Hiking in Tisovec

Last week's drizzle continued until Wednesday, when we had a nice day to go biking along a new section of the bike trail along the Vah River after school.  Then Thursday after our evening lessons, Marian, Tim and I met his wife, Susan. for pizza as a late celebration for Marian's birthday.  Fun! 

Thursday at school there was a lot of excitement.  Edita (in the jacket at right) had her names day, and she is the Class Teacher for the Septima class, who surprised her with cake and champagne after they sang to her during our long break.  :-)  

Our wonderful 5.BP class also surprised us by presenting us our own personalized invitation to their Stužková party.  They are such a sweet bunch of students!!  :-)

This is our Stužková invitation!!    :-)   We are looking forward to attending!  

Last year it was a bumper crop of apples, and this year it's pears and plums.  Delicious!  Several people have shared with us! 

Friday right after school, we hopped on a bus to Hybe, and there were tons of our students riding with us, so they helped us with our connection to Bus #2 to Brezno.  We figured out the next connection ourselves, and finally arrived in Tisovec to visit our American teachers at the Lutheran school there.  It was awesome to see their three smiling faces waiting for us at the bus stop.  We were fortunate that they arranged for us to stay in an extra apartment at the school, and we ended up eating at a pizza place for supper.  Since their apartment connects directly into the school, we got a tour of the facilities - it's gorgeous!!  The nicest school we've seen anywhere in the country!!  WOW!!  Back at their apartment, we stayed up late talking and planning for Saturday.  

This was the view from our bedroom window - of the Lutheran Church on the square, with mountains behind.

This beauty is outside the girls' apartment door.  

The gals invited us to a breakfast of American pancakes, complete with Aunt Jemima syrup - yum!!  Courtney was the pancake chef!  

After breakfast, we walked to the grocery store to get provisions for our hike.

There are many informational posters around Tisovec, and this year the new ones have English translations that Courtney checked over and re-wrote to sound better!  

With Emily, Courtney and Nina heading through the main square to start our hike in the mountains.  I'm pretty sure that's City Hall in the background. 

Memorial statue on the main square, and hint of changing autumn leaves in the background.  

Tisovec has several sister cities, including Shenandoah, Iowa!! (Shout-out to Sharon Davis!)  Ironically, the school principal, town mayor, and some other school representatives were actually in Shenandoah for a visit at the exact same time as we Iowans were in Tisovec!!  And a pastor friend of Nina's told her that this Sunday was the designated day for all ELCA congregations in the U.S. to be praying especially for the school in Tisovec.  Cool!

At last, we started our hike up through the forested areas at the bottom of Hradova.  (Which means there's a castle up there --- the word 'hrad' is castle.)  I don't know if it qualifies as a mountain or just a big hill, but after climbing up and down, WE all think it's definitely a mountain!!  

The hiking wasn't too difficult at first, but our leader was definitely a highly successful Big Ten Cross Country runner, (yes, Emily, we Googled your XC career and saw all the amazing athletic and academic accolades from both H.S. and Michigan State - Wow!!!), so the pace was a little faster than we usually go.  I did discover that 'photo ops' helped, since everyone at least stopped for a moment to pose!!  ;-)  

We always love to see the flora and fauna on our hikes, and these fungi were definitely uniquely shaped - like plates and bells!

We finally made it to this flagpole, where there are beautiful views of Tisovec and the valleys surrounding Hradova.  

The town of Tisovec below in the valley.

Looking out the other direction from the flagpole viewpoint.

There is a big strip-mining operation right next to Tisovec. 

Just above the flagpole, there is a clearing (and as we discovered later, the last flat area for a LONG time) with benches, where we ate our snacks and rested a bit.  The posted information told us that this was also the site of a Bronze Age settlement, but we can't figure out why they settled so high up on the mountain!!  The castle at the top was just minimal ruins - a few stony walls.  

O.K., so be sure to notice the yellow arrow trail marker.  It's unlike any we have seen before.  Normally the arrows point left or right, or they're just a strip of horizontal color.  Well this one points straight up.  Yes, straight up.  Otherwise we NEVER would have known this was really the trail, because it went, well, straight up the rocks!!  

We basically just headed directly up on top of this rocky ridge to that top point up there.  

The views from the top of the ridge were spectacular, and we tried to look confident instead of looking down --- it was a long ways down!!  Emily, Courtney and Nina were all smiles at this point in the hike!!  

Facebook cover pic pose!!  It was such a beautiful spot!!  

This was one of those places with 360 degree views around and below - Wow!

I didn't bring my hiking stick along on the bus from L.M., but Tim and I both found a new walking stick in the woods to use along this hike as well - and we needed them!  

The girls after they 'hugged' the rock to walk around it on that little ledge at the bottom right.  "Just don't look down, Nina!!"  

Quote from Emily:  "You may not want to bring your walking sticks along on this part of the hike because you'll need both hands to climb up and down the rocks."   We handed them or tossed them down, so we'd have the sticks for later!!  But she was right - we definitely needed both hands!

I'm pretty sure the quote from Nina at this point is fairly accurate:  "NO, I can't do that.  I'm going to die.  Send a helicopter.  I can't do it!!!"  Or something like that!!  Can you see Emily's head below, climbing down a rock face using a chain bolted into the rock??  And after that, we had to go along that rocky ridge beyond in the center.  I couldn't even take pictures when we got there!!  Too scary straight down on both sides.  (It doesn't look that steep maybe, but those are tree TOPS on both sides!!) 

Emily and Courtney were so patient with us, telling us where to put our feet on the way down.  It was just like at Twin Lakes on the rock climbing wall, except with no belay and a much longer drop-off!!  

Tim on his way down the rock climbing wall section!!  Yikes!!  

Seriously, both sides of this rock ridge had steep drop-offs, straight down!!  Here is some sample conversation from this point in the hike..............
Emily:  "Just keep low, keep your center of gravity low."
Courtney:  "You can do it, just don't look down."
Nina:  "I'm going to die.  I'm going to fall to my death.  I should never have come.  Courtney, I will never believe anything you say ever again."
Michelle & Tim:  "I can't believe this is really a trail.  If we were doing this trail alone, we would have turned back long ago!"

We saw this sign after we finally climbed down from the end of the rocky ridge, looking back up towards where we had just come from.  I was typing it into Google Translate, and after the first few letters, it said 'hazard', then I typed a few more letters, and it said 'danger', and finally with the whole word 'nebezpečny' it said 'unsafe' section   ----   yep!  

We finally reached the safety of this beautiful mountain meadow about halfway down, and we were really thankful that we triumphed on our journey of invigorating experiences!    

There was still a long, steep descent, but it was very safe and peaceful walking through the stillness of the woods.  Much safer!!!  :-)

The meadows we crossed on the lower part of the trail were all covered with these beautiful spring-like purple blossoms.  It was magical!!  

The total loop up the mountain, over the ridge and back down on the other end took longer than we expected, so we ate a very quick lunch on the square at a kebab and baguette sandwich shop.  It tasted delicious after our hike!  

We hurried back to the school to grab our suitcases, then waited for our bus in front of the Lutheran church in Tisovec with Courtney (The Navigator), Nina (The Rock Star) and Emily (The Scout).  We had such a wonderful time with these three!!  They are all doing a terrific job teaching at the school there, and during our time in Tisovec they really blessed us with their positive outlooks and flexibility, their steadfast faith in our loving God, and their fun-loving 'go-for-it' attitudes!!  It was such a fun day with them!!  Thanks for helping us to feel young, gals!!  

We had an hour layover between buses in the tiny town of Muran on the way home!  

We actually got back to our flat by about 7:30 Saturday night, so got a good night's sleep to be rested for our Sunday adventures, which will have to wait for the next post!!   God bless!!  

JK Games Weekend

Friday night I walked Tim part-way to basketball, stopped to get groceries, then hurried back to help Beth do some shopping in Oklahoma via FaceTime!  For those who don't know, she will be starting her first official job as a P.A. in October, so she was down there apartment-hunting and shopping for things she'll need once she moves in.  One of the drawbacks of being in Europe is NOT being around for things like that, so once again, we are so grateful that technology allowed us to be in on some of the action for Beth's move.  She's incredibly self-sufficient, but it makes the Mama happy to feel like I'm at least in touch while Beth is handling everything on her own.  LOL!!  

Saturday we attended the JK Games in Paludzka, an area of Liptovsky Mikuláš.  In America, JK may stand for 'just kidding', but here in Slovakia, it stands for Ježiš Kristus, or Jesus Christ.  This was an annual day-long event that is held in our town and sponsored by our church, and it involves hundreds of Christian young people from the region.  The organizational aspect was amazing in pulling it all off so successfully!  

There were two really good speakers giving witness/sermon type talks, one during the opening program and one after lunch.  Vicki translated for us, which was great!  

The kids were packed into the gym for the opening program before the games began!

The praise band was awesome -- first time we've seen one with twin cellos!!  So cool!  They sang several American songs we were familiar with, and the lyrics were up on the video screen, so we could even sing along in Slovak with them!!  

There was one skit that reminded us of the Riverside Mime - just music and acting with no dialogue.  It was short, but effective.  The girl on the left with the red pants is an American who has been working with youth in the church here for 3 months.  

This is my student, Roman, who was part of the program.  The theme for the day was "One for all", so we are assuming the 3 Musketeers theme (one for all and all for one) was also tied in somehow for Roman's part of the gig!!  

Each year's JK Games has had a different theme, and the banners since 2007 were hung up at the side of the gym.  

After the opening program, the games began - there were different skill categories for  four different sports - volleyball, futball (soccer), floor ball (like gym-floor hockey), and street ball (half-court 3-on-3 basketball).  For some reason our "Old Schol" team was put into the more advanced group of volleyball players, so we were pretty much fodder for the young bucks on the good teams, but it was still lots of fun!!    :-)   

The participants all got wristbands when we registered for the games, and lunch tickets were distributed.  We were bussed from our site to the big public high school in town, where goulash and bread were provided for lunch.  

The T-shirts for this year were really sweet.  The J in the JK Games title also goes with the word that looks like "Eden" --- the word for ONE in Slovak is Jeden  --- so, "One, for all" --Jesus, our savior died for us all!!  (We were all supposed to wear our T-shirts to school today.  Can you guess who did, and who wore a shirt & tie instead????   LOL!! )  

We played 3 games in pool play, but only the top 2 teams from each pool made it into the semi-finals.  It was a fun day for sure, seeing many of our students participating, volunteering in some capacity, and even watching the competitions.  We were really impressed by all the work and preparation that went into organizing such a big event.  

Sunday we went to church as usual, and this time Zuzana was there to translate for us - she always does such a wonderful job!!  Then I actually cooked a big Sunday dinner for the first time in a while, since we've been gone so much lately.  While things were in the oven, we listened to our online sermon over hot chai tea lattes.  We kept waiting for the temperatures to warm up a little (they didn't) and the sun to come out (it didn't), but we wanted to get outside and get some exercise, so we finally went for a long walk through the town center and down along the Vah River in the afternoon.  We enjoyed it despite the weather!!  We also watched some DVD's that friends had loaned us, which was a first for us here - it was nice to have some down time to do that.  

Today at school, the first and second year students were all gone on a field trip, which meant we didn't have to teach many classes.  It was a relaxing day to get caught up with, and even ahead on, some school work.  At 5:00 we walked to church choir (in drizzle - ugh), got a ride home from one of our singers afterwards, and then hurried over to volleyball at our school (in drizzle again - it's so annoying!!)  We're still optimistic about the arrival of that "Indian Summer" around here!!  Any time now would be terrific!!   :-)

Short Post for a Change!

Especially for folks who think the blog posts are too long........ a very quick 3-day recap is coming your way!!  ;-) 

Lucia is one of our wonderful teaching colleagues at school.  She and her husband Juraj invited us over for a delicious dinner on Wednesday evening.  They are a really neat Christian couple, and we had some great conversation!  

This picture is perfect to summarize the weather this week.  Some of Tim's students were studying at the end of the hall, amid a collection of colorful umbrellas drying out.  We have been getting rain off and on almost every day - ugh!!  But the umbrellas and the girls made a pretty picture on Thursday anyway!!  

Friday finally arrived, and everyone was really tired after a long week at school and in a "thank goodness it's Friday"(TGIF) frame of mind - teachers and students alike.  Personally, I think the unseasonable cool and cloudy weather has something to do with that!  There is even snow up on the mountaintops already!!  But two different people told me at school today that they'd heard on the radio we are expecting some 'Indian Summer' weather next week - I certainly hope so!!   :-)   In the meantime - have a nice weekend!!