Where does the time go?

Fall is definitely here.  The leaves are turning yellow and falling off the trees, and the Chrysanthums are in full bloom.  

It's turning cold, and in fact, we had our first "snow" of the year!  Pitiful, isn't it?  It only snowed for about an hour and then melted away.

With all that snow (smirk), it was too cold to go out for groceries so we ate popcorn for dinner.  Okay, we eat popcorn for dinner about 3 nights a week, but I just wanted to show you my Jiffy Pop popcorn that I got at the ladies retreat two weeks ago so that you could walk down memory lane with me!  How long has it been since you saw Jiffy Pop?

I was able to attend the Hungarian ladies meeting that started back again this fall.   Our craft for the day was a pumpkin made out of fall scrapbook paper.  I met a really nice lady named Andi and hope that we can get together again socially.

This past Monday, Glenn and I drove 3 hours into eastern Hungary to visit one of our families.  They have recently moved from Budapest to Debrecen but are already settled in nicely and meeting lots of friends.

Darrel and Kimberly took us to a nearby town where they make a special kind of pottery that is black.  And oh, so beautiful!  This type of pottery is several hundred years old, and has been passed down from father to son for many generations.  

The potter's name is Fazekas Istvan (remember, in Hungary, the last name goes first) and he had a great time showing the 7 of us all about the history of his familes' pottery, all the way from digging the clay to the inside of the oven where the soot gives it its' black color.

From Debrecen, we went another 3 hours into western Ukraine to visit with Clara and Emery.  They are Hungarian by birth but American by choice, having lived in America for about 15 years.   We were able to attend a Roma (Gypsy) Bible study group with them in a tiny 2 room house.  There were 14 in attendance, all in a room that couldn't have been larger than 12' x 10'!

Clara served us authentic Hungarian food with the exception of her butternut squash!  Wow!  I haven't had butternut squash in at least 6 years, and hers was delicious.   She brought the seeds from America and grew them in her own yard.  She doesn't know how much it meant that she shared something so special to us!

After we left Clara and Emery's town, we drove another 3 hours to visit with one more family.  We stayed in a small hotel (or a large pension house) for the night, which is always such an interesting experience for us.  We found a slip of paper on the back of the toilet that was 16 letters long.  We have NO IDEA what it said.  What do you think???

The remainder of the photos are various shots of things we saw on our travels.  The weather was overcast, the leaves were turning into a vibrant yellow, and the back roads were rough and winding.    

We've no idea what this sign says but we saw it many times along our route.   Can any of my readers understand this sign which is in either Russian or Ukrainian???

Every village has either a Catholic or Orthodox church in it, and they are usually the tallest building so you can see them from afar, dotting the countryside.  

They are quite ornate.

I loved seeing the benches outside the front gate of a lot of the houses.  This signifies to me a culture that values people watching and visiting with neighbors!

Several times as we drove through villages, we would see that it was market day and lots of people would be braving the cruddy weather to shop for their food.

All Soul's Day and All Saint's Day, November 1 & 2,  are two of the more popular holidays celebrated in central and eastern Europe.  It's a sentimental national holiday that lasts for two days and is when the family members honor the dead saints and visit the grave sites where their family members were laid to rest.

We saw many, many places selling wreaths, arrangements and cut flowers for people to put on the grave sites.  You could always tell where the cemetery was because of the direction that people were always walking.

I loved watching for grandma's and grandpa's on bikes, going to the cemetery or market on their bikes! I tried to imagine my father on a bike, but I couldn't picture it.

We saw many interesting sights along our drive through the countryside in Ukraine and Hungary, but there was one outstanding village that was a real shocker!  Just inside Ukraine there was a village where there were many HUGE houses under construction, bigger than any I've ever seen anywhere in Europe and not many places in America.  One house after another, bigger than any family could ever need, and some of them quite beautiful in brick or stone was in this ONE village.   According to our friends in Ukraine, it is a Romanian village and the money has somehow come from the Jehovah's Witness church.  

We are here for the next week and it is a full one!