Yarra Ma Narozeniny...Yarra's Birthday

We spent last Saturday with our new friends Ion, Fiana, Yarra and Kily. Yarra, Rebekah's friend had a birthday party. We had such fun there and the girls really get along great. I have even seen a change in Rebekah. There is something really helpful for her to have Yarra as a friend. She feels really connected the her, I am sure that part of it is being able to speak english together.

Byli Jsme v Brne...We were in Brno

We had a great time in Moravia. We visited Telc on the way, which is a really beautiful town and a protected UNESCO heritage site. Then we visited our friend Terezka in Brno - we had coffee with her in a big shopping mall there. I thought I made reservations for a small Penzion (like a bed and breakfast) in Vyskov, where our friend Katerina and her family live. But when we arrived at about 8PM, they informed me that they were full, and they didn't have my reservation. So we drove to the only other hotel in town, and I asked them if they had any rooms. The woman there said all of the hotels in Brno (about 400,000 people) and Vyskov (about 30,000 people) were full, because there was a big convention in Brno that week. She said she had two rooms left next to each other, because one man had never arrived, and to drive around to the gated parking. However, when I got there, she said the man had just arrived and so she had only one room with two beds for the four of us. So I took out my tour book and found another city about 15 miles north (away from Brno). Krista called them, and they said they had plenty of rooms. It was a great place - the Grand Hotel Prostejov. It is in an out-of-the-way city of about 25,000 that gets few visitors. It was really a top-class place. Unfortunately, it also had top-class prices. I told Krista and the girls we could only stay one night at these prices and would go home the next night, but they begged to have a second night so I relented. I figured since we are not going back to America this summer, we could afford two nights, and it did include a nice breakfast. Also we had dinner there Thursday night and we were the only ones in the restaurant and they treated us and the girls like royalty. On Thursday, we visited our friends in Vyskov and sat in on a 4th grade class being taught by Katerina's mom, then we all went to see Katerina's house, which she and her boyfriend of 10 years had built. It was really beautiful, and is in a small village under a castle. Katerina had a nice lunch for us, and we all talked while the girls played outside in their huge garden. We met Katerina a few years back and now she works all over Europe as a model for the Italian motorcycle company Ducatti. We saw her again Friday, and Friday night she drove back to Italy, and next week she flies to Spain for a Ducatti show. Quite the jet-setter... We also visited some remarkable caves (jeskyne Mucocha) near Vyskov. We took a cable car into a deep gorge, and from there had a private tour of the caves, since we were the only tourists there. The man was quite friendly when he heard we were Americans living in CZ. We walked all through the caves, and the tour guide would turn on lights in different rooms and describe them. Near the end, there is an underground river and we had a private boat ride through the caves with another guide, again all to ourselves. Really it was a great experience, and quite cheap too. However, after the tour we spent a long time talking to the woman in the gift shop - again she was fascinated about Americans who speak czech, and by the time we returned to the cable car it had closed for the day. So we were kind of trapped in the bottom of this canyon. Fortunately I found a map showing a trail back up to the car, so we had a nice walk back out of the canyon.

Medicinal Mayhem

Last night we had an exciting experience with czech pharmaceuticals. Krista had recently renewed her prescription for verapamil, the medication she must take to keep her heart's electrical signals in balance. Because she has been getting sick quite often this winter with colds and flu, she finally decided to go to the doctor Monday morning. As is very common here, he prescribed her with a 7-day antibiotic regimen. On Monday night, she noticed her feet were a bit swollen, and just thought she was putting on weight. Tuesday it seemed a bit worse, and last night her feet started to look like angry puffy red pillows. I researched the two medications and found a webpage describing how they cannot be taken together, as the antibiotic makes the heart medication much more powerful. So basically she was overdosing on her heart medication, causing her blood vessels to relax, which meant all the blood was pooling in her feet and didn't have sufficient pressure to pump up to her head. She became really dizzy, so I put her on the couch and raised her grapefuit-esque feet with some pillows. We considered taking her to the hospital, but since any visit to the emergency room typically results in a 5-day or longer stay in the hospital, we decided to see if the couch treatment helped. Fortunately, after about an hour and some foot and leg massage, things began to sort themselves out and today her feet and ankles look more human than vegetable.

New Friends...Nove Kamaradky

Here are Roxie and Bekah's new friends. Roxie is pictured with Kily (who is 7) and Bekah is pictured with Yarra (who is 10). The girls live with their family here in Hluboka but they are originally from Indonesia. Both of the girls go to school with Rebekah (Kily is in first grade and Yarra in fourth) and they speak English as they lived in London for a few years before the Czech Republic. We are so excited to know them and the girls are also excited to have friends who speak English. Their mum, Fiana, has become a good friend of mine too...