Austria! December 2010

We took the Staleys to Passail, a little village in the foothills of the Alps, near Graz. It seemed not in keeping with the story for them to travel by car so we comprimised and the traveled in the glove box. The ski centre is where our friend Veronika had her PE lessons when she was a child.

Hungary! December 2010

The following entries were written, and photos taken, by Jen Law

Boots in the window.
Télapó(Tél=winter, apófather)ie. Santa, leaves presents in boots left in the window on the 6th December (Saint Nicolas Day). Santa doesn't come on Christmas eve in Hungary, those presents come from Jeszuska (little Jesus).

Szeged Synagogue
http://www.zsinagoga.szeged.hu/en/index.php?menupont=history

Anna Spa thermal Baths & Anna Thermal waters
The doctor recomended to us that we take 50 litres of water from here to bathe our son in to help his exema, there is often a line of people at the fountain fill bagloads of bottles for both drinking and bathing.
The water comes from thermal springs mearly a kilometre underground and is said to cure and prevent all sorts of illnesses.

Waldorf-Steiner School
Lily is in 1st grade at the Waldorf school here, Children start school here when they are 6. They dont start learning to read and write in waldorf schools until they are 7 though.In first grade they focus on oral, visual and bodily expression. There is an emphisis on language learning through imersion; the first graders are learning English and Spanish. There also do a lot of handcraft and art. They ahve been exprerimenting with watercolour techniques and have been learning to knit. They even spin their own wool and made their own knitting needles from wood.

Szeged Market
There is still a very strong culture of fresh produce markets in Hungary, they built a brand new market hall in Szeged that was only finished in October. We do most of our shopping here and dont really need to go to the supermarket very often. We get all our fruit and vegetables here, we het fresh goats milk and cheese, eggs and meat, including szalami (salami) and kolbasz (long paprika spiced sausages). The stall holders are always very friendly and were very happy to meet the flat Staleys.