Spring meeting of members and supporters of Children’s Mensa – April 2014
On Friday April 25th, we headed out of Prague to Hotel Podlesí, which is located in the beautiful Czech-Moravian Highlands, in the Žďárské vrchy Protected Landscape Area, near its highest point, Devět Skal. The only disadvantage of that place is that the fastest way leads here along the reconstructed D1 motorway. We eliminated this disadvantage quite successfully by going out a moment before the main wave of Praguers, so we managed the journey without much delay.
Despite the gloomy forecasts of the meteorological servers, we were welcomed by sunny weather, which, with some exceptions, remained throughout the entire stay. What a difference against last year! This year - summer tyres and men in short-sleeves, last year a white landscape and bobsleighing on snow-covered meadows.
Approximately 80 adults and children had arrived by the evening. Some of us had already met a few times, but many new “supporters” also came, who did not have much idea of what was awaiting them. After accommodation and dinner, a brief introduction to the planned programme was made, and the main point of the Friday evening was the dividing into teams. Naturally, the first interesting lecture took place in the evening, and children (and not just them) took the board games into a dedicated game room. The best came after the children went to sleep. Traditionally, some lovers of good drink and good games (the Havel family, Petr Čavojský, the Pokorný family, Lucie Měchurová) opened wine and savoury snacks and, together with some new entrants, played their favourite nightly Dixit. Dana even managed to teach us the new Bluff game, which was a great success. Especially those who could not understand it for a long time had a high rate of success...
On Saturday, we set out on a treasure hunt, a cipher game connected with a trip across the surrounding landscape countryside. The weather was favourable, the atmosphere in our team was good. Both adults and kids alike had fun. Nobody got lost, nobody got hurt, everything as cool as it could be. In the afternoon, parents listened to a lecture by two child psychologists on “How to encourage children not to lose courage”, while children were searching for paper bats in the vicinity of the hotel. (Not even the organizer had any idea how many bats there were) They also collected ingredients for a magic potion, and eventually constructing buildings from skewers and marshmallows. Had they known that the buildings would count into the overall team score, some of them might have eaten less and built more. Surprisingly, they did not really get tired, and we had to wait long into the night before they fell asleep and we could sit down again for wine and board games.
Sunday decoration of the winning teams and handing over presents to all children was the conclusion of another great meeting of families of gifted children, which was held in a friendly and great atmosphere – as only Dana Havlová and her guys can do. Thank you, Dana!
Related topics
3.5.2014