January showers bring flowers too!

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We’ve seemingly slipped from an Autumnal sort of winter right into an autumnal sort of spring. We’re all confused, even the plants. We have lots of flowers making an appearance: the Primrose (Primula Vulgaris - top right picture) is in bloom everywhere, even under the shady pines, and there are crocus and snowdrops, too. The Forsythia shrubs are blooming in the sunny areas, but they are a bit show-off-y (I think I just made up a word there) anyway, having also bloomed back in early December. In the fields, the Dead Red Nettle (Lamium Purpureum - picture top left) and Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium) never stopped blooming, but they look a bit weary. The slopes in the woods are covered with a more recent arrival: hundreds upon hundreds of Helleborus Niger (picture bottom left), with the Winter Heath (Erica Carnea - picture bottom right) keeping it company. In people’s gardens the irises are well up and so are the daffodils; the pansies also hung right in there since the autumn and are still flowering.

As I started typing this update, we were having a thunderstorm. It’s a far cry from a Minnesota winter, that’s for sure! Right after the thunderstorm it turned colder for a few days and we finally saw some snow. It was one of those clingy snows that sticks to all of the branches. It only accumulated on the grassy areas and it was gone by the end of the day, but further northwest of us they got quite a bit more. We went up that way, to the little town of Planica, last weekend for some sledding (for the Minnesotans: ‘sledding’ = ‘sliding’ in your parlance . There are no snowmobiles involved.) Planica is the site of the world’s largest ski jump, but I am just mentioning that by way of information – we didn’t do anything crazy involving our toboggans and the ski jump. At Planica there's a few feet of snow on the ground. We walked for about an hour up a hill to a small gostilna where we had lunch. Then we sledded down the hill. It was fun, and Lucy had a blast running around in the snow and chasing the sled.

Now the temps are in the mid 40s during the day, and the sun is very warm. We went for a walk today and I think it was about 50 degrees or so; you just needed a light sweater. This is not typical, but the whole of western Europe is experiencing some unseasonably warm, or at least strange, weather this year. I understand El Nino is to blame (oh sure, always blame the foreigners) I think it’s affecting U.S. weather too, but you, my tens of readers, would know this better than me. In London a few weeks ago they had some very heavy rain and high winds. The wind knocked down walls and trees, and some people were killed. On the news they showed people hanging onto lampposts so they wouldn’t be blown away. We haven’t seen those here, thank goodness!

Hopefully our good weather will hold at least for a few more days. On Thursday we have a public holiday and it would be nice to go somewhere for the day and soak up some sunshine. 08 Feb 1849 is the date of the death of Slovenia’s national poet, France Preseren. While he was alive, Preseren was in love with a woman named Julija Primic. She never returned his love, even though he was not a bad-looking fella, not to mention he wrote her some kick-ass sonnets. Preseren Square in Ljubljana contains a statue of him which forever gazes on a bas-relief of Julija high on the wall of a building across the square. The seventh stanza of Preseren's poem “Zdravljica” (“A Toast”) has been the Slovenian national anthem since 1991.

God's blessing on all nations,
Who long and work for that bright day,
When o'er earth's habitations
No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
Who long to see
That all men free
No more shall foes, but neighbours be!


Not many exciting things happened over the holiday season. Here, the month of December is “Happy December” and there are Christmas markets and mulled wine to enjoy. We were battling some never-ending colds/viruses all through the holidays, and right through New Year, so we were not your usual party-loving couple. We dragged ourselves down to the castle for New Year’s fireworks (which were worth the effort) and then back home shortly thereafter. We’re feeling much better now, thanks to massive doses of vitamins and the large quantities of oranges and clementines we’ve been eating. It’s my New Year’s resolution: I Will Not Get Sick in 2007.

We have recently gotten a new neighbor. They are two roommates and they both are members of the orchestra. The boy (age 17 or 18) is from Romania or Lithuania...I’m not sure exactly -- someplace small with an ‘ia’ on the end. He plays the violin. He practices here at the house sometimes although we haven’t heard him much since we don’t always have the windows open. Joe met him the other day. He speaks English well and studied in Michigan for a while. The other roommate plays the viola, or at least I think that’s what she plays – she hasn’t been practicing here since she doesn’t carry her instrument back and forth. She’s 18 or 19 years old and is from Russia. I haven’t met either of them yet but I think I saw them at the bus stop at the corner. The boy was young, wearing very pointy cowboy boots and carrying a violin, so I guessed that was probably him. I based this on the violin he was toting -- the cowboy boots could mean anything. The girl wasn’t carrying anything outwardly musical but they were obviously together, and they were paying with bus tokens (a sure sign of a recently arrived foreigner). I would have introduced myself but the bus was just pulling up as I arrived.

Speaking of the bus, let me just say that there are few sights more depressing than that of your bus pulling away from the stop as you run down the street. On most days I take the bus four times a day. The least number of times I’ll take it is twice, and the most is six. One ill-fated day I missed the bus five times out of five. The only reason I didn’t miss it six times that day is because Joe gave me a ride for trip #6. Some days are like that. On the other hand, some days I stroll to the bus stop taking my own sweet time, lah-tee-dah, and there it is, just down the street and I only need to wait half a minute or so. I love those days. The bus at our stop is a bit capricious. In spite of the encouraging timetable posted at the bus stop, there doesn’t seem to be an actual schedule..it seems to show up whenever it pleases and you just thank your lucky stars if you were fortunate enough to be there when it did. In its defense, it does show up every 15 minutes or so, but I’ve been left staring at the back end of it often enough that I feel entitled to complain a bit. (sigh) I feel better now.

Work is still busy, so that’s good. Our school hired a new batch of teachers to replace some of the ones that moved on. We were the last group of non-EU citizens to be hired, so it’s a good thing we made the move when we did. All of the teachers now must be from within the EU, so all of the native English speakers will be from Great Britain.

I’ve got to do some class prep now, so I’ll end here. I’ll try to update more frequently, even if it’s just a few words.

Ciao