A new photo toy

The Lunsfords came over tonight and we had a wonderful evening (after Michelle's uber-successful Southern Living At Home party. Janae showed me this cool new toy...

Off to space...

I leave tomorrow morning for a three-day adventure with 52 4th-graders from Webster Elementary School. We're going to Astrocamp to learn more appreciation for the explanatory and predictive powers of science. I hear the highlight is a rocketry experiment using a 2-liter bottle and a cardboard tube. I'll keep you posted when I return on Friday.

One of the interesting things about the camp is that it's pretty remote...no internet, no wireless, no blogosphere... So I'm actually going old school for the next three days. Today I went to the library and checked out a book recommended by my favorite librarian. I'll review it later.

By the way...while I'm on books...I bought and read a wonderful spy thriller on my trip to Prague. I recommend it for a fun reminder of why the Cold War was so HOT.

Prague - Day One

What a beautiful city! After a fascinating lecture this morning by one of the leading academic economists in the Czech Republic we went on a three hour walking tour of the Castletown area of Prague. What an amazing city. It is rich in history, deservedly proud, and yet reasonably humble. I am very impressed by the people, the architecture, and the relative maturity of free markets here.

Tonight I intend to attend a Vivaldi concert with acoustic guitar duo. It should be wonderful. It costs 400Kc (Czech Crowns) or about $20. But it's in a historic church, its Vivaldi, and its on acoustic guitars. I can't wait. Full report later.

One quick side note...the food here is, well, its, um, interesting. For lunch I had garlic soup with krutons, and sliced pork with sourkrout and gravy. Quite a selection of strong flavors that took two rinses of listerene and one complete tooth-brushing to remove. :-). I'm thinking just bread and cheese for dinner.

On the road again...

I'm in Prague this week co-leading a group of students in an exploration of business in Central and Eastern Europe. It's a beautiful city. The best part is I looked up an old friend from DC...Jakub Tomastik. We are going to get together for dinner this week. It should be great to renew an old friendship. For those of you from NLC you will remember Jakub as the F.O.E. who was studying Economics at GWU.