Sumava

Okay, so this might be a bit of a hurried update. I only have about half an hour before I have to hurry away to class, and my internet has been a bit unpredictable of late, but I felt that I'd really been slacking.
As the end of the year is rapidly approaching things are getting really busy. And with big weekends, it's easy to get behind on things. So I'll just quickly give an update of our big weekend in the mountains.
It was really a wonderful weekend. We were in the southwestern corner of the Czech Republic, and it was really beautiful. There were 30 of us in our group, and we all stayed in this little hostel on the side of Spicak (It's pronounced Shpichak, but I don't have the right markings on my computer to type it correctly. It was a really nice little pension, and we had it all to our crazy group.
We took a ridiculously early bus out there on Friday morning, and arrived around 10:30. By then I was mostly awake enough to be friendly, so that was good. After putting our things away and having a small lunch, we headed out on a hike. The Pension is right next to the ski slope, so we hiked part of the way up the slope, which was seriously steep, and then headed into the woods.


We hiked, and a few biked, to a couple of lakes. The first was called Devil's lake. It was so beautiful there and we took a lot of photos.



Anicka and Honza are the couple in the picture. Anicka is the one who set up the entire weekend. They're both in my L2 Daily class and they're a whole lot of fun. I've really enjoyed getting to know so many great students this year.
Honza, who normally wears glasses, was wearing his contacts this weekend, and this lead to some problems with the sun because he had no sunglasses. Therefore, my sunglasses had a chance to travel once again. And a bit later Vasek decided he just had to have a chance to wear them as well, so the tale of the transient sunglasses continues...

We headed on to the next lake, which was called Black lake. It was also really beautiful, and had this nice lot running out into it that I just couldn't resist ;)

Here are a couple more shots from this lake, as well as one of my colleague Tomas in a contemplative moment.


From the lakes we headed back to the pension, taking in the view as we went. I really love this picture of Mambo the dog, protector of all he surveys.


We got back in the evening and had dinner, then the partying really began. It was a good time, but the alcohol was a bit excessive. Not surprising, but quite exhausting. Still, it was a nice time to get to sit and talk to people and get to know them better. I think I went to bed around 3:30 (I was the last native English speaker who was still awake) and I heard them partying until around 6 AM. What a day!