Slovenia Life

After a low-key day of lounging around the house, a quick trip to the mall and a Slovene Church service it was clearly time to take the troops out. We had arrived at Cousin David’s Saturday afternoon and meshing the two families was as easy as the Huskies victory over Stanford! All of David and Katka’s kids speak English so playtime is as easy as it would be with any 5 kids age 3-7. We did have a few troubles while at different play places and other kids that did not know English trying to play with our girls—we just told Liam to be translator and protector.

David was kind enough to translate the sermon during the service, so that we weren’t completely lost and the girls ended up in a play group during service with an English speaking volunteer. It was great to see David and Katka’s church first hand. David introduced me as “Son of Shofar” and everyone seemed to know who I was (Betty’s son).   

Monday we got up and got out because we had a full day of work research to accomplish. We drove to an indoor waterpark that is a family favorite for The Slovenia Bordners. The facility had an indoor and outdoor waterpark, but the outdoor had just closed on Saturday. David was able to organize a little walking tour of the outdoor park with their manager. It was fun to see their operations and to chat with someone who does a lot of the same things I do (scheduling, young adult management, drama patrol, etc.).

The indoor park was instantly a favorite for our girls as well. The entire facility draws its water from a natural hot spring and they have to cool the water down for it to be useable. It comes out of the spring at over 150 degrees! Watching how they operate the waterpark provided me zero ideas for Slidewaters and 100’s of ideas of what not to do operationally. They seem to have a different idea of what lifeguarding means as well as which rules are important. The kids enjoyed sliding in human trains of 4 or 5 people, sliding head first, sliding on each other’s backs, jumping and diving in pools, playing chase and tag and ignoring most height requirements (they did get shut down at the biggest slide that they all wanted to try.) We spent all day having a lot of fun at the park.