Tooooo Long

After waking to this scene outside our window yesterday morning, we realized that it has been way too long since we posted to the blog. We got about 2 inches of snow,..that big wet flakes that gently fell all day. By late afternoon it let up a bit and Ken and I went out for a walk. For some reason that first snow is always beautiful and peaceful. It's only later that it becomes a pain!! By about 6:00 pm most of it had melted off. But this morning it is back and everything is blanketed in white again. Because it is the wet snow all of the trees have snow on them too. The picture on the left is of rose bush. They grow wild and have these hugh rose hips on them. We admired them all fall and it looks like they will stay pretty exciting all winter .
We did have a most amazing fall. It started in the mountains the middle of September. We went to Slovakia with our friend, Radka and Ivo. The place we went was called the Mali Fatra. That means little Fatra and is not the big mountains in Slovakia. They were in full color and amazing. We stayed in a small pension in the mountains and had a beautiful view. The pension had a small pond which they kept stocked with trout. You could order them in the morning and they would cook and serve them to you at night. So one night we ordered three trout for the four of us. What we didnt' know was that these were the smart trouts that had avoided getting caught all summer so they were hugh. They were like the size of salmon. Please note that the skeleton that Ken is holding is almost as long as his arm. We managed to ge through two of them and the owner was kind enough to wrap up the third one for us to take home with us. They were absolutely delicious. We ate on it for two more days!! The beautiful leaves gradually moved down the mountains and into our river valley. The last of them fell off the trees about five days ago when we had a big rain storm. Now there is just snow. I guess I am telling this story in reverse or at least I am working backwards,...
The beginning of September, our good friends from Iowa, Leslie and Dennis came for two weeks. Although the weather was a bit rainy, we still had a wonderful time and gave them a little taste of this interesting country that we have adopted as our home. We went to Prague, the UN protected town of Telc, Kromerzic where the palace used in the film Amadeus is, and , of course, we gave them the grand tour of our magnificent and historic town of Olomouc. It was sad to see them leave as we had at least 100 more castles to visit and another 4 or 500 types of wine to sample. Oh well, the next trip. I would show you pictures, but unfortunately my computer crashed right after they left and I lost all of the great shots. They are still in our mind and hearts and thats the best place to store memories.
For now I am teaching full time at Palasky University here in Olomouc. This is a picture of some of my students learning how to write instructions in English (and play with Tinkertoys!). On the side, I and Kenny have a "breakfast club" for Phd students to practice their English, one private student and together we proof read science texts written in english. It really keeps us busy. Kenny continues to paint and to draw. He makes his weekly visit to the art museums and generally takes care of things around here. I did finally buy a sewing machine and finished my first quilt,...a gift for the daughter of a friend. We are going back to the states for Christmas. My department at the University has a European
Union grant to promote teaching English to high school science teachers. So I will be doing some filming of high school science classes while we are back in Iowa. We will try to sneak in as many visits as possible with family and friends, but hope you will make the effort to try to visit us too. I would like to say that our life has settled into a routine, but how can living in a place so different and exciting be routine? Maybe I should just say "a rhythm"? Take care,..Pam and Ken