Coming Soon

Jeff's work has slowed down a lot the past month. Our part of the dome is finished--it just is being painted, filled with sugar beets, and landscaped. Jeff spends his day wrapping the business up here, selling things, and making sure Hungarians don't cheat the company out of money. We gave our nice car back about a month ago. It was sad.

outside our door--the parking lot

We have this other (cheaper) car that the other workers were using. Now that they're gone, it's ours for a bit.

The other day we were walking through the town square, looking for "Hungarian" souvenirs. "Zsolnay" is what we wanted. It is very pretty porcelain, and we figured something really little would do. It is hand painted with gold and such. We didn't see anything worth it at the little shop in Kaposvar, so we decided to look in the bigger city--Pecs--and see if we could get something there. On our way back to our car, Jeff spotted a little old bookstore! He knows how much I love books. We looked for the prettiest, oldest covers and bought those books:) It's cheaper than Zsolnay, so I was happy with our purchase.

I just noticed that some of them are upside down...I think...

We have had our translator over quite a bit lately. Her name is Bettina Fekete (Betti Black), and she's my age. She went on a mission to England and is going to BYU-Hawaii in January. She has been a huge help to Jeff at work, and we have her over for dinner and games or movies a lot. She and her family put together a little gift for us--Zsolnay! It's little and everything--exactly what we wanted. A true Hungarian souvenir:) They also gave us a little doily that her grandmother made; it's a traditional Hungarian design. This gift was perfect. It's even more special coming from Hungarians that we know and love.

Jeff and I gave the 5th Sunday lesson on home teaching and visiting teaching. They haven't done it yet, here in this branch. Some don't have cell phones, they all live so far away from each other, and sometimes can't afford a bus pass. But they're trying to start it up, because it is important--especially when the branch is so small and new and spread out. I hope things go okay. Jeff and I were asked to just talk about the basics. I thought Jeff did really well. He said you really are supposed to contact your home teacher for help before the bishop. The home teacher is the middle man; if you need help, he will let the bishop know, or help you himself and give the poor bishop a break.

For my part of the lesson, I listened to questions and answers on the mormon channel with Sister Beck. She said that when we report to Heavenly Father, he won't ask us if we did 100% of our visiting teaching. "He doesn't want numbers, he wants our hearts." He will ask if we loved and served the sisters we were assigned. Like they said in Conference, 15 minute lessons each month don't cut it. We need to pray for guidance for that specific sister, then listen to the Spirit and actually DO what he tells us to. I hope they do well here. We are excited for our branch; there are going to be 3 more baptisms by the end of the month:)

Conference weekend was different, but of course it was wonderful, too. We are 8 hours ahead, so it doesn't start until 6pm here. It goes 6-8pm, and the second session is 10-12am...so we watch the later session the next day. That means it is one loooooooong Sunday. We started it off by sleeping in, then I got breakfast in bed by using one of my coupons from my Valentine's Day gift:)

Hungarian paper is longer than the standard U.S. size

My breakfast is an "alma" (apple) pastry, with yogurt and chocolate granola. For Valentine's day, Jeff got me this notebook to draw in, and it had a coupon book for me to use up while we're here. One of the coupons is for breakfast in bed. We talked with both of our families that day, and it's crazy to think that we'll be seeing them all so soon!

Slovenia: Predjama & Celje Castles

After we left Trieste, we traveled about 30 miles to the north to Predjama, Slovenia, to find another Castle. We first bought some Kebabs in the town and then drove up to the castle. The road weaved through the mountains and then you come to a castle build into the side of a cliff. It is an impressive sight. Below the castle, the mountain is very steep and leads down do a huge out-cropping that we hiked down to. The trees were very tall and the under brush had leaves about the size of a bed pillow. I just kept looking up at the castle to try and take in all of my surroundings. It was beautiful.

Predjama Castle

We hiked up that trail...

Huge leaves: That euro on the leaf is about the size of a quarter.

My foot and knee really hurt by this time, so Jeff carried me sometimes--something I hate. Whoops, sorry, we didn't get any pictures of that!

Jeff is below, on the bridge.

This is the key hole of one of the doors into the castle. We didn't buy a pass to see it because it was so expensive.

It would be pretty impossible to "storm" this castle. It's on a very steep hill and there's a draw bridge before it's tiny entrance.

Jeff was telling me a story he read about this place. He said they kept one of their kings in here and left him in there to die...? But every so often he would throw grapes or something at the guards out the windows. Well, they figured, he would run out of grapes soon enough--he's locked up in a cave. Little did they know that there was a cave that led to a little village and that's where he got the stuff. He lived in there for a year or so before they killed him. Odd, random little story...

A legitimate drawbridge

Then we had more kebabs...

and our once-every-other-year-or-so Pepsi
Both of our eyes watered on the verge of tears after our first drink.

One more castle/fortress: Celje. (Possibly pronounced "sell-yuh") It was closed by the time we got there, and was too dark to take pictures, but it was cool--at the top of a hill, above Celje, Slovenia.

We listened to classical music the whole way home, and I promised Jeff I would stay awake. As Kim and Jeff put it, I only "nodded" a few times...

She did pretty well, once we got within 45 minutes of home, she had some struggles, but she stayed somewhat conscious. 

All in all, I absolutely loved this trip. Lake Bled Slovenia was something that I found online back in February and have wanted to go to ever since. Slovenia is gorgeous. Venice and Trieste, Italy were well worth the drive. We are very fortunate to live so close to so much history and beautiful places. 

Italy: Trieste

We took a few more pictures of our hotel Villa Foscarini near Venice:

 

 

I could have stayed on this couch all day (as noted by the look on my face)

Next, we found an LDS meeting nearby. Funny thing: we met two sister missionaries there--one was a girl I knew from Preston! We took pictures and sent it to their families. Pretty cool. All during the meeting a little black girl was by Jeff and me. She was so cute, but a little brat at the same time. Her hair was in 5 or 6 braids sticking out all over her head;) It was testimony meeting, and another sister missionary translated for us. We understood more Italian than we usually do Hungarian...

We found out what time church started online and drove to the address, but no one was there. On the front gate, there was a sign (luckily in English as well) that said that the church was undergoing renovation and had moved. It gave directions to the current meeting house and so we started driving trying to find it. We drove around and came to where the directions said it would be and nothing looked like a meetinghouse. I was driving slow, looking around, when I saw a man through a second-story window wearing a white shirt. I thought, "I'll bet that's it." So we parked, walked into the building, went up the stairs and we came to a closed doorway. There was a sign in Italian on the door, but I didn't know what it said. After a few minutes, a tall black man opened the door and I asked him,"Is this a church?" He said that it was. Then, just to be sure, I asked him, "Which church?" He replied with an African-accent, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." 

We were able to attend Sunday School and Sacrament meeting and I really enjoyed it. There were about 60 people there, two sets of sister missionaries (one of whom knew Josie), and about 20 black people.

A couple of the black people spoke English and were very friendly to us. One man, Sylvester, was about my age and really sharp.

After church, we went on our way to Trieste, Italy. We drove for a couple of hours and then we came around a big turn and all of the sudden I could see the Adriatic Sea! I hurried and stopped, backed up into a pull off spot, and we walked to the lookout point. The view was pretty amazing. There were sail boats drifting along and the shore was steep with cliffs. Beautiful place. 

This picture is close to Sistiana, Italy. 

This really was a beautiful place--we wished we had more time to check it out. One of our must-sees was a castle built on the cliff: Miramare Castle.

This is the way up to the castle.

Sorry about all the panoramas and pictures overall. It's impossible to capture what it looked and felt like with the castle, the rocks, the shore, the sailboats, the fish, oysters, color of the water, perfect breeze, etc.

We didn't tour inside, but this is what we got of it--amazing woodwork.

Jeff tried a panorama sideways...

There are a few other things that I looked up but we didn't get a chance to get pictures of:

Victory Lighthouse

You can see Miramare Castle! They have boat races and stuff here.

Molo Audace Dock