out to be very nice. Plus, when I wasnt dancing I tried to sing along with the polkas, and (not to toot my own horn) a few of the band members had their eye on me all night...but they were too old for me so I just kind of laughed and went along with it. After their performance I think one was trying to give me his phone number, but he only spoke Czech so that was an interesting "conversation". It was such a fun night with the dancing and singing! Tomorrow we are stopping by an ancestral town of ours (Hrotovice) and a winery afterwards, so we'll see what happens with those two adventures!!

Nashle,
Carrie

P.S. I have not yet written about my morning with Michael Cwach, the dudak from South Dakota now living in the bagpiping region of the Czech republic. We met in the Tabor town square and I played right then and there...awakward, but these people will likely never see me again anyway. There was an elementary school class who was walking across the square and enjoyed my dudy playing. It was funny. I think I should have been better to practice in front of Michael. However, I've only been teaching myself for about 5 months, so I'm surely not a pro yet, and the dudy Michael brought was different and very difficult to play, but it was nice to see a familiar face, especially one who speaks English! I'll keep practicing!! :-)