English Competitions

Last Thursday, we met our five Speaker's Corner competitors at the train station just before 7:00 a.m. for our trip to Žilina.  We had been working individually with all these girls for about a month, and they all did a terrific job of preparing for this public speaking competition.  

Patrice, Maria, Katarina, Dada (Daniela), and Karin.  (A sixth student, Jana, rode to Žilina with her father, who shuttled her back and forth between Speaker's Corner and another competition she was in the same day.)

 Our travels went smoothly, and we actually ran into our colleague, Matt (teaching in Martin) with his students on the bus from the train station to the school.  

In Žilina, we had a mini-reunion with the American lectors from Bratislava (Sue) and Martin (Matt).  After the semi-final round of competition, ten finalists were announced, and six of the ten were students from our three Lutheran schools!!  And this was a national level competition, with students from the entire country, so we were all really pleased with our kids' efforts.  

Our school, EGJT, had three finalists this year, the most of any school entered.  We ended up with a second place and two third place winners.  It was an exciting day!!     :-)  

Friday after school we visited a local travel agent to check on 'last-minute' travel deals for our upcoming spring break.  We had sort of hoped to do a little cross-country and/or downhill skiing right here in Liptovský Mikuláš during our week off of school, but since the weather hasn't cooperated, and no snow is in the forecast for next week, we decided to explore some other options.  We've heard that the last-minute package deals from here can be really good, so we just asked the travel agent about great prices for some warm destination.  We'll see where we end up going!!

Then Friday evening Tim played basketball with the guys while I stayed home and watched the opening ceremonies of the Sochi Olympics.  It was great fun, since I'm such an Olympics junkie!!  (And Sunday afternoon we were excited about the Slovak gold medal in women's biathlon!!)  The rest of the weekend was pretty low-keyed, sleeping in on Saturday, going for a walk in the spring-like weather, getting housework and laundry done, blogging, skyping, and even playing some Yahtzee and Greed at the kitchen table.  Sunday after church we stopped for tea at a coffee shop with Zuzana, and enjoyed another walk in the warm sunshine.  

Monday we met at the train station for the same early train to Žilina, then transferred to another train to Čadca, up in the NW part of Slovakia, near the Polish/Czech border.  We went with Katka (the English Dept. chair) and our four student entries in the English Olympics.  This competition involves written testing in grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and a listening section.  The oral part of the test includes a role play situation and a picture description.  As native speakers, we were invited to read aloud the listening portions of the tests and be the interlocutors for the role-play.  (In other words, act out the other role with the students being tested.)  We did the same thing last year, so it was nice heading into both Speaker's Corner and English Olympics knowing what to expect this time around!   

On the train ride --- Katarina, Zuzana, Jakub, Molly, and our colleague Katka.  There was actually some sunshine and blue sky over the snow-covered mountains, providing us some beautiful views out the train window.

Poor Jacob had to deal with all these women all day long!!  :-)  

There were a total of five native speakers there to help with the competition, and we were kept busy going between the eight centers reading and role-playing, while the students were being tested all morning.  After a nice lunch in the school cafeteria, the results were announced in each center.  

Zuzana was awarded first place in her division!!  YAY!!  

Zuzka with her 1st place certificate and her prize - ironically, "The Book Thief", which is the movie we saw with Zuzka and her mother a couple weeks ago!!  

And then we went to Katarina's center, and she had just been awarded first place in her division, and was given the same book for her prize!!   YAY!!!  

We are so proud of ALL our competitors, and very excited to see these girls win their divisions and move on to the national competition in Bratislava later!!  

We walked back to the train station on a sunny afternoon and went by this odd bronze fish-submarine sculpture on a fountain!  

We see these train crossing signs fairly often, but I've never gotten a photo of one before. The kids were good sports about all my announcements of "O.K. - photo op - smile!!"
And it gave Tim a break from being in front of the camera!  LOL!!       :-)

We went to volleyball tonight and had a really fun time playing 4-on-4.  It was a good workout with close-scoring games and good-natured competitive spirit.  Now we're watching the Olympics again - just like we would be at home except the announcers are speaking Czech again - we have the TV on most any time we're home to see how the games are going.  

And we're really fired up about a slopestyle skier from Liptovský Mikuláš who will be competing for Slovakia tomorrow.  Her name is Zuzana Stromková, and she's the sister of our Slovak daughter Janka's boyfriend.  (Did you get that?)  :-)   So, everyone please cheer for her!!  She has been doing really well in World Cup competitions in Europe, the U.S. and New Zealand, so we are hoping she'll be awesome at Sochi too!!   GO ZUZANA!!!