Room and Board and Monkey Business

Man, for you loyal blog-checkers, this is a sweet day. That's because it was also a sweet day for me, your loyal blog-writer. I just wanted to continue some thoughts about the house and fill you in on the rest of my host family.

The house is...well, like the city, it's rough around the edges but comfortable inside. Elena told me that she and Jan got married pre-revolution, so when there was Communism, and you weren't allowed to buy or sell property. Elena was divorced, and Jan didn't want to move in with the ex-husband (suprised?), so they had to search for a way to get around the rule. Jan's aunt had this house, which apparently was very run-down and pretty much a disaster, but they moved in anyway. Since then, they've been repairing it, but for a long time it was very difficult because they'd start a project and then all of a sudden run out of concrete (as in, the city/country would run out of concrete), or they would lack supplies altogether. Anyway, now it's pretty nice inside. The outside is rather ugly: it's very flat and not very interesting. There are two floors inside. The first has a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen complete with a washing machine and pantry. The second floor has my room, Simon's room, Jan and Elena's room, and a bathroom. Actually, my room also has a LOFT, but I'm saving that fact for it's own post (Morgan, on a sidenote, every staircase here is winding and beautiful-- you'd be in heaven). My favorite part of the first floor is a wall that's entirely bookshelves, all filled with books I can't read yet. There are a lot of plants inside, and the kitchen is Brimming with food, especially pears because (and here's the best part) in the back yard there are pear trees, apple trees, grapes, etc.! The back yard is absolutely GORGEOUS. In addition to the fruits, it also contains two adorable run-down sheds, a clothesline, and flowers (pictures will follow once I figure that out). In any case, I'm quite comfortable, and my host family is even lending me a laptop, which makes the rootbeer incident not quite so heartbreaking.

When I stopped working on the last post, it was because it was time for lunch. Now, this was a special lunch because two of the three older children were there, but it was absolutely ridiculous and everything was delicious. We started out with cabbage soup, which sounds gross but actually tastes nothing like cabbage, which was followed by what I'm told is a Hungarian dish of peppers stuffed with rice and mincemeat and stewed in this tomato soup mix. They were afraid I wouldn't like it, but I loved it, which makes me nervous about the stuff they think I will like! The peppers were accompanied by the dumplings we made this morning (I had two but the average was four), and all that was before a desert of pear pudding topped with two heaps of various fruit topped by homemade cream. This was all while drinking carbonated water and two glasses of wine. After all of that, Elena went out with a scissors and brought back bunches of the most delicious grapes I've ever tasted. It was like the normal grape flavor intensified times one hundred and enriced with berries or something. They also reminded me of gushers, because the skin fell off right away in your mouth and the inside was squishy liquid.

Before I forget, the other traditional Czech food I've eaten is garlic soup, which was surprisingly savory, and made me feel extra vampire-proof.

The last thing for today is my "extended family". One reason for the big lunch was that my 34-year-old host brother is leaving for Africa, where he will shoot two documentaries. Read that sentence again, because it's pretty cool. He's also gorgeous and he has a beautiful girlfriend. He's being paid by National Geographic. Just as a note, that used to be my dream job, so I am in awe. Perhaps cooler was my host sister, who is a singer-songwriter, and her husband, who is the lead singer for the band Monkey Business. It's a pop/funk band and they sing in English, and apparently they're a HUGE deal in the Czech Republic. Jan showed me a video of their concert, and it's legit-- they have lighting effects and sweet costumes and huge crowds. The music actually wasn't bad, either, so if you can access it, Czech it out (ha). They just released an album in Australia (I think. I could be wrotg about the location), so he's going touring now. Anyway, I thought it was all pretty exciting, even thought I felt pretty left out when they were all doing their family thing in Czech and I had no clue what was going on. One of the things I'm discovering is that everyone here does something artsy in addition to their regular work if not as their regular work, and I think that's really neat.

On that topic, tonight I went to this little play put on in a schoolroom. It was all in Czech, but it was so interesting to watch. It was mainly done in puppets (think Sound of Music, but there was also a guy playing the electric guitar to accompany them, and at times the puppeteers would play the oboe or sing. I am in a crazy place!