Thanksgiving Eve

Yes, here we are on Thanksgiving Eve in Slovakia, which means.......nothing.   :-(   It feels strange to be setting the alarm for an early hour tomorrow morning for school instead of pie-baking!!  But I know Beth will do a magnificent job of continuing the pie-baking tradition for the family Thanksgiving dinner back in Ankeny tomorrow!!  :-)   

PIcking up from where we left off - Monday was a busy school day, including our Slovak lesson 5th hour.  It's nice the school allows one of the teachers to work with us once a week.  It's still slow going, but we are having more frequent "Aha moments" in Slovak now. Now that we are learning a little grammar, we can understand why our students make some of the mistakes they do.  

Monday afternoon we did a few errands after school, then went to church at 6:00 to join the Christmas carol group.  The rehearsal was held in the pastor's study, and 25-30 people were crammed in there, including 6 instrumentalists -- a 6-string and a 12-string acoustic guitar, an electric bass, (they were all adults), two violins, and an accordion (all H.S. age or so).   Most of the melodies were very catchy tunes which seemed very familiar to everyone else in the room, but our brains were hurting by the end, reading all the Slovak lyrics that were written at the bottom of the page, not up underneath the music notation on the score!  I was actually following the words along with my finger so I could keep my eyes on the music and words simultaneously!   It was a joyful, fun time.  Only one guy could speak English, but he helped a lot.  

Last night was an English lesson with one of my students, and she came with us to volleyball at school afterwards.  It was great, because we had an even 12 players with Eva too.  Then today after school, we had Carol, Zuzka, and Timko over for supper.  Carol brought some great baking items from the US - YAY - and some genuine sharp cheddar cheese from Wisconsin!!  :-)    I tried to include a photo of the beautiful poinsetta that Zuska and Timko brought, (also yummy Belgian chocolates and more apples from their garden!), but evidently this blog program has a limit to the number of photos that can be uploaded, and I'm at 100%.  Booo, hiss!!  

So, it's possible that I might have to start a new blog in order to continue posting photos.  I'll  check out options and will keep you posted!!  But for now, I apologize for no pictures.