Tidbits

Two weeks ago I learned to roll my R's. I was so excited that I called my brother to prove it. I giggled every time I did it, for days. I think I read somewhere (I'd link to it, but I can't find it) that if you don't learn how by a certain age that the odds are stacked against you. But thanks to L. telling me that her Spanish teacher said to practice with the word "Pedro," I am now one of the initiated. Thankfully, I didn't try to learn fromWikiHow's method which is missing some information between steps 4 and 5. Unfortunately, making a rolled r sound doesn't mean that I can combine it with other sounds, so I still can't pronounce Czech.

Last Saturday was some festival to do with Karel IV (aka Charles IV the Holy Roman Emperor). Every square in the city had people in Medieval and Renaissance garb reading proclamations, selling crafts at booths, jousting on liveried horses, drinking honey wine, etc. They were mini-renfairs, but instead of being kitschy and imagined, this was celebrating their actual history. They have a castle here. They had an Emperor. 10 centuries of architecture are represented in the city (now, 11, I guess).

Last Sunday, I located the NYU hive. I hadn't intended to. I was sketching the Brahe/Kepler statue behind the castle and noticed that several of the guys walking towards a residential area were Americans. (And not the kind who would explore a residential area.) And then I saw that girl from Tesco get on a tram with a guy. So I wandered around back in that neighborhood until I was certain that the grey building that curves the corner (the one with people coming and going at intervals comparable to an anthill) was theirs. Then later in the week, our class was on a field trip, again behind the castle, and we met another professor, who knew our professor, and three NYU students also studying architecture.

I walked up to the Metronome on Thursday. From there, the babies on the TV tower look like insects (again with the ants. This must be a thing with me, but I like ants, so I don't get it).