Detox Diet Day 1:
Breakfast of tea and roasted oatmeal (Libor's special recipe! *snickering*) with homemade applesauce
Lunch of meatloaf and potatoes
Chocolates. Lots of chocolates
Dinner of meatloaf on bread with mustard
Apples with peanut butter
Lots of tea

Detox Diet Day 2, Take 2 (chocolates hidden today):
Breakfast of tea, then latte
Lunch of porkchops and pasta
Lots of tea
Snack of a spoonful of peanut butter
Dinner is peanut butter on bread with apples and bananas
Lots of tea

Detox Diet Day 3, Take 3:
Breakfast of latte
Lunch of meatloaf on bread with mustard
... making tea as I type

As you can see, my New Year's resolution of eating better is getting off to a slooooooooow start. :-P Being in Breclav unfortunately meant 2 large meals a day (I refuse breakfast knowing the large meals ahead of me) with lots and lots of homemade holiday pastries. On New Year's Eve I pulled on my jeans and struggled to button them closed. *cursing*

Last night Libor and I bought the bus tickets to go to Prague next Friday for our tearful goodbyes and my flight to Rome. Has 4 months passed already? Damn. I did everything I could to make the time go as slowly as I could. I stayed in my PJs as long as I could! My snowshoes and boots are on the floor waiting for me to decide whether or not to pack them. The weather here has been pretty mild with maybe less than 5 days worth of snow, all melting within a few hours of "sun"light. I checked weather forecast for Biella - 40's, partially cloudy. Doesn't look too optimistic for snow! At the same time I don't want to be caught with beautiful snow and no snowshoes. So, I guess I'll do my best to pack them.

I'm not looking forward to the packing. I feel like I'm in limbo... felt this way for the past month. No longer really feeling like being in Czech Republic, wanting to be in Italy, but not in Italy yet. Feeling guilty of feeling excited about the time in Italy despite the fact that Libor will be here and I'll be there... Days of gray skies and sleepy mornings aren't helping either. Makes me want to look for the chocolates I hid on the evening of Day 1 (but I'm a good girl).

On the other hand, spent the morning looking at climbing routes in Italy. Many in the NE (near Austria and Slovenia), found one near me but I know there should be more. Good then! :-) Having a hard time finding snowshoe/cross-country trails, but that can wait. Found out there are super cheap flights from Milan to Rome (20 dollars!!! RT!!!!), and trains are pretty good too. :-) Pretty hard to think of the present moment, the packing and studying waiting for me. Arrggghhhh...

I'm sure you are wondering about Christmas... it is quite different than in the States. What's the same? The tree with lights and ornaments, gifts, Midnight Mass, a big meal, family, the lousy weather... Let's start. Christmas as we know it (dinner, gifts) is on the 24th, not the 25th. It starts with day of "fasting" to save up for the traditional meal including carp. My Czech Culture Shock book talks about Christmas Eve seeing the highest number of visits to the emergency room due to swallowed carp bones. Accordingly, I ate with caution and turtle-like speed. As we were talking about the statistics, Libor swallows a bone and it promptly lodges itself behind one of his tonsils. Many tense swallows of water and bread later, we head to the emergency room. After 10 more minutes and a magical tweezer, the bone is out and we are on the way home. I've lost my appetite for carp for the year. We proceed with the presents (no stockings - no fireplaces to begin with!!). After the presents and some more wine, Libor and I meet his friends at a pub where we all proceed to get Christmas drunk. Midnight Mass is out of the question this evening. Stumbling home, we sleep late on Christmas morning.

Christmas day passes slowly as we relax and be lazy at home, eating lots of Christmas pastries made by Libor's mom. Libor ate carp (slowly) for lunch. I ate something else. We took Bessy (the dog) for a walk where we learn that her hair raises in aggression whenever she saw bigger dogs, which was pretty much all dogs as she is a mini daschund. The reaction from the dogs (including one cute yellow lab) was amazement because of Bessy's size and relatively harmless appearance. I got to talk with my parents and with Chris online later that evening from a cafe with wi-fi in town. :-) That was the best part of the holiday, I think.

December 26th, I got up early to make sure I'm cleaned up and dressed in my Sunday best. Libor's family from Bratislava trickled in starting at 10. Slivovice, wine, and eggnog is served (yes, at 10 in the morning!), all of which I declined politely because I cannot for the life of me imagine drinking before noon, no matter what country I'm in... although I did sip some of the wine (homemade) and some eggnog (mm!!). Lunch was turkey with Mom's stuffing (:-) mmm a taste of home. I got homesick, tho) and sauerkraut. More talking later, the family left to visit Libor's uncle's mother across the border in Slovakia. After settling down into a turkey-induced coma, we were pleasantly surprised by a visit from Vit and a friend of his from Hustopece. His reason, to loan me a copy of Angela's Ashes, but I also know he is practicing his driving after buying his first car. ;-) Either way, the visit was short but a pleasant surprise!!! Libor and I went for a drive to Valtice to enjoy a walk and some sights. That night, again drunken carousing with friends at the pub (I didn't drink so much, thank goodness).

Again, lots of sleep, lots of pastries, and more movies the next day. I made a deal with Libor - we would study at least an hour today and tomorrow, then we could go to Mikulov in the afternoon. We went out with some of his other friends that night, but I had enough from all the pubs (I can only handle at most once a week), so I left when they went to the second pub after a struggle with Libor to let me go home alone. It was snowing and absolutely beautiful and peaceful out!

The 28th was the day we went to Mikulov in the afternoon (after studying in the morning. Yayyy!). This time we took the train (no walking through Palava this time!), and it was a pretty dreary day and pretty dark for my camera, then my battery died. I come to the conclusion that Mikulov is a city to be experienced, not to be photographed. Fine by me.

29th - 31st... blur of sleep, movies, books, pastries...

31st, we went to the house of friends of his to work out the plans for New Year's Eve. The house is small and BEAUTIFUL. Not like the traditional Czech design of doors in every room, this house has an open design and warm colors throughout. They had 2 small dogs, the mother of the pair lodged herself between my legs for some pampering. :-) Roman pulled out a box from the fridge with his name on it. It was full of pastries of all kinds, although Roman described one specific kind of pastry which was suspiciously missing from the box. Both are extremely thin (Bara looks like a model - typical Czech style), so I was smiling inside to see that they fell in the same holiday trap as we. One of Roman's friends, Robert, stopped by and we find out we were lucky we didn't go to one of the bigger pubs on the night of the 26th - apparently almost everyone got sick with the flu. He was wiping his nose and sipping tea the whole time (with a side of slivovice). The next thing that happened was one of the worst things I'd ever seen and almost ruined our NYE. Robert's puppy (nearly full grown) was digging in the yard, and to punish him, he went outside yelling at the dog, picked him up by both sides of the neck and threw him on the ground. I don't know what happened after that because I immediately left the window, drank all of my superhot tea despite feelings of nausea, and told Libor I want to go NOW. I kept repeating, I want to go now, I want to go now, I can't stay I can't stay. A tense 5 minutes later as things were finalized, we left. I couldn't look the guy in the eyes after that. Later I found out that Bara complained to Robert (I don't think what you are doing is right), but he said, "all you women say the same thing." Good thing I didn't know he said that or I would have slapped him as hard as I could. When we left the house, I looked the puppy in the eyes and that poor thing had a tortured soul. I so much wanted to go back inside and give that guy a piece of my mind, but I didn't. Imagine what he'd be like with his woman or his children. It's not right! Whew. My palms are all sweaty and shaking now just writing about it. It's out.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with periods of freaking out and crying. It almost got to the point where I almost refused to go out. Libor promised that Robert wasn't coming to this party. I don't know what I'd do if I ever saw him again. But we went out to Bara's brother's apartment for the party. It was a lot of fun! Everyone brought food, and I think only 1/4 of it was eaten up! Some people were drinking shot after shot of slivovice. *shuddering* I only got 1/2 shots down, and lots of shivering and drinking of water later, I was done with slivovice for the evening. Bara's brother and one of his friends are very good cooks, so they cooked a pot of beef goulash for everyone to eat. It was SO good. Wow. *mouth watering* We ended up dancing the night away right in that kitchen, then right before midnight we walked down to a small square where a Vietnamese wedding party was setting off fireworks. There's no laws here about the use of fireworks, so let me tell you, it was an adventure to see these fireworks up close and personal. ;-) One member of the bridal party saw our group and brought over a bunch of fireworks for us to set off in honor of the couple. :-) That was fun! After that we all kind of trickled off to the main Square to see what was up there... we went into Piksla to see Libor's friends Radim and Magda, then walked home. What a New Year's! I told Libor next year it'd be nice if we could take a trip for New Years. ha.

We're back in Brno now, and we have about a week's worth of meat given to us by Libor's mom. I wanted to do detox because eating all the food was kind of making me feel gassy and hungry all the time. So I'm not letting myself eat too much and trying to eat as much vegetables/fruits as possible, but it'll take a few more days for me to get back on track (and we go to Breclav again tomorrow).

I've spent an hour working on this blog, so I'm hoping I'm up to date (I didn't blog about our trip to Bratislava, I'm sorry... hopefully some time in the future, but at this point probably not. Biggest thing - learned my lesson after getting drunk with Libor and his cousins with _6_ bottles of wine. Also saw some very beautiful things. Ok. I'll try to post about Bratislava soon. :-))