If you can't beat em...

Živijo homies,

I hope that life is going well there in the states! Things are good here... just spent the weekend in Cerknica with my grandmother's brother and his family. It was really fun to look at pictures- my favorite was definitely a beautiful one of Slava standing by all of her siblings while they were kids. It was in the bedroom I stayed in. I also spent several hours looking at the rest of the pictures they had. I did not know the people in them, but they were very excited to show them to me.

The weather really has been exceptional for a large part of my trip, though it rained the entire time I was in Cerknica. I still managed to study a population of garlic mustard, saw a castle, and accompanied Tine on his chores:

Tine loves his cows. They are his sons, they are his friends...
Now, I do like cows, but I don't really like milk. There are things that milk goes well with... brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cocoa powder, Austrian parties (for those of you with facebook access, feel free to view the album "I can't spell things in French" for more information on that reference). And there are things that milk does not go well with... mostly everything else, including Wetzel.

Still, I wanted to accompany Tine doing the things that he loved, so I learned how to milk the cows. Unfortunately, there are no pictures, becuase Tine and I could not really communicate so well, but you just have to believe me. I extracted about 3% of that milk from a cow.

In addition to joining the Slovenes in their farming hobbies, I stumbled upon this the other day: those of you who know your extreme mountain sports, will recognize this as the downhill mountain biking World Cup, taking place on the very mountain in which I was searching for my plant in Maribor, Slovenia. No plant, but I think that accidentally coming across the world cup (and getting in for free, mind you, since I just happened to be in the woods) was still a very good way to spent the afternoon.

So in short, I am all about joining the Slovenes... meeting them where they are.
This is why I have started smoking.