Sketch note Youth 2013 Prague

Reflections: 2013 Prague

 My sketch notes provide my aide memora and my Urban Sketches augment.

 The fun started for this
Festival Young Prague 2013
18 -26 March 2013
Nanyang Primary School String Ensemble
& Nanyang Primary School Choir.

Even as we gathered for check in at Changi airport we saw the chellos being directed to first class!

An iPhone left in the washroom was desperately trying to say goodbye to its owner: a week later to be pick pocketed!

Students doing homework at Frankfurt Airport was quite a sight

Our first words of Czeck:
Dobre Rano = Good Morning
Dekuji = Thank You

The opportunity to sing at Frankfurt Airport was fun: and appreciated!

Within Prague itself, sightseeing took quite a bit of walking, often 20 minutes from bus to tour site: and another 20 minutes walking back: Keeping coach traffic out of town reducing pollution.

Plenty nice buildings to sketch: often done as urban sketches with a bit more detail and reduced to a few lines for this sketch note. Saying which the pace at which we zoomed by building after building after building, left precious little time for my speed sketching!

 

 

At Charles bridge we came across the plaque commemorating John Nepomuk.
Read the outline as annotated in my sketch note and/or Google for more info.

This page depicts the performance at Secondary School of Public Administration: Older students who could converse in English rather than Primary School Czeck students who could not. The strings played well and the choir sang beautifully.

By now a number of children (and adults) were taken ill with a vomiting bug +/- fever.
Some were quarantened at our Barcelo Hotel. Those on the road with us were shunted into makeshift sick bay on available desks.

Of the other venues, I liked the singing, music ambiance and acoustics at U Salvatora Church.

In contrast to Sunny Singapore the weather was FREEZING COLD (to the enjoyment of many).
The black light theatre was entertaining.


IN SUMMARY
Hectic schedules
Early morning calls
 Personal bible reading & quiet time disrupted
But what are my true values!
A gentle guided way to point me back to my maker!
Especially of the Jewish Quarter
Not only the Holocust and the 86,000 dead , the Terazine camp children's art but even previous successive progroms and the way that the Josefov was set outside the city wall
A sense of connectiveness even through churches and cathedrals that yoyo from Catholic to Protestant and vice versa
And the elements of the synagogue : the Torah scroll, the Decalogue and Gollem!

Good to see bonding camaraderie sense of oneness of Nanyang PS esprit de corps
To see children helping one another
To see parents helping other people's children

The official performances were good. Both strings and choir.
"When I close my eyes" and "turkey in the straw" became the unofficial anthems

The baroque, renaissance, gothic styles
 were just words to me: must learn basic historic architecture.

The pace of touring was very fast : too fast to do justice to my sketching: so my sketches became snap shots:
The instinct and passion and capability for building preservation is very commendable: something Singapore can learn.

The cold was cold! I think some kids were underdressed! The tiny tiny exposure to snow was fun.

Food was quite pleasant generally, except for the report of one school lunch. my favourite: the expresso served at Michal Restraunt

Observing teamwork as the group responded to various situations: like jumbled aeroplane seating and the tummy bug vomitting "epidemic"

Compared to the rural village conditions I sometimes work with in Cambodia , this trip has been a total 8 star experience: STA Eileen & staff deserve a commendation.

Hats off to Mother Hen 校长
Hip hip horray
Hi-yah!!