Snowmen

Thanks to Kat and Emily for volunteering their services as guest writers, telling the stories of a Christmas in Greece and a weekend in Heves county! I appreciate their efforts to tell, wittily enough, some good stories of good travels.

Beautiful snow fall in Heves this week. Three inches, more or less, will go down in the books as the "Big Blizzard of 2006," I'm guessing. It's funny to see people shovel with a small square of plywood nailed onto a 2"x4".

Recent e-mail from my wonderful father read:

blah blah blah
Ease up on the self-pity on the blog. Your other writing is far more fun to read.
blah blah blah

I would offer apologies, but I feel that would be unfair to you, him and me. Simply put, living and teaching here in Hungary, alone, is an adventure in many regards. Adventures are uncertain, there's a suspicious lack of expected outcomes and easy avenues. Wouldn't I be cheating everyone, if I didn't share the hardships? If you only heard the good stories, they wouldn't be nearly as sweet. Finding happiness where you never knew it to exist before must invariably entail the yin to that yang, finding sadness, hardship, anger, difficulty, non-humor, where it was never know to have existed. What good book didn't have conflict? What good story, a story worth telling, didn't have ups and downs, a dramatic suspense, didn't reflect the realities of this world, and of even the fictions of this world. I only write what I feel. And feeling is living. Not balanced, but augmented with thinking.

Those are the thoughts I think, and the thoughts I share. Have a great weekend!