Roma kids and the singers of the spa

Getting up early in the morning so that we are on time in the Roma school. The Roma live in a ghetto here as in other parts of the world, the hetto it is over the bridge. We started playing a letter game with kids in a large circle. The energy quickly accelerated. The kids were creating letters, playing with the parachute sail, and the alphabet table. More and more kids joined in—for every 10year old, there were suddenly also 2 five-year olds. Others were crowding behing the classroom windows and the main entrance to the school building. There was commotion everywhere, we were surrounded by activity and play. Eventually we felt a bit bad for the teachers who will have to tame the excited kids in order to bring them back into the classroom. The event went surprisingly well, despite our worries that the Roma will not have much of a relationship with the cyrilic script. We tried to talk with them in the Romany language, in the fragments we managed to remember from what they taught us. It was a strange juxtaposition of Romany and the cyrilic, but the kids at this age reacted with no hesitation. We saw four little kids running down the muddy street, dressed colorfully and dancing as they ran. It was an image of freedom and joy, perhaps more possible amongst the apparent poverty of this place than in the regulated world of affluence.
We needed a rest and appreciated the breakfast/lunch in a café, and after that even more restful soaking in the local mineral water spa. The main pool of the spa was in a domed hall decorated in the art-deco style, and it had excellent acoustics. Even when you sang into the canal bordering the pool, the sound resonated all the way from the water surface to the green-painted cupola.
We eventually returned to Bela Rechka, where more guests arrived in the meantime—Mirek and his people from the Oral History Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and also people from the Bulgarian National TV. We will be in the news the day before the national holiday of St. Cyril and Metodus on May 24. The day ended in the pub. We had a dinner and celeration with the newly arrived friends. They said that there was great weather in Prague, over 30 degrees Celsia and sunny. So we hope and pray that it finally arrives here as well, tomorrow.