And Awaaaayyy We Go!!

The school year is only three days old, and it's already been a blur of activity.  Last year at this time, every day after school we were busy foraging for necessities and trying to figure out the local stores, and this year we've been, well, just plain busy!  :-)  

Monday morning was so awesome meeting all our students on the square in front of the church before the service.  Instead of being overwhelmed by a sea of unfamiliar student faces like last year, we were so excited to greet our kids by name and talk to them about their summers.  They all gathered with their class teachers, then we went in for the school opening church service.  Janka and Zuzka both came up to our balcony seats, with Janka taking translating duties this time.  

At the end of the school-opening church service, the first-year classes at the Basic School and the Secondary School both came up to the altar for special blessings as they begin their education at our Lutheran school.  

Katarina is the "Class Teacher" for the new incoming I.A5 class (first year of the 5-year bilingual H.S. program), and she had her sign all ready so the students could find her in front of the church!  

After church, we went back to school and worked a while before going out to lunch using our meal vouchers.  We are definitely all feeling very spoiled, and much like 'normal' professional workers, getting to go to restaurants every day until the school canteen opens next week.   :-)  I'm still not done with the year-plans yet, but at least the teaching schedule didn't start until Wednesday!  After school we biked to Tesco for a few things - not that we needed anything special there, but it was a longer bike ride for some exercise.   :-)  Since Monday was the Labor Day holiday at home, our kids had all been at the Riverside Bible Camp all-staff reunion, and they were all staying at Paul & Alana's overnight.  So we got to talk to everyone but Alana (she had to work).  It was fun talking to three of them, all sitting on the couch together back in Iowa, reporting on Olson Family Games!!  

Tuesday the students met with their class teachers all morning, so we asked to go meet our new classes of students.  We just did a quick stop-by to say hello and welcome the kids.  We actually left school early to go home and change clothes for an instructional field trip for the rest of the day!  Erik had arranged this outing with the headmistress last week, so we had permission to miss the afternoon staff meeting.  

Stefan and Jan, two of the basketball group, picked up Erik, Tim and me at school for a trip to tour the power plant facilities at the reservoir near Vychodna.

We got the most amazing, informational and unique personalized tour of Čierny Váh, because Stefan spent years of his professional life as the engineer in charge of constructing the facility back in the 1970's.  

This graphic shows the concept - a lower reservoir (at right) was created by damming the river - from there water is pumped horizontally, then up through the mountain at a 45 degree angle to be held in the upper reservoir.  The pumping happens at night when power isn't needed by factories and people in cities.  Then, when power is needed at peak consumption times, the water is allowed to flow back down the pipe, turning turbines to create electricity as needed.  

After donning hard hats, we were allowed into the tunnel used only by workers - definitely not open to the public or other visitors!  We were only allowed there because of Stefan and his accomplishments in building the facility in the first place!  

We entered and walked 500 meters (aka yards) in a tunnel parallel to the horizontal pipe.  

We arrived at an elevator shaft, also going parallel to the water pipe, where it goes up to the upper reservoir.  It's a LONG way up!!  

It was cold in the tunnel, so we were all bundled up.  Cute hard hats, eh?? 

Stefan and Erik kept grabbing my camera to take pictures with me in them too!  This was the worker who accompanied us on our tour.  

I'm bummed this wasn't a good picture of Stefan too - he kept us fascinated by stories of the difficult construction process and the complex engineering behind the whole operation. Erik was awesome as our translator, especially considering all the specific technical terms Stefan was using!  And Jan was our geography expert, telling us all about the mountains surrounding the area, again with Erik translating.  

After a lot of cloudy and gloomy weather since we arrived back in Slovakia, our day at the reservoir was sunny, clear and beautiful!  

Tim with our engineering expert and our expert translator!   (Stefan and Erik)  The top of this mountain was actually sliced off to make the reservoir, and the rocks were used to make the road up the mountain to transport materials up for the construction of the reservoir and tunnels / pipes.

The Vysoké Tatry mountains in the background.  Some of the mountain places we've visited were behind us in this picture.  

This is actually a 'typo' in Slovak, which just made me giggle!!  'Nosnost' is actually a word I recognized because we see it daily in our elevator, and it was also correctly written in many places in the reservoir facility.  But here, spelled incorrectly, it looks like 'No snot' - LOL!!  The worker couldn't figure out why I took the picture, so back in the elevator he kept pointing out the correct spelling there, and explaining the 's' was missing upstairs.  (All in Slovak, but I could tell what he was saying!)  Silly American!!  

I forgot to mention that the elevator ride up through the mountain at the 45 degree angle lasted for 15 minutes each way ---- it's a LONG way up!!  The workers use it on a daily basis to go up and check to make sure everything is working O.K., but like I said, no tourists get to take it like we did.  

Back down on the lower level, we toured the power plant portion of the facility.  These are the tops of the 6 turbines.  

The worker had Tim stand right next to this machinery to show how enormous it is.  

Explanations about how the turbines operate - they go one way to pump the water up into the reservoir on top of the mountain, and another direction to create electricity as the water flows back down to the lower reservoir.  

The diameter of the water pipes is over 2 meters - huge!!  Because of the enormous weight of the water, the bottom of the piping is thicker (and stronger) than the top.  

After leaving the hard-hat area, you won't see me in any more pictures.  I had to get really stern with the guys, and they finally understood when I refused to be photographed with a severe case of 'helmet-hair' - LOL!!!!   :-)   (Even without a mirror, I knew it had to be bad, because when I asked Tim for an assessment, he just stifled a laugh and agreed that I shouldn't be in any pictures!  I have always appreciated his honesty in situations like this!)

Walking out onto the dam at the lower reservoir.  Ahead of us you can see some wide-spaced railroad tracks.  The contraption down at the end is a crane that moves along the tracks so large pieces of debris can be removed from the water above the dam.  

The water spillway beyond the dam.  Beautiful scenery!!  

The power station distributing the electricity generated by the water-driven turbines.  It was really an amazing tour, with so many explanations and stories from Stefan!  

A little ways upstream from the lower reservoir, we went to a forest church and cemetery, where this statue and bell tower are located.  The statue commemorates the King of the Hungarian Empire visiting and hunting in the area.  

The last thing we saw driving around the lower reservoir was the water ramp down into the reservoir from the river bed above.  The structure on the right serves as stairs for the fish to go upstream.  

All in all, it was a really interesting day, and it was fun being with our three awesome tour guides and companions!  Tuesday evening we had another 'programme' - the British term that is often used here for itinerary, schedule, plans, etc.   Eva, my adult student, had invited us over to her flat at 6:00 for wine, cute little open-face sandwiches, tiny fresh wild cranberries, and delicious cakes make by Monika, her daughter.  Along with her husband, Ivan, the four of us had a delightful evening chatting and enjoying refreshments.  Later, Ivan's mother stopped by for a while, and then two of their kids came home too.  

OOPS - I guess I didn't have the camera's timer function set properly the first time!  But the smiles from Ivan, Monika, Eva and Ondrej were so nice!!  They are such a neat family!

I won't even mention the number of 'fails' that happened before I finally made it into place in time for this picture --- HAHAHA!!!   

 Wednesday (today) was the first day of regular classes, so Tim and I were excited to finally get going with our students again.  We really enjoyed it, and it was nice because we each only had 3 classes today.  For lunch, we tried a restaurant we hadn't been to before, and it was really good food, yet less expensive than other places, so we may go back again tomorrow!  (Lunches have been mostly with just our two Slovak daughters - Katarina Joy and Jana Elizabeth - since Slovak people don't have middle names, we christened them both with American middle names that suit them perfectly!!  And our Slovak younger sister has been dubbed Zuzana Marie!!)   After school, Janka drove us to see her recent house renovations, but she made a quick stop at a darling little bakery shop we've seen but have never gone into.  

The bakery selections were amazing - cookies and cakes by the dozens!!  

We've noticed this little shop from the road, all decorated like a gingerbread house! 

Janka has a beautiful, big garden, and the first thing she did was pick some fresh mint to make us a cup of tea.  It was delicious with lemon and brown crystal sugar.   Mmmmm!!

And the cakes from the bakery for Janka's little housewarming party were awesome too!  Walnut cake on the bottom, some sort of rich cream-cheesy sweet layer, and fresh peach slices in a peach gel on top.  Amazing!!  

The house had new floors, windows, some walls knocked out to make more open spaces, and fresh paint everywhere.  It looked great!   And her garden was full of produce - like this heavy laden pear tree.  

After we got back from Janka's 'paradise' overlooking the Vah River and beyond to Puludnica - so beautiful - we decided we needed a little exercise.  We got the bikes out and did a few errands, dropped stuff off back at the flat, then headed up into the hills on our favorite route to Trstene.  Of course the views were magnificent, and the whole way home was coasting downhill!  Gotta love living in the mountain valley!