Brrrr! It's cold here!

The first couple of days of the week were very quiet. Glenn left on Monday (the same day Barbara returned to the U.S.) for a 3 day/2 night bike ride around Lake Balaton with his friend, Istvan. I love Glenn and I missed him, but I admit the 3 days by myself were nice. I still had to hold down the fort and respond to calls and emails, but just being able to eat when (and what!) I wanted was nice. I didn't get any projects done and I didn't get as many emails written as I'd hoped, but I did allow myself to watch a couple of movies in the evenings. I walked and read a good book. It was fun and relaxing.



Glenn enjoyed his bike ride and his body handled it pretty well, but his hands have been giving him some problems. The last two fingers on each hand have been numb and he is having trouble gripping things, but they are getting better. His bike held up pretty well too, except at the very end! He biked all the way around the lake without any problems, rode the train back to Budapest with his bike stashed to the side, but when he got off the train in BP, the gear mechanism just dropped off his bike! He had to call me to come pick him up! I'm glad it was on the very end of his trip!



I always get amused at Glenn as he carries on conversations with our neighbors, the elderly couple who are the parents of our landlord. He amazes me! Somehow, he is able to communicate what he wants to say! This week Glenn noticed our neighbor had someone over who was working with sheets of steel so Glenn asked him to come over and look at our grill. Glenn hired the friend of the neighbor to make us a cover for the grill! Amazing!



We have a guest staying with us this week because the Eden House is full and overflowing. One afternoon we took her into town to do a little sightseeing, and it was so cold I had to wear a long sleeve shirt and a light jacket! And this is mid-July! I remember 2 summers ago when Budapest hit record highs of 111 degrees. It was 20 degrees celcius (72 degrees fahrenheit). It was beautiful weather and perfect for walking through town.



The above picture was in last week's blog update, but I wanted to show you the difference a week can make in the flood level here! See the photo below, taken this week.

Just the week before, this road was under water!

While we were in town with our guest, we saw all the tourists and locals enjoying the beautiful sunshine and soft breeze in the cafe' lined streets. Perfect day.

Every weekend in July and August the Szabadsag Hid (Liberty Bridge) is closed to cars and opened for pedestrians. Booths are set up across the bridge where folks sell local arts and crafts and traditional Hungarian foods. This weekend the French living in Hungary celebrated one of their national holidays by setting up booths and selling French products, such as cheeses, wine, breads and pastries.

They also had places where kids, teens, and young adults could play various sports (thanks to sporting goods store Decathalon). These children are enjoying playing Boules.

Teens and young adults enjoyed Ping-pong. We didn't play anything, but we enjoyed hearing all the beautiful French! It is so weird to be able to hear a foreign language and understand it! Beautiful but weird.

And one more photo of Parliment. :) I can't wait until all the scaffolding is off the building and I can get a perfect photo!!

In other news, our son Chris and wife Kate closed on their house this past week and will be moving to New Jersey on July 17th where Chris will start studying to become a physician's assistant. Our son-in-law Jonathan finished his fifth year of osteopathy school and will start the final year this fall. Kari stays busy as editor of a French magazine and doing voice recordings for television and radio. Glenn and I are definitely blessed by our children and their spouses!