Lipnice nad Sazavou

I had seen a post a couple of weeks ago of an ear carved in stone mentioning that it was in the Czech Republic.  I have already seen devils carved into stone here, so I wanted to check out this ear as well.  When Leoš and I went to visit Trebic, I wanted to do something on Saturday that was in the area and we found out that the carved ear was about an hour away. We decided to make our way to the village in which you can park and then hike around.  It was a bit cold and we only saw 3 people in the area of a carved mouth.  At the carved ear and carved eyes, we didn't see a single person!!  It was so empty and it was nice to walk around in the forest by ourselves.  After seeing the three things, we noticed on the village map, it marked that there was a carved head too, but out of the way and in another village, so we drove to the head to make sure we saw all 4 things.  It was a nice day discovering a new place in nature.

                                                                    the sheep in the village

                                                                pub that Jaroslav Hašek would go to

                                                                statue of Jaroslav Hašek

                                                            main castle in the city center

                                          the photo doesn't do it justice, but this was really steep

                                                                 sign for the ear on a tree

                                                                sign for the mouth, eyes and ear

                                                                can you see the eyes??

                                                   trying to feed my scarf to the mouth, haha!

J-Hud Show Airs!!!!

In January, just 2 days before Leoš and I headed back to the Czech Republic, we got to be part of the Jennifer Hudson show audience.  They told us that the episode was going to air on March 4th, so I waited patiently until the day came.  Sure enough the episode aired and here are screenshots from the video on YouTube.  The main video for the singing portion can be found here. The extended version where Jennifer calls me out from the audience and I hug both her and Tichina Arnold can be found here. (at minute 17, 15 seconds) It was such a fun day and I will for sure never forget it.  Because I Said So!!!!

                                         

                                                              there's Leoš in the audience!

                                                                   

on the Jennifer Hudson show website!

I had to wear my glasses while on stage!

                                                                    hugging Jennifer Hudson

                                                                            high five

hugging Tichina Arnold

                                                            amazing piano player

Colombian Lunch

My friends, from a project last year, and I have been having potluck dinners since November.  This month, we weren't able to have the potluck, so we went to a Colombian restaurant, El Arriero, instead.  The food was great as always and I was happy that I was able to introduce my Colombian friend to this restaurant.  The look on her face when she was scanning the menu and then eating the food was full of love.  She was so happy to be eating food from her home country.  We had a nice afternoon chatting and eating delicious food.  Hopefully, next month we will be able to have a potluck again!

                                                                        patacones 

chicken steak

                                                                     

Galentine's Day (7th!!!)

My first Galentine's Day event was in 2018.  I happen to come across it when I was looking for events in Prague.  Little did I know that I would be celebrating it every year.  The first Galentine's event was at a hostel called Clown and Bard and this past Christmas when we were looking for places to have a cookie exchange I remembered this hostel.  I thought that this year I would have it again at the hostel where the tradition began for me.  We had a mixture of savory and sweet snacks, but there was definitely a lot more sweet.  Unfortunately, we didn't have many things for the exchange as in the years before, but it was still fine.  Thanks everyone for joining and see you at another event in the future!

                                before the event, I helped my student write letters with candy hearts

                                                                        Turkey

USA

card table playing UNO

                                                              smallest exchange this year

                                                                        Azerbaijan 

                                                                            Italy  10,436

                                                               7th Galentine's together!!!

                                                            Happy Galentine's Day!!