Weekend visits

During the trips that I took this weekend we saw some storks nesting on electric power poles. They build platforms on these poles for the birds. The birds then bring in all the other material. You could see the mother and the father and once in a while you could see a baby stork. There were many of these nests in this town.
We also visited an underground salt mine in Praid, Romania. They are mining salt from under the ground. The salt is in the rock. What you see her is on of the many huge caverns that have been dug out of the earth. They have turned this area into a health area. People come from all over to spend time here. The people who run it claim that it is very good for people with respiratory conditions. The air is different here underground then it is above the ground. We are almost one mile inside the mountain and more than 400 feet underground. We took a bus for part of the way and then had to walk down about 250 steps. That was not the hard part of course because if you walk down 250 steps to get to this place, you have to walk up 250 steps when you leave.
The last picture is taken from the bus that I took from Roman to Iasi (pronounced Yash). This view is typical of the countryside that you can see here in Romania. If you look closely you can see sunflowers and corn. They tend to plant these in alternating patterns, sunflower then corn then sunflower... The sunflower is used for cooking oil and the corn, among other things for mamaliga. The crops look very good this year, they have had plenty of rain. Well it is time for me to go teach my afternoon class ( even though right now as I type it is 6:10 am in Livermore). Talk with you all soon.

Mark