Condensed events

Yes, I have been remiss in my blog entries, but I have great excuses.  Things have been quite interesting here lately.  My aerobics teacher, Ilona, will be coming to spend September and October with us in Portland.  We are really looking forward to hosting her and she is ecstatic for the opportunity to be immersed in the language that she wants so badly to master.

Now, I know that my family reads this and I don't want anyone to be concerned.  I have decided to include this without lots of details:  I have been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism.  This means that I have had to go to hungarian doctors (who have proven to be very thorough and caring), make a trip to a hungarian hospital for some diagnostic tests, and am taking meds for the condition.  The hospital visit was a challenge because not only were there no signs in english, but I dealt with no one who spoke a lick of english.  When it was over, I felt as though I had really accomplished something difficult.  THEN, I had an allergic reaction to the thyroid meds.  I have include a picture.  Never been so uncomfortable.  I itched from my arches to inside my ears!  So now I am on meds to control the meds.  Will review my options when I talk to my doctor at home.

Okay, for the good part . . . we had spring vacation last week.  Due to my health issues, we were unable to do much preplanning not knowing if we would be able to leave town or not.  So we ended up renting a car and decided to drive down to the Dalmatian coastline of Croatia and then to Lake Bled in Slovenia.  We had no reservations and not much itinerary, so we  just drove where our inclination took us.  We stayed in sobes (rooms in people's home) in Croatia.  In Senj, we were approached by a middle aged man who spoke a little english.  He asked if we needed a room.  We told him that we would look at it.  So we followed him to his home where we were met by his wife who smiled a lot, but spoke no english and his daughter who told us she was studying engineering at university and spoke excellent english.  The room was clean as was the bathroom.  What impressed me the most was that the sheets had obviously been ironed, because dryers are rare and I know what our sheets look like in Budapest after we take them off the drying rack.  We told them we would take it and paid them 30 euros (about $45).

The next morning we just started driving the gorgeous coastline and saw signs for the ferry to the island of Rab which we had read about.  We looked at each other and said, "Want to check it out?"  So we did!  It was such a beautiful place with medieval buildings and the remnants of a wall which used to ring the city we decided to spend the night and began our search for a place to crash.  It is a resort town where lots of Germans and Italians stay so we  knew that the motels were going to be spendy, so we decided to search for another sobe.  We discovered this one above a restaurant and found it to be just as clean and well cared for. From the little balcony, we even had a partial view of the Adriatic.

Then, on to Slovenia!