It's so cute when you speak....

Kaori and I went to the Postojnska caves today -- pretty cool. I've heard that they are both the largest in Europe and the largest in Slovenia (really quite a different thing) but anyway, they are 20 km deep and about 100m below the surface. They were very much like the ones that Carolyn, Kevin and I saw more than a year ago in Kings Canyon, but much much bigger. A river carved them into the limestone and then sunk below them. You start the tour by taking a little train for about a km into the ground. The stalactites and stalagmites are all over the place looking like chickens and spaghetti and ribbons and piles of white poop. I think there must have been like 1000 people on our tour.

Kaori is Japanese, but she speaks wonderful English. Caroline, the French/German girl who also shares our room, and I were talking about going rafting in the Alps. Later, Kaori says to me "You two are going laughing". Of course, I didn't understand, but as I already gave it away, she meant "rafting". Likewise, back at the conference, Giselle was trying to communicate something about people who sell things on the street, and she called them "hookers". Now, maybe its an issue for hookers to have space on the street, but probably that's not what she meant. Sara Stout couldn't stop laughing (tho silently) and later we both wondered why we feel uncomfortable trying to speak other languages. Everyone else makes mistakes trying to speak English with us, we think it's adorable.

Kaori loves Rome. You should have seen her effusing about the architecture. She's from a small town north or Tokyo where she drove alone to her job every day managing the production of Sony computers in China. She was very proud of this job. The office was surrounded by rice paddies, and there is no TDM, but they did pay like $10/mo for the parking. She saves every napkin bc she is concerned about the environment, but she is only vaguely aware of TDM programs. So, I want to talk to her about this some more. I also helped her to describe what she did in English, bc the way she described it was much longer than the way I have described it here. I wrote it out for her, in case she wants to create a resume in English.

She also had a funny idea that I would not drink green tea, only black tea. But maybe that's bc she prefers black tea.

I should wrap up here but there are a few more things I want to mention randomly:

One-third of all people who identify as Hungarian live outside the border of Hungary. I think the subtext here is that the Hungarians believe they have been robbed of their land and that the country should be much bigger. They didn't say it like that however.

Slovenia wanted Independence for economic, not racial, reasons, which is why there was no significant fighting here.

Young Hungarian women are very skinny with big boobs. Later they gain weight and become round and apple-shaped. My companions admired the young women (hey, what am I guy now?) with the understanding that it couldn't last.

Hungary is much cheaper than Slovenia.