Our time in the Carpathians was wonderful… we had a great break. No one could ask us grammar questions, we didn’t have to worry about anyone doing their work duties or not, no marking papers, and no writing of lesson plans. It was shear bliss.

Allison hiking away

Climbing the mountains

One student, Dima, came with us just to make sure the hotel was good and that they would not try to cheat us. The hotel was tiny, but it was nice. We arrived on New Year’s eve and were exhausted. We laid down for a bit, watched a movie and then went down to try and order some food. The restaurant was being prepped for the evening’s festivities so we could only order food to be brought up. It was kinda funny since all the hotel staff knew we were foreigners who did not know Russian or Ukrainian and they all knew what rooms we were in. We went up to decipher the menu and a little later the waiter came to our door to take our order.

While we were waiting for our food we played a game, but in the middle of our game the power went out. There were emergency lights in the hallways but not in the rooms. The food came shortly after, but we had to eat in the dark. It was hilarious since I had randomly packed my headlamp and that became our only source of light for about 3 hours.

The hotel was moderately quiet the whole of the night. We watched one more movie, chatted and then fell asleep at about 11. The fireworks woke us and we wished each other happy new year and went back to sleep again with our clothes on. It was quite comical to wake up the next day all in the same bed with our clothes still on.

Our Hotel: El Dorado

Almost to the top…

The rest of our time there was spent wandering the hills (I call them hills because compared to the mountains in Washington that’s what they are.) We explored mountaintops and wound around hills. There was not much snow, but the scenery was beautiful.

(If you came across a mini snowman on a mountain, wouldn’t you want to decapitate it too?)