Daily life...these days

So, different than last year, but similar.

I've been busy lately planning for my trip with my family starting next week. We'll be caravaning through Europe: Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, and then Romania.

I've been good though since my last trip with katie (blog is under construction, but almost ready to be posted ;) ). Mostly, I've just stayed at home. All the other volunteers in my area have gone back to the states to move on with their lives...so it's not like I have anyone to visit anyway. Anyway, I'm sad and happy for them, but I know they're more sad and scared than anything else. The US sounds like a scary place, and for them: a place where we have to make decisions for the future again. Here we're in limbo, and we don't have to really think about "later." Yet.
Anyway, this was the only picture we took at our "good-bye" luncheon. Emily and Nils took off (from my group) and Nancy and Dan took off a week after (from an earlier group, and they finished their 2 year service). Em has a fetus in her, and Nils got accepted into his dream job and got a 1 month notice, so they had to leave quickly.

Oh well. Meanwhile, in the village....

I cleaned 1 of my sour cherry trees of its cherries, and I spent 9 hours in total pitting them, and removing any worms while watching movies, then boiling them in sugar until they became jelly. *sigh* and out of this giant thing, I got 5 small jars. It was fun...but I can't say I think it was worth the loss of sleep.

We remember the corn maze I made? The corn is done!! and so so sweet!! yaya!!!

Now the chickens. By the way, I'm not running around in the forest with kids so much now because I somehow obligated myself to a whole bunch of weeding, feeding, watering, greaving over my yard, which is rewarding in itself, but takes my time away from the community too.
So anyway, chicks are crazily well behaved! They go right to their bed at 9pm fixed! Every single evening, rain or shine, early Summer or late Summer. All by themselves!!

Unfortunately, you see how those chicks have grown too big for their coop? Well...the little dudetta: Bandita died because enclosed spaces over Summer heat = chicken mites, chicken worms, and etc...At the autopsy at the vet she said my chicks had it ALLLLLLL. *shudder*

So I got little pills I had to jam into every single beak, pesticide to soak their coop in, spray for their little bodies, vitamen suppliments, etc... It was actually pretty cheap too: less than $10 for it all. So now I was down to 8 chicks.

Oh..I was wondering what those grey dots on me were. LUCKILY, THEY DON'T LIVE OFF OF HUMANS! They may get on us, but in 10 days they die. This one is grey because it didn't have any blood inside it. I am mite free at the moment =D, But of course I have at least 15 mosquito bites on me. I put spray on, but...I live in a swamp. I think my itch tolerance has gotten stronger.


A SAD, BUT ONE DAY COULD BE PUBLISHED IN CHILDRENS' BOOKS, STORY:

There once was a special chicken. He wasn't a rooster yet because he couldn't crow yet. He was more special than he knew. When he was just a little chick, he slept nice and comfortably next to a warm light bulb next to his brothers and sisters. He lived in a yellow world, where sometimes a giant being would come and supply him water to splash in, and food for him to peck at. Unbeknown to him, the giant being was part of even gianter being: a human. This human was responsible for 10 little chicks, and for what would happen to them when they would be grown, she didn't know, but for the moment she would clean and feed them and keep them warm and secure. Days passed quickly and the chicks began to grow and have more energy. Word got out that this human had small chicks. In the human's home world, not many people had chicks. One friend asked the human to pick the best female and male and she would adopt them. So the search began.
One morning, our little chicken woke up to see an elastic around his little foot. At first he found that he waddled a little strange because one leg was heavier than the other. There was also the problem of being tangled with small branches if he didnt' lift his foot correctly. Eventually, he got used to having it with him. He later realized that he wasn't the only one with this new assessory, but it wasn't the future hens, but all the future roosters that got it. However, all of them were different colors. His was green, the big bully's was red, the fatty one's was blue, and the boring dude's one was yellow. The red chicken loved to show off his nice band and how it matched his crest. As he grew larger, the band ceast to exist, and he gave no more thought to it. As he grew larger, he also realized that the hand that fed them, was actually part of a whole being, much much larger than the hand. He also realized that his yellow world was a place he was later free to leave. In this green and brown world there was lots of stuff for him to peck and consume. He quickly learned that not everything green was edible. The human tended to throw rocks and hard objects at him and his family when he pecked at her vegetables too. At first it was fun, but later he learned that the human was really aiming at them and he stopped entering in the forbidden area.
And that was his life. He hopped out of the coop in the morning, ran to the Human when she woke up to accept breakfast, bathed in the sandy spot in the yard, and sat in the shade and slept during the hottest part of the day. This he did every day.
Of course there were moments in his life where he had to deal with some loss. When he was just 3 weeks old his first brother died due to a heart attack (he was afraid of cats, and he had a weak heart). When he was 2.5 months old his baby sister died to mites and worm infection because she was too small to hop onto branches to sleep like the older sisters and brothers. She stayed sleeping in the coop and the bugs got her in her sleep. Verde, is what he was named due to the color of the band on his leg, greaved over her for a long time and vowed to never let the mites get him as they got her. To this day, Verde sleeps on the high branch available, and sometimes on top of the coop.
And this was the way that Verde thought life would be. The human would always be there to give him his breakfast and late lunch. His days would pass by eating bugs and napping in the shade, and his nights would pass next to the warm feathers of his close family.
What he didn't realize was that the decision had been made by the human that she couldn't keep 8 chickens anymore. She had initially wanted just 3 chickens for fun and for eggs. She had bought 10 because she was told that the majority would die.
Now she had 8, and she had not 4 males and 4 females, but 5 males and 3 females.
That was going to be a problem. Males started to fight when they matured, and on top of that, 8 beaks to feed was a lot of beaks.
There was still that decision of which male and which female were to be adopted. Over the months, the chicks were being observed and finally the decision was made: Verde would be kept because he was the most behaved, the smartest, and the most curious. Jackie was named and enlisted to be adopted because she was the most "bad-ass"- hands down. All the females would be kept because they could be utilized to produce eggs until they could breed no longer. Their eggs would be stolen from them to make omelets, and they would never be allowed to raise any of their young because the human had no need for new chicklings. This would be the life of the hens once they were no longer chicks. The males, there only needed to be one. Verde will be this chosen rooster, as long as he stays in the human's favor. That leaves 4 young males to be made into dinner, and soon, because eventually they will grow into cruel agressive angry jealous and dangerous males that will claw and gorge at each other until one by one they'll die.
None of them know about their future yet, but they may have a hint of what's to come. Starting last week 1 of the heavier males was turned into dinner.
The human didn't know if she had it in her to do it. Would it give her nightmares? Could she stomach it? Would she tremble? Would she change her mind? Was she an animal lover or a cruel hearted giant raising creatures, plumping them up only to consume them when they were ripe for the picking? She was born in the city and her chickens were bought in styrofoam and seram wrap.
We'll....it was done, and there were no nightmares.



Watch out Verde, keep being a good bird, the sweet bird that runs up the human every morning, every time he hears her footsteps. Females birds, keep being mean to the human because she's gonna eat your babies one day.
Better question yet: will you realize what's going on Verde? can you save your brothers? would you save them?
_______________________________________
The featured stars of this story:

No worries: Jackie and Verde are still alive today. Jackie is Amanda's adopted girl. She has one white left streak on her right wing, and Verde loves me. He's always aproaching me to see what's up, and he's called Verde for now because he has the green rubber band on his leg. Verde = Green. Dude, what do I name him? He does respond to Verde at this point.

Well, what do you think of this story?

Okay, so here is Bulgaria, Sofia (last country of this trip)

So here is Bulgaria's rural area. There were lots of tunnels we went through.

I thought it was flat, but there's lots of elevation.

Here's our next train. We got 3 beds per a room here (so here Emily and Nils tried to squash onto one bed) and there were 4 of us. Oddly, the bed on top was shorter by a foot than the other two, so I got it.

In our train, there was no English written on these signs. This corner table is a sink too! What a surprise. Thinking back, we think we had sinks in our previous trains too (but didn't know about this secret until our almost last train).

Here we are in Sofia! The capital of Bulgaria, like the capital of Romania is Bucuaresti, and like...do we have a capital of the US? I don't think so, so, like how California's capital is Sacramento.

So...we arrived in the morning and we had a train leaving that evening. Ergo, we had the whole day to explore the city of Sofia. Would it be enough? Look. Mountains in the horizon.

I got this plastic bag that showed us all the important landmarks in Bulgaria. jk. There's probably more.

Looky. Another country that celebrates Martisor (by the way, I don't know if I mentioned that the word Marti-sor means "little march." "Marti" means the month of March, and "-isor" is one of the diminutive suffixes you add to words to make them small. That's latin.

We walked for a bit, then we took a rest. I saw a honey faire. It was expensive expensive honey, but they all tasted so different. Pretty awesome to taste sweet in so many different ways.

We found 1 of the monuments on the platic bag. *checked off the list* Then we saw this building in the distant too. I think we did walk up to it eventually.

There were these old stones with Latin on them. Man! In so many of the places I've been: Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, the really old scripture is often in Latin and I can't read latin! I can guess at it, but apparently it's worth learning still even though it's a dead language.

We decided to take a food break and where did we go?
Well. We didn't' know what traditional Bulgarian food was, and we didn't' really see any Bulgarian restaurants, so after 30 minutes of following signs to get to a KFC then being disappointed because the place was still under construction (we decided that it would make more sense for KFC to build the place first, then advertise its location), we went to the safe fall back restaurant of McD.

Cool how the menu is all in Cyrillic and they have free internet.

After lunch, we did so much more wandering cause what else is there to do?

Orthodox church or Catholic or other?

Hallu Bulgarian flag.

Here are old statues outside. I wish there was information on a sign next to them cause then things would make more sense. Why statues of old people? Why there? why?

Park Park. I think we passed 5. Here we decided to settle for a little while.

We took naps. It's hard to get fully rested in trains and this last ride was particularly short.
We took shifts taking watch. Lol. We must have been a sight, 4 middle aged people passed out on a bench for 2-3 hours.

Nils needed to pay for this port-a-potty. (Yet, another reason McDonald stops are so important: use of facilities is free (with purchase of something)).

More wandering.

Saw this old prison that was used during a war.


That was pretty cool, but so random. It's next to a restaurant. We also saw a very old church. I think it dates back to 1400 or 1500. It's weird how there's a whole building build around it though.

All around it.

Then we saw an important political building with the Bulgarian flag draping down.

We had a pleasant evening stroll through the market place. This place is supposed to be cheap, but the prices I saw were high. I did get decent priced sweet Bulgarian bread for the break-fast home. Bananas were super super expensive here!! 11 Lira/Liva for 1 kg of bananas! That's like 24 ron/kg of bananas, or $8 for 1 kg of bananas. We are so fortunate.


Before we left, we found a fast food Bulgarian place and food wasn't too expensive, or that that fresh (it being evening and we know how buffets food are usually kept til eaten), but it was tasty and different. I'm glad we ate here because I love my food and I want to try exotic foods.

Chicken with creamy soup, stew with potatoes, potatoes baked and rolled about with spices and ham bits, and meat balls in sauce.

Nils got fried rice. Bulgarian fried rice.

Here was a receipt, and it's here so you can see Cyrillic. That was our day. Off we went back home.

Our 7 days, 7 nights trip. 2 nights in a hostel in Turkey, 1 night in a hotel in Greece, and many-a nights on sleeper trains. It was a good trip. Nils did all the planning and I appreciated that for my first international traveling experience.

Here was the view on the train ride home by myself. It was Easter weekend = equivalent of pre-Thanksgiving, or pre-Chinese New year. I sat on my suitcase the whole way back because thankfully, the transportation system doesn't feel bad about overselling seats.