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.

Another trip 2005

In 2005 we stayed local, and Timi (Gégény) flew in from Provo and we went on a road trip along the California coast. I can't say anything else, but beautiful. We wanted to go boogie boarding on the first day, but we drove too far north and the water got SO cold, I stepped back and chickened out. But at least I put my feet in the water. Of course we were not perfectly prepared here either... no reservations, only adventure. We wanted to camp out at Big Sur... but of course, in August, all the camping sites were full... so at this time, the first night, we slept in the car, if I am correct, might have been in Monterey.
We went to Pebble Beach, the 13 mile drive. It was very pretty. The weather wasn't the best, it was overcast and super foggy in the morning, but the same day we went back to see a bit more of the beauty of this place.
We visited Monterey too, had clam chowder in a bread bowl and saw lots of sail boats.



Next day we drove up to San Francisco. Fun city. We went on a harbor cruise, under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz. What an experience! I never thought I would make it here. We went to Ghirardelly square, China town, drove around town having feelings like on the roller coaster.
After this boat trip, we went on a little hunt to find a camp site. We ended up UP in Mount Tamalpais. A little bit north of San Francisco. And it's really up close to the top of the mountain, above Muir Woods. Our camp site was in the so called "Spooky Forest". Well, we called it like that. When we arrived, it was so foggy, and so humid that the humidity was dripping off the moss from the trees... it was really spooky, we didn't see too far either...We had two night up here, the first was super cold (FOR ME), the next night, we tried to prepare and covered all the openings in the tent, and guess what, it cleared out and was literally warm outside... and we were dying in the tent from the heat. Yeah, nothing's good for me hehehe

We went to see the Muir Woods below Mount Tamalpais. Very tall red woods all over.

We got our stuff together headed for the Capitol... Sacramento. I expected more... I can't tell you what way... but I expected more from Sacramento... I don't ever want to go back, it wasn't too desirable for me.
Then we took a big right turn and started to go to Lake Tahoe. Before we got there, Timi told me she might know some people there, I didn't know that, she didn't mention that before. But hey, we looked them up, and they still lived there. And they were taking care of the apartments right on the beach of the lake. And they offered us one apartment, we could have had a big party there, it had like 4 rooms... and all kind of things in there... all for free for a few days. So this was the place where we relaxed. Swam in the lake, I drove around it once to see all side of it. And I loved it a lot.
We relaxed here for a few days and headed back towards Los Angeles. On our way back we drove through Yosemite National park. I mean... really drove through it. Because we didn't know when exactly head back, we couldn't make reservation.. and of course, like on our first day of this trip, there was no free campsite, so after we drove through Yosemite, we found a Rite Aid and slept in the car in the parking lot. Lovely...I'm getting used to sleeping in the car...

And on our last day of the trip we went to Sequoia National park. At least we could look around here a little bit and take some pictures.
Another wonderful trip ended here. Of course we were super exhausted, but we saw many fun and beautiful places.

Trip of 2004

Next year, in 2004, I had a bigger plan, I wanted to see more of this world, and more national parks. So, I planned a trip to see 5 national parks in Utah, and my companion was Timi, who's also from Hungary and was going to BYU at that time.
I started out driving from LA to Provo, and we got our stuff together and headed towards Arches. Oh, it is so beautiful.
After spending 2 nights at Arches, climbing and hiking.. and seeing the Delicate Arch, that was my favorite, we drove to Canyon Lands National Park.

On our way to go to Capitol Reef National Park we stopped by a place called, Goblin Valley.
If you ever saw or plan to see Galaxy Quest, with Tim Allen, well, there is a part they filmed in Goblin Valley. Pretty cool. It's really a place for... goblins... it's very strange but beautiful.
And we arrived at Capitol Reef. It's another special place. Did you know there are orchards there? You can go in, eat as much fruit as you can, and when you want to take some with you, you can get it for really cheap. We had some delicious peaches there and of course, we needed some in our tent too. And by the way, these orchards were organized by the Mormons? Yep. We were proud of that. Here, at Capitol Reef, when we woke up in the morning and heading out of the tent, saw baby deer just right by our tent. We were really in Nature. I loved that.

After Capitol Reef, we drove to Bryce Canyon. I never thought it could be so wonderful. Amazing and unbelievable. And our drive was kind of unbelievable there too... driving through Dixy Forrest, with almost no gas in the car, and definitely no gas station close by. Yeah, but we made it. One of my favorite place was the road on the top of the mountain and there is NOTHING beside... just the road... I couldn't look to the sides because if I do...Let's not think about that..But it was fun. OK, we arrived in Bryce Canyon!!!

It was beautiful in Bryce Canyon. The only problems were the cold nights. The first night I woke up..my buttom feeling numb from the cold ground...Next night I slept in the car... that wasn't warmer or more comfortable either...I survived. And we took off going back to Provo, hitting Zion National park on the way. We pretty much drove through Zion, taking a picture or two there. But we had one more FUN stop, which was in Monroe, UT. Have you heard about the place, where there are bathtubs built into the hillside and the hot spring is running in and through the tubs? And you can soak in the tub and relax in the hot water. Oh, after this trip, and hot desert, lots of miles behind us, it was great to wash off the dust of this trip in the hot springs. And we spent all afternoon there. Just FYI, Monroe is off the I15, not too far from the freeway, and this place is at the end of the city (very small city, and there are signs to the place).


OK, here is a picture of the tubs built into the hill side. We had a pretty view from here over a Utah valley, and even though it was very hot summer day, when we got out of the tub we were kind of chilly. This water was super hot, but very comfortable and relaxing.



And from Provo, I drove back to California, finishing this trip. I went back to work ,so I could rest after this trip.