Goldilocks and the Halloween Windows

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit behind, so this is about the first two weeks of October.

This week our neighbors had invited me to a ballet. (They know me because they once hosted a student through SIT and had been interested blah blah.) This family is always suggesting things for me to go to and inviting me to things, that usually don’t work out. Obviously, I’d completely forgotten about the ballet.

I was even sleeping over at my friend Aidan’s house when I got the text that morning, telling me the time and place we would meet. I rushed there without enough time to take a shower or realize that I should put on something semi-formal.

The text I’d received was just signed with the family’s surname, so I expected that most of them would be there. Surprise. It was only the youngest daughter, Marie, waiting for me. She is about eleven.

When we got to the theater I dropped my complain-y attitude because the building was beautiful. I couldn’t take pictures of the show itself but I got a few of where we were sitting. 

And the sit-ees, that is, us. (Or probably "sitters"... we were not being sat on.)

The ballet was Goldilocks, but there were no three bears. I couldn’t grasp what was going on until Marie bought a program and let me read the English part. Czech Goldilocks is a beautiful princess with such golden blonde hair, that an evil king from very far away wants to marry her. He sends a messenger who helps animals perform certain tasks on the way. He saves ants from a fire, lets a fish go, etc. Each of them tell the guy that if he ever needs a favor he should just ask. When he arrives he has to jump through all these hoops to get Goldilocks, including perform three tasks that he could only do with the help of animals (like find a ring in the bottom of a lake or pick up pearls scattered in the forest).

Then he has to guess which daughter is goldilocks with their hair covered. Luckily, the fly he had saved from a spider’s web whispers the answer to him. Goldilocks has permission to be married, and the evil king ends up dying due to a complicated side story. Now the messenger can marry G-girl!!

At the end, the clapping never stopped, something I have learned is normal here in Czech lands. You see, the actors bowed, we clapped. They bowed again, we clapped. They left the stage, I grabbed my coat, but they came back and bowed again. They kept bowing in different combinations and leaving and coming back over and over. This happens at every performance I’ve seen. You just keep clapping for about five minutes straight. This is probably why the arts thrive in Prague.

Another thing I did during this week, was interview an artist. My art prof. Jan suggested him for an assignment, most likely not realizing how little English the guy knew. Waiting for him I was really nervous he would think I was late and leave because a massive statue was obstructing my view of most of the room. I took a picture just so you could feel my pain.

He did come eventually, and I think I learned a lot from the interview, but it was hard to tell really. He knew lots of English words but no grammar, so some sentences were really confusing to listen to. I just nodded and smiled.

That week I recorded the adorable rule postings for the busses and metros. They go across all languages.

Plus, my mom sent me a Halloween themed package! So for the past month, the view out of my window looked like this: