Free time

This is what I see every day on the walk to the center. We live on the "other side" of the train tracks so very often, I get stuck having to wait for a train or 4 before I can cross the tracks. I'm not as brave as the Slovak pedestrians who just walk under!

This is the fish I got from Oystein for Christmas! The windchime I was raving about before. Perfect for me, huh?

Ha - this is a bigger view of our room from this past week. He became fascinated with this nest of sorts outside the window. He's playing inspector.

Things to mention from last week: I joined two Norwegian girls last week - Nina and Maren - to make some chocolate chip cookies that were to die for.  Actually, all I can really speak for is the dough since I ate so much of that I didn't even try a cookie. I got to contribute the chocolate chips from home which they were impressed by, but later considered it just another lazy American-ism.  The cookies were so good that poor Carl succombed to their tempting aroma and gave in to eight of them! He has been on a flat bread/liver patee diet with the occassional vegetable dinner for 10 days now.

Since Oystein and I really have gotten so much better at cooking, we decided we should know some things about it as well. We started with a spice smelling/tasting contest. This involved packets of foil filled with 12 different spices, a number system to identify them, and a blindfold. He did better on the smelling section, but I did better on the tasting section....but maybe that has to do with the fact that I gave him ginger to taste first so the next 11 were all a little scewed.

Friday I met up with Miro the Slovak for some tea and we talked about how to solve all sorts of problems. Sadly, many of them were mine, but I tried to keep it light. He did give me the secret to making the famously Slovak potatoe pancake though. That night, Hannah and Emily came over for our first cooking adventure. Seems all of the ingredients are simple, but flipping those suckers is definitely not! After some experimentation, we ended up with a giant stack of these things and nothing to really eat them with. Traditionally, they are served on the side of some sort of meat meal. Oystein dabbled with making an acceptable sauce (since we didn't have ketchup), and he admitted that this is probably where our improving cooking skills flatlined. It should have been left as some sort of joke, but it actually tasted pretty good! We combined it with Norwegian brown cheese (definitely deviated from the Slovak plan) and they weren't so bad!

Emily has the great idea of starting a cooking show where we make things that are traditional to different countries without the help of someone actually from that country. We think it will be quite hilarious and in order to capture the best audience, we'll petition for a spot directly after the Ellen show. Have I mentioned those two? They are both Americans from Minnesota. We get along great. Emily is teaching English here for at least two years at the Bible School and Hannah is here just for January to do some student teaching as part of her education degree.

The days have been beautiful lately. I wanted to note that. As well as this: thanks for all the support everyone has given me. Some of you have such nice things to say and it's so encouraging.

For lunch today: soup and the focaccia bread Oystein made yesterday