Blog 45: A horse is a horse; of course, of course.

Well, it was a beautiful fall day here in prague, and I couldn’t have asked to spend it a better way. Let me start off by saying that we have a holiday on Wednesday (hooray!!). It is the celebration of official statehood of Czechoslovakia, which I find quite ironic seeing as how Czechoslovakia exists no more… but hey, you won’t hear me complaining about a day off school! Due to said holiday, most of my friends are not working much this week at all. They all work at language schools where you teach 2-6 hours a day in individual lessons, and most have canceled seeing as how there is a holiday in the middle of the week. Being in the private school system, we do not have such luxuries, and will still have school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

At first, yes, I was a touch bitter about this seeing as how most of my friends have an entire week off. But after spending such a lovely fall day with my kiddos I wouldn’t have wanted to spend it any other way. It was the perfect fall weather, high 50’s with sunshine and leaves falling all around us. We spent the morning carving pumpkins for our Halloween party (which happens to be tomorrow the 27th… I guess they didn’t quite get it right here when they copied it from us) and we spent the afternoon horseback riding in the mountains of prague. It was a great way to spend the day, and I am not only okay with being in school all week, but I am thankful to get to spend these beautiful days with my favorite four year olds :)

They love horseback riding, and out of our many weekly activities (ceramics, yoga, sauna, and cooking) I think this one is my favorite. And let me just say here and now, I use the term “horseback riding” quite loosely. It consists of two children at a time sitting on small horses walking down a short path as the horses are lead (very slowly) by two of the professionals. It’s about a four minute walk and they walk at a pace of about two miles per hour…maximum. Nevertheless, they all jump off the horse with the same excitement as if they have just been a part of a high speed horse chase.
Seeing their shinning faces brings a rush of memories back to me from when I took horseback riding at good old Camp Eberhart. We would ride for two hours twice a week and I thought that was SO MUCH time. Most of the time was spent leisurely walking through the trails in Michigan, which in my little mind translated into running high speed up and down mountains… same thing, right? Even if its not, im happy to be able to see the joy on their little faces as their imaginations run wild with these small adventures. An ability we should all strive to have!

Love love love from a beautiful prague!