Wherever I may Rome

 I'm sitting in the courtyard of our tiny apartment on a quiet, chilly morning in Trastevere, realizing it's been more than a year since I've written here, but feeling like it's time for a catch-up. Easiest here is probably just a bunch of pictures.

December 2022: spent a nice long break in Thailand. First stop was Zeavola resort on Ko Phi Phi Don. They picked us up from the boat on a tractor! They also left us little gifts every morning. It was a nice relaxing way to unwind, just the two of us and a beach with nothing else to do. (also where I did some studying and started some teaching ideas that I'm still working on now)

This area brings back lots of memories of my first time in Thailand with my college roommate many years ago.

The rest of the time we spent on Kata beach in Phuket, where we met up with Matt and Sarah and family, plus Rani's peace-corps friends Megan and Michael and their new baby. Lots of beach time, a Thai boxing match, and a ridiculous X-mas celebration at the hotel.

In April, we headed to Athens, where apparently, all we did was take ussies in front of old shit. We like Athens: good food, good cafe culture, nice walking.

My sister passed away in June, and we rearranged things to be home for the summer to see family.

Sad circumstances, but good time with family. We spent lots of time with my parents, and had a fun trip to a couple of wineries in southwest Michigan. Nice to be back in the big house for awhile. We also all stayed at the same place where Rani and I had our commitment party. No longer called Lakeside Melodies, now it's Camp Blue Canoe.

Rani and I took a break and spent a couple of days in Kalamazoo, where we saw a Latin music festival, an old-white-guy blues band in a bar, and trekked to Fantasy Forest in Battle Creek (it was better in my head). Our last day in Michigan happened to be the Three Rivers Pride festival; it was a real trip to see main street in the town where I grew up full of all of these beautiful freaks.

Rani and I took the long way to FLA. Found the heart in the wall in Nashville, drove the Natchez Trace Parkway, saw the Wichahpi stone wall, spent some time in NOLA with Rani's mom (NOLA was hotter than Doha, BTW), aced the test at NASA Stennis Space center, then trucked it through to Bradenton. 

Florida was HOT (duh), but i mean really hot. The water was over 100 degrees on a couple of days... Great year for beach wildlife, swimming with baby and mama manatees and one day a shark! Rani broke her foot! That introduced another challenge to our summer, but we got her crutches and a scooter and carried on. Good to see Rani's brother Jesse and nephew Tyce, who also had a boot on for his own foot injury (which got cut out of the picture above but was super cute).

Spent a few days in Stockholm, did some boat tours and walking around. I spent a rainy day on a self-made tour of the wild art exhibits that are the Stockholm metro stations.

Then we were off to Copenhagen, beautiful city with wandering canals, underwater sculptures, pretty gardens, and a cool old-timey theme park with awesome food.

Speaking of food, they really do it right here, with permanent "food halls" that have lots of variety. The most impressive of these we experienced was Reffen. On the water, live music, endless food and drink options. We spent an entire day here just watching people and eating food. Definitely going back to CPH just for this.

There were also a couple of fun twisty towers to climb, and the weird enclave of Christiania to visit.

We made it home! It was a summer full of challenges, but we were ready to get into the new school year. Rani had a new position as an instructional coach, and I had a whole new crop of kids to get to know.

Also welcomed cousin Julie and her husband Ross to Doha. So nice having them here! and they snuck in these other two jokers, Randy and Christine, who we worked with in Pakistan and had no idea were coming to work with us in Doha. They're all a great friend group for cards and other get-togethers.

In October, we made a long-anticipated visit to Rani's old Peace Corps stomping grounds in Armenia. This country is full of history, interesting art and architecture, and dogs with a blatant disregard for posted rules.

We, of course, revisited some of Rani's old food memories, including Mr Gyros and khachapuri, and made some new ones. Nice winery visit on a trip through the countryside to see some old monasteries

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The art around Yerevan was fun and eclectic.

In December, Wendy visited for a couple days in Doha, and then we headed out for another much-anticipated destination: the Maldives! It was, of course, beautiful and relaxing. Lots of food and sun, and we got to dive for the first time since before Covid. On our first introduction to the beach near our room, we saw some small reef sharks in the shallows, and later were able to dive with a pack of 4-5 lemon sharks on the reef right next to our hotel, at night! It was a pretty singular experience.

Then, after a 1-night layover in Doha, we were on to Croatia! Zagreb, with its x-mas markets, was the first stop, where we enjoyed street food, decorations, and performances. These people party for Christmas!

On x-mas day, we had our own little picnic in our sunny apartment across from Trg Kralja Tomislava, with its constant music and ice-skating. 

If you're in Zagreb, and in the mood, there's a fun scavenger hunt for all of the planets of the solar system, to scale, hidden around the city. 

Our AirBnb host payed bass in the Zagreb Philharmonic, and invited us to a televised concert of all kinds of holiday music. By far the best performance was this children's choir. Here's a link if that video doesn't load.

Road trip to the coast: we headed south, with a stop at Plitvice Lakes National Park. nice waterfalls and serene stretches of river/lakes in a quiet valley.

Next stop: Zadar, where my favorite thing was sitting on the dock of the bay, wastin' time listening to the sea organ as the ferries went by. Again, link.

Yet another beautiful valley with water at Krka national park.

On to Split, and Klis Fortress, where we fended off the hordes with tiny canons and fake arrows. Those steps Rani's walking up were where a major scene from Game of Thrones was filmed (crucified masters of Mereen).

Split was interesting enough. Cool statue of "Bishop" Gregory of Nin (I think he's really a wizard).

Alot of Split is the Diocletian Palace. Lots of levels with stuff built up on ruins... and weird mannequins. 

Last stop: Dubrovnik, the setting for King's Landing in GOT. Cool old walled city.

And life goes on in 2024. We saw Japan play Iran at the Asia cup, I'm involved in a couple of Dungeons and Dragons games (IDK why I never got into this in high school, but it's pretty fun), some beautiful winter mornings on our balcony with our growing plant family, another visit to Athens, a conference in Malta where I presented some of the teaching methods I'm working on with a colleague (and Rani finished out her 2-year coaching cohort!), an Easter egg hunt with the cousins (there's still one missing...), and their first Doha brunch with a live bongo player...

And we've spent the last week in Rome for spring break. Had lots of nice walks around Trastavere, daily doses of porchetta (like thanksgiving turkey, but pork), a lovely morning in the botanical gardens, and a tour of the colosseum. 

We're back in Doha now getting ready for the final push to summer, where we'll be spending time in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Ireland. 

Congrats to those of you who made it this far! Miss you, hope to run into you sometime soon. This is some soothing sounds from a rube-goldberg-style sculpture at the botanical gardens.

Peace all, Jon

Now is all

 Hey Y'all. IDK if you know about this, but THE WORLD CUP IS HAPPENING IN THE CITY WHERE I LIVE.

We've been watching the infrastructure construction happen since we got here three years ago. This summer, all of the branded advertisement started going up. The sports center near our school, which is a training area for some of the teams, started installing security gates. The school day was shortened in November to keep the streets clear as they tested the new bus system. Empty lots filled with RV trailers overnight, and cruise ships pulled into harbor to house fans. 

My parents visited in early November. Even though there were no matches happening at that time, they needed tickets to get a visa! We had fun seeing sights in Education City, downtown at the Souk, and the national museum. Rani and Dad baked me a cake for my 44th birthday, which we spent with some friends on the compound

Some neighborhood eccentrics built some metal sculptures with soccer balls on them. 

And then it was time.

In many places around the world, you might go to the neighborhood bar to view the first game of the World Cup. We have a neighborhood luxury resort, so that's where we went.

On the way home we caught the first of the nightly fireworks-and-drones shows. Nice accompaniment to the skyline.

The city, along with various hotels, set up fan zones as places to gather and watch games. Various activities, varieties of food and drink, and fans from all over the place. Fun to see this kind of thing going on in Doha.

We ended up attending three games: Wales/Iran, Tunisia/Australia, and Belgium/Croatia. Pretty exciting to see the fans and the new stadia.  

We did virtual school for two and a half weeks while the tournament was going on. It was exhausting, but it's over and we headed out to Thailand earlier this week for our extended December break. Games in this time zone are very late at night, so we haven't been keeping up; hope everyone is enjoying the Cup!

Peace,

Jon

Slow-VIENNA!

 [I got really excited about how that title worked out :)] 

Here's the last leg of the trip:

Nice view!

We drove from Bled to Maribor, and had a lot of extra time, so we decided to take what I thought was a short side trip to see this statue of a miner. You can see our feelings on our faces, as this turned out to take about twice as long to drive as we thought. Thanks, beautiful mountain roads!

Much of the countryside we drove through was hop fields, which look really cool.

Beer fountain! This is a public park in a small village where you buy a mug with a chip in it that lets you sample 6 different beers from the region that use local hops. Genius!

These were the options. All pretty good.

When you drink the green one, a rainbow appears!

Our last destination in Slovenia was Maribor. Again, we didn't really have a good reason for being there (there was something about a puppet festival, but we weren't in the mood). We did find an interesting wine tour, which started at the oldest wine-producing vine in the world (like 400 years old), proceeded to a small family winery where we had a nice lunch with an intense young wine producer, and ended at a new, modern winery with a great view over the surrounding vineyards. We both feel confident at least looking like we know what we're doing when tasting wine now. It was also a real treat to speak with an independent producer, who is something of a local prodigy and very open about the process and the scene.

The rest of Maribor was pretty chill: there was a nice square near our hotel with a fountain that was a sort of stand in for a local swimming hole during the day (think lots of naked kids running through it) and at night was lit up with pretty colors. Restaurants and walks for the most part.

Last stop: Vienna. Beautiful city: we had a great view of Stadtpark from out hotel balcony, good ol' Sigmund greeting us by our hotel door, pickle statue near the Naschmarkt, site-seeing walks, and an awesome food/music-film festival in Rathauspark.

We are back home in Doha, bags are unpacked, laundry is (mostly) done, and we are slowly but surely reminding ourselves of our real life routines. This summer was quite and adventure, and we got to see a whole bunch of new places, and that's what it's all about. I hope all is well out there; have a wonderful last few weeks of summer everyone!

Wait! Can't forget the bees: this li'l bugger wanted in on my last meal (ribs, of course). 

Slow-Venia 2

 While in Ljubljana and considering our next stop, we began to wonder why we had chosen to spend the next 9 days (!) in Bled, a small village around a pretty lake. 

We started off with lunch at a nice lakeside hotel, and our food was delivered by Rok the robot server. Weird introduction...

And yes, we remembered, we DID have a reason for coming here on the weekend and staying for awhile. Bled days festival meant live music on weekend nights. This stage was basically right outside of our door.

We made the trek uphill to Castle Bled. They had a Lord and Lady just sitting there drinking wine and taking pics with tourists all day. I passed the Lord of the castle going to the bathroom, then peed on top of his pee, so I'm basically the lord of Bled castle now.

View of the lake from the castle.

A few days in, we rented a car and started exploring the surroundings. This is Pericnik Waterfall. Waterfall in Slovenian is Slap, so we had lots of fun reading road signs. We also took an unnecessarily difficult hike to an ugly little lake on our way back.

A little hike on the Mostnica River.

When you come across grazing animals, don't be a dumbass.

Baby goat in a box.

Lake Bohinj, biggest lake in Slovenia, viewed from the top of the Vogel cable car.

Slap Savica!

Lake Bled was just beautiful, like a postcard everywhere you looked. there's a castle on the cliff overlooking the lake, and a little church on an island in the middle. Ridiculous.

Rani, being who she is, challenged me to a photo contest, so here it goes (let me know your votes, and I'll only tell her about it if you vote for me):

Rani

Jon

We spent plenty of time chillin in our apartment as well, sort of taking a break from the vacation of it all. Did a little cooking. Overall, probably a few too many days to spend here, but we made good use of it. 

On our way out, we stopped for a quick breakfast, and guess who showed up: Renata the robot server! Creepy, but also cool.

Bee update: if you want to keep them away from your beer, order an iced tea.