Once I had grabbed my things from my mom’s office, it was time to go to the train station to meet everyone. I finally got to meet our newly welcomed Australian student, Hannah! Once we were all together we went to the train station and got on our train. It happens to be the same train I take to get home to the village. The train ride was only about an hour, so we all did our own thing since we had to split up a bit.
When we got to Třebíč we walked together to the hotel where we would be staying. There weren’t many people there yet, but we got our room assignments and brought our things up. Then we came back downstairs to see who else had arrived. We had two hours of nothing planned, so we went upstairs to our designated hang out area, and hung out with everyone as they arrived. I got to know the other new Aussies and I got to meet the girl from South Africa! After we had had a couple of hours to catch up, we had dinner.
After dinner of course was our language test. First we had a four page written and listening test. I think that I did alright on it. The listening was super weird, because I thought that I had understood and I could read the questions, but nothing matched up. There were Rotex walking around taking pictures of us taking our tests which was a bit distracting, but kind of fun too. When our time was up for taking the written portion we got a 15 minute break before we started to do our speaking test.
When we got back from our break, Barak had been informed that one of the elevators in the hotel had been broken. He was quite mad and very sure that it was one of us. Honestly I have no clue if it was or not, but our speaking tests got delayed because of it, making for a very long night. First all of the new kids (Australia and South Africa) and the kids who missed the first meeting had their tests so that they could go to a presentation. Once they had all moved into the other room for their presentation we could finally begin.
The tests went the same as the first speaking one. We would stand up and say something about ourselves and then Barak and Rotex would ask us random questions until they felt like they had an accurate assessment of our proficiency. It was taking forever because they were talking a lot with each student, and around midnight we counted that at least 20 people still had to go. I finally got to go around 1:30, and I was so exhausted from my prom, and then another early morning and the trip to get there. I could barely speak English let alone try to prove myself in my Czech. I introduced myself and apologized for my poor Czech at the moment and told them how I was tired because I had been dancing the night before. It didn’t go as well as I had hoped but I was just happy to be going to bed soon after. We finally finished around 2am and we were immediately sent to bed.
I shared a room with Alexia from Mexico who lives in the same city as Juliana from Oregon. We brushed our teeth, changed our clothes and immediately passed out. We were really not looking forward to the early morning that was coming the next day… well actually the same day.
The next day we had to wake up at 6:45 in the morning for our breakfast. We all slowly moved downstairs and had some food. Nobody was really talking because nobody could find the coffee and we were all running on only 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Once we were done eating we got our things and got ready for a little tour of Třebíč and of course our group pictures.
We got a really interesting tour of an old synagog and then took some of our group pictures around the city. It was still a bit snowy so we were all bundled up in the pictures. Once they had some pictures with us and our flags, we went back to the hotel.
The next activity that they had planned for us was a sort of scavenger hung in smaller groups that they had assigned earlier in the morning. We got a list of ten questions in Czech that we had to find in the main square of Třebíč. The questions were about how many ATMs were there in the square, what color certain buildings were, and similar things. We were having trouble finding some things so my group decided to practice our Czech and ask random people for help who were walking around. In the end we finished with quite a bit of time left even though we didn’t think that we would have had enough time. We all went to a cafe for some coffees before going back to the hotel for lunch.
After lunch we gathered our things again and walked to a basilica for a quick tour. After our tour they brought us back outside to a big open area to take some more pictures. After we took our required pictures, we broke off into small groups to do all sorts of things. Most people had a huge snow fight, while others took pictures and built snowmen. It was quite the scene to say the least!
When we were done with our snowball fights, we gathered our things and started our walk to the gym where we would be playing badminton. There had been a huge misunderstanding so about 30 of us got in trouble for “not reading the instructions”. We were supposed to bring shoes to wear in the gym for badminton, but most of us had understood that we could just wear the shoes we were wearing if they were workout shoes, since that would be normal to do in our home countries. Apparently the only shoes that are allowed on the court are shoes that are never worn outside, so we all got in trouble and then got to practice for our talent show instead of playing with the few people who had followed the rules.
I honestly think it was better that we got time to practice for the talent show because most of us still didn’t know what we were going to do for it. First we practiced the three songs that we were supposed to know as a group. Then the Americans decided to get together to try to learn some kind of dance. We tried a few southern dances before kind of mixing them all together and calling it good. We practiced for a long time and it was still super bad, but we were tired of trying to come up with something better.
After a few hours at the badminton courts we finally headed back to the hotel for dinner and our talent show. We had some time to practice the songs and work on the Czech song with the Rotex before Barak arrived. Once Barak arrived we preformed our songs, then the whole talent show, and we ended with the songs again. As a group we sang “Waving Flag”, “We Are the World”, and “Rene Ja A Rudolf”.
I’m not going to lie, after the American’s turn for our performance, I thought to myself that I had never been more ashamed of my country, and I’ve never wished I was from somewhere else as much as then. Our dance was a mess, but we did it all the way through.
Once we were done with all of the performances and the second round of singing our songs, we got our awards for the various competitions from the weekend. Then we got our language tests back, and I somehow got decent scores again, even with having a really late speaking test. I was happy with my scores, but even more happy to finally be going to bed around 1:30am after another way too long day.
Our last morning in Třebíč we got to sleep in until 7:30 before going downstairs for breakfast. After we ate we all made our way up stairs to pack all of our things. Once we were packed we brought everything downstairs to hang out for awhile while everyone began to leave. The Brno group was one of the last to leave since we live pretty close to Třebíč. We took the same train as everyone who lives in Ostrava too. When we got back, Maggie had a bit of time before her connecting trains to Trutnov, so we went to get some coffee. Once I had taken her to her train and said goodbye, I went to wait for my train home too. When I got home, I unpacked a bit, took a shower and then had dinner with my family. I was exhausted as usual from the meeting, so I went to bed pretty early so that I could try and make it to school the next day.
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