A Cappella!

The rest of the week was 'normal' - for us anyway.  Tim's big excitement on our free night Wednesday was defrosting the freezer - whoooeeee!!  :-)   Thursday night we had volleyball.      

We stay at school every day now until 3:30-4:30 with all our extra afternoon teaching - individual lessons, small group extra classes, my Basic School "teacher academy" as Tim calls it, and my after-school elementary class.  Of course now that I'm teaching about 8 extra classes at the Basic School during the mornings, and Tim has an extra class this year at the H.S. plus is doing more subbing, we also have to stay later just to do all our normal school preparation, grading and grade recording, and weekly lesson plans.  We simply don't have time to get all that done during the school day this year.  We are almost always the last teachers out of the building, but at least with everyone else gone, we have the copy machine and computer to ourselves to get our work done in the afternoons, and we take nothing home to work on in the evenings, which the other teachers do.   

Our second Stužkova invitation - this one for the Oktava class!   :-)  

This is fruit and vegetable art on display at the Basic School.  

The school celebration of the harvest included lots of creative critters!!  

Friday night we went to a concert at the Liptovsky Mikuláš House of Culture.  This is the town logo on display beside the stage.  We didn't know it ahead of time, but the event was a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the L.M. Rotary International organization.  

The first performance of the evening was by students from a dance studio.  They really did a lovely job!  

This picture is out of focus, but I included it anyway because it is so typical of any event in Slovakia.  Speeches.  Speeches read from a clipboard or notebook.  Long speeches!!  Officers of the local Rotary group as well as those from several other cities were introduced, awards were presented, history of the local Rotary was explained, and a donation of 1,000 EU was presented to the dance studio in support of the arts.

Then the featured entertainers finally came on stage, "Close Harmony Friends", which is the oldest a cappella group in Slovakia, and acclaimed as one of the best.  They have given concerts in many countries on several continents and have made lots of recordings.  One of our students told us about it and went with us to the concert - it was great!!  

During intermission, this Slovak folk dancing ensemble performed.  The boy on the right is a Prima at our school, and he's the younger brother of the student who invited us to their family's flat last Sunday afternoon for tea.  

The musicians and the youngest dancers after they finished.  

The second half of the concert was awesome too.  Lots of their songs were American pop songs performed in English, which was great for us!!  They were excellent performers, and their vocal percussionist (VP) was absolutely amazing!  He did the requisite solo demonstration that audiences love to hear from a VP!!  We loved it!

Two of the members of the a cappella group after the concert, with our student, Ema.  

This morning was a 'first' in a long time --- we woke up to the sun instead of to an alarm clock!!  It was so nice to get 9 hours of sleep and feel well rested.  Tim was gone from about 9:00-1:00 playing in a basketball tournament at school.  Erik arranges one tourney a month so that our guys' team gets some experience, since they don't play any other schools really.  It's a round-robin tourney where each of 4 teams plays all the others, and there are 3 random teams of college-age and young adult players from neighboring towns.  Tim says he's the oldest one there - by about 30 years!!  But I keep hearing from my students in class that Tim is awesome - great shooter, unstoppable dribbler, and terrific passer.  Yep, he's still got it!!  :-)  

Meanwhile I was at home just getting stuff done that hasn't been done because of all our travels and activities lately.  Nothing exciting, but it felt good to be productive without feeling rushed about it.  After lunch, we went on a bike ride that served two purposes - to get out and enjoy the sunny fall day and the snow-capped mountains (yes, there is snow up in the mountains already - about 50 cm, or nearly 20"!), AND to do some errands around town.  It was so nice to enjoy being outside, again with no rush.  It seems like lately we've been doing a lot of hurrying from one thing to the next, so today was a nice change of pace.  

Today's view from behind the McDonald's (where we have never eaten!) near Tesco
(the local Wal-Mart wannabe!) over Liptovsky Mikuláš and beyond to the western Tatras.
Yes, snow on the mountains.   :-)

Tomorrow's agenda is completely unplanned too.  Wow!  So after church, we may head out on another bike ride since the forecast is for more sunshine and even warmer temperatures.  We try to count our blessing every day, and weather like this is definitely a blessing anywhere!