I apologize.

I am in the process of coming up with a new blog name. But in the mean time I apologize to any of you (i.e. my sister) who was bothered by the apostrophe in the previous blog name "THE UTAH MARSHALL'S". I'm not sure why I put there and I am terribly sorry if it bothered the grammar monster inside of any of you.

Home

I did make it home from Europe... and then made it to Yuma... and then made it to the Grand Canyon... and then made it to Moab... and then made it home... and I'm now working on packing up the apartment to move to Idaho (our REAL home). When that happens I'll have to come up with a new blog name. And hopefully you'll get to see some more Slovenia/Paris/Arizona/California/Moab pictures.

Slovenia, Last morning

So I missed blogging yesterday and now it's 4:00 AM and I'm busily packing to catch the shuttle to the airport. Thus.. not time to blog about yesterday.

Back home it is 8:00 pm and I'd be in graduation right now if I were home... I wore my Utah shirt to bed last night to celebrate.

Slovenia Day 6

Today was our last working day. We finished all our work and tomorrow we are going to be touring a reactor facility here in slovenia. This evening I finished all my shopping needs and requirements. I finally found something for Brett and I am very, very, very excited to give it to him because I think he will really like it a lot. I also found the most fun jewelry shop. I think it might be even better than the jewelry shop my sister found last month back east that she is still raving about. All the jewelry was handmade and about as funky and fun as can be. There were lots of glass, wire, and stone designs that I LOVED LOVED LOVED. I bought some earrings and a glass ring but the ring already broker. I am going to go back tomorrow to see if I can exchange it. However, being made of glass I'm sure the next one will break too and I rather continue wearing the broken one than get a perfect one and live in fear of it breaking. We'll see what I decide to do.

We went out to dinner at a cocktail bar but the food was amazing. I have some pictures but I'm too tired and will post them tomorrow with the pictures of the tour.

Slovenia Day 5/ The Big Day

~6:00 (first and not the important, if you are unsure I use the '~' sign to signify approximately. during this meeting there was some russian gentlemen who were confused by the use of this symbol because to this it means of the same magnitude not approximately. approximately would be the double '~' or the wavey equals sign as I call it.)

Today was the day that my evaluate was under review. I am still alive. There were a lot of comments and it took nearly two hours to make it through but someone said it was good for a first time evaluator so hopefully not all hope is lost for me. At least my mentors haven't told me I'm not allowed to come and work for them anymore (...yet). I didn't cry during any of the comments, I had after all threatened to be the first person to cry, but my core body temperature did rise a little bit (not enough to be noticeable by others though). In summary, it was not an enjoyable experience and I have threatened to not come back next year BUT I think time will lesson the pain and I will come back next year if they let me.

This evening we are going out to a authentic slovene restaurant so there should be pictures of that later..

(also not important... I tried doing spell check for the first time in a long time on my blog.. it highlighted almost everyword I THINK because it is spell checking for slovene words and not english words.)

Slovenia Day 4/Work & Working Dinner

Today was work all day again but this evening we had a 'working' dinner in Bled. It was so beautiful up there.
Bled has the only island in slovenia and it has a church on it.

There is this castle on the cliff on the lake shore.

The surrounding area was so lush and green. It was rainy still so we couldn't see the alps in the background but it was still gorgeous. I was sure to touch the water in honor of my sister who has to touch every major body of water she ever comes within 100 miles of (even if it means sleeping in the car at the new hampshire airport just to touch to ocean).

We ate at Vila Bled which was the Vila of former Yugoslavic President Tito. I didn't get many good pictures of the Vila.

In the room where we ate there was a large mural of WWII for Yugoslavia. Some parts were a little bit more graphic and didn't set quite the right ambiance but they were proud of it.

The food was quite good. These were the appetizers. The seafood cocktail (bottom) was not to my liking. Once I tried the tentacle I was done with that one. The moxarella balls were to die for though.

The dinner and dessert were delicious but we never got to the buffet table at the right time and they were always out. The desserts the completely ran out of so what you see above is not what was on the menu.

In other food news. At Brett's requrest I tried Doner Kebaps twice.
This is the man shaving the meat.

These are the two doner kebaps. They were both quite tasty. I couldn't however find the Ula Dag which is the drink Brett asked me to bring back for him and his brother. I have grown very fond of the Shwepps Bitter lemonade. It's delicious.

Last night we went out for dinner.
I had risotto and apple strudel. Both were very good
Tomorrow it is more work.

Slovenia Day 3/Work

The next few days will be all work. Not very exciting and so I don't really have any pictures.

Slovenia Day 2/Tour Day

Today we went on a tour of the southwest part of the country. We went to a cave in Postojna, a castle in Stanjel (there is suppose to be a thiny on top of the S), and the shore in Piran. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

The Driving was gorgeous. Of course it was har

Our first stop was this cave. The bottom picture is John and me by the sign for the cave. There is also a picture of all the people I know at the meeting on the train that goes through the cave and then some pictures of the cave

This is the castle we visited. We had some tastings there. The stair case is for my mom's interests

This is really creepy looking but really good chocolate given to us by a man from Russia here at the meeting.

This is a picture from the bus. Churches with tall towers like this were all over the place.

Sorry about the pictures not being rotated. These are all from around the castle. The views were breathtaking!

This is the town square at Piran.

A beautiful tree in Piran

This is me with my feet in the rather codldadriatic sea.

Again, sorry about the not being rotated. I liked the sail boat in the picture. The land in the back ground is croatia.

Because it was cloudy you could barely see Italy. In the horizon you can barely make out the coastline that is slightly darker than the sky. That is Italy. The peninsula is Slovenia on the side you can see and Italy on the other.

That was my day. After getting back we went out for a quick dinner of pizza and then came back to the hotel for the night. I talked to brett on Skype for a while and loved every minute of it.

Slovenia day 1/Travel

~5:00:
I made it to slovenia. I left salt lake at 5:00 pm on Friday the 30th and arrived in Slovenia Saturday the first at 5:00 pm. The flight from SLC to Paris was good but long. I slept okay on the flight and got a little work done. I got to see bits of england, the english channel, and france through the clouds. The french countryside is beautful. It lookes like a patch work of greens, browns, and yellow. After a short stay in the Paris airport it was off to slovenia. I'm suppose to meet some people in a few minutes but I wanted to share some pictures with you real quick.

Paris from the air.

Policemen on actual horses in front of our hotel and my hotel room.

It took me a while to figure out how to turn on the lights. I freak me out a little that none of the switches did anything. Turns out the box by the door that I didn't notice... You have to put your room key into it and all the lights will turn on. Pretty neat eh? Well I'm off to find food.

~9:00
Well I'm back from buying food. Brett was logged on to his gmail account and I'm very happy to be chatting with him through gmail as we speak. Instant messaging/online chatting does make me feel like I'm in Jr. High again though and I don't like it. We are working on getting it so we can talk over Skype. Here is what we did this evening...

This is the view from my hotel (not part of what we did this evening but still cool)

Outside the Hotel


The hotel from down the street



The center of the touristy downtown.


Dinner: Gyro Pita and a Banana Nutella Crepe

After dinner we wandered around down town. There are a ton of beautiful buildings that are in stark contrast of the buildings from the communist era.

The castle overlooking the city is in the background atop the hill.


This statue was rare because... he is fully dressed. Or at least more dressed than most the other statues.


Okay this guy was/is fully dressed and awesome!


The park was so green and beautiful there were tons of flowers I've enver seen before and some I have. The amusing part is that the flowers are so well kept but the grass not so much. The grass is longer and has dandelions in it. Not a bad thing but different from parks back home.