I am an older man, yes I am 70 and now retired for one year, I had been scared about retirement, what would I do when I have nothing to do? I used to ask myself, and thus I organized a retirement support group at the Men's Center about 6 years ago, and that has been very satisfying for me and for some others too. We meet monthly and welcome new members, and we have a core group who keeps coming back.

Well in this past year I became a student again, I applied for and was accepted in a Czech language immersion program in Dobruska Czech Republic, a small town of 7,000  residents, East of Prague, near the Polish border. It is  a scholarship program provided by the Czech government to have people from many different lands be welcoming to Czech immigrants in foreign lands. So I became a student again, living in a dormitory, sharing a room with an older man from Brazil. We learned language and culture, though I was somewhat familiar with both since I have been active in the Czech Slovak Sokol organization in St Paul, and the Czech Slovak Cultural Center. And I had studied Czech language in the Army 49 years ago, and still retained some of it, having visited relatives several times in the Czech Republic in recent years and  I expect these are the reasons I was given the scholarship which did not include transportation costs. Continued...