I Won

Hello,

I won a $25 gift certificate at a local flower shop that we visited on Thanksgiving Day. "I can get another plant!" immediately came to mind.

Now I am thinking, "Should I use it as a gift for someone else?" I know that I am more drawn to the plants than anything else, but can my house and husband live with one more?

Internet ads from Lufthansa in Slovak come to my in box. It is magic, how do they know that I can read it a little? I could change them to English, but I enjoy the challenge of understanding some with no pressure to really understand. Today they had a deal for me to go from New York (all of you could have understood that) to South America (you might not have understood that). Because I know I am not going I do not spend much time looking at it I just leave it in the Slovak and I let it keep coming to my in box.

I gave my neighbor an advent calendar that Sarah and Stephen had given us. It is in French. I believe Tatyana was quite pleased with is since it is only pictures behind the doors and the numbers are universal. Later Tatyana showed me a sheet from school requesting that they make an ornament for the building. Her daughter’s was to be a French gingerbread boy since that is the country they "are" this month. Later she showed me a paper that had the numbers (1-10) written in French. Because I had two years of French I could read those numbers. When I did that father Viktor rolled his eyes and snorted, "What French? Emily is to be learning English!"

Last night at choir practice the person who was to play the triangle was gone. I was selected to play it. It is really two very tiny cymbals. It was not easy to hold one of these in each hand, read the music, sing, and in addition turn the page. Helpfully the woman next to me held the music and turned pages. That helped a lot, but I still had some trouble since I do not know this song so well and my triangle line was at the top of the page and the voice part near the bottom.

Challenges! Challenges! I can feel my brain cells regenerating, or at least something is happening up there.

Paula