A Bike Trip near Břeclav

So the same start...sorry for the 2 weeks between posts.

I have a new family (one woman, named Doris), but it is looking as though they are not sure whether or not it will be permanent. She lives in a "flat" in the upstairs of a house, and her parents live below. They are really not open to the idea of someone else living in the house, even if not with them. That remains to be seen. This is in Brno, and so I have been at the same school, and I think I will be for the rest of the year. There isn't too much of it left, and would make absolutely no sense to change when all the tests are coming up and the days will soon be shortened. Doris is right now in Egypt for 2 weeks, and so I am staying again with Eva, the volunteer I stayed with for almost a month in November/December. She and her parents are great.

We have finally planned our big trip. I am going with Maria (Brasil), Marta (Iceland) and Jason (Hong Kong) on our 9 day trip. We are doing 2 nights in Ljubljana, 1 in Zagreb and 5 in/near Split. During the time in Split we will probably head out for a night to an island in the vicinity. I am really excited. The planning was a huge pain, with not knowing who was coming or when we were going, but now it is all starting to work out. The next piece of business is to get the train passes, and book the hostels. We are going from May 15th to May 24th. After that, if all works out as planned, Mom and Dad will come a month later.

This past weekend was another AFS weekend. I am so glad to be in AFS Morava because we have so many activities together. In Bohemia, they have just had the required camps (3 per year) and that is all, while we get together at least once a month. This weekend was a biking weekend near Břeclav. It was the longest camp we have had, encompassing at least part of 5 days, because yesterday (Tuesday) was the 1st of Mai, and a "left-over" holiday from Comunism. It is the "den prace" or the day of work, and from what I was told, when everyone, schools, businesses etc. were required to turn out and celebrate the work and stuff. They still do it as just a day off because people say, well, work is good to have, so why not celebrate it? It is also the day for the Neo-nazi's to come out and protest. The numbers are relatively small though. In Brno, there were something like 1,000 police for 400 neo-nazis, and they didn't cause too big a rucus. I'm not sure what it was like elsewhere.

Saturday and Sunday were biking days. This is an interesting experience with a group of 20 teenagers with different biking abilities. There was one girl who didn't know how to ride a bike (it is a bit beyond me why she came...), and thus didn't come with us on our rides.

Saturday we went in the morning to go rent all the bikes for people who needed them and then we set out. The morning we spent together, culminating for lunch in a town called Valtice. Trying to find a place for 24 people to eat is quite a task. We did find a typical czech fast food place (all fried and/or cooked in oil), but it was fine. The afternoon we split up into two groups for the way back. One for the shorter, faster, easier way consisted mostly of the thai girls, and the other was the ones for the hilly longer way. The leader of my group (harder, hillier) was Diego's host dad. He rides everyday, does spinning etc., meaning is quite the biker. Fast, and not phased by hills. Unlike the rest of us. Our path took us through wine country (lots and lots of vineyards...), and up some pretty big hills. One hill we had to go down was seriously like aroller coaster. And you all know how much I hate roller coasters. My speed on that one was recorded as 45 km per hour. Not bad on a bike... We had 10 people in our group, and took about 3 hours to do 25 km because out of the 10 bikes, about 4 got grounded. We came back to the place we were staying with I think 5 people. That day we biked 50 km. Something else I did on Saturday was play Mah Jong!! In about December the kids from Hong Kong were suprised to learn that I knew how to play, and started to try and figure out how to get a set. One of the girls' moms apparently sent her a travel mah jong set, and thus I set out to learn how to play Chinese mah jong. Granted, we didn't get into everything, but it is rather more simple than ours. If anyone is wondering where atomic comes from, it is from Chinese mah jong. The point is to find 4 sets of 3 and a pair. The hardest part of this all for me was the chinese characters. because they can obviously read them. I had my little cheat sheet for the cracks, dragons and winds. It was really fun. They play with friends, much like we do cribbage. Maybe now we have a new game.... Tana, still remember?

I think for hte first time of any AFS camp, we all actually got a decent amount of sleep. Maybe because this camp was longer, maybe because we were all dead tired from biking, but for whatever reason we did. This was evident in the fact that no one wanted to go out Saturday night. That is amazing.

Sunday was our second bike day. My legs weren't sore, or at least not until we actually got on the bike. That is when you start to feel it. This day was 45 km. The start was a lot hillier. To the point where, god I can't go on. But I made it up some hills I thought I wouldn't, so that was an accomplishment. Right before lunch we went down this HUGE hill. Like 2 km, twisting and turning. It was incredibly windy that day and some of these turns I felt like I would be blown off the road! At the end I ended up with a flat tire though, and had to wait for Diego's host dad to come change it. Note: if ever going on long rides, learn how to change tires!! After this though, it was only like another 3 km to the place for lunch, but it seemed impossible! Most of the B group from the day before joined the A group, because the A group went by train! After lunch some of us headed up to this monument thing on top of a big hill in Mikulov, right near Austria. Both days we rode along the Austrian border. The ride back was fun, despite the boli nohy (hurting legs), because it was more like mountain biking stuff (rocks etc.), though I was a little worried becuse I was using a road bike, but Diego's host dad, who I borrowed it from, had one too, and was doing the same stuff, so it was good. Sunday night after everyone stopped ocmplaing about the legs, we went to the house of the host family of Richy, who lives in Breclav, to their wine cellar to try some of the wine. We weren't there very long because there wasn't exactly enough room for 24 people, but it was good. Sunday was another early night, due to the tiredness.

Monday wasn't bikes, but instead a výlet (day trip) to Lednice. There is a castle/villa from the Lichtenstien family. We got a tour of the villa, and then went out to the minaret that is on the grounds. It is pretty, but was another really windy day. In the afternoon we went to a horse place to ride horses, but this consisted of 2 horses and being led around a ring, mostly because a lot of people had never been on a horse before. Monday night I played cards with Jason and Summer (HK) and Hector (paraguay). It was funny because Hector and I started a verbal fighting match in Chinese (with the help of Jason and Summer). I have learned some practical and not so practical chinese, and decided that the only words I will ever remember how to write in chinese characters are 1, 2, 3 and son of a bitch. Not because of necessity, just because of simplicity. My vocabulary now consists of the numbers up to 999 (e.g. yat, yee, sam, say, um, lo, tsa, ba, gao, tsap; 1-10), my name is Becca (no giu Becca), he/she is/isn't (kai hai/m hai), you are/aren't (lay hai/m hai), I am/am not (no hai/m hai), thank you (to say), and various swear words. I like Cantonese, and have decided learning Chinese may not be a bad thing, but perhaps Mandarin might be a tad bit more useful seeing as it is what htey speak on the mainland.