Slovavas

Lots of time spent in the car today with cow-eye boy falling asleep on me. His head is spherical. I can add another country to my list of countries I've visited though!

First we went to downtown Slovakia-city. I can't remember the name. It was pretty dead though, but apparently it hasn't always been that way. It felt strange to be perusing a downtown area that would normally be bustling and full of shops and shoppers. But most of the shops were closed, and there were very few people on the sidewalks. We had some obiad (lunch) and they bought me an entire pizza. I told them I couldn't eat the whole thing, and I don't know why they insisted on doing that. I explained about getting half and half, that is half meat and half sans meat, but they weren't down for that either. Leftovers? They are weirded out when I eat cold pizza.

After wandering the market square got lame, we went to the mountains. Which mountains, you ask? The Tetras of course! Ever heard of it? It's okay if you haven't - you can still pretend that you have.

It was pretty neat to see. I enjoyed the part where we first saw it in the distance, and then drove closer, and then took a cable car up. It was pretty gradual and you don't really realize how far up you're going until you turn around and look back and see huge machinery that looks like caterpillars. All the land is divided up into pretty small parcels because it has been split by fathers among their sons for too many generations. At least they want to be fair about it. Fair according to the patriarchy I mean.

Naturally it's a pretty popular ski destination, and there was lots of construction going on while we were there. They were either working on the slaloms or creating new resorts on the mountain. The whole place was really gorgeous, except for all the machinery, deforestation, bright red and orange cords running everywhere, and huge piles of dirt and gravel surrounding barren pits in the earth. Nice!

I looked out across the hills when we were headed up in the cable car, and noticed a gentle slope not too far away that was being logged. There were vertical strips of trees missing from the woods, and those that had been harvested were messily strewn where they had once stood, looking like toothpicks from a tipped-over jar. It reminded me of how I shave my legs: one neat strip at a time, taking away the stubble and leaving only brown freckled earth behind. Then sometimes I forget to finish one leg and leave some hair behind for the next time, and it's like an oasis in a barrage of smoothness.

The lower soft hills of the Tetras were a brilliant, luscious green color, pimpled by freshly sawed tree stumps. The color of the stumps was even more brilliant, the orange wood fresh and wet against the ground, probably still alive. Some of the stumps had been gored out like a trimmed deer during hunting season, missing their veins and guts and life. I felt sad and heavy like the machinery that would come to haul the logs away.

While seeing the destruction in the name of profit happening all around me made me quiet, I did feel renewed by all the people I saw on the top of the mountain once we exited the cable car. I saw one family with a few kids, fairly young, all wearing hefty hiking boots and other clothes that you wear for hiking, I guess. They were eating their lunch out of round silver pans and it was like a picnic. After, I saw them rinsing their dishes and it included a few skillets and other pots and pans, so it became obvious to me that they had brought all their necessities with them. It made me want to become one of those nature people who goes hiking and cooks their lunch in the woods! Then I noticed all the gear they had with them and thought about how much of an investment that is, and decided I'd look pretty dorky in those bulky hiking boots. I decided to settle for living vicariously through them, which is enough for me.

I have some cool photos of the mountains, but my feelings about that remain the same in that you should probably just look online at some professional photographer's work and appreciate it just as much, if not more. I'll still share my photos when I get home, though.

I am getting pretty pumped for the garden and to be home and done with teaching! I decided teaching is not for me, by the way. We can talk about that later. I don't know how teachers do it. It's so frustrating to me how little they get paid and how absolutely painstaking and crucial their jobs are. Not to mention the hours of outside work that must be done: lesson planning, grading papers, organizing trips, and more. And the fact that most kids are disrespectful and have no idea how much work goes in to running a class successfully and how emotionally tolling it can be. Amiright?

Anyway - the bounty of the garden will be mine to enjoy in just over one fair week! One fair week!

Loves to you all.

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