And a Happy New Year

Greetings and a Happy 2010 to everyone.  Here are a couple of recent highlights...

Lined up letting nose drops soak into our brains.  From The Holidays

We was sick.  Bad sick.  So bad, in fact, that our doctor made a house call.  He is also our Branch President.  After bouncing back, Lucy and I had gone down again, this time with ear aches.  The doc took a look, departed, and came back an hour later with seven medications for each of us.  Pills, nose drops, nose spray, ear drops.  Most were to treat symptoms, but he also put us on an antibiotic.  Lucy later got to add another medication for her cough and should have had eye drops for a horribly infected eye, but she refused.  The doctor also prescribed a hat, coat, and socks for Lucy (the whole neighborhood is in awe at the change).  Caleb, developing an ear ache, got on the regimen too.  Kristine's ears filled with fluid and she joined in with a partial treatment.  We all still have a residual cough, but we are at least living again.

Kristine and Aubrey on Charles Bridge in Prague on a quiet, snowy morning.

So our friend Aubrey's visit was a little less exciting than we had intended for her.  Still, she got to see the Hluboka Castle, the ruins at Maskovec and Divči Kamen, the countryside around Rudolfov and Dobrá Voda, the Talich Quartet, and the Southern Bohemian Philharmonic, and lots of Czech Fairy Tales on TV.  We also ate a lot.  Feeling it was our duty to introduce her to Czech cuisine she ate Carp and potato salad, strawberry dumplings, chicken schnitzel, svičkova, the Czech national dish of pork roast, sauerkraut and dumplings, and a bunch of pastries.  She ate caviar, Tartar Steak (a raw beef spread) and drank her fill of non-alcoholic beer, though she did not yet develop a taste for it when she left.  And, as a Christmas present, Kristine took the girls out for dinner at Vin de Cafe.  She survived the 19 days with us and Silas keeps asking for her to return.  The photos in this post, and the web album they link to, are from her camera.

Aubrey's entre at Vin de Cafe. From The Holidays

On New Years Day, we got up early and took a train to Třisov to hike to Divči Kamen.  It was a perfect day, by the way.  The cool thing, though, was that the train was crowded with people.  Most were older, dressed in hiking clothes, and got off at the town nearest the mountain Klet.  It is a popular tradition to hike (not ride the chair lift) to the top on New Years Day.  On the way south, Caleb and I had a conversation with a college student and his grandfather in Czech, and English, and Spanish.  On the way back I chatted with a couple from San Francisco while Aubrey talked to people from New York and Kristine spoke with a Japanese man that teaches German and spoke a bit of Czech.  What a multilingual smorgasbord.

On Saturday we got some snow, so on Sunday afternoon I went for a walk along the river for some solitude.  I didn't get it though.  There were more people going for walks, taking their kids sledding, or just hanging out on benches than I have ever seen on the Red Jacket Trail in west Mankato on the nicest summer day.  That's the single thing I like most about life here, people's affinity for spending time outside no matter the time of year.

One thing I decidedly do not like about life here is the fact that when my three year old throws tantrums in the streets - which he does a lot - people gather round to watch.  One day we had a small crowd observing Silas crying that he did not want to go on a walk.  One woman even came out of her building for the express purpose of standing there watching us from an uncomfortably short distance away.

Caleb is most assuredly Czech though.  We had to run an errand before fencing last night, so he had to change into his sports clothes at the practice.  I was surprised when, right in front of the mothers of some of the other fencers, he pulled his pants off and slipped into sweats just like the Czechs do.  Sorry, I didn't get a photo.

Many wishes for good health, happiness, and the blessings of heaven in the new year.

Peter