Other places are warmer...

While I'm enjoying, or not, this cold weather here in Hungary, Wally is having a bit better or warmer weather in Morocco. I remember when I was there... It was very hot, now it's a bit cooler, but I still can not compare to my weather.




















Oualia and the settlement to my father for my hand. Hehehe... or not.

So Cold Here

So, this morning it was -10 Celsius. Which is about (exactly) 10 degrees below freezing... It's beautiful and white outside... but no snow...it's the frost. I really enjoyed seeing some beauty and taking pictures too.

These are some leaves on the grape vine, decorated with the frost.





















A rose bud. Barely opened, and frozen. It's very pretty. This frozen nature can be a beautiful sight.





















Another rose. It was almost open, and it won't be open for sure. The decoration of nature is beautiful on it.





















The pear tree...in the winter. Hopefully next year it will bring more fruit than this past year.

The first snow has arrived

Yeah... The snow has arrived. It's been cold here and overcast and finally one day it started snowing. Of course it has melted and because of the cold it froze over the roads.. wasn't too fun.
That was 2 days ago, on November 22nd. Since then it's been snowing here and there, temperature is below freezing... Snow fall can be beautiful if there is no strong wind involved. And of course, MORE to come. I hope for a white Christmas this year. But we'll have to wait for that.

The garden. It's not that green anymore, but at least I can stop mowing the grass this year.
You can see the snow flakes. It's pretty... but sometimes when I am freezing cold I wish to go to somewhere warm and sunny, like Morocco with Wally or South California.

Nature is beautiful

Sometimes I can be grateful for cool moments, like a cold morning. Nature holds small surprises and beauty. Like this one, yesterday. I just love it.
Click on this picture to see the original size, and the beautiful beads of dew on the web. Very amazing.
I will look for the wonders of nature in the future and if I find them, I will share them.

Polar bears are coming!!!!

We have a running joke in my home. A few weeks ago the weather started to cool down. I was coming into the house like a crazy person yelling "the bears are coming, the bears are coming!"
Of course, like normal people, my parents didn't know what and why I was saying that. Well... I was super cold... and I felt like I am on the North Pole... and waiting for the polar bears to turn at the corner and head to my house.... And since that time, when we are cold we talk about the "bears", and quickly start the heater going to keep the bears out.
I am worried about winter time. I will cuddle with the bears...
Oh well, I keep warm, house is nice... outside, well...it's nature. I'll get used to it.

Joy from the garden

So we have beets in the garden. Lucky, the last big hale storm, that destroyed everything in the garden above ground, didn't hurt the things growing below. Look at the size of these beets!!!
It took a bit of work out for my dad to cut this beet in half. And today we are canning beets. They are cooking right now, so I have time to post this blog. Beets are good!!
And my favorite thing in the garden is the fig tree. It's still very young, but you can see the small figs at the bottom of the leaves. We won't eat these this year...but if they won't freeze during winter we'll have big figs next year. It's very exciting!!! And I LOVE figs.
By the way, what did Adam and Eve do with the fig leaves??? Look at these leaves... hide nothing, they really had to make aprons from them. :)

Wally and I

Oualia Eddah...Ohiboka!!!
This picture was taken the day after we came back from Tan Tan, his home town. He told me before, "it's a small city"... so I was expecting a small city... and it was pretty big, about the population of 60.000. When I learned that I was laughing, because I LIVE in a SMALL CITY... and he thought I was kidding, when I told him, that in my city there are 6.000 people... Big difference...(Anyway, I wouldn't call this place city...maybe boonies....yes I'm still bitter about this place...)

Ohhhhhh look at his eye lashes!!!
It's not fair my man has longer and fuller eye lashes than I do. But still he's gorgeous with them.
And I fell in love again here, he was freshly shaven, and I've never seen him like this before, and I love him anyway.
Yeah, love birds....



We were going to a casino/restaurant with uncle and Rochida. And I didn't really have nice clothing with me (I thought I travel to the desert of Morocco, not the beautiful city of Agadir...) So Hana let me use her traditional clothing. I think it's very pretty. Yeah, and I still ended up going in my jeans and a white shirt, because it was forbidden to go to that place in traditional clothing...Oh well, at first I was embarrassed to wear jeans with my company... but then I saw people wearing shorts... sandals... sporty clothing, yes they were Americans. :)
This was taken the night before I left Morocco.
Watching TV and cuddling, or I was cuddling and he was reading... doesn't matter, it was just a lovely time with him. Like every moment.




The day before I came home...
Here we were going to get me Henna. Oh, I need to put pictures of that too.
Agadir, you can see the docks behind us, it's past the beauiful beach, but the view from here is still pretty.




My silly man. He sings to me, he dances to me, he makes me laugh, makes me happy and loves me.

AND I LOVE HIM!

drag your mouse over the canvas to paint, click your mouse when you want to change the paint color

More about Morocco

The TEA is very delicious. They make (here Wally makes) mint tea, in a little tiny tea pot. I think they know the art of making the tea. They serve it in a little glass, the first time I saw those cups, they reminded me of the "shot glass", but maybe it's the double in size. So, they don't drink tea from a mug... I even have a tea pot and a set of glasses too, uncle gave that to me when I left, but my tea pot is half the size of this one on the picture. You would think it's crazy to drink hot tea in super hot weather, well, I though it was crazy, but it was hotter then the weather, so I felt cooler pretty quickly. Everybody makes the tea differently, Wally pours it from really high, his sister makes it with a little foam on the top of it, I make it.... with LOTS of mess...
We were driving from Agadir to Tan Tan (it's south of Agadir). We were not deep in the desert, but the edge of it... and the second time, in about 20 minutes, the car broke down. Uncle called some people who came out to fix the car, but during that time we put all the food on the hood of the car and enjoyed our lunch, in the desert, in the heat... It was a really fun adventure, and I am totally serious about it. After this stop the car made it to our destination and back too.

The food I didn't try....I almost turned around and run from the kitchen when I saw this. There are things my stomach can take to easily...Rochida made this food, pieces of stomach, filled with special inside stuff...liver, heart, lung, fat pieces, and she made a ball out of it, and wrapped it around with intestines....and there were about 5 little balls on one line of intestine... Yeah...
One night I saw it in the 'common' plate... and I recognized the stomach... and I didn't dare trying it.

And then one morning, I was taking my laundry out to the balcony to dry... and I was in shock... because I saw these things hanging on the line...drying... I put my clothes far from these things...

Oh, don't worry, the toes on the bottom of the picture are not food. Hehehe



We were driving on the beach of Agadir, and heading for a place called "Marina Agadir", you can see that on the picture anyway.
Those are really fancy apartments and docks for sail boats. It's a nice place to walk around and do window shopping.

My Exotic Traveling 2008

In the high desert sun... I see the caravan... The wind is gently stirring the sand and the camels walk peacefully one after the other... In the shadows of the palm trees in the oasis the men set down drinking their tea...


YEAH sure... I wish it was this exotic...

Yes, I traveled to Africa. I went to Morocco. What an adventure!!

I had ONE, and very important reason (and lots of little reasons) for this trip, and that's HIM, Wally. He said I had to tell about him at the beginning, for everybody to know that he's my man, and he loves me. :) So this is him, Oualia.
We met in December of 2006, an online fling that became very serious. And this year, in June, we finally met for real. I was a bit nervous to travel alone in a country I've never visited, but I found him, his family, very welcoming. And all the people I've met were very sweet.
I had a long flight from Budapest-Paris-Casa Blanca-Agadir. I left early in the afternoon and arrived at 1AM in Agadir, Morocco. Yeah, sand dunes, camels, easy breeze...I got off the airplane in Casa Balanca and it was HOT at 11PM and super humid...I though it's Africa, desert, hot during the day, cool/cold at night and dry air... yeah, maybe in the middle of the Sahara... and of course I didn't see anything, it was dark, so I don't know if it was "gone by the wind" or not.
I had a bit of a problem at passport check in Agadir, when I realized I didn't have Wally's correct address with me...and I kind of knew it.. but that wasn't enough. And speaking English and not French didn't help me much, because the dear police man wasn't happy about that... but he did know English. Oh well, I'm glad Wally and uncle Mohamed and his wife Rochida and their son, Abdel Wahed were waiting for me. And we cleared all the problems and FINALLY we really met.

This is the decoration of the ceiling in uncle Mohamed's home. This is in the "sitting room", I'm not sure what to call it, but when a guest comes they have dinner/tea here. I had the privilege to visit a few homes in Morocco, and they are tastefully decorated (not as richly as this one). By the way, I spent most of my time here, in Agadir, and we only went to Wally's hometown, Tan Tan, for a few days. It was very nice from uncle and his family to have me for a month in their home. I'm grateful for that.


Family lunch. Almost all the time the family is together for lunch AND dinner. There is uncle on my right, on my left is Hana, Wally's sister, and Abdel Wahed, the cousin, and Rochida, uncle's wife. And we are eating cous-cous. It is so delicious, "bnin". And at this time we eat like normal people, using utensils, but after a few days they returned to, and I've got used to the Moroccan traditional eating, by hand. RIGHT hand. Meals are always great. I stopped eating breakfast after a few days so I can have lunch... Lunch is usually at 2PM or around it, there is a snack, around 6-7PM and dinner most of the time at 12AM or 1-2AM... I was lucky only a few times to be able to have dinner at 10PM. It was very strange, but the food is unbelievable. I didn't get sick. The water is good, there is bottled water, but tap water is as good as the other.

Wally and I. Me wearing the clothing from the Sahara. He's from Western Sahara, which is the southern part of Morocco and wants independence from it.
I borrowed this clothing from Hana, and it's only a long piece of fabric tied together and wrapped around the body. I was super hot there, and I couldn't stand having more clothing than I really needed on my body. So I only had this on for the picture. (Now, I would definitely wear it, would keep me warm hehehe).



My new family, Su-ed, she's uncle's daughter, Wally, I and Hana.







The beach in Agadir. It is so beautiful. (especially, if you look close on the picture, you can see the golden arches of McDonald's).
I enjoyed coming to the beach and walking around and sit down in a restaurant have a drink and relax and watch all the people walking by.
The sand on the beach is super fine, I'm sure they fill the sand timers here.

Big Move

On the 1st of May of this year, 2008, I moved back home to Hungary. I left California after 9 years. It was a bitter sweet move, sweet for seeing my family after 8 years, bitter... for many reasons, but leaving my friends is on the top of my list. I didn't like to do that.
After being home for over 4 months now I still have some of those friends, and every time we talk, or communicate with each other is a joy for me.
And as the summer is over... here, IS over... I am crying for the California sun, and asking any able person to do some canning and can some sunshine for me. Oh I am so cold, and it's not even winter yet... What will I do?
We are having trouble with the heating system in the house, after removing a heater during the bathroom renovation, it just doesn't want to work...so I feel like cuddling a polar bear at night... Oh well I will survive somehow.

This is Budapest. That beautiful building is the place of ugly things, the politics. That's the Parliament. (The big and spacious building..)
The water (represent) the Danube, or the DUNA (its name Hungarian). This side, where I took the picture is called Buda and the other side is Pest. There are many (over 10) bridges connecting the two sides together.


So we had a little problem in our bathroom... The tiles from the wall were falling off. For many many years now. And this summer we decided to change those on the wall AND on the floor, and to make our job a bit more difficult, we changed the bathtub too, and painted...
No, we didn't hire anybody, only for the work to change the tub, but my parents and I did all the work. And you see... It looked pretty bad, but this picture is already with the new tub in. And of course these days trouble, the heater isn't in there...(neither was the toilet....)




And this is how, after a week of hard work the bathroom looked. I still painted it later.
I like it a lot more than before. But it still works the same old way like always.










This is the garden, in May. The pear trees full of hope and fruit...
until a hale storm in July, when nature harvested pretty much everything in our garden that was above ground. (It should have taken the grass too... but noooo... I still have to mow the lawn.. ;)
And this garden was good for our little pool in the summer when we cooled off.



This is the entrance to the house, by the little terrace and the roses.







This was a short way of telling the happenings of the past 4 months in Hungary. But there were a LOT more stories and fun.

2007 My last great trip in the USA

This was a trip I didn't have to plan for too much. I mean, I was excited, and was planning to get my stuff ready, but Jen (again), my travel buddy, she got on fire and started planning and having fantastic ideas. I was sorry, no white water rafting was included.. hehehe but there were other things on the plate.

We, again, were driving up California coast and our destination was Seattle, Washington.
Our first stop was San Simeon, we saw Hearst Castle. What an amazing place... yeah, it shows a man who didn't know what to do with his money....but still, beautiful. Gold gold everywhere. Look at this inside pool... in the little mosaics there is 25karat gold.. I didn't want the gold just wanted to swim in the pool. Riches, it's all I can say. If you can, you should go and visit this place.

Our next stop was Monterey. I was here 2 years before, but the weather then... was bad compare to this time. It was sunny and beautiful and we saw more than before. And more colors too. I loved Pebble Beach, adn I would go there any time if I had a chance. And Monterey is a lovely city to visit.




After Monterey, we drove up to San Francisco. We did some fun things, eat good food (clam chowder)... hehehe I mention this the second time on my blog... I don't eat creepy crallies...I mean shrimp and things in a shell... but I do love clam chowder. We went on a cruise again, and you can see San Francisco behind Jen. It's always fun to visit SF. And the weather was on our side again.

Our next stop was Crater Lake. Yeah, this was the only time the weather wasn't too kind. When we got there the fog was settling down and we saw almost nothing from the lake...very disappointing. And it was raining and COLD. We set up our tent and treated ourselves with a very nice dinner in a restaurant (dry and warm place). After we watched a movie (The Holiday) in the car... and went to sleep listening to the rain falling down. BUT the next morning the fog burned up very quickly so before we left the lake we looked around and found this beautiful blue crater lake, and everything was so clear and fresh.

We arrived in Portland next. Such a neat city. That's a place I can imagine to live in . We went to down town...OK, it's funny, compare to LA down town... Portland is VERY clean, and you can find parking any time on the streets. We went to this super big book store...it has his own map... If you need info about it... well ask Jen, she knows more about it than me.
We went to this Chinese Museum in down town. Very nice and interesting. Our camping was nice too, only we were close to the train tracks and every time the train passed by we could feel it on the ground. We saw lots of waterfalls and went to the famous rose garden. That was amazing with ALL those beautiful colorful roses. LOVED IT!!!!


This is just a little part of the rose garden.
And look at Jen, you should do what she does. Stop! And smell the roses. Enjoy life.
I felt like in Heaven, I love gardens and flowers and especially roses, so this place was for me, the only problem we couldn't take them with us.



Jen and I in Portland, close to our camp site. At sunset.

Self portrait. We like to do that, I like to do that.






Finally at our destination, in Seattle, WA. We made it up to the Space Needle too. Yep, we are up there on this picture. I had a friend long time ago and she sent me many postcards from Seattle and I longed to go to that place and maybe go up to the Space Needle there.
And no, we were not sleepless in Seattle.



Here, we waved to Canada, from Port Angeles, and turned around and went home... again. We always return home. It was fun. Jen is a great companion to travel with!!!

Trip of 2006

So this year Jen P. and I decided to go to Yellow Stone National Park. Oh, I always wanted to go there, and finally with a little bit of planning, we traveled.
First, we drove from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, and from there, we headed up north through Utah and Idaho to Wyoming.

We camped at a KOA camping in Jackson Hole, and I was pleasantly surprised there. Very neat place. Our tent looked over the Snake River, very pretty site.

And this same evening we already had a wonderful program planned. We went to see the Bar J. Wranglers in the city of Jackson Hole. These cowboys are amazing, they sing and entertain and super fun. So guys, if you ever have a chance to travel that way, it's worth to see them. And the food they served was good too. (And girls, there are some hot cowboys there too)
Maybe later I find the videos I took and can attach a little bit of their program, they are super talented with the music and very funny too. We were in pain from the laughing by the end of the night.

After this fun evening we had a super day. Jen and I decided to go white water rafting. Yep. We've never done it before so we wanted to try it. And we even had our (or mostly my last will taped... just in case). It was a "small" boat and took a family of 5, Jen and I and our tour guide. The rafting was about 2 hour long with nice cold water around and all over us. I never regret that I tried it, I want to do it again!!!




When we finished of course we were soaking wet, but we wanted to go back again right after, but we had other plans in our agenda, which was to reach Yellow Stones. And pretty much this was our destination. We spent several days here, but as the night got drastically freezing cold... we cut our trip a day shorter.
We saw deer, bison and a lots of other kind of creatures, and NO we did not see bears, even though we camped out in "bear country". Lucky us.















Jen and I enjoying the colors of these special lakes









At Fairy Falls









There is a geyser behind me.








Jen beside the frosted something, it looked like a BIG white frosted cake.





OK, the smell wasn't all that good everywhere. This was some kind of sulfur-ish smell... not too pleasant





On our last morning, before the time to get up, I was up, and in the car, running the heat...It was cold, 28F...and my air matrace went flat, and... yeah all my excuses... I was freezing. We were supposed to stop at the Grand Tetons for a night... but after this morning, we could not stay another night. We drove by the Tetons and took some amazing pictures there too. After the Tetons on our way home we stopped my SLC and went home to relax.



At the Grand Tetons. We had amazing view from this spot.