random musings

2011-06-26T06:44:00.001-07:00

Grab a tea, this is a long one!

And then we left Latvia. Our last full day, a Thursday, was an unexpected and unexplained day off, which was quite lovely. We had watched the hockey game at 3am the night before, and gone to bed annoyed with the loss, only to wake up saddened by the riots. Zane was out doing something or other, so we generally entertained ourselves by walking to the store with Pietro for food for the bus, watching Friends, and doing some work. The walk home from the store was hilarious, as it started to sprinkle with rain, and Pietro went diving under a tree to wait for a ride while we laughed and asked if he was a cat. It’s a funny thing about living on Vancouver Island, or the West Coast in general, that if you can’t see the rain bouncing back off the street, it’s basically ‘not raining’ in most of our minds.

Back at the club, we helped Pietro with dinner, which was a lovely Italian spread. First, we helped him make Tiramisu by dipping Lady Fingers into espresso and shaping them around the dish while he made the mascarpone for it. That chilling, we diced tomatoes for the bruschetta, and then toasted the bread on the BBQ before rubbing them with garlic and topping them with the tomato mix—yum! The final dish involved very cute and tasty individual-sized pizzas that we deep-fried instead of baking as there is no oven at the club. Pietro said that it was a typical way of making pizza in his area of Italy, and they were absolutely delicious—hot and thick and chewy, just topped with a tomato sauce we had made and a little bit of parmesan. We made several palm-sized ones and they were gobbled up by everyone.

After dinner, we showed everyone some photos of home, Japan, and Iceland on Facebook, and then Agata brought her hoop, clubs, and ball over and did a rhythmic gymnastics performance in the squash club, which was pretty great. She’s very cute and obviously loves it a lot. We wanted to show her vaulting, so took her inside and watched some youtube videos and she showed us a couple of rhythmic movies as well.

Then we jumped online to buy our bus ticket for the next day and saw that there were only three seats left. Unfortunately, our Canadian credit cards didn’t work online, so we figured we would buy them over the phone the next morning. ‘Who’s going to buy the last tickets between midnight and 8am?’ we thought.

Famous last words.

I got up on the Friday at 6 to work, and as soon as 8am rolled around, called the number for the ticket agency listed on the website. ‘We don’t sell tickets,’ the ticket agent informed me. ‘No reservations, only ticket buying.’ Uhhhuh. ‘I want to pay for a ticket now.’ I said, hoping that would be doable, but ‘no. only online.’ ‘but online doesn’t work.’ ‘Sorry.’

Great. I called about six different agencies, getting progressively worried as none of them spoke English or could help me, and at the same time, the website was alternating between showing three and zero seats available.

Unfortunately, there is only one bus per week to Bratislava, so I was slightly worried, but figured that being a capital city in Europe, one could get out of Riga in one of a number of ways. Well….not so much. Still hindered by its communist past, Latvia is a bit marooned in terms of intercontinental transit; not helped by the fact that its trains are on a different gauge than the rest of Europe.

Finally and after much website checking, including one that told me ‘the circuit you are looking for is unavailable, please choose another race,’ I realized that we could leave at 10:40 that morning, take a bus to Warsaw, wait overnight, and then get on the original bus from Riga, which at that point would have emptied out sufficiently, and continue to Bratislava, arriving at the already-planned 7pm.

Good enough. At 9:15, we made the decision, borrowed a car, and leapt into action, madly leaving the club, which was a shame, and bolting to the bus station. As glad as we were to get on the bus, it was sad we didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to Andis or Agata, or have our last, planned day in Riga, get our patches, or check the mail one more time. I’m going to see if Zane can do that for me though. I want my mail!!!!

In a bit of a panic, we leapt onto our bus and settled in for the 12 hour trip, which actually went fairly quickly by the time we did some reading, sleeping, Friends watching, etc. It was hard to work as there were no plugs or wifi, but I finished a book I’m meant to be reviewing, so that worked out pretty well.

We had a few rest stops, including one about two hours from Warsaw that included internet, and it was there that we found out that Zane had been on the bugle and managed to find us both a couch to surf on and a back up, all for that night. It was pretty amazing! At about 11pm, we rocked up to the Warsaw Station (the smaller of two, but still), and found….nothing. No phone, no bank machine, no open anything except one small bar, a locked hostel, and no way to get online. Fantastic. After a few minutes of completely fruitless searching in a mostly empty, depressingly-Soviet building, I suggested we ask to borrow someone’s phone, and scanned the crowd for a good looking target. A goofy-looking guy and his friendly looking girlfriend. We had a bit of a language difficulty at first, when I said ‘can I use your phone?’ and he thouht I had his phone, and I thought he was taking the piss, but we got it sorted out, and called Agata, the woman that would be putting us up.

She said that because of her baby, she couldn’t leave the flat to get us, but we should get a bus to the main station and then another bus to her, and then call her when we got there, and see you later.

Right. These things are easier with money. And phones. And not being 11:30pm. The super-friendly guy and his gf, who were just dropping someone off, not getting on a bus, asked if everything was OK, and we asked if they could show us to a city bus. And if they knew where we could get some Zlotys (the Euro was seeming SO great at this point!). After we gave them the gist of the story, the guy said something along the lines of, ‘come. I’ll be your bus.’ And so, even though we’d sworn off hitchhiking in the Baltics, we headed off with them, into their Beemer, and traipsed across Warsaw. They were an absolutely lovely couple and he couldn’t have been more thrilled when I pulled out a keychain from Victoria to give them as a thank you for rescuing us from the Station. He gave me a huge hug, called Agata to make sure she was just around the corner, and then with a hug and a kiss to a girlfriend, literally skipped around the corner back to his car. What kind, kind people!

Agata, for her part, was amazing too. She walked down to a nearby corner to get us, and brought us back to her lovely flat, where we were incredibly glad to see a bed, reserve a hostel for Bratislava the next morning, and see a friendly face. She and her husband were also an incredibly sweet, adorable couple, and it was really cute to see them snuggling and laughing together so much. They put us to bed, as our four hours of sleep were ticking, and gave us enough Zlotys to get on the bus back to the main train station in the morning so that we wouldn’t have to pay 5$ in bank fees to withdraw 3$ worth of city bus fare, since our bus out of Poland was at 6:30 in the morning and we wouldn’t be needing cash for anything else.

More famous last words.

We got to the station at 6:11 for our 6:30 bus and headed to the platform to wait. And wait. And wait. At first, we weren’t too worried—our bus had been a good twenty minutes late the night before, and we figured that coming from Riga it could have been delayed overnight. But after two hours, we were more than a bit concerned, and after going in to the information desk, which said ‘I don’t know, ask that office.’ (which didn’t open for another hour) and discovering that there really and truly is nary a payphone in the entire bloody place, we asked a man with his daughter to call the bus for us, and found out that our bus was running 5 hours late. FIVE! Which of course it wasn’t. Six hours after it was supposed to have arrived, we had set up quite a camp on the platform, taking turns lying down and sleeping on the bags, and eating through our snack supplies as well as the snacks we could use a Visa card to buy (‘cos do you think there’s an ATM there? Hahah….noooo). At this point, we were again worried, especially when no drivers from the same company could tell us what was going on, and so finally Cecilia went into the office that had been closed before, and was told by a very grumpy woman that our bus had left at 6:30. Which it hadn’t, since we’d been sitting there, but at that point it was hard not to believe her. She offered us a special price ticket to Vilnius for that night, or a bus to Bratislava on Wednesday, and that was it.

About to bail for the train station, we found a sweet, middle-aged German lady that Cecilia was able to talk to, and got her to phone the bus for us. There had been an accident on the highway, we learned, and our bus had needed to wait for the road to reopen. It was on its way.

Hunkering back down to wait, and wait, and wait, we met Elisa (or something like that) from Turkey, who was a student in Bulgaria but doing Erasmus in Poland, and heading home. They had told her, like they had told everyone for whom they had a phone number, that the bus was delayed, so she hadn’t been sitting there all day, but she was able to confirm that there was a bus, on its way. With safety in numbers, we finally stopped worrying that we had somehow missed a huge yellow bus.

Finally, at 2:30pm, some SEVEN hours late, our bus arrived and we all jumped for joy, just a little bit. The poor, haggered passengers that got off made us very, very glad to have been in Warsaw over night, despite the various stresses of that decision.

Finally, at 3am, in pouring rain, we were deposited unceremoniously in Bratislava, and decided to get a cab to the hostel, betting that it was close enough to come in under the 6Euro Cecilia had to her name. Which it was, except the Euro had jumped ship by the time it came to pay, so we spent an embarrassing 10 minutes searching through every bag, trying to explain what was going on, offering him Lats, Krona of various sorts, and Canadian dollars, trying the nearby ATM that didn’t work, offering him Visa, all to no avail and one grumpy cab driver. Finally, I sent C up to the front desk to explain the situation and see if they would add the 6E to our bill and pay the taxi driver, which they couldn’t, but eventually the guy at the front desk gave us 10E (pissed off panda driver raised his fee due to the waiting) from his own pocket to pay the cab driver, who left just in time for the Euro to turn up in an unchecked inside pocket. Of course. We managed to pay back Jakob for almost everything and promised him the last .60E (dollar CDN) in the morning.

At that point, Cecilia went to bed, and I went to work. In the end, I didn’t sleep, because I figured that I would be more miserable after two hours of sleep than none, so I just worked until 7:30, had a shower, and then woke her up again as it was time to head to Pezinok.

Pezinok is a small town known for wine just about an hour by city bus outside of Bratislava. It was really cute, but the reason we were there was for CVI Slovakia, being held at a fairly large and really nice horse park. We got off the bus around 9:30 and met Barbora, who would be our couch surfing host for that night. She was 26 and had a very, very cute dog named Coco, who was Jack Russell-mutt and liked to bark at you until she knew who you were. It was pretty cute. Barbora took us to a grocery store for supplies and then walked with us to the horse park, about twenty minutes out of town. She headed off to do…something…for the day and left us to it. We met Dieter, who we will be staying with and vaulting with in Prague, and he gave us competitor wrist bands so that we could head wherever we wanted to around the park. We started off watching junior team, and then junior freestyle, which was great. It was lunch, then, and we met back up with Dieter and sat in the little café, where we ran into Lukas Klouda, one of the top vaulters in the world. It was pretty cool to hang out with him for a little bit, and he and Dieter seem to be pretty good friends. They are from different parts of the country, but must see each other a lot. Lukas, entertainingly, has converted an old school bus into a horse trailer. I wish we could have seen that better.

After lunch it was senior freestyles, and we got to see Lukas go, with a good round, as well as Dieter’s individual male, who also had a good round. We also saw the pas de deux, which were pretty cool—Kornelia and Blanka, whom we had seen at CVI Chilliwack, competed (and won), and senior team, which was amazing. Lukas had a team, which did well, and there was an amazing German team as well. The horse they brought was the top horse at WEG, I think. Something like that, anyway.

We had a great day watching the vaulting, hanging out with Dieter, meeting some people, and just having time to do whatever we wanted to! At 6, we met back up with Barbora who walked us into town to show us around a bit—she bought us delicious gelato, which we ate while walking through the park, and then took us out for a drink in the town square. It was a gorgeous evening and really nice to spend time walking around. Then we headed up to the flat she shares with her parents (though her mom was away), and met her dad, who teaches at the police academy. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t want to cross him, but he seemed very, very sweet, despite not speaking any English. He’d made us a lovely dinner of eggs and peppers and bread (and nothing sour!) and force-fed us a STRONG lemon liqueur, which I definitely only had half a sip of before passing it off to Barbora haha. He was very sweet and we had a nice chat via her translation.

We had an early sleep as I hadn’t slept at all, and we’d had limited access to being horizontal since leaving Latvia!

In the morning, we had to leave for work when she did, around 8:30, but she brought us Horalky, which are little sandwiches of wafer, peanut butter, and a bit of chocolate dipped around the outside, as well as pears, and then walked us back to the bus. It was very sweet! Turns out that she has been on couchsurfing for two years, but we were the first people she had been able to host, due to family/timing/etc., so I think she was pretty excited to have us. We had a great time with her!

Back in Bratislava, we headed off to a coffee shop so that I could work, and Cecilia explored Old Town a little bit on her own. At about 2, we got our bags from the hostel we had original stayed at and then walked over to meet our new Couchsurfing hosts, Peter and Peter. They were really sweet, with a flat right in the very centre, and are probably together though they wouldn’t cop to it, it was pretty cute. We dropped our bags off and checked in, and then headed back out for a walk. We went over the ‘new bridge’ to this fake beach on the banks of the Danube that T-Mobile is sponsoring. It’s pretty cool! They have clean white sand, bright pink beach chairs, snacks and a bar, playground, beach volleyball, futsal, hammocks and book cases under the trees…cool place!

After that, we walked back across the bridge and went up to the castle, which was very pretty but under construction, so we couldn’t go in. We walked around it and then found a little park where we started playing with handstands and things—of course. Back in town, we wandered through Old Town, stopped by an outdoor market, and then headed over to the Slovak Pub (“it’s not a pub, it’s an institution”) and had dinner there. We were after traditional Slovakian dumplings, which didn’t entirely turn out as we thought they would—they were small and there was a LOT of sheep cheese sauce, which was good, but we were expecting pierogies/pelmini more than gnocchi, which is sort of more what we got. The pub was funny and had one heck of a full menu, including a student’s menu, which was all but gruel and broth. It was a lot of bread and soup, actually. But if you get an A on an exam and bring it in, you get a free cola or soup or something.

Back at the boys’ flat, we chatted with them for a while, and in the course of planning what to do with our day the next day, realized that we were only 11Euro return (16$) and an hour away from Vienna, home to the Spanish Riding School, so we figured we better go do that. It’s pretty cool that you can just pop on a train and get to another country in an hour! What would have been cooler would be them giving us a platform number so that we didn’t miss our train, but in any case, after a short hour of waiting, we figured out where to go and headed to Austria. By this point we were clearly running late, so we jumped on a tram and headed over to the school. We got off quite a bit early, so ended up still having to do a fair amount of walking, but we got to the Palace complex about twenty minutes into the two-hour morning program, which wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately, the afternoon tours were sold out already, but we were able to watch an hour and a half of exercise set to music in the morning. The ring is absolutely gorgeous, and seems like it should be a ballroom, except there are high walls and a sand footing. Two levels of balcony were occupied by tons of tourists watching the training and enjoying the music, which was funny as I’m sure normally you couldn’t pay most of those people to spend two hours watching dressage.

We loved it, of course, especially Cecilia, who grew up hearing about the school and doing dressage. It was certainly a must-see for her. They divided training into thirty-minute chunks, with each section having 5-6 horses. Depending on the horse they all did individual workouts, which were efficient and included some airs above the ground, canter pirouettes, and other fun things as well as plenty of work on basics. The riders all wore funny full dress uniform, including cute little hats, but interestingly, seemed to use thin sticks as whips instead of dressage whips, which was interesting.

After the training, we walked over to Starbucks, which was really exciting because we hadn’t seen one since we left Canada. What wasn’t quite so exciting was spending $8.50 on my drink! Perhaps my only Starbucks visit of the trip!

Then it was time for lunch, and following that, a wander around. Since it was so last-minute, we hadn’t had a chance to look into Vienna at all, so just walked in the centre to see what we could see. The Stephensdom was amazing, an absolutely gorgeous cathedral! They were setting up for a Mozart concert in a few days, and had coloured plastic over the windows as well as theatre lights up, which combined to make quite a stunning effect in an already-gorgeous building. Of course, the outside was under construction, but it seemed the entire city was, really. At least they have building covers that look like what’s underneath, as opposed to plain white plastic. It’s much nicer that way.

After the cathedral we bought some postcards, walked through a gorgeous rose garden, tried to look at another cathedral (shut), and then headed into a McDonalds so that I could work for a few hours. It’s kind of funny here because McD’s are really nice, have proper cafes with blended coffee drinks, aircon, free wifi, and often-free toilets, so they are rapidly becoming our go-to ‘work/internet/snack’ stop.

After a few hours of that, we headed back to Bratislava, via another post card stop, a fountain, and an interesting sculpture that had music playing from it. It was a good handstand opportunity!

We were lucky to get a train fairly quickly and then headed back to town, walking back to the boys’ via old town, where we caught the tail end of an interesting dance/acrobatic performance to Bolero’s March. In the square, we also saw a bunch of 20-something guys wearing Canadian shirts and looking rather official, so we had to ask what they were up to. Turns out it is our national ball hockey team over here for a tournament. I think they were playing in the same rink as the one used for the IIHF Worlds earlier this year. They were nice and friendly and it was cool to meet some random Canadians.

We headed back to the flat and picked the boys up to go out for dinner, again at the Slovak Pub—we both wanted another go at our dumpling ordering. I got breaded, deep-fried pierogies, which wasn’t entirely what I expected, but they were great!

After dinner, they took us to a wine bar so that Cecilia could sample some local, Slovakian wine. By this point, it was after 10, and we were hot and full, and therefore I could barely keep my eyes open. It was a bit of a problem. We made it back to the flat, though, and fell into bed with another early morning ahead of us.

The next day (Wednesday, I think), we had to leave when they did—around 8:30—so it was back to McD’s for a couple hours of work before our 11am bus. This trip went much better, and we spent the morning enjoying the free cappuccino, leather seats, and English channel playing ‘It’s Complicated,’ one of my favorite romantic comedies from the past decade. When I grow up, I’m going to be Meryl Streep, I’ve decided. <3 her.

In Budapest, we left our bags in the luggage check, got some cash, bought 72-hour transit passes, picked a station that looked like it was in the middle of town, and headed out. Turns out we had mis-judged by one station, so we popped out not entirely sure where we were, but we found a hostel where we got a free map and directions to McD’s (are you seeing a pattern here?) and went down there for lunch (Tzatski wraps, a Hungarian specialty, apparently) and work time.

Thus fortified, we headed off to St. Stephan’s Basilica, an absolutely massive cathedral capable of holding 8,500 people (though that must be an incredibly tight fit!). We climbed its tower and got some great views of the city, and then checked out the inside, which is beautiful and ornate. After that, we walked over to the Parliament buildings, which are right on the river and also gorgeous, and then took a tram to the ‘green bridge,’ which we walked across to see what was what. We happened to find a church built into the mountain, and though we didn’t have time to go in, it was cool just to poke our heads into the visitor’s centre, anyway. Cecilia had got a tiny cut from doing a handstand and meeting up with some glass, but they had iodine and bandaids and a sweet guy that spoke English, so she was well taken care of. By this point it was time to head back to the bus station and meet our new Couch surfing host (what a great idea, this is!), Frederika. She was there with her boyfriend Peter, and they had a car, which was handy with all of our stuff. Both of them were also very nice, and we headed back to her very cute flat just outside the city. They fed us a lovely dinner including an egg thing that goes on crepes (which she made with chestnut flour, which was cool), a lovely huge salad, and yummy bread. Mmmm fresh food haha.

We originally thought we were going to sleep in the next morning, but realized that was never going to work if we wanted to get our to-do list accomplished, so…We left the house around 8:30 and I did a couple of hours of work, before we headed off to some Turkish-style baths, a tradition Budapest is known for. We went to Schenzyi (or something along those lines), one of the biggest bathing complexes in Europe. With three huge outdoor pools, 20 or so indoor pools, a hotel, cafes, massage places, saunas, etc., I can that it might be! It was a pretty grand old place, built around the turn of the (past) century, I think, and a pretty cool place to spend the morning, even if it was a bit ridiculous to be going in the hot pools when it was 35C outside. We worked on our flexibility a bit though, which was desperately needed given all the working, walking, and sitting we’ve been doing, without stretching much since we left home. Oh dear.

After the baths, we headed to subway for lunch, and then embarked on an epic transit adventure. First, we took a tram to a cog railway line, which we rode from end to end up through the Buda hills. It was a gorgeous green ride, and a pretty cool form of public transit. After that, we walked over to the Children’s Railway, which was super cute. Apparently popular in the Soviet Era, children’s railways give kids the chance to run a small railway, with adult supervision. It’s a little locomotive that travels a relatively good distance, and while adults are actually the ones driving, the kids sell and take tickets, run the switches, make the announcements, do the conducting, and various other jobs. It’s pretty cool, and apparently fairly hard to get into. There is also a four-month initial training program and then yearly recertification, and during the school year, railway ‘employees’ get one day off from school every 15 days in order to work the rails. Cecilia has decided that she wishes she was a small Hungarian child who could work as a conductor.

After our ride on the rails, we hiked for 15 or 20 minutes up a shaded hill to Elizabeth’s Tower, which wasn’t too tall, but on the top of the top of a hill, as it was, still afforded a great view of the city. We randomly decided to practice handstands there, and then walked down to the chair lift, which was going to get us off the mountain. It was pretty fun to step onto a chairlift without skis or boards, though we were glad to have lots of lift experience back home. Cecilia was a little worried about losing her flip flops, but overall we enjoyed our fifteen-minute offload down the mountain, which featured some views of the city and nice cool trees. We found a bus, then took a tram, then a metro, and eventually ended up back in the centre, where I worked for a couple of hours, and we met up with Frederika. She took us to a very cool hostel, which is in an old apartment block built around a square. The square, which is very garden-like, is now home to a cute bar, and we had a couple of drinks with her and her friend Laszlo, and also ate dinner under the trees. He’s a nice guy that works for Apple, and has a friend from Germany that just moved to Canada—to Victoria, actually, and has a job with one of the whale watching companies. Small world!

We headed back to the flat after that for some very exciting clothes washing. Sadly, it was the first time since leaving Iceland a month ago that we had managed to find a washer! We did all our laundry and fell asleep, deciding to use the next day as a sleep-in one. We left the flat around 11 and headed into town for an early lunch and work, and then bought our bus tickets for the next day to Prague, as well as going to a funny second hand shop so that Cecilia could try, and then buy, a lovely blue dress hanging in the window. We saw lots of great clothes, but they were typically one size wrong in either diection—very frustrating! We then went to a huge marketplace near the centre. We got our patches and a few little souvenirs, and dinner, and decided that instead of going to the night at the museums, which was our original plan, we would climb up to the top of a small mountain near castle hill instead. We found a pretty cool statue of a woman to take photos by and some lovely city views.

After that, we climbed back down, and paused half-way to take some photos. I wanted to do a handstand on a bench, so that you could see the city, instead of the railing, behind me. There were some Chinese tourists around, but also a woman who gestured to me, gestured to her parents, and then said something about a shashin (photo), so I knew they were Japanese. I said sumimasen (excuse me), which they didn’t really seem to notice, and then did my handstand and got my photo. They, not so surprisingly, wanted to get a photo of me doing my handstand, and were then pretty shocked when I asked them in Japanese if the place was OK and if their photos were OK or if they wanted another one. They were really sweet and from Shinjuku. We had a brief, not very fluent conversation in Japanese where they asked me where we were from, if I’d been to Japan, how long I’d lived there for, where, what I was doing, etc. It was nice J How funny to speak Japanese on a hill in Budapest!

Back at the bottom, we found the funicular, which was cool to watch go up and down the tracks, and then stumbled upon the Duna Party, which, as far as we could tell, was some kind of concert/dance thing. It was rather bizarre, though there was a cool shooplatla (sp?)-related dance with lots of men hopping around and hitting their legs and shoes for the sound.

We walked back over the bridge, ended up in the shopping district, and tried on some clothes, which was fun, before having a nightly rest stop/internet check (no internet at the flat), and heading back for around 11. It was quite funny, as Frederika was away as of Friday morning, but left us to our own devices in her flat, and left us with a key to have. It was quite lovely, really.

By the time we showered and packed all of our lovely clean clothes, it was 2am and bed time! This morning (yay, I’m finally caught up!!) We got up early, took a bus and a metro to the main bus station, and got on our bright yellow Student Agency bus at 9:15am. It generally seems to be a good company with free hot drinks and decent movies, and cheap tickets (25$ to go from Budapest to Prague, an 8 hour trip), so if you’re looking to travel around Europe….

Right now, we’re somewhere just outside of Bratislava, off to Prague, where we’ll meet Dieter and settle into our new digs. It’s Cecilia’s last city already! L

I’ll try and keep going without being quite so long between posts next time. No more novels!

2011-06-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

Monday was a pretty non-descript sort of day. Lots of raking and moving of roots and dirt, lots of rhubarb in sour milk, and a spectacular loss by the Canucks, but Game 7 tonight (at 2:30am), so lets not dwell on that absolute drubbing, shall we? Other than talking to Toryn before he went to work, I honestly don't think we did much worth noting Monday, but maybe Cecilia will remember and set me straight.

Yesterday I was tired and sore and my back hated me, so I managed to not get up and work, which was frustrating especially since it hurt too much to sleep, so I wasn't getting anything productive done at all. Cecilia is fighting a cold, so between the two of us, we made quite the pair!

Anyway, we finally dragged ourselves out of bed and downstairs for eggs and toast, and then went back to raking. Cecilia, lucky panda, got to work with Vitas, the hilarious Lithuanian grandfather type who is making, we're quite sure, various lewd comments 24/7. He's a sweetheart though and they enjoyed piecing together their collectively iffy German into some semblance of a working conversation and making a bunch of bench ends. Meanwhile, Pietro and I moved dirt, and more dirt, and some more dirt. We got a good lunch though--pork and potatos and no sour milk to be seen (with the exception of the rhubarb, caramel, and kafirs 'shake'), and then Zane went into town and told us to finish when we felt like slashing our throats. Nevermind that I'd passed that point at 11am, we worked until about 4 and called it a day.

I had a much needed shower, though its less than fun when your hair ends up smelling like rotting eggs after you shower, had a 'tricks' date with Cecilia and three of the littles, and sorted out couches for Pezinok, Bratislava, and Budapest, our next three stops.

After dinner of Pelmini (yay!) Cecilia, Pietro, and I headed off to the local pub for a drink and dessert. Nora's stupid dogs followed us and then proceeded to chase cars, run barking up to women walking alone, and generally cause problems. We got yelled at at least three times by angry Latvians and just shook our head and tried to convey that they weren't our dogs. Stupid things hung around the pub for awhile before FINALLY heading home at some point during our snack.

I had a lovely rhubarb cake/crumble (they sure love their rhubarb around here!) and an icecream 'cocktail,' which was peach juice and blueberry icecream, of all the flavors, all mixed together. The cake was great, partly because it had a ton of lovely fresh fruit on the side, which we are generally a bit short on this trip.

After the pub, Pietro went to the flat with Zane and Andis, and Cecilia and I walked home, getting only partially and temporarily lost (what is it with shortcuts actually being longcuts?) and then watching a Friends before falling asleep in preparation for another 6am morning this morning.

xx
D

2011-06-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

Hmmm sorry for the lack of blogging!

Friday we got to sleep in a little bit, which was really nice, and we had most of the morning off to wait for the person who was tilling up the bank to get here and do that so that we could finish off the raking with it. It was a little bit annoying as we had been told we would start at 11 but it was more like 2, so there was a lot of hurry up and waiting, which seems to happen quite a bit with Zane.

As opposed to the light raking we thought we were getting in for, it was hot, hard work, and more than that, really boring--we've already dug up all of this land once, so digging it up again in the 30+ weather was a bit...ugh. Especially when the new guy started making cracks about it being a 'man's job' to dig up some of the roots while we did other work, and commented that he'd turned up for the hard parts since he was doing what we hadn't been able to do. Le sigh.

Luckily I think everyone was annoyed and hot and frustrated so we didn't do too much, only a few hours, and got sprung around 6. After showers and getting changed, Cecilia and headed on a grand adventure on the bus to SPICE, which is a local mall. Zane had suggested it because she knew I wanted to look for a bikini, and they were having a special shopping night where they stayed open until 2am, and had events and sales. It was pretty crazy, like a really busy boxing day, but I got a bikini that I love for only 15$ and Cecilia and I found Buffs! We'd been so excited to find them in Iceland but hadn't bought them as we didn't like the very touristy patterns which were the only ones we could find in stores, but this sports store had some great patterns, and they were 30% off, so we each got one, which made us very happy!

We left the mall at about 11, got back to Riga Central and sprinted across the station for an 11:30 bus that didn't exist, and ended up on the last bus back to Kekava at midnight. By the time we walked home for 20 minutes, convincing ourselves it wasn't really dark and there weren't going to be bears or boars it was nearly 1am. I don't think I've come home from too many shopping expeditions at 1am but it was really fun!

On Saturday (we get weekends off here), we walked across the road to the neighbour's farm to watch their driving competition. There were some verrrry cute ponies and carts and a really cute kid acting as navigator for a farm that seemed to like their adorable welsh ponies. We watched a few of the dressage tests, which was pretty interesting, but unfortunately couldn't stay for the cones courses or cross country--the show was scheduled to go from 10am to 7pm as there were a lot of horses, but we had other plans, so needed to get going.

Andis had offered to take us to Sigulda, a neighbouring town, for the day, so around 2 we packed up Miks and the four of us headed out. We stopped for a drive through lunch which was funny because I think there's a good chance it was the first time Miks had ever experienced coke, and potentially even bubbles in his drink, given by the hilarious expressions he was giving me every time he tried it. Between that and figuring out straws, it was a bit of a labour intensive drinking experience for the poor guy, but he seemed to enjoy it OK.

We dropped Miks off with Andis' brother, who lives in town, and then headed to a 13th century castle, which was pretty cool. We got to climb its tower and then visit a museum explaining how it was used by the Archbishop of Riga back in the day. It was called Turaida castle and there is a legend about the 'Rose of Turaida,' a woman who got double-crossed at a cave nearby, so in the midst of a thunderstorm we had a quick walk down to the cave, and had a nice warm shower in the process.

After that, we headed to Tarzans, which is an adventure park sort of like Tree Go back home. We didn't do the ropes course, but took a ski lift to the top of the Baltic State's longest run (ha.ha.ha. it was like 70m and not very steep whatsoever) and then rode a little yellow plastic car thing down a track. It was really fun, especially since you get to control your own speed. After that, and I'm not entirely sure how, Andis convinced us to go on the catapult, which is basically a reverse bungy jump. You get strapped in and told to hold your teeth tight, and then a machine tensions the many, many bungy cords attached to you, based on what you weigh, which was making me hope we'd converted to kilograms correctly! Once you're tensioned in and terrified, the guy pulls a string and sends you sky rocketing into the sky, 20m straight up. On the way down you do some flips, unintentionally, and also impersonate a rag doll, and then bounce around a bit before finally coming back down to earth. I kept my eyes shut for most of it haha, but Cecilia said it was quite the experience to see the earth rushing at you as you went head first for it.

That adventure successfully dispatched with, we met back up with Miks and Andis' brother, who had come to the park, and walked over to take a cable car across the river, but by the time we got there, you could only do it if you wanted to bungy jump. Which we didn't. So after a quick coffee in their flat, where Miks seized on being undiapered and watered the floor, which was hilarious, we headed back into Kekava. We got back and had a lovely dinner cooked by the Italian--spaghetti carbonara, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Sunday was the first day since leaving Canada six weeks ago where we haven't had a plan, so it was lovely to sleep, and sleep, and sleep. Until noon. Haha. We eventually crawled out of bed and headed to the store to pick up a few things that Andis needed for a party he was overseeing (they rent the squash club and playground out to parties) and also got a couple of snacks for ourselves. Once his food had been delivered, we changed into bikinis and together with Pietro (the Italian workawayer) walked down to a little beach/swimming hole they've opened this year about 2km away. It was lovely to lie in the semi-sun and read a book that I'm reviewing for work for a couple of hours.

We headed back and started a movie, and then much to our (happy) surprise, were left all alone from about 5:30 yesterday as everyone including Pietro went back to the flat. We finished the movie, made pasta for dinner, looked for couches and workaway places for the next little while, and generally had a lovely end to a relaxing weekend.

This morning I'm up early to catch up on the blog and do some work, and we aren't entirely sure what the plan is, probably moving and raking more dirt, over and over again. It's looking much cooler out there, though, and it's cloudy, so it should be much easier work out of the sun.

xx
D

2011-06-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I got up to work and then when Zane arrived we started doing the dirt moving and digging again. There wasn't sooo much left to be done, but it was still hot, hard work. We had to get it finished though, as the guy who is doing the tilling is meant to be coming by today, so we were trying to get it ready for that.

We broke for lunch and Zane made us omelettes, which was really nice since she knows we aren't crazy about the bright magenta fermented milk soup she made before, and that's what they were having for lunch. We had a very pleasant sit in the shade and chatted over lunch before going back to finish up the earth moving and plant watering and whatnot.

We finished work at about 3:30 and then hung around the club while she went to pick up the Thai girl and the new Italian guy. I fell asleep in the hammock, and then stubbed my toe so hard while swinging that I peeled off a chunk of skin. It was yuck! Slamming my head into multiple low pieces of wood definitely made me want to go back to sleep pretty quick yesterday!

Once they all showed up, we headed over to the sister's house to help the Thai girl cook for everyone. There were ten adults in all, and she made a great spread for us! Red and green curries, basil with garlic and chicken, omelette, rice, etc. So good! After we'd finished chopping things up, Cecilia and I went to play outside with Agata, which is always funny when she is trying to think of the word in English, she seems as though she is physically giving birth to it as she contorts her body and flutters her hands in frustration. For 8, her English is pretty good, though, especially compared to our Latvian.

She was hilarious when she was explaining and Cecilia was talking to one of the dogs, she was like 'Cecilia!' in a very sharp 'are we listening?' voice. She was trying to explain a complicated game involving throwing a ball in the air, catching it, calling someone's name, them taking 14 steps back, and the ball thrower trying to get the ball (in this case a stuffy) through a hoop made by the person's arms.

She also asked us if we liked dogs and then told us she knew where two, long, smart, miniature ones lived, and proceeded to climb a tree. We were a little confused, to say the least, but then it was dinner time which was great. Mix wandered by and stole a sip of someone's 28% alcohol and then proceeded to scream about it, which was kind of hilarious and karmic, really.

Cecilia and I ended up having an hour and a half long singalong to him, first running through our limited lyric repertoire of Christmas carols and Somewhere Over the Rainbow-type songs, and then realising we could look up lyrics on our phones. That meant we could do a good chunk of the Christmas oeuvre before adding backing tracks courtesy of our iPods and graduating to a random assortment of songs by Coldplay, Joni Mitchell, the Ataris, Dido, Leonard Cohen (covered by the good people at Shrek), and a few others. He was fast asleep by the time he was collected to go home around 11.

Since we didn't have to get up too early today we watched a Friends and hung out for a little bit before getting some sleep ourselves.

xx
D

2011-06-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we got a bit of a sleep in (Cecilia) and longer work session (me) as no one showed up until 9 (so actually 9:30). Andis and Mix turned up, and after breakfast, we were tasked with babysitting the little bub. Given how child-phobic we are, we were a little unsure about the whole thing, but it was actually OK. We couldn't get him to settled down at all (he's a whiny little guy!) but after a little bit we got him in C's lap and I pushed both of them on the swing, which he loved, until he fell asleep, which we loved. We've worked out that the poor kid is probably getting less than 8 hours of sleep a night, and doesn't get regular naps (he's 1.5), and is largely left to his own devices most of the day, so it's no wonder he's a grump, especially because in Mix's world, being a grump = getting good food.

Anyway...after Zane left to do...something? We packed him up in his stroller (he was droopy, but awake again by now) and set off for a local swimming hole, which we didn't make it to haha. He was fast asleep by the time we passed the turn off for it, and so we kept walking into 'town' to get a couple of snacks, at which point he'd decided to get up. We gave him a snack and then tried to take him into the blow up bouncy castle thing that was randomly set up in the parking lot, be he's a little young, or was a little too asleep, or something, so didn't really enjoy it.

Back into the pram he went and we trundled back off to the beach, but half way there we realised just how late it was getting and headed back. It was about a 5.5km walk in the 30º heat, but not so bad with a bit of a breeze. We came back and as he started to fuss started singing him songs, except the only ones we actually know are Christmas carols. His favourite, by far, is Rudolph. When I had him alone, he got quite the medley of Secret Revolution, The Ataris, and RENT. He was a Seasons of Love fan.

We dipped his toes in the sister's pool and then brought him back for lunch. After that, we downloaded Kung Fu Panda for him to watch, but he wasn't so into it, though he didn't seem to mind chilling in C's lap too much until he passed out there, too. Seems that when he's with us we'll be giving him the chance to catch up on his sleep. He's really quite cute when he isn't exhausted and therefore screaming.

At about 3, we got sprung from our babysitting duties to go into town--Zane and Andis also host a lot of couch surfers, and there was a girl from Thailand, Tukta, who arrived yesterday and is spending two nights with them, so Zane thought we could spend some time showing her around what we have seen already and hanging out with her.

My first stop was to the central post office, where my mail hasn't arrived yet :( at least we know where to go now, and hopefully some or all of it arrives before I leave in 9 days!!

Then I had to take care of a 6-week old craving and get a Big Mac haha. After those two important errands were taken care of it was off to the Freedom Monument to meet up with Tukta. She's a sweetie and traveling around Eastern Europe on her own. She's been studying technology in Germany, and this was her graduation trip, I think. We walked around Old Town and then got a picnic from the grocery store (eating out in Riga is the same price as at home, but groceries are about half the price, so we've decided this is our new tactic) and went to one of the huge parks to eat. We walked down an embankment to eat by a canal but after about five minutes two pissed off cops came and barked at us to eat 'in the park. Don't sleep.' Ummm OK? Upshot: get off the embankment you foreigners. So we did and it was fine, kind of ridiculous. Reminded me of Japan, where I had a student say 'in your country, grass is for walking on, in my country, grass is for looking at.'

Anyway, Soviet jail avoided, we headed over to the Art Nouveau section of town, which was very cool. Riga is known for it, and the buildings are pretty sweet. Grampa, there will be photos soon, I promise!

After that we headed back over to the minibus we take too and from town to the squash club when we can't get a ride, and took Tukta with us, so that we could drop her off at the stop for the flat. Unfortunately, we weren't entirely sure how to stop a bus with no stop button in it (we get on and off on the first and last stop, usually), so we ended up just yelling 'ummm stop?' in a bit of a panic, which was embarassing, but effective. Seems you just walk up to the driver and ask him to to stop, usually. Funny system of tiny buses rocketing around the city, but they are efficient and seem to be about the same size.

After our two km walk home from the stop, with a gorgeous sunset keeping us company, we just watched a Friends and then I passed out while C watched another one. Getting up at 6 every morning to work is A) ridiculous and B) cramping my late-night style!

Today is interesting as we are getting another workawayer. An Italian guy. Should be interesting!
xx
D

2011-06-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

Tuesday:

Today was more dirt-moving. Zane said she would be here for 8, but didn't get here until about 8:30, which is becoming a pattern. At least this time we had milk and butter and bread, so breakfast (including iced coffee) could be made. She made the mistake of showing us how to make sweet, milky iced coffee in the blender, and has created a bit of a monster out of me!

Anyway, once she showed up it was back to the dirt pile, which is moving along well despite the sauna-like conditions of this place. Everyone seems to be surprised it is 30+, which is at least slightly reassuring--maybe it will cool down a bit?! I was working close to Zane again, and this time learned about retirement funds, taxes, and the cost of medical care in Latvia. We also talked about the summer camps she went to as a kid in Soviet Times (she was 16 during the collapse). She called them 'Pioneer Camps' and I guess they weren't mandatory, but pretty standard--hers was near by, at an old farm house (that is now a guest house). She said they were lots of fun, but they included a mandatory 4 hour per day work session on the fields of the local kolkhozy (collective farm). She said the fields were so endless it was pretty depressing as you could never see the end of your work, but fun to be with all of your friends.

We wrapped up at about 12:30 because of the heat and had lunch (that milky soup for me; I'm getting good at swallowing before tasting) and spaghetti for C. We got a rest after that, and then set up a slip and slide for the kids. It was going really well until we had to move it down the hill (for no good reason) and the kids lost interest in it. Oh well. Luckily Zane decided it was too hot to keep digging, so we moved on to bathroom cleaning, which was basically just washing mirrors and showers in the two squash club change rooms, and then I did a bit of work while C started to pick classes for next semester. I also started to look for workaway places for the couple of weeks I have free after she leaves and before I go home. There is a horse holiday/cooking school in Portugal which would be pretty cool!

Mid-afternoon, Zane packed us and the kids up and we headed to a beach, which was lovely. There was a strange wind pattern rendering the water at the Baltic sea a comparatively frigid 9C, so we went to a lake instead. It still had a huge, lovely, sandy beach, though, so we mostly lay in the half-shade and read/listened to podcasts while the kids and Zane played in the water, but we went for a brief swim, too. It was quite lovely.

On the way home, we drove past the largest chicken farm in the country, a holdover from Soviet Times. Row upon row upon row upon row upon small-town-sized row of concrete chicken houses. Surreal. Efficient, if nothing else, I suppose!

Back home, we headed up to our loft and I did some work/trip planning before dinner. Dinner was typically Latvian, apparently--boiled potatoes, cottage cheese, and cold smoked herring packed in oil. Considering I don't eat fish or cottage cheese, it was pretty good, and at least filling, which isn't always the case around here--Zane doesn't seem that interested in carbs. It was also nice to avoid fresh veggies. While the E. Coli out break hasn't reached Latvia (from what we've heard, anyway), since it's pretty bad and no one seems to know what is causing it, we're generally trying to stay away from lettuce/tomatoes/cucumbers/sprouts, and you know, all of Northern Germany.

They left pretty early (9:30ish) and since we hadn't been in the sun quite so much, I had enough energy to pick classes for next semester (all on Monday and Tuesday), which was probably a bit silly, because there is the whole paying for tuition thing...(and before the peanut gallery comments, thanks to this whole dirt digging, cow milking lark, these few months are about the same cost as living at home for me, including flights). It was good to know that four of the seven required courses I need are there, and in a great schedule, next semester, so we'll see what we can do to actually take them...

And that brings us basically up to date. Up at 6:30 to do this and work, and then people are meant to start showing up around 9.

xx
D

2011-06-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Yikes: sorry for the lack of blogging! Catching up now...

Forgotten from the fair day: When we were walking around we came across a huge (maybe three feet high) ant hill that had clearly been made by humans, and Zane's sister picked up a long pieces of grass and put it on the hill so that it was converged on by a couple of dozen ants. From there, she flicked off the ants (who had apparently peed on the grass by now) and then sucked on the grass before passing it to Zane to suck on. They claim this is some type of traditional medicine, but when we pressed them on what it was medicine for, her sister was like 'I don't know. Google it.' Haha.

Monday I got up and did a little bit of work before getting Cecilia up so we could be ready for Zane to turn up for 'dirt moving.' We had a bit of a trauma in the morning when I made iced coffees for us with the last bag of milk they'd left in the fridge, only to discover that instead of milk it was some kind of pourable sour cream stuff. Yuck. By this point we were out of milk, bread, butter, and toilet paper, so it was getting a bit desperate (and hard to make breakfast). Luckily when I mentioned this to Zane later, she did go to the store for us so breakfast this mornign should be better than the oatmeal and salt we made yesterday.

Anyway, by mid-morning we finally started to work on the dirt moving. Basically they have a canal down one side of the property line, and beside it, a shoulder about 5 feet wide. Right now it's all uneven dirt and sand and roots, and we're taking out as many of the rocks as possible and spreading the dirt out as much as we can so that it can get tilled and then seeded for grass soon. Its hot, dusty work, especially since it has been 30+, so we did a couple of hours of work and then passed out in the shade for half an hour, and then did another 45 minutes of work before lunch, and had a break, and then did the last hour once it had gotten very slightly cooler.

Lunch was another adventure--cold soup again, this time with ham and I think some potatoes, which would have been good if not for the reappearance of that horrible sour milk I'd tried to use for my coffee. Cold fermented milk soup isn't our cup of tea!

I was working with Zane for more of the day while C worked on a slightly different area, and I had a chance to ask her some questions about Soviet Times, which was really really interesting to hear about. It's weird to be here and see something that at home we would semi joke about 'wow, is that gas can from the Soviets or something? Look at that Soviet apartment building' ha.ha.ha. Except these buildings and tractors and gas cans and paranoias really are from them. I say paranoias because, for example, we're in the middle of the country in a low crime country, where our only close neighbours are Zane's sister's family, yet the sister's family alarms their house every night (the alarm is shared with us), and when we all go out, this place gets alarmed too. And bikes are hidden in a locked garage around the corner, and just little things that are hard to explain, but interesting. Funnily, though, Mix got left in his stroller outside of one of the historical buildings at the fair for several minutes and no one thought anything of that, and the 5-8 year old kids bike all over the place without helmets or telling anyone where they are going, so it's all a bit of a wash, I guess.

Anyway, at about 3 we got released from the dirt pile due to impending sunstroke on everyone's part, and after a quick shower, walked over to the sisters to sit in her pool for a bit. It's one of those full size blow up ones, and was really quite lovely. Her husband came home and we chatted for a bit about various random things, and then came back over to see if we were meant to be doing anything.

We weren't, but Zane asked us if we wanted to go to a 'home zoo' with her, where she was dropping off some papers. It was pretty interesting--a large dog rescue, including an awesome Rhodesian Ridgeback named Jordon who was always getting into things he wasn't meant to. They also had a three week old orphaned deer (cutest thing EVER!), pigs, goats, foxes (their babies were adorable), ferrets (one looked like Bandit!), a gorgeous wolf, some funny things that looked like marmots, some other funny things that looked like a raccoon and a weasel got jiggy with it, and two black bears, one of whom did a hilarious bum wiggle/jump when dinner was being prepared. It was a funny place and since it basically seemed like it was in her backyard, I'm going to say not one we would be allowed to have at home!

After that, we stopped for some kind of Russian 'junk food' -- Pelmini. After the soups, we were a little worried, but these were amazing--dumplings that were sort of a cross between pierogies and Chinese dumplings, boiled in a yummy broth.

While they were being cooked, Andis (the dad) and I played squash. It was really fun and he taught me the gist of how squash is different from tennis. Just enough to screw properly with my mind, but not enough that reverting to tennis (strokes/ready position, etc) seems to actually be too much of a problem.

They didn't get out of here until 10:30, so we just watched Friends and went to bed after that...

xx D

2011-06-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

Today was long, but fun! We were, as instructed, ready to go by 9 am (for me after a couple of hours of work), but our ride (host mum and youngest kid) didn't turn up until 10:20 so we waited for them outside and did gymnastics and chatted with friends back home on ping (best iOS app ever!), which was lovely.

When Zane and Mix finally showed up, we went to get her sister from next door, and then drove about half an hour away to an absolutely massive outdoor living museum. It was started in 1921 and has over 100 buildings on over 87 hectares. It's pretty crazy! The buildings are from all over Latvia and from different regions and time periods, serving different purposes. They were all actual buildings before getting picked up and moved to the museum in a continual and ongoing process.

We went today because they were having a huge fair, with tons of craft stalls and also food and performances (we saw some traditional dancing, which was fun), and people dressed in traditional Latvian costume, etc. We also saw the President of Latvia sitting around having lunch, which marks the second time in less than a week that we've seen him out and about. Funny.

There were some gorgeous arts and craft pieces there, lots of jewellery, fine leather work, some woodworking, crocheting, etc. Also tons of gingerbread cookies decorated like cars and cartoon characters, small instruments, pottery, etc.

There were a few sets of pony rides, which were interesting because instead of a couple of older scruffier ponies and their older, scruffier owners, they had these sleek and expensive show horses with riders in full seat johds leading them around. Nevermind a change from home, it was miles and miles away from the pony rides we gave at Dunhaghi in Iceland!

Some of the buildings we went into were VERY interesting (and made for not very big people, back in the 1700s) and one of the churches we went into was absolutely gorgeous with intricate scroll work and paintings on the ceiling, and lovely fresh flowers all over the place.

We hiked all around for several hours, with a pause to let the little one swim in the big lake it's beside, and then headed home around 4:30. I haven't been getting much sleep recently, so I fell asleep in the car, and then when we got home and Zane asked if I wanted to have a nap, I gratefully fell up the stairs into our loft for the next three hours.

There was a party at the club, so I think we were meant to stay out of the way anyway--we watched a Friends, chatted with T, and then ate a yummy pasta meal Zane cooked us. After that, we did some plant watering for her and then ended up playing with Aguta, the 8 year old rhythmic gymnast who lives next door. She was very cute and came by and said 'are you good for the tricks?' and when we said yes, she smiled and said 'in 14 minutes.' We were like sure....14 minutes it is haha. Playing with gymnastics was super fun, except for the gazzzzzilllion mosquito bites I got, through my clothes, and despite my OFF. Her friend was there too and we ended up getting on our bikes and riding over to the friend's grandparents house across the canal to play more. I felt very much like a 9 year old, except no one called me in to bed at 10:30 with the other two.

We're calling ourselves to bed, though, as tomorrow we start actually working--moving dirt around the canal or something.

xx
D

2011-06-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

Didn't feel like blogging yesterday, but I'll try and catch up...

We slept till about 9 and then got ready to start working, which we began at about 10. Our job was to figure out how to make the climbing structure we had started yesterday and then put it together. Thanks to youtube, we learned a couple of different ways of making cargo nets, and after practicing with a small piece of rope, decided we were ready for the real thing. We made a net with nine rows of loops, alternating between three rows of dark green, three of light green, and another three of dark green.

We had a good system going using a play structure's ladder as a guide to make sure we were getting the loops consistent, and after a brief lunch break for liver (um, yum?) and salad (watch that European E-coli outbreak!) we hung it up on it's frame. Unfortunately, the rope stretched way more than we anticipated so the whole thing was too stretchy and we had to un-knot the bottom third of it and then wrench it down to the bottom frame.

However, after that we just needed to water some plants and weed some cucumbers and we were done for the day, which was nice--so different from Iceland! Zane was headed into town with her mum for a play so she offered to take us into town with her while they went, which was great--we went to an Irish pub, walked around Old Town, did some window shopping, saw a fabulous brass quartet made up of cross-dressing tuba and trumpet players, and had desert at a cute little cafe where you paid for your cake by the weight of the slice they cut for you.

Today the club we are staying at held a women's squash tournament, so we helped out with that a little bit--first we took the bikes down the ridiculous washboard road to the store to get groceries for the girls to snack on--it was funny bringing home two kg of coal and two kg of grapes and cucumbers and milk and bread and cookies, etc., on our bikes. We spent most of the next few hours helping to make iced coffees, clearing and washing dirty dishes, and grilling up some marinated chicken wings we had bought. It was so ridiculously relaxed compared to the cow farm that I thought she was taking the piss when she thanked us for 'helping so much.'

Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot, but we got talked into yoga this morning, which we agreed to fairly readily, thinking that our poor muscles could really do with stretching for the first time in six weeks, but it turns out it was Kundalini yoga, which is verrrrry low on the stretching and very high on the chanting of things. It was an interesting experience and involved mantras, bouncing around for a bit, and nearly falling asleep on the grass (that part was good!).

Anyway, after the tournament finished midday, most of the women stayed to hang around and we played volleyball (just keeping the ball up in a big circle) and Cecilia and I took advantage of all the lovely grass to do gymnastics and acro, which everyone found entertainingly impressing.

After that, we piled into the car and took a slightly terrifying drive down a gravel highway to Zane's mother's and step-father's house (he's the one building everything around the club) for a sauna. We weren't entirely sure what to expect from this, except we were worried about the 'you don't need your bathing suit' directive. The house was on a plot of land taken from a soviet-era co-operative, where you were given land to farm for personal use. It was a pretty interesting hodge podge of tiny old houses and holiday homes tucked away in gardens and mini-farms.

Their house is amazing and built entirely by Vikas, in just a couple of years. It is gorgeous! He also built a traditional sauna room, where they heat up rocks and then pour water over them to make one ridiculously hot room. Well it was only 50C, which they told us was nothing, but I barely lasted two sets of 3-5 minutes each before bailing permanently. I only did slightly better than the kids, who sit in tubs of cool water at the floor of the sauna getting used to it. We all wore little tea-cosy like hats on our heads in order to stop our hair from getting too hot, and scrubbed a ridiculous amount of black crap out of our skin. And not just us backpackers from a cowfarm, either--they all do it once a week and get this much out. Crazy. Once I got out, they gave me a traditional Latvian drink--Birch Juice. It's slightly fermented and more than slightly vile, I have to say. It reminded me a little bit of natto (fermented soy beans in Japan) but I suppose tasted approximately like you might expect from fermented forest.

I didn't stay in for the full meal deal, but Cecilia did, so she is going to guest blog her experience:

"We joined the mum, sister, grandmother and children in the sauna for a couple of rounds of hot sauna, cold shower. This included a loofa mit round in which the granny took it upon herself to exfoliate our backs. I really appreciated it, but Dani's poor sunburned shoulders certainly did not. After the loofa mit round, Dani bailed and I thought we were all pretty much done so I got dressed too (did Dani mention we were all expected to be totally naked?). Then out came the ladies from their most recent round in the sauna and told me I couldn't possibly bow out now or I was going to miss the best part. So I stripped down again and went and sat in the sauna, not knowing what to expect.

The next thing I know this strapping young man (husband of the sister) comes in wearing only his towel - which I was told was a courtesy so that I wouldn't be shocked. I sat on the bench and pretended I wasn't completely naked and alone with a strange man in a sauna, and he prepared some buckets of water and some birch branches. He laid a bunch of wet, leafy birch branches on the bench at one end and I was instructed to lie front down on the bench with my face on the branches. He then took two more bunches of the leafy birch branches soaked in water and shook them vigorously over me. This had the effect of spraying me with water (nice) and bringing all the hot air from the very top of the sauna wooshing down on me (nice... ish). It was VERY hot!! He did this several times. Every time I thought it was too hot to stand, he would stop, re wet his branches and start over again. The water it splattered was a relief but it got hotter and hotter! At some points in the middle he ran the wet branches up and down my body and pressed them into my back. I think it's supposed to be like a massage. Finally when I really didn't know what to do if this grunting, sweating man didn't stop waiving branches and incredibly hot air over me, because really I was seriously cooked and about to die, he picked up a large tub of cold water (I was unaware of this because I had my eyes shut and was focusing on steady breathing) and doused me head to foot! I yelled in shock, but it was such a relief. Then we were done and he opened the door and I went staggering out wearing nothing but a multitude of birch leaves and all the assembled people chuckled at me and told me to take a cold shower.

Once I cooled off it was back in for the next step. The host mum and I sat in the sauna with her sister and it was salt time. We took pinches of salt from a bowl and scrubbed ourselves with it.
Once we were thoroughly salted we sat back and let our bodies sweat like crazy and 'melt the salt off'. When we couldn't stand it any more we staggered out and I took the coldest shower of my life. It felt so good and now my skin is, as promised, very soft. All in all an experience I won't forget that's for sure!

Oh, and by the way, I disagree with Dani's assessment of the birch bark juice. Forest would taste good. This stuff tastes like your mouth after you puke. Revolting! But the kids were downing it."

Haha thanks Cecilia!

After that we caught a ride back to the club with the sister's family, and chatted with their 8 year old about gymnastics. She is in rhythmic 18 hours a week and we are going to play gym sometime soon, and then back in our little cottage we cooked our first real meal since breakfast 12 hours ago, and are now falling into bed for a quick rest before we go to an open air museum having a fair of some sort tomorrow.

xx
D

2011-06-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Well today was our first official day as workawayers at the squash club, and it couldn't have been too much different from at Aufbrekka! I got up at 8 and did a couple of hours of BAB work before waking up Cecilia for a quick breakfast. We knew we didn't have to be back until at least noon, so we took the two bikes to the little town near us to check out the grocery story and buy a brita water filter (the water smells and tastes like rotten eggs here). We spent about half an hour looking at the (generally really cheap) food, bought 65 cent ice cream sandwhiches, and then headed back. We made a small snack and then took our books out to the sun for an hour or so, until Zane showed up.

She fed us lunch, too, which was a cold soup that I can't say I really enjoyed--beets, radishes, pickled stuff, and lots of dill in a milky base. Other than the milk, I'm not really a fan of any of those things.

We were then asked to actually--you know--do some work, and cut the lawn for them. It's pretty big, all told, at least an acre, but they have a riding mower, which Cecilia manned, and then a push mower, which I used to do the edges and playground area. It was a relatively benign way to pass the afternoon, with the exception of the lovely burn I got myself. Time to get out the spray sunscreen I picked up yesterday!

After that we got the very fun job of building a prototype for a rope climbing structure we're going to build properly tomorrow. We basically got to spend a couple of hours making enormous dream catchers in the playground, and in the end came up with a pretty good method of putting it all together, which I think we may do properly tomorrow.

And that was...it. Crazy. We decided to play squash, which was great fun. I dragged C into it for a while and then when she went to shower I had a good game with the wall. She managed to get it stuck on the railing between the two courts, which apparently is fairly common, but was still funny and we spent quite some amount of time trying to throw a water bottle at it to get it down, until we were told that they could get it down somehow. It's been too long since I played a racquet sport!! I'm hoping to play with the host-dad soon, he can teach me a lot, I'm sure!

After that, it was time for dinner, which was luckily much better than lunch! Hot dogs (they sure are popular over here!), potato pancakes, and a tomato salad, yum! Everyone else left in a bit of a rush today because one of the kids got hurt by bouncing on a trampoline and hitting her teeth onto the scalp of another kid (or something?) so we had the place to ourselves starting around 9. We made fried egg sandwiches (dinner was good, but small) and since we've been told there is AC upstairs (thank god!) we're going to head up there and watch some Friends soon. It should be better than last night, which was absolutely sweltering. We kept our travel towels wet with cold water and wrapped around as much of us as we could, but it didn't really help all that much. Luckily we were tired and slept anyway, but we're excited for AC tonight, the slight decrease in mossies (must be all the ones I killed!) is appreciated too!

xx
D

2011-06-01T13:14:00.001-07:00

We woke up from a very deep, on a ship with no lights or sound-induced sleep around 8:30 this morning and all met up for breakfast, having decided to splurge/spend the last of our Swedish Krona on the breakfast buffet, so we ate that while watching the last hour of our trip into the harbour go by.

By this point and having spent quite some time reading about the TB and tick-borne encephalitis and other fun things Latvia had to offer, combined with not knowing much at all about Riga has to offer or what the story with the Workaway place is, I was getting a little nervous about what to expect.

We got off the ferry and saw a very cute looking town in front of us, but we weren't entirely sure who we were meeting, except that it was a guy named Zane, so we stood around in the terminal looking a bit lost, and were just on our way out to look at the car park when we saw a very nicely dressed woman with a sign saying 'Daniel and Cecil.' Close enough.

Turns out that she 'wouldn't dream of having us work on your first day,' so she dropped us off in the centre of Riga for about 7 hours of exploring. We spent a couple of hours just walking around the gorgeous Old Town, which was lovely! It was a gorgeous, hot day today, about 30C, which was kind of ridiculous and a bit too hot, but it was nice to get thrown into summer finally.

We ended up finding a nice park by a huge statue (Freedom Statue) and walked around there for a little bit before popping back out by the statue to discover the Military honor guard, representatives of the army, navy, and air force (we're kind of guessing with that, but there were definitely three branches of people with guns represented. It was pretty obvious that someone important was about to rock up, so we hung around for a minute and pretty quickly a relatively small motorcade arrived and let out two men, who walked up and put two wreathes on the statue and then went and shook hands with some other official looking people before walking away. We headed away slightly confused but found out later that it was the President of Latvia and the Prince of Monaco. Not a bad welcome to the country, really.

We ate lunch at TGIFridays because we knew it would satisfy our salad cravings and we could sit outside, and then did some more walking before heading (via the Train Museum, as we got a bit lost) to the Museum of Occupations. Man Latvia has had a tough go of it! It was a very interesting but gruelling and dense museum--I definitely left feeling like I'd been reading a history textbook for two and a half hours, but we learned about the Soviet Occupation and the Nazi Occupation and the second Soviet Occupation, and that it in its entire history, Latvia has only had something like 40 years of independence, total. A good chunk of that has been since 1991 when they got themselves back from Russia.

We eventually met back up with Zane and her one year old Mix and headed out to the squash club, which is about 20 minutes from the city. It's a lovely property with a huge, very cool playground, two squash courts, a little cottage-like apartment, small garden and swimming pool, and friendly people and dogs. Zane's sister lives next door (they are her dogs) and you can really see that when they get it finished, it's going to be a great place.

We were sort of expecting to be put straight to work, but instead we were invited to play a game of croquet, which we did--badly--Cecilia managed to whack her ball into the pond and had to go wading to get it, and then hit one of the poor dogs (10 points?) but we made a comeback at the end and only lost 4-2 to the team of Zane and her sister.

We had a lovely BBQ for dinner and watched the squash club tournament that was going on--a fairly informal affair--it seems they get together to play for fun once a week and tried out the playground a bit while avoiding the vicious mossies around here. It seems they, more than ticks, are the big concern right in the area where we are. There was a lovely sunset and the whole thing was rather relaxing and very un-cow farm!

We aren't entirely sure how it is going to play out, but we have the morning off tomorrow, anyway, which is good because we will need all of that time to scratch our stupid mossie bites! We're sitting in our little living room with wet towels on our stomachs trying to cool off and avoid adding to our bites. It seems tomorrow is meant to be a bit cooler than today, which would be nice! We're also going to use our time off to cycle to the small town 2km away from us and pick up some citronella candles or something to try and ward off the little suckers.

We're going to climb up into our super cute playroom/sleeping loft and head to bed pretty soon. I'll be working in the AM, so sadly not much of a sleep in, but it will be lovely not to be up with the cows, at any rate!

xx
D

2011-06-01T13:13:00.001-07:00

So I just realized that very frustratingly between my computer and my blog, it looks like I may have lost all of the blog entries I wrote on the last ferry, a total of 4 days L. If I can’t find them, I’ll try and find time to summarise them at some point—the Faeroes, especially, were lovely!

Anyway, this morning I got up at 6:30 and did a couple of hours of work as the morning sun streamed in the windows and I looked over a river separating Gamla Stan from a little neighboring island that does brisk business in museums. I could get used to this! I did love Stockholm, though we only had 24 hours there, it was a city I could see spending some time there, though perhaps not without a full time job as a banker, or something! Though we did well, considering, Scandinavia isn’t exactly inexpensive.

Everyone else woke up just after 8, and we enjoyed the free hostel breakfast (cereal and toast), and tried to convince one of the guys we had been sharing the dorm with to enjoy his free cornflakes more. His friend, the one who started the whole ‘free cereal is exciting’ thing is from Northern BC but was on exchange to Stockholm and heading home soon.

Nothing was open when we left the hostel at around 9:30, so we wandered around the museum island a little bit and then headed to our first destination—the Palace. It was pretty great! It’s huge, with some 608 rooms, and 5 different museums you can visit. We got a combination ticket for about $12 (yay for being students) and decided to just whiz through as much as possible, hoping to see the maximum amount possible. We started with the Tre Kronor (Three Crown) Museum, which looks at the old Palace (from the 1300s and then 1600s), which was mostly destroyed by fire before being replaced by the current building. It’s underground, in part of the remaining original building, and very cool to be standing in the cellar from way back when. We zipped through that part and then headed to the apartments, which are incredibly opulent. There are three blocks of apartments, but we weren’t allowed in one because the King was using it. Fair enough, really. It was quite cool as the two other apartment blocks we did get to go in are also used from time to time, which is very cool—usually you can’t go in castles they are still castling in.

There was an interesting photography exhibit on the Scouts and their role in helping draw different cultures together around the world, in honor of a big Jamboree happening in Stockholm in July (and also because the King is the honorary head of the whole Scouting organization), which made Cecilia (a former Scout herself) pretty excited.

We then took a brief tour past the Royal Carriages, which were very cool, especially the royal sledges, used when the streets were icy. They were all amazingly ornate, and the model horses were very well done up! We headed upstairs and saw some armour and also clothing, including some amazingly cute kids clothing. Hoka and Cecilia learned how to tie a tie, and we all failed miserably at learning how to tie a bow tie. There was also a special vintage clothing exhibition, which was pretty cool, though not so Royal, per se.

We saw the Royal Chapel, which was absolutely stunning (and where you can attend services, apparently), and then the crown jewels, which were fabulously glitzy, of course. At that point, we noticed people lining up all over the place and found out that the twice-weekly changing of the guards was about to start. Cecilia managed to find a garbage can to stand on, and I found a couple of columns to balance (rather precariously) between to watch. It was a pretty elaborate ceremony involving a brass band on horseback, complete with a drum horse (very cool!) and about 40 other mounted guards and then several foot soldiers. It was definitely worth hanging around to watch.

After that and in order to keep to our very strict time schedule, we had about 12 minutes for lunch, so we just went to a hot dog stand at a nearby park. I got a ‘French hotdog’ that is basically a hotdog in a hollow tube of baguette bread, so your hotdog is in a bun with no opening along the side, if that makes sense. A weiner condom, if you will.

We ate while walking along the river, and went to the Nationalmuseum, which is the major art and design museum in town. I was most interested in two of the exhibitions, first the 19002000 exhibition, which looked at the past century of Scandinavian design, which I love. There were some pieces I recognized and lots I’d never seen before, and then a great collection of glass art, which was very cool. I love glass!

There was also an exhibition examining the role of Lust and Love (and Sex) in art. It was very interesting and had some pretty, um, interesting art. No shunga, though, which would have added a certain something to the whole thing. There was a lot of 18^th and 19^th century art, but some modern stuff too, including some work by Susan Sontag. I really enjoyed the exhibition, which must have been really interesting to curate, and would have liked to have bought the catalogue, except it was in Swedish (and far too big to lug home).

Sadly, that brought our time in Stockholm to a close, so we got our bags from the hostel, got on a bus, and headed to the terminal to get on our cruise ferry. It’s big and exciting!! There are 700+ cabins that hold 2,500 passengers, but I don’t think it’s very full at all. We went to our cabins (we seem to have accidentally booked three single cabins and are spread out around the ship) We had a quick snack on deck and then explored the ship. There are several restaurants, a two-deck theatre, shop, etc. It’s not far off from a small cruise ship, really.

We had dinner in the cafeteria and then came to watch the shows, which are some kind of funny quasi Broadway dance routines interspersed with lounge music. There are some very cute couples dancing off and on, and one Granny totally rocking the dance floor, it’s pretty awesome.

We’re sitting in the balcony watching the shows and making use of the not-so-good internet on board (but it’s free, which is pretty sweet). We’re busy doing some research about Latvia, which we know very little about, and preparing to start our next Workaway assignment tomorrow.

2011-05-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

After another night with 62 of our closest friends, we woke up early and headed down to the central train station to begin our journey to Stockholm, first spending our last 20 DKK on a cheeseburger and carrot sticks for breakfast--our first McDonalds indulgence since leaving home a month ago. Mmmm salt haha.

We took a brief train to Malmo, and then transferred onto the inter-city train for a roughly 6 hour ride to Stockholm, which I used to sleep on. Sadly, there was no internet so I couldn't work, which was my first plan, but I haven't been sleeping that well since we left Canada, so it was good to get a few extra hours along the way.

We got into Stockholm at about 2 and walked to our hostel, which is on Gamla Stan, right in the midst of Old Town. It's a gorgeous city and a lovely hostel with several kitchens (and free pasta!), decent internet, and bunk beds tucked up and around cute rooms with exposed brick and some ancient beams--the building dates back to the 1400s! The hostel itself is an absolute warren, spanning three not-so-connected floors and with several rooms all over the place. It's quite lovely though, and if you need a cheap place to stay in Stockholm, I'd definitely recommend 'The Best Hostel Old Town'--they're even offering us free breakfast tomorrow.

We spent some time walking around looking for an ATM, and then further time walking around to find the ferry ticket office so that Hoka could pay for her reservation. While none of that was tourist-ing per se, it was a great chance to explore the city by foot, and also enjoy the first hot sunny day we've seen in ages. It was 20º and I was in a tank top and loving it!

We've all agreed we love Stockholm so far, and much more than Copenhagen. I wish we had more time here, but I've loved walking around in the older areas, with the great old buildings, looking at all the water (it's 14 islands linked by bridges) and enjoying the vibe of another proper city. This is definitely one where we got off the train and had an instant good feeling about it.

People are super friendly, too--Cecilia befriended a street performer who was playing a song she liked on her guitar and we chatted with her for a bit, and a random guy helped us find a bank--just little things, but people are generally lovely here. Lots of cute dogs, too!

For dinner, we took advantage of the free pasta and bought some chorizo sausages, sauce, and an onion for a delicious dinner in the hostel--one of the kitchens has big windows overlooking one of the rivers (canals?) it was lovely!

Tomorrow we have a big day planned: I'm getting up early to work, we are going to the Palace (Europe's largest that is still in use, with 608 rooms), the art museum, and then to our ferry, which leaves at 5pm and takes us to Riga.

xx
D

2011-05-30T12:53:00.001-07:00

Sunday May 29:

Today was our single day in Copenhagen, and we were fairly busy! Neither of us slept exceptionally well, which isn’t entirely surprising given that we were bunked up with 60 other people who didn’t go to bed entirely, ever. We’re hoping tonight, given that it isn’t Saturday, we might get a little bit more sleep. Either way, we’ll be up at 6 to go to the train station, so it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway, this morning we were up by 8 and made some oatmeal before setting off for a canal tour of the city, which was a great way to start the day. We took an hour long, guided tour, for about 7$ each, and got a great overview of the city, seeing the old Stock Exchange, Parliament Buildings, opera house, theatre, new harbour (well new as in 1700s), lots of cute little houses, etc. After it finished, at around 11:30, we got a couple of souvenirs and then headed back to the hostel in search of Hoka, who was nowhere to be seen. She’d been having train delay issues, and since yesterday we had to go to a different hostel, and our internet wasn’t great, and the number I had for her wasn’t working, so we were a little worried about whether or not we’d end up seeing her at all.

We went back to the hostel and cooked ourselves lunch, and then tried to hunt Hoka down to no avail, so we left her a note on our bed and on facebook and via the front desk, and set off to climb to the top of Our Saviour’s Church, which we’d seen on our boat tour. It’s a gorgeous dark tower with a gold ball on the top, and a gold spiral staircase that wraps around the tower. We were about half way there when we saw Hoka from across an intersection. I yelled her name and she was rather relieved to have seen us as our frantic Facebook messages hadn’t reached her on her overnight train and she didn’t entirely know where we had ended up.

We took her back to our hostel to get her checked in and drop her bags off, and then started back towards the tower. It was a lovely climb and we got an amazing view of the city from the top, it was gorgeous and really cool to look down on all of the red-roofed buildings and see some of the buildings and statues we had learned about during our earlier canal tour. The climb up the tower also took us through the church bell tower, which was pretty cool to see, and up some very twisty windy wooden steps. It was lovely!

We then walked via an amazing bakery where we split a loaf dessert cake thing that was vaguely like a chocolate croissant, but huge. We continued our long wander of the surrounding area by checking out the sites of the Ameliaborg Palace, which was essentially several lovely buildings surrounding a huge square, patrolled by guards who looked very much like the British Beefeaters, but in navy blue as opposed to red.

We walked back to the hostel for dinner and then headed back out to Tivoli Gardens, which is the world’s second-oldest amusement park, or something like that. It’s a very charming midway-esque place built around a gorgeous park/garden complex that has several theatres/pantomime spaces/restaurants, shops, etc. It was a grey and windy Sunday, so not so many people were about, and there were no concerts or pantomimes going on, but we still spent a pleasant enough few hours walking around and taking it in. I could see how it would be magical on a Saturday afternoon with good weather, though. Cecilia was the only one of us brave enough to go on the big coaster, which had a couple of loop-d-loops, but she enjoyed it very much and we liked watching her cars go flying around the tracks. We tried to feed some carp, but the pushy birds got in the way, and other than that we mostly just walked around and didn’t go on rides or eat or anything. It’s a very charming place and you can easily imagine what it might have been like when it opened back in 1894.

After that it was back to the hostel to make plans for tomorrow and then head to sleep fairly soon, what with our multiple roommates and 5:45am wakeup call. Lovely!

Overall, I think we both liked Copenhagen and would have liked a bit more time here, though our wallets are happy that the Scandinavian part of our trip is going to be a quick one! It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I realized that I had let my idea of what Scandinavian design is now influence what I thought the city would be like, which is a bit silly given that it is nearly 1000 years old. I loved the canals though and the old buildings and cobblestone streets and the fact it has three times as many people in the city as Iceland does in its entirety. I’m looking forward to our first taste of long-distance European train travel tomorrow as well as 24 hours in Stockholm before we get on our ferry and head over to Riga to do workaway again.

2011-05-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday May 28:

As ‘promised,’ we were woken by the Captain at 6:30 this morning, who reminded us that we required to leave our cabin by 7am. Yuck. We crawled out of bed and had gotten half way out of our room by 7:05, which wasn’t early enough for housekeeping, who all but kicked us out.

We took our bags down by where we’d be getting off, and settled in to wait, making a sign that said ‘we are two girls looking for a ride to Copenhagen. Please let us know if you’d like to help.’ While it didn’t get us a ride right off the bat, we did meet a lovely older couple from Cologne and had a nice chat with them. They weren’t headed in our direction or I think they would have taken us. We got off the ferry around 9 and were plopped into the most boring industrial port ever. And again, no customs just like in the Faeroes. We aren’t doing too well with getting our passports stamped! We decided to take our ‘Copenhagen’ sign to where all of the cars were driving off (we really didn’t want to spend 70$ on a train ticket and we’d read hitching in Denmark is considered safe and easy), put our thumbs out, and looked hopeful. After several members of the motorcycle club that were on the ferry jokingly offered us rides on the back of their bikes, a man in a truck with a trailer pulled up and offered us a ride. He was really nice, if quiet, and we had an uneventful ride with him for about five hours—he took us most of the way to Copenhagen, which was great. He lived in Denmark for 20 years, but is back in the Faeros now, with 1.5, 14, and 20 year-old children. I think he was a contractor or something similar to that.

We were laughing as we had started in Hirtshals, which is the VERY north of the country, and were aiming for the very bottom of the East coast. It was basically tantamount to walking off a ferry in Victoria, holding out a sign saying ‘St. John’s’ and hoping for the best. After he dropped us off at a big gas station/rest stop 70km out of Copenhagen, we had a brief snack and then headed back out to the road for another ride. It was only about 10 minutes before we got picked up again, and this time taken to within a 15 minute ride of the city centre. It was funny as the guy didn’t speak English, German, French, or Japanese, which are the languages we can offer, and our Danish is pretty shite, so we managed to say ‘chugga chugga choo choo’ and get dropped off at a station. 8$, four stops, and some free wifi on the train later, we were at the central Copenhagen Station. Not a bad price for traveling roughly 600km across the country! Probably the end of our hitching career, though, since we’re leaving Scandinavia soon and too chicken/smart to hitch into eastern Europe, as tempting as all of these free rides might be!

We figured out where our hostel was, and set off, wandering for around 25 minutes through the city with our fairly big packs before we discovered that the hostel we had wanted to stay in was fully booked. We had chosen not to book anything in Copenhagen because we hadn’t known if we’d been getting out of Iceland, and then hadn’t been near a computer with internet, so we didn’t have a bed, oops. The woman in that hostel was really nice and called a couple of close hostels for us, so we ended up walking to City Youth Hostel, where for about 23$ a night, we are the proud renters of bunks in a 66-bed (!) mixed dorm. It’s somewhat like staying in a semi-permanent shelter in a high school, but it should be OK for two nights. As a bonus, there was a free pot of newly-cooked and very tasty pot of spaghetti in the kitchen! Almost makes up for the 8$ diet coke I accidentally bought tonight. Sadly, the wifi is down so we’ve had very limited internet access all around. We did end up going to a café with wifi, but I didn’t have very much battery power, so we really only had time to book a ferry ticket to get to Riga and fail at booking our train tickets for Monday (I don’t think it like our Canadian cards). Back at the hostel, I downloaded some photos and wrote this for later posting—we’ll be getting an early start tomorrow as it’s our only day in the city, so I should probably get going…

2011-05-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

Whew, our last day on the farm today and it was a crazy-busy one!

We did our last morning cow chores this morning, with nothing too exciting that I can remember, and then found out we were going to to Dun Haghi (the other farm) for breakfast. They are such sweethearts over there and we had a lovely breakfast! There was salmon and cream cheese on this funny slightly-sweet, slightly puffy bread they have here (which I avoided thanks to the salmon), but there was also this really amazing baked bread/egg/herb thing, which was a bit like a savoury bread pudding or something, I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. We had chunks of it on bread with homemade jam, and it was delicious! She also made hot chocolate on the stove with fresh cream; lovely! They are such a sweet couple and we gave them one of the postcards from home we are using as thank you cards, and asked them to come visit us :)

Then it was back to our farm to string a semi-permanent electric fence around about two acres of grass immediately surrounding the house. It was pretty easy since they have corner posts that live there year-round, and some that go through a little forest (where we discovered a tire swing!) so we just had to fill in the blanks with the plastic electric sticks. Plus we had new wire, which meant that nothing got tangled, and our hands didn't die a slow death from little bits of wire peeling off the main strand.

The weather was finally much nicer today, too, so we put the mares in so that the stud could come out for some playtime and then headed in for lunch.

After lunch we bundled up all of the kids and grabbed our cameras to head out to put the cows out to pasture for the afternoon. This was pretty much the most hilarious thing ever! We were given sticks asnd areas to guard, and tried not to die laughing as the excited, bucking, cantering, udder-swinging bovines came popping out of the milk barn and then circled and butted and frolicked around in confusion. A cantering herd of milk cows, udders a flapping, is quite the site! After quite some time we got them all in their field and secured and then Cecilia and I were allowed to pick two of our favourite horses and go for a couple of rides, which was really nice--we wanted to get some last-minute tolting in! It's so much easier to go riding here. We haul a saddle and a bridle down to the paddock, and one brush, catch the ponies in their bridles and tell them to stay (they do). A quick brushing, saddles on, and off we go. We stored the curry combs in the mail boxes to avoid them getting stolen by the puppies (who steal EVERYTHING) but we just realised we may have left them in there by accident. Oops! That will be a surprise for someone when they check the mail next haha.

I took Emil first, who I've been horse-handling at the pony rides and he was great, as usual, especially his lovely canter, which has so much power, but only when you want it. Our second ride wasn't quite as fun because Loki, who I was on, and Mynt, who Cecilia was riding, both decided to be a little bit 'up' and so it wasn't such a relaxing ride, especially when Cecilia's stirrup fell off her saddle and Mynt decided that would be a good moment to get jumpy. Compared to lots of horses at home, this was absolutely nothing, but compared to the perfect horses we have gotten spoiled with here it was a bit of a surprise to see them spook and feel them be a little bit tense. To be fair, they've been cooped up inside or on grass or going for wild gallops through hill and dale and standing around in -5 weather until today, when it warmed way up, to maybe 8? It was lovely!

As we were walking back down to turn Loki out, we noticed a long stream of cows wandering sedately down the road. Our cows. All 26 of them had decided to wander out of their fence (the hot wire one we had just built) and go walk about. Since this wasn't our fault, and there were no Loppa dogs on the case, we died laughing before we went to get sticks to try and herd them home. There is no funnier sight than a bunch of middle aged lady cows wandering down the street, especially when one of them is walking down the street humping the other, and an SUV is trying to get through. It was made even funnier when one car that had to drive through the herd was the neighbour who told us we'd broken his fence. He gave us the most 'omg you useless girls' look, it was sooo funny! We were trying to run down the road after them, but laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

B was out and about in the tractor, and he raced down the road after them and drove through the herd, turned around, and started honking to get them to head home. We got them into the cow barn OK, but then we had to play a good game of moooo-cow duck-duck-goose to get them all re homed correctly in their tie stalls. A couple of them went 'home' automatically, but a good bunch of them completely lost the plot, and I said they looked like the most disorganised school group I'd ever seen! We divided and conquered, taking one cow between one or two of us and beat/herded/pulled/pushed/willed and cajoled the stupid things into their homes before petting them and clipping them back in. It was completely hilarious and ridiculous and took far longer than it should have. We discovered that cows can't run on slick concrete too well and were treated to some entertaining Eeyore on Iceskates moments.

After we'd collected our cows and our breath, we headed up for snack and then went down, nearly two hours late, for cow chores. With everyone doing it, it didn't take too long, and I had time to take photos of most of the chores for a post I'm hoping to do on 'what exactly are the cow chores' soon.

We had dinner of hotdogs, which are very Icelandic (no, actually), and then watched Rocky Horror Picture Show with B. It was the first time I'd seen it, but I'll have to watch again, as I kept falling asleep. While we were busy with that, we washed our cow clothes twice, and while they are still drying, they seem to be back to their original colors, which is a minor miracle--they were pretty grim after 20 days of cow chores without a wash. T said my pants could stand up on their own, which probably wasn't too far off!

I'm getting a start on packing tonight, but will finish in the morning once our clothes are dry, and then we head out at 7:30 to catch an 8:30am bus--we hope. Right now some passes are closed between us and the ferry due to snow and so we might not be able to get there. The ferry is in port, but they aren't letting people off it until they clear the roads because of all the cars coming over having summer tires and whatnot. So tomorrow is generally a bit up in the air, but we are hoping for CALM wind and water and no snow so we can head over to Copenhagen as planned!

I may not have internet for the next couple of days, but we'll see how things go.

xx
D

2011-05-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

We got down to the cows just after 7 this morning and were surprised to find both B and T out and milking already. Usual no one gets down there until between 7 and 7:15 and there is enough prep for milking that no one is milking anything until at least 7:30. Anyway, I guess today was the monthly milk testing day, so maybe they were up early for that?

We did our chores (including moving the ponies successfully) and headed up to the house and after breakfast just did some laundry and cleaned tack, and then had lunch, which was yummy meat stew and potatoes and rice. And a bowl of cereal just for good measure haha.

We were given some time off, which I used to work on something for Toryn, send some work emails, and watch Friends with Cecilia, and then we took oldest to soccer and in the hour he was there, we stocked up on anti-nausea medication for C for the ferry (given the weather here we are getting a little worried!), I picked up a used book for the ferry, and picked up lots of food for our trip. I'm going to be very disappointed if I'm too seasick to eat my skyr! At this point, though, the pass to the town where the ferry leaves from is closed and we're not entirely sure what we will do if it hasn't opened back up again by Wednesday. Perhaps a few more days here or a few days at the barley farm. We'll play it by ear over the next 24 hours and then make a plan depending on what is going on with the weather.

After we got back from town it was time for snack and then cow chores. We did the first half of it and then b and t did all the milking so that we could build a new horse fence in the minus five degree snow and wind. With all the clothing I was wearing (three pairs of pants, two shirts, 2 fleeces, a jacket, 2 buffs, a toque and gloves) I was actually warm, which was a small miracle.

During cow chores Cecilia was getting followed around by a new calf that was butting our legs and sides looking for milk. She followed c around at every step, which was pretty cute, if a little annoying.

We also saw youngest inadvertently giving one of the puppies what can only be described as a blow job. She had the puppy flopped over on his back and was kissing him and blowing raspberries all over his little puppy penis. It was absolutely hilarious and we tried not to laugh too hard in front of her, because I don't think she had any idea what she was doing.

After chores we came up for a light dinner and then basically stayed hunkered down during the wind and sideways snow we've been, um, enjoying.

Tomorrow we are building fences and moving cows, who apparently will 'explode' if they go out in the sun, so it's good that it will cloudy tomorrow.

xx
D

2011-05-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

Today was our day off, and we took advantage of it to go on a road trip to Mytvan. Mytvan is a local resort area about two hours away from us known for its hot springs and volcanic activity. We started the adventure from the outset, as we picked up a hitchhiker named Paige on our way out of Akureryi and took her to Mytvan with us. She's a freshman in college in North Carolina and here in Iceland to WWOOF on the barley farm in the east that we nearly worked on, which was preisntty funny. She was really sweet and we had a great time getting to know her as we drove through snowy mountain passes to Mytvan. We dropped her off at the grocery store at the little down in the area, though we saw her later headed towards a Guesthouse to wait until tomorrow--there weren't so many people out travelling on a Sunday.

Our first stop was the nature baths, which were the main purpose of our visit. It was quite pretty but snowing sideways, which isn't exactly the weather you want when you are visiting a hotsprings! Our muscles were so excited for the chance to relax a bit in the supposedly-healing waters that we weren't going to say no, though! It was a bit strange in the lagoon, as they had a couple of hot water output pipes running into it from the borehole they get it from, I guess, and if you got close to them, it was absolutely boiling, but if you got too far away it was pretty cool, and since the wind was blowing something fierce, it was hard to stay/find/keep in a good position. Eventually we found a relatively protected small lagoon that was pretty good, and then we finally discovered the hot tub, which was lagoon water, but in a man-made, temperature-controlled concrete tub, and sat in there for awhile, which was lovely.

Once we were finally thoroughly cooked, we got dressed again and headed to a little cafe for a snack, hoping to find Geysir Bread, which is a specialty bread baked underground using only the heat of the geothermal energy in the area to bake it. We ended up at a cute little place called the cowshed cafe, which from the outside doesn't look like much at all, but is a lovely little cafe and giftshop that they have recently re-done on the inside. They are nestled near the lake and have tons of windows to take advantage of their gorgeous view. One of the windows is in the gift shop and looks out into their cow barn, which is quite funny. We were saying that a month ago we would have been excited to see the cows and go meet them, but today we just tried to figure out how milking system worked as compared to ours.

We did indeed find the bread, which is thick and moist, and dark, and had a little bit of it with mozzarella from their own milk and tomatoes and a side salad, it was quite lovely. By that point the snow had stopped and things were brightening up a bit, so we got instructions on how to get to the nearby crater you can see from miles around (Hverfall), and drove through some very surreal volcanic surroundings to get to it. We took the 'easy' trail to get up, and while we made it just fine, it was still a pretty decent hike to the top of the crater. It was basically just a tromped-down path up the side of the volcanoe, and we were laughing that at home there would be rails and warning signs and pay parking and info boards and here we were basically just turned loose. It was shaped roughly as you would expect a volcano to be, and according to one of the brochures we picked up, it's a Tephra crater, which is quite a rare type, but occurs quite often in this particular area. We took some pictures but were getting pretty wind-blown, so we didn't stay up there for too long before heading back down to our car.

Next up it was over to some crazy lava formations at Dimmuborgir that we walked around in. A totally surreal Middle-Earth like place where the Icelandic Yule Lads live. We weren't at all surprised to be warned to avoid trolls and elves in this area, you could completely imagine how some little creature might pop out of a volcanic cave.

After that, we decided to complete our day in Mytvan by heading to Krafla, where you can see bubbling lava, but we ended up going onto a mountain pass on our road that was pretty snowy, and deciding not to send the station wagon sliding off the road, so we turned around before we got there, at a huge geothermal power plant that we happened along. Between the snow, black and white landscape, and huge industrial steaming plant, it was all very end of the earth/apocolyptic, and I was pretty happy to get out of there. We stopped at an info point to take a quick photo of some steaming earth kind of nearby, and then headed home.

On the way back, we stopped at Detifoss, which is Europe's most powerful waterfall. It was pretty funny as we approached it, there was a gorgeous view from the highway, and so we stopped, on the middle of a one lane bridge, turned on the flashers, and took our photo out of the window. Of course, that was the minute a car decided to turn up (the highway is always super quiet!) so I had to quickly start and get off the bridge, but it was probably my best start all day.

The waterfall was gorgeous, but we are so spoiled in Canada that it wasn't exceptionally impressive in size, but it is lovely and it was very pretty! After that we finished driving back to Akureryi and put 40$ worth of gas in the car, which only got us 16L of gas!

On the way back to the farm we stopped to look at the local church where B and T's family go. It was very cute and very pretty nestled in the valley. We had a look around the church and through the graveyard, which seemed to start with people born in the mid 1800s and then headed towards home. We actually kept going past the farm and parked at the side of the road about a mile up to do a couple of walks we had wanted to do for a while-one up to a waterfall on the side of the road which was really pretty, and then in the bottom of the valley we walked past an old sheep corral made out of volcanic rock, and then down to a river that runs through the valley.

Back home around 10, we had time to chat with Toryn for a bit, and then off to bed. Only two more days of farm chores to go!
xx
D

2011-05-21T13:40:00.001-07:00

First of all, I forgot to mention for yesterday--there's a couple of cows we milk who are utter, well, cows, about the whole thing, and so they get restrained with a variety of devices including ropes or metal leg shackles. One of them Sisi, gets her ankles tied together with what is essentially very thick bailing twine, but she still hops around like a twit when you are milking her. Yesterday, just as I was like 'dear, you're going to fall over if you do that,' she hopped around enough that she did indeed plop over beside me. It's a good thing I had quick enough reflexes and was aware enough of what was going on that I jumped out of the way and didn't get sat on by a cow, which would have been distinctly unpleasant.

Anyway, today started with the discovery that there was a new calf down in the barn, who had just been born overnight and who is quite drunk on her feet still. Very cute even though her mom is a bit of a biatch!

After morning chores we came up for breakfast and then T asked us to move the ponies from their stall back to their permanent paddock (as opposed to the one we keep rebuilding every other day) and build a new fence for them to graze in. This would have been easier had there not been heavy plastic from the roundbales all over the barn floor, and a huge tractor in the door, leaving us exactly only pony's width and two people trying to move six horses. In the end, I took one horse through and then Cecilia put the reigns over the heads of the next three horses, slapped their bums, and sent them to me to snag as they walked through the door. I was holding four horses as she backed Osk through, while leading another pony. Osk managed to wrap her hind leg up in plastic and didn't even flinch, or really seem to notice for that matter. And no one spooked at the massive tractor or walking over the plastic. Amazing horses!

We were also put in charge of sorting a pile of socks about as big as we are, which took the better part of an hour; some of the kids have the same socks in different sizes, which was confusing, and there were just soooooo many. Like a ridiculous game of memory!

But all in all an easy morning, and after a couple of hours we came in for lunch--sausage patties and mashed potatoes, which was great! We had a couple of hours to clean some more tack and watch Friends, and then it was time for snack and afternoon cow chores.

We were all eager to get done as C and I were going out, and B and T had a birthday party to get to, but of course the best laid plans...

T asked Cecilia and I to take the ponies from the permanent paddock into the new paddock, which is basically in the grassy verge across the road from the farm. We usually use a system of non-electrified hot wire to make a pathway for the horses to follow, but we didn't have enough wire, and it was looking a bit iffy for us to get them in their paddock from the start. I was going to open the gate and let them out, driving them towards C, and then she was going to funnel them into their paddock. But then Loppa, the over-enthusiastic loose cannon of a collie got involved and all hell broke seriously loose. Not knowing where exactly to go, and with a herding snapping canine at their hocks they all took off galloping into the neighbours' field, and sprinted around and around a couple of times before heading back to us, or so we thought. As we prepared to divert them into our paddock, they completely ignored us and kept galloping out one gate and across a driveway into another field we hadn't even noticed, Loppa still in hot pursuit.

At this point we were alternating between hysterical laughter and bellowing at Loppa so loudly it was bouncing off the mountains on the other side of the valley, but she was completely and utterly ignoring us. After a couple of laps of this second, also very large field, they bolted back into the first field for another lap and then eventually came back. C was trying to keep them from going back into the second big field and in the process convinced them not to come through the gate at all, but with Loppa at their heels, they decided it would be a good idea to go over/through the fence and then home, with the exception of two ponies. One who stayed where the grass was, being circled by Loppa, and one who actually ended up, by some miracle, where it was supposed to be. We looked at everyone in the paddock and to our great relief no one seemed to be lame or spurting blood, but right then a neighbour showed up and was unimpressed as he told us we had destroyed his fence. Oops. I finally had a chance to get T at that point, and was somewhat terrified of what her reaction would be, but she just said 'Loppa was not tied up?' and came to help us move the horses. We both apologised after and she just smiled and said 'it's not a problem. shit happens.' It sure does! Turns out the fence is B's, because he leases that land anyway, so we can still have tomorrow off, and we'll fix it on Monday.

We realised that between us, T, and the 9 year old, this is the fifth time one or more horses has been lose in like six days. Things here are different when it comes to ponies!

T and B went off to their birthday party with the cow that they are giving as a present, and apparently made a bow to put on him, we're hoping for photos! As for us, we took advantage of it being Saturday and not having cows to do tomorrow in order to go into Akureryi to what is quickly becoming our favourite cafe for dessert and then downstairs to the attached pub to see a father/daughter band combo. They were good and the pub was great--really cute and relaxed, and Cecilia's Viking-brand beer came out of a saxaphone!

Here's the daughter doing something solo:

They were good fun :)

We got home just before B and T, who told us that the cow had gone over well, even though it peed all over the floor in the house as they were presenting it, and now we're off to bed, as we're heading to the hotsprings tomorrow and we don't want to get *too* late a start.

xx
D

2011-05-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

There was no snow on the ground this morning, but it was snowing sideways when I got up to work at 6, and would continue to snow off and on all day today and tonight.

We did the cow chores this morning with nothing too exciting to report, and then headed back up to the house for oatmeal. After we'd cleared the table, Cecilia hesitantly asked what the plan was for this morning and we both nearly fell over with shock when T told us we could do whatever we wanted to until it was time to pick up the youngest two from kindergarten at 1.

We watched two episodes of Friends and then both managed to shower AND wash our hair for the first time in a scarily long time, before heading off to the local pool we've been wanting to try for days. My back is such a mess that breathing was painful yesterday and I'm desperate to loosen it up, so we figured the hot tub would be a good idea. That was cut short, though, when we realised that A) the pool is only for the school until 5pm and B) outside. We didn't feel like hot tubbing in the snow, so we went into town and looked into bus tickets to get east for our ferry on Wednesday, and then went for lunch at the same cafe we went to last time we ate in Akueryi. This time we were there early enough for the lunch buffet special, which was so good! For about 9.50 Cdn we got salad (greens!), cream of cauliflower soup, several types of bread, and a lightly curried pasta. It was all amazing! It was also pretty cool as we ran into the couple from the pony ride farm--we're practically locals, apparently!

We zipped over to school to pick up the littles and put 10$ worth of gas in the car, which didn't even move the gauge--at 2.39 a litre, it really wouldn't!

We got back to the farm and left the three youngest (the one with the broken arm had another day off school today) up in the house while we went down to the barn to watch Friends, eat cookies, and clean tack for a couple of hours. It was a pleasant way to spend the day, tucked up in the office with the kittens and the snow coming down outside.

At 3:30ish, we drove oldest to soccer, in one of the most beautiful complexes! You go into a team building with the changerooms and everything, and then take a tunnel into an indoor, full-sized rubber-based turf. It is amazing! There were tons of kids training and the level of play seemed really good, nice fast soccer. I SO wanted to get out there!

We couldn't stay too long, though, as we had cows to do, so we headed home, fed the three we'd left behind (only here could a 9-y-old with a broken arm take care of the 6 and 4 year olds!) and then went down to start chores. When T came down, she brought youngest with her, and while we waited for T to do the hay (the cows get fed with hay she delivers by tractor) we had a great time climbing around on the round bales with youngest and Loppa, the collie mum. Youngest jumped on her pony, Osk, and lounged around and stood on her back, all while Osk was loose in a stall with 6 other ponies trying to eat her supper. Remarkable. I want to vault on her little 4-beat canter so badly! Chores took ages today, but they were fun since we got to play and I got to feed the calf. It would normally be old enough to 'graduate' to the sheep and calf pen where it would have an automatic milker, but it is a birthday present for a neighbour tomorrow, and we're trying to keep it clean.

We got back to the house around 8 to discover B singing and BBQing in the snow, which seemed somehow exactly what B would do, and had a great dinner. We checked in with Toryn via skype, who was sunbathing and also BBQing, but without the snow, and I'm heading to bed soon. No idea what is in store tomorrow during the day, but T is trying to organise a night out for Cecilia and me tomorrow--two neighbouring farms have girls staying with them right now, one from Switzerland and one from Denmark, and the four of us are meant to meet up in the evening.

xx
D

2011-05-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

"Cecilia, where are the horses?" Was my question at 7:20 this morning as I idly looked out the cow barn window and down to the pastures, which both appeared to be empty. We looked back and forth as if ten horses might re-materialise out of thing air, then started scanning up and down the valley, wondering where on earth we'd lost all the ponies, especially given that the land is relatively flat. Finally, Cecilia spotted Osk's white butt half a kilometre away at a neighbouring farm.

"Hey B, we found your horses!" She called over to him as he milked. His response was basically along the lines of 'well that's good. They were there when I got home at 2am." He'd been out so late because poor second-oldest did indeed break her elbow yesterday and had to have surgery and get pins put in. She and T spent the night at the hospital.

After we finished cleaning cows, B sent us up to the house early to eat breakfast and then get ready for riding--there were pony rides this morning. We ate quickly and layered up for a brisk mid-May tolt down the road. I wore a black unitard, knee-high socks, spandex leggings, more knee high socks, MEC pants, jodhpur boots, a long sleeved t, a short sleeved t, a light sweater, a long sleeved fleece, a sleeveless vest, a helly hansen windbreaker, gloves, a buff, and a toque and it was just about right as we headed out into the blowing snow and hail. We drove the SUV down to where the ponies had put themselves and collected our two horses that we needed for pony rides. B was pretty funny as he goes 'be careful. they are out of their safety zone.' and then rustled a plastic bag of bread at them. We grabbed our two and tacked them up from the back of the car and then headed off to the next farm, feeling very Iclelandic indeed as we travelled along the windswept road. Amazing ponies though! We are falling in love with these little horses.

Pony rides were good, and luckily short given the weather. We met a kid named Emil, which was notable since the horse I was handling was also named Emil, and the kid had been riding him at the farm every year for five years. The mom, who spoke good English, confessed that they thought he would be dead by now. Poor guy is only 18 and has plenty of spunk left in him!

We rode the horses home and put them out in their un-destroyed paddock. They were a little perturbed to be separated from the rest of the herd, whom we had left at the neighbours until further notice.

It was about 11am at this point and B was in town picking up the girls, so C and I sat down on our bed and thought we would rest for 'just five minutes' and then looked at the clock again to discover that it was 2pm. It was the best sleep I've had since we left Canada, and we both needed it so badly! B and the kids were still out when we woke up, and second-oldest (A) was watching Toy Story while T was napping (super woman needs a break too! amazing!) so C and I had a light lunch and fed A, then bundled back up and went to collect the ponies. We took an armload of headstalls with us and hiked down the road, where C used her horse whispering skills to collect us four ponies to lead back. Once we hiked back again, the four that were left were glued to the gate, wondering where their buddies had gone. One of the puppies, red dog, came with us, and was so windswept he was walking like he was drunk. Very cute!

Once we got all of the horses back from the next farm we got called in for a snack, which was 'feel better chocolate cake' and then headed down to tend to the cows, who were SO loud! We are expecting more bad weather and temperatures into the - numbers, so we shut up the barn, which included bringing all ten horses in to an area totaling maybe ten by thirty feet and collecting some lambs.

Soooo yea. Basically we were told which numbers to get, but the numbers are tiny and on their ears, and generally waved in the correct direction, at which point we lunged through their snowing, windy, muddy paddock to grab a lamb. If we had the correct one, we then went and waved it in front of its mother, to encourage the mom to follow along so that we could get the selected sheep and lambs into the barn. If this sounds too easy to be true you'd be right. Holy crap it was hard to get some of those sheep to follow us! They were totally ready to throw their lambs under the bus and let them go wherever, while running for their own lives. We got good at holding wriggling little lambs though! They are sooo cute! Eventually many of the mums got caught by the horns and hauled inside; much easier.

B had a couple to ear clip (like a brand, but cutting into the ear) and tag, which we helped with. He knew I was squeamish about holding the lamb for it, so he told me I would just be giving it to him...and then definitely made me hold it so he could cut its ear. He gave C the earring maker though, and she put a whole in a lamb's ear and tagged it. T just looked at me and went 'I guess you don't want to be here in the fall when we slaughter the lambs?' Um, no. Thanks though.

We had to bring them water, and instead of undoing the hose to fill up their bucket, as would have been logical, C decided to give me the bucket to hold against my chest (there was no handle) and fill it up for me to carry. Except we didn't think through how the combined effect of me laughing hysterically and walking might create a small tidal wave effect, losing a couple of inches of water all over me. B just looked at us and went, dryly: "That wasn't very smart. In fact it was almost stupid." T was busy trying not to laugh, it was pretty funny. She is really growing on us as we get to know her more. She's definitely super woman, it's quite nuts.

After milking, which was unremarkable except that I got kicked once and C got kicked twice (all glancing blows), we headed up for a light dinner of pourable yogurt, fruit, and egg, and some cereal, and then T gave us an impromptu lesson in Iceland. We learned a bunch of animals, and then 'My name is...What is your name?' 'I'm from Canada' and 'I don't understand Icelandic.' The last one would have been handy around all these pony ride kids!

Even though we aren't nearly so tired thanks to our nap, I think we're still going to try for an early night. 6am for me and 7am for Cecilia comes very early around here, especially with such busy days! After evening chores we came in and were both like 'wow, we didn't have to do any work today!' but then we counted up and realised we still did at least 9 hours of chores and work. Crazy. If nothing else, we'll be fit!

xx
D

2011-05-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

I got up around 5 today to work, which was productive but exhausting, and I could really have done with crawling back into bed and not down to the cows, at 7, especially given how cold and windy it's been today. The snow line is probably only 40 metres above us right now and the forecast is for disgusting weather tonight and tomorrow. One can only hope it will be disgusting enough to keep us indoors, where we might get to bake. It's a long shot, but...

Anyway, morning chores were fairly typical except for the discovery of the lamb in lamb's clothing. We noticed a little lamb who looked like it's skin was several sizes too big and when we asked T what had happened to the poor thing she was like 'I don't think you want to know' but Cecilia pressed her for it and we found out that the little lamb is wearing the skin of another lamb that died. The momma sheep lost both her babies and at a farm down the road this lamb lost its mommy, so they skinned one of the dead sheep from our farm and put it on like a coat around the little live lamb so that the momma sheep here will accept it. It's gross and cute all at the same time. Though we were saying it actually didn't really phase us at all, which it probably would have 2 weeks ago.

After breakfast, we headed back down to do the 'shitty' job, which we started last week--using planks to create a mucky slurry of cow crap to wash down the channels into the deeper pit. We spent a couple of hours doing that while T used the tractor to muck out the young bull pit, removing the 2 feet of crap they've been standing in in several massive loads. While she was scraping and moving, Cecilia was on bull control duty but they didn't want to leave too badly, apparently, so she didn't have to whack anyone on the head. T also used the tractor to muck out the horses's stalls, which is certainly one way to do it!

For lunch we had 'slauuter,' which is basically a meat/fat meatloaf/sausage like product, made from lamb. At B's family lunch we had it's cousin made with blood. Anyway, I'm not a massive fan, but they make a lovely sweet milk gravy, and combined with mashed potatos and enough gravy and the hunger of two hours of shit slurry-ing, one can quite happily eat anything!

After lunch we quite guiltily enjoyed a five minute break and then headed back out to do more of the crap moving as well as milk machine cleaning and floor scrubbing in the barn's office. The milk machine was interesting--it's an automatic feeder for the calves, who are weaned from their mothers immediately and then fed milk from a bucket until they are a few days old and then are moved into the pen with the other babies and the sheep and lambs. In that pen, they can walk up to an automatic feeder and suck down some milk. We were cleaning that part of the machinery and discovered that inside, the small metal panel that pushes the milk around in a circle is making butter in there. Bizarre.

At 4, thorouhly bored even though we'd been listening to podcasts, we abandoned our planks and headed up to the house for snack, which was way better than normal because T, who is clearly super-woman, was pulling out two loaves of home made coffee cake/bread and also whipping up a big batch of crepes to go with our typical bread/cheese/crackers/cookies/milk snack. It's hilarious the things that two weeks ago would have phased us, which are totally normal now: getting sent down to the barn to get milk from the massive holding tank (if this goes wrong it would be 5-1500L of milk on the floor), youngest trying to eat the entire block of cheese, second-youngest chewing a pen until he exploded it over himself and then poked it in the butter, kids running away with knives (only a cause for concern if it's not a butter knife), toasting their chocolate-covered digestives, licking the top of a tin can etc. At the barn it's nuts too--standing on ponies, crawling around cows, drinking sheep water out of the bucket...I make it sound like they're neglected kids, but they aren't--they're just allowed to run around and be crazy kids. And the parents are so busy there isn't too much time for anything different, anyway.

Night chores were late, because of the epic snack, but generally went well until right at the very end when second-oldest managed to hurt herself (we have no idea how, but maybe using the hay as a gymnastics mat was a silly idea) and had to be taken to hospital by her parents, leaving us to feed the kids and put them to bed, which they were actually fairly happy to do.

I'm exhausted so basically counting down the minutes until bed. I wish cows granted snow days!
xx
D

2011-05-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

Nothing too exciting to report from today, but it was good, and busy, and not too long, by which I mean only 13.5 hours.

Up at 7 for cows--the first time we've done them in a few days, actually, so it was a bit strange to get back to that routine, but good in some ways, too.

After oatmeal for breakfast we saddled up Undri, Emil, and Osk and headed down to the other farm for a group of pre-schoolers. It was coooold today! Hailing and miserable while we were doing the pony rides, but these kids sure know how to dress for the weather around here, it's pretty amazing! We tolted home and then Cecilia and I moved the pony electric fencing around again (they go out at night for grass, and every couple of days we need to move the pen around so they have enough grass as this is all they are eating. Interestingly, they went from a dirt paddock to green grass 12 hours a day with no switching over period at all. Horse people from home can continue to cringe as I say that there is a small heap of garbage and crap including loose wire fencing in the new paddock we made today. Horse care is certainly different around here!).

Then it was up to the house to thaw out and watch an episode of Friends, and then time for a yummy yummy lunch of lamb steaks, roast potatos and a milk-based gravy. B also melted together cheese, salsa, and pizza sauce into a casserole dish and we used it like a dip for Doritos. Oh and there was salad!!! Very exciting! Lunch is typically the best meal around here, we're discovering, and when they actually cook, it's typically very good.

After lunch we got all bundled up and headed back out into the cold Icelandic afternoon. I have a picture to post after of C, me, and youngest all wrapped up. I had leggings, pants, a long sleeved shirt, t shirt, long sleeved fleece, fleece vest, wind breaker, buff, toque, and gloves on. I NEVER wear that much clothing! Youngest had three pairs of pants and two pairs of socks, plus the most adorable woolen sweater with all sorts of animals knit into it.

We went down the road to one of the fields they lease and set about fixing the fence for sheep, who will push through anything. We went down the line of stock fencing and anywhere there was a gap, we took scraps of wood and nails and made bent-over-nail fencing staples to attach the fence to the wood, making a sort of wooden barrier at the bottom. It was just the sort of heathed together, reused fence mom would love to make! :p

By the time we quit, it was already 4:30, so once we had our snack and headed out to the barn after 5, the poor cows were hungry! (Cows start at 4 in the afternoon, usually). We did all the evening chores without anything too exciting going on, and then T went back to work on her fence while C and I fed the kids. We were planning on grilled ham and cheese sandos for them, which they eventually did eat, but while we were cooking they chaotically got their own food. Oldest (10) went for caviar in a tube, while youngest made a sandwhich of ketchup, cheese, and cocktail sauce. Second-youngest, who refuses to eat when his parents are around but is just fine at getting the bread and cheese down when they aren't, went one up on her and had bread and ketchup, and that's it.

I played a quick game of indoor soccer with the boys, updated the blog, and am heading to bed. Tomorrow I'll get up early to keep doing the work I was doing today whenever I had a second, too. A 16-hour day sounds fabulous to me :p

xx
D

2011-05-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

So we went to the Arctic Circle today! It was quite the adventure!

No one got much sleep last night, so we left a bit later than we wanted to this morning, and therefore were rushing to get to a ferry we didn't know the location of, ooops! Luckily no towns are very big here and we managed to find the ferry terminal, run across the dockyard to get our tickets, and jog back on to the boat in time to set off on the 9am sailing. After an hour, we were probably wishing we'd missed the boat--even in the fjord the going was a bit rough, and by the time we hit the open ocean, C wasn't the only one to re-see her breakfast. I'm SO glad I don't get seasick! I was a bit unnerved by the rolling and pitching of the boat, but not nauseous, which was a plus in all of that! The seas were only about two metres (they only cancel the sailing if they hit six), but messy, so we were pitching up and down both from bow to stern and side to side. It was rough enough that when I went below decks to find C some paper towel, the ground moved a good couple of feet from where I expected it to be and I hit the ground in a great, ungraceful heap.

We stayed glued to a railing for basically the entire three-hour crossing, and were checked on a few times by the SWEETEST lady who worked for the company and spent the entire crossing dealing with sick people, from the sounds of it. She lent us an absolutely gorgeous wool blanket for the crossing, that had viking ships and Iceland woven into the pattern. Gorgeous.

With great relief and touch of hypothermia we shivered our way onto shore and headed up to the tiny settlement. Only about 87 people live on the island, so it's pretty compact! We discovered that The Shop (it's proper name) was closed for another couple of hours, so we went to the pub and had a surprisingly good and reasonably-priced lunch amongst half of the boat's occupants, and thawed out at least partially.

Then it was down to business: we had three hours and three goals--the arctic circle, puffins, and handicrafts.

First off was the handicraft store in order to get directions and also have a look at the lovely knit things on offer. We chatted for a few minutes and then hiked past the teeny tiny airport and beyond a yellow guest house to the small statue that demarcates the line of the Arctic Circle. We shiveringly took a few pictures and I decided to do a handstand leanding up against the pole of the Arctic Circle. I managed to kick up in the wrong place, but because I was expecting to hit the pole, I didn't pay any attention to anything at all, until suddenly I was in a bridge, and then a heap; having not caught myself in the air at all. I tried again and eventually ended up with a photo of me with my legs sort of hugging the sign. Haha oh well!

That job crossed off the list, we walked for about an hour, examining some cliffs which are used by birds to make colonies of nests in. They were stunning! They looked kind of like Hawaii in some ways, which makes sense, due to the volcanic nature of the whole thing, but it was rather colder up here! We saw lots of puffins though! They are adorable little guys, if tough to photograph! They seem to nest in little hollows in the cliffs, and some flew out quite close to us and then put on a flying show around us, pretty cool!

Once we'd exhausted the body heat we'd stored up at the pub, we walked back to the other end of town and saw the very cute but sadly under construction church, and then wandered back to the craft store, where we bought some postcards as well as certificates to prove we had indeed crossed the Arctic Circle. After mailing the cards in 'The Store' we hesitantly got back on the boat. Our favourite crew member was there and she assured us that it was going to be much better, because even though we still had some swells to deal with, the roll was only going to be side to side, not forward and back, and also the wind was behind us this time (and the sun was out). True to her word, it was infinitely better. Knowing we liked to be on deck, she gave us each a wool blanket, and between that, our wind breakers, and our borrowed buffs, we were semi-OK. Frozen, but not seasick. We did get rather wet a few times from the spray over the sides, and eventually I buried myself entirely under the blanket and did some reading through the kindle app on my phone.

It was so much better this time that we managed to go inside for the last 45 minutes or so and thawed out and watched the end of the movie they had showing--Along Came Polly.

We grudgingly gave our blankets back when we got to the end of the ferry trip and made a brief stop for a drink and a personal-sized skyr to add to the sandwiches we'd packed for lunch and never gotten a chance to eat during the day, and stopped in a pull off overlooking a fjord to eat a late-ish dinner before heading back to the farm. It was around 9 when we got home, so we just did some emails, photo uploading, work, blogging, etc., and it will be time for bed soon--back to 7am cows tomorrow.

We've both been surprised as to how this farm has come to feel quite comfortable over the past few days, to the point where, while on the boat and completely green around the gills, Cecilia said 'I want to get back to the farm!' I wouldn't say that I'm loving it here, exactly, but I'm appreciating the time we have here and having lots of fun moments. I can't wait to move back to a bigger city, and am hoping Riga will be that, but there's something to be said for going down to the barn and knowing almost exactly what the routine will be for the next two hours, and then looking forward to the sweet oatmeal after for breakfast, or the bread and cheese for every other meal. (Well not quite any more, but...)

Anyway, more tomorrow.
xx
Dani

2011-05-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

Posting for two days, I suppose...

Yesterday (Saturday) we were allowed to sleep in and skip morning chores, though we didn't sleep too late as we wanted to get going and head into town! Our first stop was a local gymnastics competition, which we had heard about because two of the extra people kicking around the house on Friday were competing in it. We had no idea what to expect, but showed up at a local gymnasium and watched for a couple of hours. It was pretty interesting! Instead of the events we do, they had a vault and mini tramp event (two events but considered as part of one), a power tumbling event, and a team dance event. On the first two events, everyone went one right after the other (some very close together!) and then they lined up and saluted as a team. The dance thing was interesting too--it seemed like they all needed some elements, such as a full turn, a cartwheel, a prone-fall, and a couple of other bits and pieces, and other than that it was just a dance routine; not so interesting to be honest. The vault was a loooooot of front handsprings, with some half-ons. The hardest vault I saw was a tsuk 1/1.

On minitramp, mostly they were layout 1/1 with some double fulls. Strangely, no one really seemed to try and stick anything, even the things they totally could have. On the power tumbling strip, we saw front tuck to cartwheel, ro, bhs, bhs; ro, bhs, blo, etc. Oh and a couple of front layouts with a full twist that were sooooo low and forward it was like if a whip back was sent forwards and they managed to get a full twist in. It was pretty cute.

After that we had lunch at Bonus which is a supermarket kind of like a mini costco. We had wanted to eat in their cafe, but it turned out to be surprisingly expensive given how cheap Bonus is, so we ended up buying a few groceries--individually-sized skyr, thick digestives, cheese buns, and diet coke. mmmmm bubbles.

After lunch we went to the mall to try and return my mobile data stick from vodafone that doens't work out here on the farm, but without a receipt, she wouldn't help me. We picked up some half-price candy and then took that out to one of the big Icelandic horse breeding farms to watch a show. It was really interesting. Two horses at a time went out onto a track and started at diagonally-opposite corners. They then tolted around (this was a tolt-only class) until they were told to reverse. On the reverse rein they would tolt with extension along the long side and collection around the short ends. After about 3-5 minutes the class would be over and they would each get a score and then move on to the next pair.

We came back to the farm for SUPER quick chores (lots of extra people helped) so that the family could be ready to go in time for Eurovision. But before that we had time to help T take 4 kids on a trail ride. Three of the kids from here came plus one of their friends who was SO funny. He's never really ridden before and spent the whole time using his crop like a jockey and yelling 'hup, hup, yeeehaw!' while smacking and pulling and bouncing along. Osk was an absolute star and did exactly what she thought would be best for him, which was a nice slow trot. Emil and I stayed close to jump in if needs be, but she was an utter star. That pony is amazing. We've walked in on the kids standing on her back while she was in a stall with another pony, as well as lounging around on her back, dropping the reins and leaving her wherever, etc. She's pretty great!

C and I changed back into our city clothes and went into town for dinner. We had yummy burgers at a little burger place and watched about half of the Eurovision contestants before walking around Akureryi and heading home in time to find out that Azerbaijan, of all the European countries, was the winner this year. We had never experienced Eurovision up until this point, but we're both quite well into it now and planning on getting the CD of all the finalists (like 45 of them) to listen to on our Alberta road trip later this summer.

Today (Sunday) was relaxed. We got to sleep in again, because it was Sunday, and when we woke up, everyone else had gone to church, so C read for a bit and I did some work, and then when they got home around 1 we headed out, to the most kitschy place in all of Iceland, probably--it's a funny little Christmas town that is really just a big Christmas store, a few little buildings, the 'world's largest advent calendar' (situated in a faux medieval tower, of course), the cutest little outhouse you've ever seen, and lots of Christmas cheer. Naturally I loved it!

Driving back into town we noticed how the airport here is built right into the fjord--it must be a craaaazy landing! We had planned to go to the visitor's centre to see about our options for getting to our ferry next week and also about visiting Lake Mytvan, which is supposed to be amazing, but they were closed, so we had lunch in a lovely little cafe in a bright blue building and then came back for cows. After cows was dinner and then a bit of low key babysitting before bed. C is asleep now, but I'm working (uploading and the internet is slooooow, so it's taking forever) and updating the blog for you guys. There will be photos eventually Grampy, I promise.

Tomorrow: The Arctic Circle. Also: NO COWS!
xx
D

2011-05-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

Typically I would say 'how can I remember what I did today, I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast,' but the answer to that question is always oatmeal, so at least I can remember one thing about the day. I *think* this is roughly what happened today:

• Woke up at 6, worked for 45 minutes, got up C, went to the cows.
• T accidentally flicked shit onto my forehead when I was cleaning a cow.
• I asked her why one of the cows wears a harness-like thing for milking and she said "well it kicks when you milk, but if you tie her up like the others [there are a couple that get bailing-twine ankle restraints while milking] she goes crazy and bucks, so she needs to wear the rope. She's a very boring cow." I'm pretty sure boring wasn't quite the word she was looking for!
• We went to our new favourite neighbour's farm for pony rides. It was the two youngest's kindergarten so everyone knew everyone.
• B, who is 6'+ and 200" + got on 14.2 hh Emil, in his capri-length jeans, and tolted around the field.
• We ate lunch with all the kids at the farm and then C and I had a lovely tolt home ponying Osk with us so that T could drive home.
• We cleaned house. OMG. Excavation city. At LEAST 20 loads of laundry was collected from ALL OVER THE PLACE. Including under the cat, who likes to sleep disguised in clothing, which is why C stepped on it a couple of days ago and got bitten in return.
• I separated a ridiculous number of toys into five categories: "dolls, animals, blocks, cars, guns."
• Second-youngest (six) and I had a bit of a wrestling match over the crystal I was trying to dust. He's a bit of a terror and managed to steal a commemorative flute from 2000 and abscond with it to a bunk bed. I had to send his mother after him to collect it.
• We discovered T, who is an absolute force, is only 29.
• Many, many extra people showed up, some of whom seem to be staying here. There is a mum and three girls and maybe a boy? Who knows. This place is so chaotic it's easy to lose people. BUT they are here for a gymnastics meet! And we get to watch!
• Cow chores were ridiculous: we had forgotten to turn on the milk cleaning system this morning, B half-flooded the milk room by not opening a valve, T had forgotten to give the cows hay this morning so they were all moan-y about that, B broke a milking machine, C got a serious electric shock on the bulls and got peed on...
• starting to build a fence at 8:30pm when you've been going for 13 hours and are freezing is a recipe for meltdown.
• some days, meltdowns mean days off the next day.
• we get to watch gymnastics and Icelandic pony shows and Eurovision tomorrow. We only have to do night chores!!!
• B made amazing pizza
• B and T went out, but the random adult who seems to be staying here is babysitting :)
• we get to sleep in tomorrow
• we get to sleep in tomorrow
• did I mention we get to sleep in tomorrow????
• it's midnight and it's only just now starting to get somewhere close to dark. The sun will rise again in around 2 hours.
• I will be asleep at 7:01 tomorrow. And then I will be in town. Near gymnastics. And maybe coffee. And veggies and fruit and bubbly drinks.
xx
D

2011-05-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is a day later, blogger was down. Anyway:

Finally a good day :) We did morning chores as usual and then trudged up for breakfast and asked when we might be able to leave the farm at some point and were basically told ‘not today but whenever you want,’ which was a bit hard to reconcile with the ‘work, work, work’ that had been going on and left us feeling a bit less than impressed. Things perked up, though, as we headed back to the neighbour’s farm for more pony rides, which are always cute and pretty easy. One kid got on my pony, Emil, and promptly started crying, but other than that, all was good.

After the morning of pony rides, we were told to untack the horses and put them in a field at the neighbour’s farm, as we would be eating lunch there and then doing another school group in the afternoon. Good news on so many levels! More pony rides, less work, new people! And then it just got better as the soup, which was delicious, included real vegetables! Of a few varieties! The people were really really sweet too—the middle aged couple that owns the farm, and another couple who live on the property but don’t farm it, and then B and T as well. It was a relaxed lunch and the people there were really friendly with us, which was nice! B and T aren’t unfriendly, exactly, they just don’t really talk about much of anything or engage in too many conversations, even if we try and start them, so it was nice to be around some enthusiastic people. They also have a really nice house, which was a welcome relief from the absolute chaos of this place.

Partway through lunch I asked the woman who owns the farm what place in the area she would recommend for us to see, and this started a spirited conversation about a few places we could go, including Mytvan, which is a lake B and T had mentioned. I think this whole conversation helped to remind B and T that we are tourists as well as farm hands, and the woman seemed to encourage them to let us go, at least a little bit. At the very least, it put it on the table. We found out around then that T wouldn’t be doing the afternoon group with us, so we weren’t entirely sure what to do with ourselves for the hour before that school showed up, but then the woman at the new farm was like ‘why don’t you borrow our car and drive down the fjord for a little bit?’ T didn’t like that idea so much as it didn’t work with the car situation at our farm, because our ponies are staying overnight at the farm tonight and we needed a way to get home, but the way things were worded, they basically had no choice but to give us that hour off. We went home and got in the farm car, giddy with the prospect of a bit of free time, and completely re-engerised zipped into town. We got a bit lost and only had about 20 minutes at the mall, which was enough time to get ice cream and re-stock our emergency granola bar supply, but it was still very exciting! It was the first time we’d been to town on our own since last Friday, and we were drunk with freedom haha.

We headed back to the other farm to do the pony rides, which went really well, and were then offered coffee and some funny little donut-like things they (and we) love around here. They continued to be super-friendly and offered us the chance to hang out with them while they worked with the sheep for a bit, which we took until we had to head back to the farm for our own cow chores. After having basically not worked the whole rest of the day, the three hours in the evening felt like nothing, and were punctuated by Bryndis giving me another epic bath, and Asia giving birth to the cutest calf ever! It was so fast, too, she popped the sucker out in like 5 minutes!

After we headed up from the barn, we played on the trampoline with the youngest for a bit, and then came in for a supper of BBQ’d hotdogs, Icelandic-style. T gave us a lesson in Icelandic pronunciation, giving us a guide to the horses’ names as a practice sheet.

I even got some work done!

The next few days are looking up too: tomorrow is more pony rides in the morning followed by house cleaning (far preferable to cleaning the cows’ house or wrangling bulls!), Saturday after chores we are going into town to have dinner and watch the Eurovision finals on TV, Sunday we get to sleep in (and will probably try and borrow the car for a couple of hours), and Monday we are going to Grimsey, which is an island 45 miles north of us bisected by the Arctic Circle. Then we’ll just have a week and a bit left to go and our stint as dairy farmers will be behind us!

2011-05-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing I'm writing things down before we go to bed as I can barely remember what happened by the end of the day, never mind if I waited until tomorrow! Anyway...

Today started at 5 so that I could have a meeting with Caroline, as the time difference for us is really awkward and the cows are rather needy during the hours the two of us are generally awake. It was good to 'see' her!

We headed down to the barn for 7, did the cow chores, which again involved pulling some lambs out of a sheep (oh, and the iffy one from yesterday is OK!) and headed up for our usual oatmeal around 9. We had a few minutes of free time, during which we went down to our bedrooms and promptly passed out for about half an hour until B yelled for us and we went out to the barn to play with the bulls, which is about exactly as fun/terrifying as it sounds like it should be.

Basically, we were supposed to help move eight teenage bulls from the end of the barn where they kind of hang out into another smaller pen on the other end of the (milk) cows. This meant moving them from the big pen, down the shoot between where the girl cows stick their heads to eat, and then into the pen. I was given a small stick and told to guard the whole length of pen A while B and T selected the ones they wanted and literally whacked them until they moved where they were supposed to. We lost a couple down to the wrong end of the barn, including one that decided it would be a great idea to attack the round bale of straw I was on the other side of. At this point in my overtired, slightly panicked stated I started half laughing, half crying, and madly stick waving until B came to my rescue. We did eventually get all but one of the bulls where it was supposed to be going (that one just wouldn't go to the new pen) and I only had to whack a couple of bulls in the head a couple of times, apologising under my breath while willing it not to kill me. At some point, B looked over at me, and said 'don't worry, they won't hurt you.' Uhuh. Likely story.

That excitement done I moved hay around for the cows while C helped with clipping the lambs ears and putting in their ear tags, and then I was sent up to the house to boil potatos for lunch. It was pretty funny as we have yet to be asked if we can, for example, wrangle bulls, handle studs, milk cows, etc., but I was asked with great seriousness if I knew how to boil potatoes before I headed up to the house. Seriously? THAT'S the skill I might not have come to Iceland with?

Anyway...after lunch we played musical ponies and then went for a ride on our own, I took a cute little paint pony, who is only 5 and a bit of a brat, and C rode a cute slightly older mare. We tried to take some ponies, but had limited success, given my prancing pony. Following our tolt, we went down into a field that they either own or lease and took down a bunch of hot wire to use for later in an absolutely biting wind, it was brutal!

Next, it was into the car to drive down to another field and collect more hotwire, and then back into one of the old abandoned houses on the property (what a funny place!!) to get hot wire fencing sticks, which we used to build a two-strand hot wire fence around some grass by the road.

Then it was snack time which was even more chaotic as usual, since we had four extra kids over, taking the snack total up to nine or something like that, even though not everyone was even home! T made some very yummy crepes to go with our usual bread/cheese/buns/milk snack, and then it was back down to do cows. We got sidetracked part way through when T asked us to help her move the ponies from their paddock into the grass field we had made. We had strings of electric to hold up as guides, but really against 15 excited ponies and 100 metres of distance to cover it was a bit futile. Two jumped my strand and headed off to a hill to graze and one jumped C's rope and headed off at a brisk tolt down the road, while the 13 or so who made it into the field took off at a mad assortment of quick gaits to the end of their new paddock, with the loose pony tolting down the road beside them. This was all semi-OK until he decided to jump into the paddock, but didn't really get off the ground, and took our lovely fence down with him as they all sprinted around a bit more. We quickly got their fence back together just in time for Loppa the absolutely gorgeous border collie mum around here to worry that her flock had moved and begin to herd everyone at an efficient and brisk pace back to the gate end of the paddock, which C and T were still building. Some jumping jacks from C and frantic calling from both T and me got the ponies to turn around and Loppa to finally stop nipping at their heels. She's a good herder that one, just a little mis-guided!!

After that exciting diversion, we headed in to milk, which was a little bit annoying as half the cows have their periods or whatever it is cows do, and therefore were being right stroppy, well, cows, as it happens. I did get a bath from Brynya, one of our favourites, who spent the entire time I was cleaning her neighbour giving me a thorough bath, which is all fine till she hits skin, at which point it's a little much--they have very cat-like rough tongues, except really, really big, so it's like a rather unexpected exfoliation!

Dinner of yogurt and fruit after that, and bed soon, yay!
xx
D

2011-05-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

Today was another epically long day, though knowing we might be in for a 12 hour (well if you count babysitting we are at 14 hours and counting) day made it easier to get through.

We woke up at 7 and did cow chores as normal, actually finishing about 45 minutes earlier than normal, and came in for breakfast at about 8:15. Instead of going straight out to do training rides like we'd done yesterday, this time we saddled up three of the very obliging ponies and tolted off down the road two farms down, where a preschool visit was happening. They call it kindergarten here, but I think it's closer to what we consider preschool. We took about 40 kids for little pony rides up and down a field, it was pretty fun and cute. All of the kids have adorable little headscarves that they wear, which we're thinking we might need to hunt down for ourselves--they seem like the ultimate multi-purpose tool.

After we walked them around, we got coffee, which was amazing thanks to the situation, and these funny, crispy cousins of donuts, which are pretty good.

We tolted back home and got our next ponies and headed back out for a regular training tolt. I was on Loki this time, who is so far my favourite, very sweet and lovely gaits.

After our second ride we played musical ponies so that the stud could go out (all of the mares need to come in), swept out the main loading bay of the barn, and then headed up for lunch which was an intriguing chocolate pudding in liquid form type of object, along with toast and hard-boiled eggs and cheese. There is no shortage of cheese and bread and milk around here!

Then it was back out to the barn for what T termed the 'shitty job.' Now there's an intro. Basically we put two by eight boards into the slats of the grates behind the cows, where the poo gets caught, and with the help of a running hose, mushed the whole thing around into a slurry, and slopped it off the edge half way down the length of the barn into the deeper holding tank. It was roughly as pleasant as it sounds.

I was lucky and got rescued half way through to go help put in fence posts for a field which I think will hold some kind of crop eventually. It was cool though as I held the fence posts and then T lowered the bucked of the tractor on top of them to push them into the field. Pain-free fence post pounding.

We finished up the fencing around 4 and rescued C from her slurry pushing to go up for a snack of bread and cheese and then back to the barn around 4:30 for cow chores, which included a side of musical ponies. T came to get Cecilia and asked her to hold a sheep while she stuck her hand up it and pulled out a half-dead lamb. After a LOT of swinging and hitting and rubbing and mouth-to-mouthing (!), T got it to be semi-breathing and sort of slightly happier looking. She spent about 20 minutes trying to rub some life into it, and then we left it in a new mommy stall with its mom, and we'll hope for the best in the morning.

Back to the house just after 8, T left immediately and in a bit of a panic because the two older kids were having a school concert that started at 8 and she wanted to get to part of it, therefore leaving us to babysit. The two younger ones were watching Eurovision semi-finals (Iceland got through!) and we took a break just before finding out the winners to feed them a quick dinner (our leftover lunch). Once it finished there was a bit of an argument to get the six year old to bed (it's REALLY hard to negotiate when neither of you speaks a word of the other's language!) but we tag teamed and things went down decently well. The 4 and 6 year olds share a queen sized bed and getting them to stay quiet is absolutely ridiculous.

Finally at about 9:45, T, who was at that point down at the barn helping another sheep lamb, came up to the house and sprung us, which is lovely, as I need to be up at 5 for work, and then 7 for chores...

D

2011-05-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

Whew, today was a completely and utterly crazy day, and hopefully not the template for the next two weeks, as I'm pretty sure I would pitch over with total and utter exhaustion if it is. We got up at 6:53, which we've discovered is the magic time in order to get on our cow clothes, which sit festering in two piles by the door fireman-style, possibly eat a granola bar, and possibly brush our teeth. Then it's off to the barn for 2 hours of morning chores, which today also included Cecilia helping T pull a dead sheep out of a first-time mom, as well as two live and very adorable new sheep out of a different mom. After chores, it's breakfast time, which seems to often be oatmeal, and then this morning, instead of rest time like we had been getting, it was straight out to the barn to help train the ponies.

We each rode a pony at a brisk tolt down the road and back, which was quite good fun, as our first horses were well trained and seemed mostly to be out and about for a conditioning jog. The saddles are quite funny (very flat dressage saddles) and sit very far back on the horses, with no saddle pads. The horses are also caught and groomed in the first part of a bridle (including bit), and then they add on what is essentially the nose band. They're all well behaved for the grooming and tacking up, and most of them stood obligingly for their grooming without being tied or held.

After our first ride, it was on to pony two, which for me was a bit more than I bargained for. T asked me if I'd ever ponied a horse before (essentially leading a horse from the horse you're riding) and I said no, but that I'd watched. She was like, OK, you'll try, and take this one. Which seemed fair enough, because since it seems we're mostly doing fitness jogs for our part, but then she put a surcingle on it, and went to catch the pony that seems to have been handled least, a gorgeous little buckskin paint mare. She got the bridle on it, and then clipped its head to the surcingle of my (second) pony, and proceeded to do some grooming while the young pony freaked out and the babysitter pony stayed remarkably calm. She then got me to mount my pony (A), giving me the reins to pony B, who was thoroughly attached to pony C, who decided to lean most of her weight on to the poor sandwiched pony, who decided to nip me to tell me about it, and trap my leg in the middle. Lovely. Actually, it went better than it might have, in that there were no major traumas, but half way down the road the pony I was on, who I was trying to neck rein with the reins in some sort of galloping bridge so as to free up an extra hand for the other two ponies, decided that we were doing a random circle, and I nearly lost the plot entirely. The rest of the ride was much improved when T took the two ponies off me, and I got to concentrate on riding my 18 year old school master with a big tolt.

Then we got a brief lunch break, which was lamb sausage and potatoes with a sweet milk-based gravy (if it can involve milk, it will, around here), and we did a bit of laundry, and then were settling in to watch Friends when T came in to tell us that it was back down to the barn for more pony time. This time I was on a gorgeous but green little paint, who decided she absolutely wasn't going to cross the rivers we had to get over on our ride. I got her over the first one, but it took two of us and quite some time to get her to cross the second one. Luckily we didn't have to cross the rivers on our way home!

After we got back to the barn, I went to saddle up pony two for the second time in order to pony the littlest on a short trail ride. She has a sweet, obliging paint that didn't do much except threaten to nibble my leg. The girl was funny as I looked back towards her and she had her eyes closed and was listing scarily to one side. It actually seemed like she was well on her way to falling asleep, which was pretty funny.

After that, I helped Cecilia complete the pony swapping she had been tasked with, which had included moving a stud from one part of the property to the other, and then moving the mares to the other part of the property so that his outing was completed, and no one was going to have babies on us.

Then it was straight up to the house for a quick snack of bread and cheese and to feed the two youngest kids the same, and then out to grab laundry and straight down to the barn for cow chores, which took 45 minutes longer than they should have because we had to wait for T to get back from taking the two oldest into town (soccer and gymnastics, I would have loved to have gone to either!!) in order to complete everything we need to do.

Back to the house at 7:45, we had time for very short but appreciated showers before dinner of museli and cheerios and pourable yogurt, which is a pretty cool product, especially when it is caramel flavoured!

Now its 9:20pm and definitely time to fall into bed, read for a bit, and get up at 7 to do some or all of that again. If anyone wants to fedex me a caramel macchiato or a diet coke, I'd love you forever!

xx
D

2011-05-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Today we got to sleep in, which was great! We woke up at around 10 and then watched Friends until about 11 and then came up for a chaotic breakfast of oatmeal, milk, cheese, etc. The kids all seem really sweet, even though we can't particularly understand them, but when they are all together, it conspires to be a hurricane of craziness.

We were at loose ends a bit after lunch, but we ended up going for a nice walk down the road for about 45 minutes each way, and found a pretty little river and some old ruins, which T said was an old sheep-holding pen. It's all made out of rocks and quite cool. It would have been good to walk over there, but we weren't sure if we were allowed to traipse through someone else's fields. Unfortunately, though it is a gorgeous valley, there isn't really anywhere to go, so we just wandered till we got tired and turned around.

We had a companion on our walk--City Dog--who has been visiting the farm and doesn't have so much barn sense! He came along and went shooting across fields chasing birds and sheep and whatever else caught it's fancy; completely ignoring us as we yelled and yelled for it to stick close. He then turned tail and took off, luckily to the farm, where we saw him once we got home.

On the way back we also saw a cow licking a horse, which was pretty cute!

We got home, relaxed/worked for a bit, and then had a late lunch before heading down to the barn at 4.

We did the normal cow/sheep/horse chores, and then spent about half an hour shoving old round-bale wrappers into huuuuuuuge bags (you could easily fit 4-5 of me standing up in there). It was notable only because it was disgusting--the puppies use those bags as their bathrooms :/ I realised 20 minutes in what the smell was that I couldn't quite place--it exactly matched my old cleat bags haha.

Cow chores went as normal, though this time we did them with T, as B was ill today, not entirely sure with what, and trying to believe its not due to them getting home at 3am yesterday :p We got to learn how to shut off the milking system and set it up for cleaning, which was actually quite a bit more complicated than you might think, and there's no way I'll be able to do it again without getting shown once or twice more, but anyway...in the next couple of days, we're going to take pictures of every step of the way, so you can see the cow chores in action. I bet you can't wait! :p

After that, we came up to the house for spaghetti and then C called it an early night. I sent BAB to print and am blogging, etc., before sleeping early too--Up at 6:45 again tomorrow. At least we aren't getting up in the dark, though! It's only sunset from midnight to 2am right now, which means that by the time you rock through dawn and dusk, there is some light basically all the time up here on the 65th parallel. I love it!

xx
D

2011-05-07T14:09:00.001-07:00

Today started, as usual, with the 7am cow chores, which weren't so bad today, now that we knew what was going on. There were also two new lambs to start the day, which were pretty adorable! We went up for breakfast around 9:30 and then were told we'd have the morning off, which was lovely--time to do a little bit of work and upload some photos.

We left around 11:30 and headed to B's grandparent's house, where we had a traditional Saturday lunch with the three of them as well as two of the grandmothers' sisters and one of their brothers. Lunch was interesting and included dried fish, which you smushed through butter, lamb head-cheese, blood and lard sausage, and a very liquid-y rice pudding with cinnamon sugar, which was the main course. I can definitely get behind rice pudding as a main meal!

C and I had to fight desperately to stay awake after lunch as everyone was speaking Icelandic and it was warm and comfortable and we were full, couldn't tell what was going on, and also exhausted. It was a dangerous combination!

We got back to the house around 2, and B said he was exhausted and didn't feel like doing anything, so we got to nap until 3, which was great. We both fell fast asleep and rolled out of bed just in time to head down to the barn to do cow chores.

It was rather exciting as we discovered that one cow, Lus, was loose. I got her collar from her standing stall and put it back on her, and then we herded her back to her pen. Luckily, she was very obliging and basically meandered back in.

C also had to deal with the teenage bulls (who are just waiting to be slaughtered as far as we can tell), who had broken the bottom wire of their two-strand electric fence in their crush for the water bucket.

As we were almost done the cow chores, T and the kids showed up, delivering some more ponies as they did so. Three minutes after they showed up, Thordis (who is all of 5'1 and 110 pounds) had her hand in to her shoulder of a mother-to-be cow, and wrapped bailing twine around two of its legs, basically yanking it into the world, whether it wanted to come or not. Sadly, it didn't as it was still born. It was pretty, uh, gross the whole thing, to be honest, though C was fascinated. We both bolted once the dead cow was tipped upside down and disgorged a vast quantity of liquidious crap from his lungs.

Once we'd herded the sheep back into their pens, we headed up to the house and were left with the four kids, aged four to ten. There are two girls (4 and 9) and two boys (6 and 10) and though they are complete chaos, they are pretty cute! They came into the kitchen in a whirlwind to get themselves a dinner of skiyr (thick yogurt) and cookies, which to be fair, is what we ate too, and then scattered off to watch Eurovision and play barbies. We hung out with the four year old and braided her babies hair, and then got ridden around like ponies, flipped the two little ones around, and generally fooled around even though they speak no English and our Icelandic isn't so good really. The littlest one stole my glasses and then wore them for bit, but when when I wen to find her and get them back, I discovered she was washing them off in the bathroom sink for me. Very cute!

They're in bed now, though not asleep, so we're not entirely sure what to do about that...hopefully they conk out soon!

Best news of the day--we get to sleep in tomorrow!
xx
D

2011-05-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post today--I want to go to bed, but I'm hoping to get photos up tomorrow if we have any spare time in the afternoon...

We woke up just before 7 to do the cows, which wasn't quite as involved in the morning--we only have to scrape behind them and milk them, as well as feeding ponies and a few other things. Morning chores take about 2 hours. Then we had breakfast and did some folding and hanging of laundry for the family, and at about 10:30 got the fantastic news we were going to town!! We went straight to a bookstore with free internet and checked in with the world, and then wandered around Akureryi for a little bit. We had gorgeous weather again, and it really is a stunning little town on the fjord. We ate Icelandic hotdogs for lunch, with yummy crispy onions in them, and walked down to the little mall for icecream.

At about 1, we came back to the farm and spent a couple of hours taking photographs, watching TV, and taking in laundry, before starting evening chores at 4. These take nearly 3 hours, and will be fully documented later. After chores, a neighbour who is also in the play came over and we watched the news interview B had done on local TV with her. It included a clip of the play with a bunch of farmers in their skivvies. Very entertaining even though we didn't understand a word of the Icelandic!

We had a quick dinner (hotdogs again, haha) and then they were off to the performance, while C and I skyped with Toryn, watched Friends, did a bit of work, and are now gratefully getting an early night!

xx
D

2011-05-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

We started the morning by dipping our feet in the sulphuric (all the water smells like rotten eggs here) hot tub behind the hostel and on the side of the fjord. We hit the road around 10 and drove for the next four and a half hours, through some amazing scenery—big mountains, valleys, rivers running alongside us, and blue skies throughout. We stopped briefly for a drink at Blundous, but continued straight to Akyureri, as we needed to have the car back for 1:00, and were running pretty late. At 1:40, we finally got to the rental agency, held our breath that they wouldn’t mind it being a bit late, and then sat on the curb to wait for our host/boss for the next 20 days, B.

So far he seems really friendly, and he took us on a little driving tour of the town, which is really cute and I hope we get to see it properly, and then up to their ski hill, which was not so impressive, in order to see the town, which certainly was. It’s an absolutely gorgeous view down the valley and into the fjord, especially today, which was lovely and sunny.

We then drove about 20 minutes back to the farm, which has been in his family for five generations, and which is nestled in another lovely valley. He showed us the farmhouse where we’ll be staying, which is a bit chaotic, but friendly none-the-less, and then after a lunch of fresh from their cows milk, bread, lamb spread (like liverwurst, it was great), we headed out to do chores for the evening.

Whew.

There are quite a few animals here, starting with four absolutely adorable sheepdog puppies, some week-old kittens, a day-old lamb, and a day-old calf! There are about 50 cows in total, 30 in milking, and then a bunch more little ones and mysteriously separated ones. Maybe teenage boys going off to other things? There are about 30 sheep, including 2 rams, and then maybe 8 horses outside, one gorgeous paint stallion inside, and three young ones in training, also inside. Our chores were to feed and water the horses, feed the goats, water some of the cows, sweep the cow areas where they stand (in tie stalls), sweep all the walkways, scrape and wash down the grates behind the cows where they poo (yup, it’s lovely), and wash the cows’ udders as well as expressing some milk from each teat in preparation for milking, which is done with some pretty nifty automated machines. It’s a good thing C and I learned the basics of milking with Poppy, or we would never have had a hope!

I’m going to leave it at that for the animals and spread that out a bit over the next few posts, as otherwise I will have run out of things to say after two days, I imagine. The whole shebang took about 2.5 to 3 hours, and left us with no doubts that we will be fit at the end of our three-week stint as Icelandic dairy farmers.

We finished around 7 and headed back into the house, at which point B stripped down to his undies and left his barn clothes in the front hall before running upstairs. C and I were like, hey, uh….we’ll leave our clothes on, thanks. He jumped straight in the shower and then bolted off, as he’s performing in a play this evening, put on by a farmers association in the region. They’ve sold out 28 performances this year, and tonight and tomorrow are the last two. The play? The Full Monty! He showed us an ad for the play and they are all naked in the hay. All I could come up with to say was, ‘that must have been itchy.’ Haha. Apparently all the actors also made a calendar, and he promised to bring one home for us.

Left to our own devices, we made cheese sandwiches and ate some pear yogurt he left for us. It’s an Icelandic yogurt and it is really thick and creamy and amazing. We fought with the horrible internet some more, I tried to work, and we’re calling it a very early night now as the cows need to be milked at 7 tomorrow.

2011-05-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

Whew, what a day! Photos are probably going to come later, because I have fairly limited internet tonight, and it's also 1am, which means I need to be heading to bed so as not to fall over tomorrow, unaccustomed as I am to semi-early mornings and busy days!

Anyway. We got up and out of the house around 9:30, this time through the door, thank you very much, and grabbed Subway for breakfast (after seeing KFC, Subway, Taco Bell, etc. here I'm wondering where on earth Starbucks is?! *or McDonalds, for that matter) on our way to the National Museum. Recent winner of a best museum in Europe award, it was completely refurbished in 2004 and a great way to spend the morning. It has eight main sections and covers the history of Iceland from its first settlement 1000 years ago to today. There are some amazing artefacts, including jointed snaffle bits from 800 years ago, the most gorgeous jewellery, intricate wood carvings, etc. Sadly, the hands-on exhibit, where one could supposedly try on clothing, was closed for rennovations, but with a tight schedule as it was, we were happy enough to move on. After walking towards our car rental agency for an hour in a lovely drizzle and beside a four-lane highway, we decided to get on a bus, where the very helpful bus driver took the change we had (not enough, but he didn't mind/notice) and told us how to get to the correct street.

Twenty minutes later, we were the proud temporary owners of a Ford Fiesta (named TJ for the duration). It was pretty funny as we received a free upgrade from our original booking; a Ford Ka, which is evidentally tiny and 2-door. We had been having so much fun saying 'ka, ka, KAHHH' for the past week, we were fairly disappointed to be driving a bigger, better car for free, which confused the rental agent quite a bit! (There's also the $2.40 per L (nearly 10$/GAL we're paying for gas to consider!!!)

Before we were let loose on the road, we were asked to watch a six-minute video on driving in Iceland, which showed an accident, a guy getting whipped to the back of his car thanks to not wearing a seatbelt, and all sorts of other fun things! Also included: Iceland-specific road signs, tips for driving in gravel, and some other bits and bobs.

Set free, we drove back to Tobba's to collect our stuff, bought lunch at the grocery store, and hit the road around 3pm. Our first stop was Thingvellir, which is a UNESCO world heritage site, and home to the original Althingi, or Icelandic national parliament. We walked down to the Law Rock, where people read the laws and made proclimations way back in the day, entertained ourselves by straddling fissures (Thingvellir sits between the American and Europe/Asian plates), and walked down to the little church you'll see when I get photos up. Interestingly, Tobba's family is originally from there, and her grandfather was the priest of the church. Her family lived there until her older brother turned one year old, at which point the family moved north, where she grew up.

At Thingvellir, we noticed we were only 50km from Geyser, so continued inland and completely away from where we actually needed to go, but decided it was worth it when we saw the bubbling pits of water and the impressive and regular 40-foot geyser Strokkur shooting into the sky. We had a fairly grey day, so the photos are a bit grey on light grey, but it was impressive none-the-less. We also saw lots and lots of CUTE ponies and lambs on this part of the drive, and I got some more standard driving practice in, without destroying the clutch!

Following our stop at Geyser, we headed back to the main 'one' road, which was quite a journey in and of itself, and involved some of the inland gravel roads Iceland seems to have in great abundance. The landscape here is incredible, and changes from moon-like, to tundra, to end of the earth, to middle earth, to volcanic mountains, to snowy mountains, to tussock-y grass, to amazing fjords to waterfalls to rivers and streams. It's just incredible. We are SO glad we rented a car instead of flying or taking a bus north! We keep trying to compare it to places we've been and have settled on some sort of 'if Northern Canada and Nevada and the foothills of the Rockies and Hawaii had a baby...' thing.

It's really funny how quickly we've come to think of two or three houses all together as 'civilisation' and a tiny town as a mecca--it's pretty empty out here!

After several hours of driving, we ended up at our destination for the night--Saeborg. It's a tiny settlement now used for educational camps, and shares the general area with our youth hostel, which used to be a farm house. It's basic but clean, quiet, and cheerful. We got here kind of late--around 10:30pm, and unfortunately may have woken up the caretaker when we phoned her to check in (she doesn't stay on-site). However, she was very sweet and got us into a six-person dorm we have all to ourselves, which is very nice. The hostel is perched right on a fjord, and tomorrow we'll be looking at that, dipping our sore-from-endless-walking-muscles in the geo-thermally-heated hot tub, and seeing if we have time to look for puffins before we continue north to Akyureri and meet our hosts for the next three weeks, Benni and Thordis.

OK, time to log off, download photos, and fall into bed. More and photos tomorrow, hopefully!
xx
D

2011-05-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

So today started not so much with breaking into, but rather out of, our host family's house. Oops! They were leaving this morning at 7:30am, and despite our seemingly endless day of travel yesterday, we made a decent effort and were ready to go at 7:35. Unfortunately, there was a bus to be caught, and we were left rather abruptly and not knowing quite what to do. Not wanting to stay there the whole day, but also not wanting to leave the apartment unlocked, we surveyed our options and sent Cecilia through the bathroom window which gets left open for the cat. It was slightly more ridiculous due to the fact that the only way we could get her out was by physically unscrewing the window latch, opening the hinges all away, screwing it back together, and moving on our way. Handy no one called the police on us!Once finally free, we wandered back down to our favorite hostel, where we got yummy freshly-baked croissants, did some work, read books, watched friends, talked to T, and generally relaxed for a couple of hours until the rest of Reykjavik woke up. Then it was time to head down along the harbour for a walk, and all around town, poking around lots of cute little shops.
We found this cool Viking ship/whale statue, and did some vaulting on it, of course, and also found the coolest outdoor clothing store. Not so much for the products, which seemed nice enough, but for the inside of the store itself, which featured a slide, tire swing, small bouldering wall, and chalk wall where you could write messages. Someone had written a note in Japanese that said something along the lines of 'My name is Eva, it's nice to meet you. I want to go to Japan, but I don't have any money, so I can't.' It was somewhat random!

After we poked around the shops, we went to lunch at a little burger place, and watched as a woman who looked completely cracked out and her friend made friends with man who was replacing the advertising signs in big billboards around town. The woman's friend helped the town guy put up the posters, and they were very entertaining as they made friends with everyone they could, especially the woman, who was definitely inhabiting her very own special world.

After lunch it was time for more poking around, and long walk down the harbour in the other direction. We found a rather odd backyard full of rusted, metal structures, right on the water. It was intriguing, but we just examined it from a distance. We also went to the cathedral, which for a long time was the tallest building in Reykjyavik. It was really interesting as despite the fact it had the big, vaulted ceilings you would expect, it was all made from formed concrete and stucco, and didn't have stained glass, so it was really quite austere.

We came briefly back to our hosts' house, mostly to change bags and make a new plan and check in, then went to a tack store we'd heard about near their house. They had some really nice stuff, and some funny things too, like full farrier sets and teeth floats. It was a combo dance/horse/soccer store, which meant it was pretty well perfect!

We got dinner at a grocery store in the mall, and then walked up to Perlan, which is a big domed building overlooking the city, it was gorgeous and we got some great shots of the city in late afternoon sun (despite it being 8pm--it stays light until 11 here), including one of a plane landing in the regional airport, which was just below us.

On the hike back down the hill, we found the very odd remnants of a potentially former military site--a bunch of round, crumbling, stone-re-enforced areas linked together by concrete and stone staircases going over 5 foot high walls. There were a few people climbing on the sides of the rock walls.

We then headed back to town to print off our car reservation form at our trusty hostel, and finished up the evening with a quick snack at a very very cute and funk cafe that's tucked away in an attic. C said it was like a 'tree fort all grown up.' During the day they have a nice-looking balcony overlooking one of the busier shopping streets, but we chose to sit at a cute little table under little peaked roofs.

Back home around 10:30, it was basically time for bed, prerparing for the drive to Akyureri today.

xx D

2011-05-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

Well, we're here!

T drove the two of us to Seattle from Vancouver on Sunday morning, getting up at 7 and leaving around 8. We got to Sea-Tac by 12:30 and were checked in at 1, giving us plenty of time to hang out and stress out before we got on the plane for a 4:30 departure. Seven rather groggy sleeping pill-filled hours later, we arrived in Reykjavik, which was...not at all like we were expecting. Very desolate and volcanic, and not so green. And snow! Apparently it's unusual for them to have snow here at this time of year, which made us feel a little bit better, at least. It's also not too cold, which is nice, and the sun did eventually come out.

We got a bus in from the airport and ended up at the central bus station, about 20 minutes' walk from where we are staying, so we headed up there and got to Tobba and Halli's house around 9. It's our first Couchsurfing experience, and so far, so good. We haven't met Halli yet, but Tobba is a sweetheart and welcomed us to drop off our bags. We went off to explore Reykjavik for a few hours and then came back to collapse, so we saw her briefly again this afternoon before she headed off to work (she's a nurse). Halli will be home from work in awhile, so in the meantime, the two of us are just relaxing and watching some TV/letting people know we're here/blogging/etc.

In the couple of hours we went into town, we mostly walked down the main shopping street, wondering why nothing was open until 11, price-compared a bunch of cafes until we found a reasonable one and had a light lunch, and then headed over to a mall near our hosts in order to get internet for me to take up north. That didn't actually happen, but wandering around the mall was fun, and we explored the grocery store (especially its candy aisle, where the candy bags are sponsored by Colgate!), was good fun and about all our over-tired selves were too interested in doing.

Back at Halli and Tobba's its just been a short nap for me and showers/relaxing. Tomorrow when we're not quite so exhausted/disoriented we'll hit up a couple of more touristy locations--there's a cathedral we want to look through, a harbour to explore, and some sort of Saga museum.

Photos soon. xxo
D

2011-05-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

So we're in Vancouver, with one foot out the door to Iceland. It's the same as usual, exciting with a side of terrifying, of hating change, of missing people I love, all that. But: Icelandic Ponies! Sheep! Fjords! Completely un-intelligable names! It will be good. And y'all* have Skype, right? Tall Panda, I'm looking at you! (*apparently I'm now from Texas)

I'm looking forward to getting there, finally, which will be at about midnight tomorrow, or in less than 24 hours. T is driving C and me down to Seattle for a mid-afternoon flight. It's only 7 hours, which is nice, my sleeping pills should deal with that pretty well; one hopes.

So far on the forgotten list: my carefully procured Esquire. It was meant to last me for the airport and then be left in a hostel or cafe or something. Travelling light(ish) means I haven't brought a single actual book with me, which is very strange and a bit like having left my left hand at home. I've been busily downloading Kindle, Kobo, and iBook apps on my phone, and downloading free books. So far I'm basically getting what I've paid for, but when I get my library downloading sorted out, provided the wait lists aren't quite so insane, there should be some good stuff on there. Or I'll cave and throw the 5 pound tome that is Shantaram into my bag for another go round.

More from Reykjavik tomorrow!
xx
D

2011-04-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

So there's a month to go, supposedly, and of course I'm nervous because I always am about leaving Victoria, which seems so incredibly small and constricting and like the perfect place to leave until a month before I do just that and decide I love the place dearly. Every. Single. Time.

We may not be sheep farming any more, having been slightly terrified by the 24/7 nature of lambing. Which is too bad on the one hand, but fairly reasonable on the other, I suppose. We do want to see part of the country, after all!

So we're back to looking for places, with the offer of an organic barley farm looking our best bet in Iceland right at the moment. Also signing up for couch surfing, and planning to do that on those intermediary nights around and about; most likely starting in Reykjavik.

xo
D

2011-03-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

So we may have found a sheep farm in Iceland. With 400 sheep producing 700 lambs, predominantly in the three weeks we would be there. Crazy. We'll be in the very north east of Iceland with the Gudmundsson/Stefansdottir couple, who are in their early 30s with three kids. And by very north east, I mean completely inaka boonies. I will be so ready for Budapest/Prague/a proper hamlet once we finish, but it should be great, great fun!!

Just so you can get more jealous, here are some pictures of Icelandic Sheep. Clearly, I will be fedexing a lamb home!

D

2011-02-04T00:38:00.000-08:00

Circus School!!!!

The day finally came :) I think my body wishes it hadn't, but it was great! I ended up being the only student in both my classes, and had a great time in both. So far I like hoop/trapeeze a little bit more, but silks was fun too. Hard! They both are. Lots of upper body strength, but that will come pretty quickly. As will the man hands. I have two rips already--very 1994!

I don't remember all of what we did, but here's a relatively complete selection.

Trapeeze:

knee hang, bird's nest, mermaid, stand, tuck hang, angel, half angel, old man on the moon, plank

Hoop:

pike mount, straddle mount, fetus, old man on the moon, mermaid (maybe?)

Silks:

square pose, cocoon, inverted straddle, inverted angel, pullover into sitting on the knot, pullover, plank, candy cane knot.

Can't wait until next week!

2011-02-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

Vaulting:

Feb 2

More work on new things at canter. Scissors were the big (bad) thing. I have to work on making the turn with my hips and not just flailing around. My last one was finally a little better; once Susan convinced me that landing on the horse wouldn't be the end of the world, I was much happier to keep my legs closer together.

In better news, my sideways sadie with no hands felt pretty stable this week, and I also did my first shoulder stand at canter! It wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be, which is always nice :)

Also did a pretty solid stand at canter, and front/sideways stands at walk, and hopped back and forth between them.

2011-01-27T14:51:00.000-08:00

Vaulting. January 26.

Walker was really good!! Super star :) Worked on swings with basic seat in between each one, which seems to improve my swings a bunch. Not sure why, but maybe forces me into shoulder-hip-heel. It's also helping my basic seat which is oddly one of my weakest feeling compulsories. Working on diving up and over the surcingle. I think the strength and handstands are helping me support my body in the swing so that coming down feels more controlled as well.

Stood twice at canter, without the lead rope. Felt pretty controlled and Walker was a star.

Decided to do shoulder stands at canter next week, with Danno on the back to help support me. Definitely nervous to try them, but I know I need to get it over with and it will be less scary with time, like everything.

Worked on new freestyle moves at canter as well: cross lie with no hands, sideways split in the stirrup, sign post with one hand free, and sideways sadie with no arms. Fell the first time on that one, as I refused to go for it and stretch up. The second time I completely gave'r and managed to do it. Susan said I actually stretched too much. Haha oh well.

2011-01-27T14:45:00.001-08:00

So I start circus school next week. I can't wait! It's through Vancouver Circus School and I'm taking two classes back to back--Aerial Silks, and Static Hoop and Static Trapeeze. This brings my scheduled upside down time to 5 times per week, which isn't bad, really! Gymnastics on Monday and Tuesday, vaulting Wednesday, Circus on Thursday, and Acro balancing with Toryn and Cecilia on Saturdays.

I want to start logging what I'm up to somewhere, and might start to do that here a little bit. So for those of you reading about Japan, I apologise as this is about to take a left turn into circusville. If all goes well, it will be back to travel in May, though. There are many acrobatic shows to take in in Beijing!!

Anyway.
Time to go upside down.

D

2010-12-21T18:25:00.000-08:00

Dreaming.

Seattle-Iceland-Faroe Islands-Denmark-Cologne-Budapest with C.

Budapest-Ulaanbatar.

Ulaanbatar pony trek with Mom
Ulaanbatar-Moscow via Trans-Siberan Railway (99.5 hours of chugga chugga choo choo) with Mom.

Home (via A-dam, London?)

May-July 2011. Amazing!

2010-08-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

So, those punks on the beach I met a few months ago? They certainly did become a part of my life, especially B, who is suddenly one of my best friends and--if we get our act together--going to be my roommate in September along with his awesome girl T and maybe another one of B's friends. Plus his awesome pitbull.

Strangely, in a lot of ways we have very little in common, though we often balance each other out, but he's the kind of friend who can hear me say 'I'm so lonely but I can't be around people right now,' know exactly what I mean, and invite me over to just be around someone that loves me without needing to interact at all with him. It's a weird thing, but something I love. I don't have to be anything around them, and the more I feel it from them, the more I realise how sort of rare that is.

And partly--OK largely--because of them, and the people and places (and music!) they're introducing me to, Vancouver is, for the first time, OK. I'm maybe even enjoying it. Bizarre! So...I'm taking advantage of not feeling a burning desire to run away and staying here--moving in with my friends, and trying to get a little bit more school done. It's a bit of a race against time to get tuition and registration in place, but I'm hoping to do another independent design class as well as another anthro requirement or two. We shall see.

xx
D

2010-06-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

Facebook and twitter are simultaneously hooped--site maintenance and sad whales, respectively. I find myself compulsed to update the world on this ridiculous state of affairs, so here we are. Oh dear.

2010-05-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

I've been loving the Ataris a ridiculous amount recently (thanks to the beach boys for letting me know about them), especially Saddest Song and In This Diary, which have some amazing lyrics, and took half an hour to chill in a playground, swinging and singing recently. It was so much fun! Swinging is AT LEAST as much fun at 23 as it was at 3, and when you're belting out (badly) lyrics as great as these:

"Here in this diary,
I write you visions of my summer.
It was the best I ever had.
There were choruses and sing-alongs,
and that unspoken feeling
of knowing that right now is all that matters."

(In This Diary)

"Only two more days, until your birthday
Yesterday was mine
You'll be turning five
I know what it's like, growing up without your father in your life
So I pretend, I'm doing all I can
And I hope someday you'll find it in your heart

To understand
Why I'm not around
And forgive me for not being in your life"

(Saddest Song)

and

""We Are the Champions" playing out on the radio station
Everyone sing along with these anthems of our generation.
Cruisin' down Pacific Coast Highway,
Put the top down, crawl into the back seat.
Let's create anthems of our own tonight."

(Summer '79)

It's probably even better. Though a guy turned up with his dogs halfway through my private concert and, though I don't think he could hear me from where he was (for his sake, I REALLY hope not), he kept staring at me. I reckon he was jealous. I would have been.

xx
D

PS. Ataris in Vancouver August 1. I'll be there. can't wait for the epic!

2010-05-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

I have more time on my hands these days since I can remember. The summer between grade 12 and York, probably. It's...weird. On the one hand, I love that I can go to the studio with the beach boys, or the beach, or out for coffee, or to a movie (SATC2 was every bit the amazing ridiculousness it was meant to be), or whatever, whenever...on the other hand, I hate being bored, and not being 110% booked up is a good way to become bored. Especially when the weather is shiiiite as it has been recently.

I've had more time to read and watch documentaries and stuff though recently, which has been nice! I recently saw No Impact Man, which is about a family of three in NYC who decide (well he decides and she goes along with it; the 2-yr-old doesn't really care) to live for a year without making a net negative impact on the environment. This includes 6 months of living without power, not using paper (including toilet paper), shopping for unwrapped food so as to not create any garbage, only using foot and pedal power...pretty intense and interesting. She works for Business Week and he's not a *total* hippy, so it was interesting to see them asking the questions around what we 'actually' need to use/consume/etc. Of course, they blogged about it all once he borrowed a solar panel to power his laptop (but not his fridge), this man has his priorties straight!

I also saw 'RiP: A remix Manifesto', which was almost as interesting for the fact that the director grew up on Gabriola of all places! It looks at the development of copyright and its current state, and how we need to move on to copyleft. Interestingly, it looks in pretty great detail at one of my favourite DJs, Girltalk, who samples and remixes dozens of songs into each track. To do it legally, he would have to pay some $284,000 per song to buy the licensing rights, even though he only uses a second or two of each track. Crazy. In contrast, the whole documentary is copyleft/CC and open to remixing. [film homepage]

Reading-wise, I finally decided to get to Siddartha, given to me by a dear friend before I left Japan, who told me that I was 'on a journey and needed to read it.' I know I'll be re-reading it soon, but I'm glad I did. There were some great things about loving and listening in there.

Continuing a strangely Indian theme, I'm also working my way through Shantaram right now, which is a 900+ page memoir-style novel about a semi-fictionalised decade in India. Written by ex criminal/drug dealer/arms dealer/prison escape artist/etc. etc., Gregory David Roberts, it's well worth the time. Apparently he's working on two other books to make it a trilogy and the movie rights have been bought, though there's no way a film could do the rich description of this novel justice, so I don't think I'd go see it. (Plus I think it would be at turns depressing, gruesome, scary, and stunningly gorgeous and I'm not sure I can handle all of that plus Johnny Depp all in one sitting). I have 650 pages, or roughly a week, to go, and I'm already mourning the end of this book. Here's hoping the sequels don't take the 13 years this one was rumored to take to write.

Happy reading!
D

2010-05-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

[post 400!]

Today's topic: How I spent my summer vacation. Or: How Grampa and I turned a pigeon coop into a house.

One of those 'has potential' places TLC so loves to cover on Saturday afternoon specials.

It's defining feature was 14 years (and wheelbarrow loads) of crap. Which we hauled away to find a very structurally-sound place, luckily! Even some torn ligaments weren't enough to stop construction.

This was BY FAR the crappiest part of the whole reno. If you can avoid it, I highly suggest you NEVER insulate a ceiling. In the end, though, it was totally worth it!! I'll find some other pictures later, including some of the other end, which features a teeny tiny kitchenette and a little bitty desk.

2010-05-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

Semester over. GPA helped. yay!! luckily my teacher loves mobiles, so that worked out rather nicely indeed. Huge project though. Besides the mobile (which is actually a giveaway self-promotional piece), there was a 20 page booklet, box, mailer, and small poster to do.

2010-04-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in Starbucks, doing a bit of work and listening to the conversation beside me, where a woman is talking the ear off a poor guy about how her whole life changed when she started to ride her bike everywhere (good for her), and then another pivotal moment where some acquaintance invited her to a movie at an environmental film festival (not as a date, from what I can gather, but a shared interest in water conservation), and she goes.

"Well OF COURSE, this is WAY out of my comfort zone! I mean it was at 9 pm on a FRIDAY. I don't go out at night, never mind to movies across town."

I started to mentally scoff at the ridiculousness of that statement, as it wasn't like he invited her to a rave or something, but then I realised there are plenty of things I don't do either, like strike up conversations with interesting looking strangers or go out for drinks if someone I've just met randomly invites me. I'm far more likely to protect myself (from who knows what) and make up excuses not to go, no matter the situation.

So I'm glad I didn't last week, when I went to Kits Beach and took some photos. Of the sunset, the logs, the washed-up boats, and a couple of guys having a couple of drinks and playing their guitars. Sure, I snarkily tweeted about them on my phone along the lines of: "stoners, beer, and indie music, ahh kits beach." But then one of them came up to me and asked me to email him my photos, and then they invited me out for dinner across the street, and I went. And had a great time. Until nearly 3am. And now I have two friends that I've only met once but feel like will be a part of my life for awhile, if only for lazy afternoons spent on the beach this summer (another thing I don't usually partake in, for who knows what lame reason).

There's no particular point to this, except that I guess it's kind of cool to expand your horizons, in whatever little way. Movies at 9pm, impromptu, incredibly emotional jam sessions in parking lots, moving away. Whatever.

Back to work.
xx
D

2010-04-14T15:10:00.001-07:00

I got my camera! I am very much in love but have been far too busy to take any pictures that don't involve Elliot in bed at midnight. Hopefully soooon!

In the meantime, I've been working on a school project to redesign a newsletter into a magazine. I'm really enjoying it (this whole course, actually), though I find I'm constantly behind it in. I think what happens is that I decide to do all of the stuff I don't like first, because it feels like too much of a treat to be doing design, and then it's suddenly a week (or a weekend) away from being due! And this is a 6cr. 400-level course, so good marks would be nice in order to help out my poor GPA a bit!

Anyway, all that to ramble that it's been really interesting to see just how DIFFERENT every page of a magazine is. BAB is so set on a template that I'm totally used to that, and the other magazines I read regularly/semi-regularly (WIRED, Esquire, Dwell, print, Communication Arts, T+L, Conde Naste, etc.,) are all, I'm finding, actually very unique page to page. It's been an interesting challenge to work out what makes a magazine hold together when it's so different. Wired has a general style around their design (I do love them!), and used many illustrations in a similar vein, so that helps there. But some (many) use a variety of typefaces, two/three/four column grid layouts, colours, and who knows what else over the course of the mag. Granted most have 65+ pages to work with (compared to my 16), which might help? They certainly get more space! I'm jealous of the 5 pages of contents/masthead many seem to have. I'm giving myself 1 and a quarter, with the quarter already feeling a bit cheeky.

I do love magazines, though! It's been a challenge not to read every single one I've picked up for inspiration over the last several days.

Back to it...
D

2010-04-03T22:26:00.001-07:00

I'm blaming the roughly 150F my room reached last night before I realised there was a heat vent above my bed, the landlords were cranking the central heating, and that for someone who keeps the heat on the 'don't freeze the pipes/3C setting' it was basically a desert.

But as I was falling asleep I had a minor 'wtf am I thinking?' panic attack regarding my trip. I think it had something to do with reading a 'how to live in Pakistan blog' full of all sorts of warnings just before bed (not that Pakistan is on my to-do list), and deciding at 4am in that weird semi-sleep state, that I was going to get raped and pillaged, not make any friends, get bored (!?), and all sorts of things while away. Even as I was falling back asleep, I knew I wouldn't feel the same in the morning--and I didn't--but I anticipate a fair few more 'uhhhh WHAT am I doing?!' moments between now and my ETD of September 10.

In other news, I sold a camera lens today--for my asking price :)--and between that, a bit of an unexpected check (gotta love them!), and the toonies I've been saving, I can *almost* buy a new camera! Hopefully I can trade in or sell my old body for the difference and get a new one soon. Like next weekend? Ohhh tempted!

I'm going to be getting a micro 4:3 camera. They're a new type of camera that fits somewhere between the dSLRs (great, but big, heavy, and bulky) and compact digital cameras (good for snapshots, can't interchange lenses, no real control, limited zoom). They also shoot HD. They're still relatively new, so there are only two major models--one from Olympus that came out in early '09 and one from Panasonic/Lumix (not sure when this one hit the market).

I'm leaning towards the Olympus with the 14-42mm kit lens (think 28-84mm) for a few reasons--it's cheaper, about $400 so, than the GF! and for me, the only difference that is a difference is the lack of a built-in flash for the Olympus (I know, right?) That said, I was thinking about it today, and I'm reticent to use my flash as it is--it's always a distraction/annoyance somewhere like a museum, you don't need them outside in anything approaching decent light (and a fill flash isn't going to fix a big lack of light on something far away anyway), you can't use them at sporting events, they're not useful at concerts, etc. I end up turning off the flash ALL THE TIME. It's not like I'm going to be setting up a studio shot that often, either, and there are other cameras in the house I could borrow for that if needs be. The one time I can see using a built-in fill flash--at a party/dinner party/club, I'd still probably have my pocket Olympus on me 80% of the time instead, since if that camera gets beer splashed on it or is broken or stolen it's a massive annoyance more than a $700 loss.

You can also buy an external flash for about $150, which still means your net savings isn't negligible.

It also has a WAY more awesome design. I'm in love with the retro look (there's a silver and black body, as opposed to the one in the link above, that I'd be getting).

It's pretty hard--there's no clear winner I don't think. I'd love to be patient enough to wait a year or so and see what emerges as the leader, but...!

mata ne!

2010-03-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

I seem to have itchy feet again. Travelling feet. Drop out of school, buy a ticket to Iceland, and see what happens feet. So that's what I'm going to do--I hope--come September. It's exciting and terrifying, and at the same time a huge list of things to do, and nothing at all (buy a ticket and go, what could be easier/harder?)

The weird thing about me is that I've always hated change with a passion (as any good Capricorn should) yet I'm never satisfied with staying put. In 23 years I've gone to 2 or 3 preschools, french immersion, 2 different montessori schools, private elementary and high school, home schooled (twice), unschooled (briefly), checked out an alternative high school, graduated from public high school, and then promptly went to three universities in 4 years of school. I've lived in eight cities in three countries, some of them more than once, and tomorrow I move into my 23rd place of residence in as many years. Not exactly the model of stability!

Currently, I'm living in Vancouver, spending weekends in Victoria, and working in Japan. Supposedly, I'm finishing my degree at SFU, but it's really not doing it for me at the moment. I'm spending a relatively large amount of money to go to classes that aren't interesting me, and with no real motivation to finish. I don't feel like I'm getting smarter by going to school, and with a job that I love now, no plans to have kids or settle down any time soon, and a laundry list of places I'd love to see, it seems a bit ridiculous to keep on keeping on, just because I'm "supposed to."

So with a great Herculean effort I'm forgetting everything I ever learned at GNS about being a successful human being, applying for a British passport, and in May, if things go according to plan, buying a one-way ticket to Iceland.

The plan, so-far, is to go after Saanich Fair (priorities, priorities!) and fly one-way from Seattle to Iceland to join a two-week volunteer trip, spending a week in Reykjavik and a week around the rest of the country, photographing and plotting the GPS coordinates of ocean debris too large to be removed by humans alone. On September 29th, I'll be getting on a ferry to Denmark (via the Faeroes) and then...I have no idea! Probably figure out a way to Holland to hang out with Hoka for a bit, and then hopefully volunteering at the World Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam at the end of October. After that, I really have no idea.

Christmas comes up pretty soon after that, which is a bit of a wrench in it as I CAN NOT/WILL NOT miss Xmas with my mum and gramps. Maybe I can convince them to come to Europe for Christmas there!

I'm planning to keep my job, as I have the BEST BOSS EVER, who supports me completely in running away from school and jumping in with two feet to an adventure of random detail. I could potentially live off that, but probably not too easily, if I also want to be travelling and whatnot, so I'm hoping to do some www.workaway.info placements, pick up shifts in youth hostels, or even pull pints. Work off half my board on average, or something like that. Who knows? Half my family doesn't, haha.

Anyway, back to work now, but good to be blogging about an adventure again.

2009-07-13T21:55:00.001-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More women

2009-07-13T21:54:00.002-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More women

2009-07-13T21:54:00.001-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More boudoir

2009-07-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More women

2009-03-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

Most fantastically pompous ad ever:

"Aesthete, bibliophile, castle-builder, chronicler, collector, cosmopolite, epicure, optimistic pessimist, pacifist, pedant, philomath, not-quite-polyglot but contemplating fixing that. Incorrigible dreamer. Denizen of museums, art-house cinemas, libraries, concert halls, universities, cities of exceptional grandeur and antiquity, prodigious landscapes of uncommon splendor. Indefatigably curious, active cultivator of mind and body. Impelled by overwhelming internal compulsions: to muse abundantly, to render other-worldly imaginations, to voyage and wander hither and yon. Engrossed in the study of sciences, languages, history, philosophy, and the arts. Repelled by any bondslave of dogmas, superstition, religion, material anxiety, resignation or despair. Reckless, sometimes careless, never uncaring. Disciple of a crowded pantheon: exempli gratia, JS Bach, D Shostakovich, W Furtwängler, T Beecham, S Lem, L Tolstoy, A Kurosawa, I Bergman, A Tarkovksy, L Bunuel, B Keaton, G Marx, K Hamsun, T Bernhard, P O'Brian, A Damasio, D Dennett, C Darwin, M Holub, W Shakespeare, H Melville, A Akhmatova, TE Lawrence, M de Montaigne, K Issa, H Zinn, P Casals. Afflicted by Unamuno's sentimiento tragico de la vida. Dressed in order not to stand out in the Boulevard St-Michel or the Staré Mesto. Inclined to subject all things in life to a process of aesthetic refinement: dress, cuisine, speech, deportment, and every inhabited space, among others. Most fond of the light that arrives shortly after dawn and in the hours before dusk, when shadows are long. Enchanted by mysteries. Invigorated by rains."

2009-03-09T05:40:00.001-07:00

Hey, I've had over 10,000 hits. That's pretty cool, especially given all of the ignoring of this blog I've done over this past year or year-and-a-half!

2009-03-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

Recently, Jordon, Yo-chan, their friend Ed, and potentially some others have come together on flickr. Each day, we have to upload a picture of something that makes us happy. We started on March 1, so it's been about eight photos each so far. You can see what makes us tick here. My poor camera phone doesn't live up to the iphone-iness of the others, but so far I can't find anyone who wants to take over an iphone in August, so I'm waiting till I move home. That's how I'm bribing myself to go back. (and seeing you all, of course). Anyway...back to the topic. Finding things that make you happy when work is 8-16 hours of unfortunate-ness these days (not BAB, other work), is a challenge. I've noticed that many of my posts revolve around food. Well, what can you say, you all know me. Check out the ahmazing veggie lasagne though. That was the weekend's project (along with white/chocolate chunk cookies, which, incidentally, also made the official happy list). The lasagne involved roasted red and green peppers, onions, shallots, zucchinis, egg plant, and probably some other stuff, plus fresh tomatoes in the sauce, and lots of other yummy stuff--cheese, eggs, etc. Yum :)

I'm hoping to make a carrot cake tomorrow to complete a week of living with an oven and taking full advantage of that. (Peter and Hitomi are in Hawaii these days so I'm house sitting until thursday).

Speaking of Thursday, this weekend I should have plenty of things to make the happy list--Amy and I are flying to Hokkaido to go to Niseko to go snowboarding for a couple of days. Here's hoping I don't break anything! Niseko should be interesting--there are loads of Aussies up there and from all reports it feels very foreign. Yay accents!

School starts again in a couple of weeks (oh god) which is stressful beyond belief. I barely have time to cook twice a week or run that much (all about the small, achievable goals these days), nevermind go to school full time. The only good thing is that I'm only going to be taking the same level of Japanese as I did last semester. That is a bit of a cop out but on the other hand, hopefully I won't be as stressed and I'll actually better learn some of the content. I'm studying as much as I can (or, well, like an hour a week) these days and I've forgotten sooo much. It sucks!

Anyway, not much of a report, but I need to get back to work, of course.

oxo
d

2009-02-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

A random collection of happenings from between October and February (oy how the overzealous bloggers have fallen!)

1. I took on way, way too much. Two magazines and full time school, and too-hard Japanese, and a long commute=crappy. However, I have fab friends who either cooked for me, distracted me, studied with me, taught me how to conjugate adjectives, or spirited me away to America for concentrated work sessions with Chili's or cheap movies or cookies to look forward to. A big big hug to Jac, Hoka, and Amy!

2. Weekender got sold, and completely revamped. Marie moved back to the UK to start the next stage of her life, and Ulara came on as editor. Lots and lots and lots of changes. We all know how much I love change. In January, we had a party @ SDLX.

3. I officially don't know what I would do without Amy. (())

4. I was Juno for Halloween. Meanwhile, Jac was an '80s fitness instructor, rocking my awesome vaulting spandies, and Hoka was (an increasingly convincing as the night went on) Lily Allen. Highlights included a sock in Hoka's hair, a large pillow up my shirt, and people giving me their seat on the train as I looked pregnant enough. Most people didn't know the movie and seemed to mostly think I was just preggers. However, I will def. be re-using this costume in N. America so I can say things like 'hang on, i'm on my hamburger phone' and 'honest to blog?' and people will know what I mean.

5. Jac, Hoka, Hoka's friend Nadine, Jensen, and I headed to Kyoto for a weekend after school finished. It was lots of fun and we stayed in a great hostel that was convenient and cheap. We did the touristy things--Gion (geisha stalking!!!), the golden temple, a couple of castles, etc. As well as karaoke (where I fell fast asleep!). We did the trip the uni way. Ie: cheap and took 8 hours to get there on local (or rapid local) trains. Unfortunately, Jac and I (who were coming back up alone) managed to miss our first train from Kyoto on the way back, causing a chain reaction leading to sleeping in a station somewhere outside Atami and vaguely lying our way back through the ticket gates in Tokyo as technically we had one-day tickets but weren't about to pay for the trip that we didn't get to use the day before. Good times. We discovered that there are many freight trains at night, 1/2 a granola bar goes a long way, and corn soup in a can isn't so bad.

6. I went home for Christmas, which was great! There was tons of snow, my first real white Christmas, a proper break, and a new cousin (Zoe). It was fairly quiet as Williams family Christmases go, but so nice to be back and see everyone. And have Tim Hortons.

7. I took my mom to (bible) horse camp for Christmas. We went for 4 days after boxing day. It was quite the experience. It all started when I got the plague (due, no doubt, to my burning loins getting over worked [though I would debate that point at the moment, sadly]) and literally couldn't stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. Unfortunate when the camp schedule ran full-on from 7am-after midnight (on New Years). Despite being ridick sick and freeezing in the snow while outside, it was lots of fun with trail riding, vaulting (in an ice rink, basically), archery, ping pong, hanging out with Julie/perspy, mounted games, an awesome private lesson, etc. We'll have to go back!

8. Helen came to visit. Love! So good to see her looking soooo happy :)

9. Amy and Zach and I went to the opening of ZED, Cirque's permanent show in Maihama/Disney. It was amazing!!! After the show, I went to the opening party in Shin Kiba. Also loads of fun! I want to join the circus!

9a) I got circus lessons for Christmas!

10) Amy and I got to go to Corteo, Cirque's traveling show in Yoyogi Koen. I got to live out a dream and go backstage, conduct interviews, and eat in the artist caf. I'm not sure who I would chose to interview over Cirque...Maybe Coldplay but it would be close. I was fairly close to hyperventiliation, but throughouly enjoyed myself and the show. I want to join the circus!

11) In an effort to do something (anything) involving mats and chalk, I seem to have taken up bouldering. I've only gone twice, but so far its been lots of fun, if frustrating when I can't finish the pink (kiddy) routes, and painful...my forearms are seriously protesting! However, its lots of fun and as a bonus I'm sure the arm workout will help my mounts in vaulting and the rough grippy things will suitably abuse my hands so I don't rip so much when I finally get back into gymnastics. Good things all around.

12. I moved today. Again. All the girls moved today, all the boys move tomorrow. This is pretty communal-style dorm living, which will take some getting used to. I'd so far managed to avoid the '21 girls and 4 shower stalls in the basement when the rooms are on the 3rd floor' thing, but we'll see how this goes. On the major plus side, no more curfew, and we live in civilisation again. In a ku! in a good ku at that (setagaya). we're near jiyugaoka and ookayama, which puts me only one train away from work (instead of three) and a 10 minute walk to a proper shotengai. yay! Pics to come cos the cable is at work. boo!

AFAIK, this is house number 17 or so for me, but I'm kind of losing track (is this right, anyone?). (Saltspring, Victoria, Johnathon Harbor, Myrtle Beach, Ft. Lauderdale x2, Chaucer, Myrtle, Sidney, Hampshire, Dowler, Wellsview, York, Oyama-cho, Vancouver, Higashi-Kanagawa, and now Setagaya). This was def. the easiest move, as though I'd packed about 1/2 my stuff, the moving company packed/unpacked everything else for us, and loaded/unloaded the truck, etc. No lifting of boxes or anything. V. easy!

However, a long day so def. time for bed...back to work tomorrow. meh.
xo
d

2009-02-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

In my last, very very long ago post (maybe I can do some kind of highlights post or something to recap in a list form...?) I mentioned how I was just starting sumi-e class and afterwards we were going to have 'an exhibition of sorts' well here it is--second floor of the shokudou (caf)--and and exhibition by everyone in the two classes. In the picture above, on the very left is ms. hoka's super-cute penguin, that ended up looking very suica-ish :)
This is my peacock. The kanji for peacock is 'many colors bird' and I stamped the first half of it onto the piece. (Basically: many colors)
Ms. Jac's Tiny Dancer. I love the tutu/skirt :)

2008-10-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the first day of sumi-e.

2008-10-05T07:04:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, I know. I'm the most delinquent blogger; ever. Let's just say it has been busy! Shortly after my last post, we started intensive, which was 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, of Japanese. Added to a 8 hour a day, 4 days a week job, a 2 hour a day commute, and a couple of hours a day of homework, and it's no wonder that week is a blur!

I had three teachers, two of which were lovely, and one of which was a little bit...not. I was (and still am, really) way behind my class as the level one was much to easy for me, but realistically, level two was too hard. A level 1.5 would have been perfect, but I guess this is a good way to jump right in there! I'm catching up OK, I think, but I need to get going on the kanji I missed in the middle (there are about 6 lessons that I did in 3 weeks. in comparison, we'll do 8 lessons between now and January, so a few things slipped through the cracks!)

Regular classes started three weeks later, and so far I've been sleeping more than 4 hours a night, so that's lovely! We have Japanese 2/days a week as well as 4 (or more) classes. I'm taking: marriage in japan, gender dynamics, education, and sumi-e. I've had all but education (the prof just randomly didn't show up on the first day) and I enjoy all of them. Sumi-e is fun and practical (well in the sense of sumi-e being practical), as we were given large kits of stuff and we get to actually paint--around the end of semester we'll be having an exhibition of sorts.

Marriage is fun too, we have to do a 15-20 minute presentation on some aspect of marriage in our home country. I'm going to do gay marriage, being from the west coast and all, and I need to get on that soon--I'm going at the next of next week.

So far, I've been impressed with the classes and lecturers, they're very small, and it's interesting to have the small-class sizes with our profs, which we don't get at home. (There are only 8-10 kids in marriage, gender, and education, 5 in japanese, and 15-20 in sumi-e).

Work has been going well, if hectically, as well. I got another BAB to print last week and we have some new people in the office which is fun and also easing the strain a little bit while I'm in class...We've recently had a couple of BAB events as well. For instance, two weeks ago we had another clothes' swap, which was good fun and I think everyone had/got some good stuff. It was a smaller turnout than last year, but everyone agreed the quality of clothing was way better. I got a couple of cute black dresses and a black top that I just adore, plus some black stilletos that were impulse to the extreme!

There were also some bits and pieces from last year's clothes swap. I suppose that's the good thing about having them regularly! (I brought a few bits back as well, including dress pants that I loved dearly, but would never fit in to (they pretty much just fell off me) ...good, but bad in thi particular case!

On Wednesday, Amy, Zach, and I all went to the opening gala night of Cirque du Soleil's first permanent show in Japan--ZED. It was BRILLIANT. I definitely want to see it again, and if possible, run away and join the cirque! I went to the after party as well, at Ageha in Shin Kiba, which was fun, if a bit strange--many of the cast members had children who came to the club; it was cute, if odd, to see so many toddlers at Ageha!

But go, go, go to see ZED. It is amazing! I'm so excited to see Corteo, as well, which hits Tokyo in the new year.

Yesterday, we had a joint event with Paddy Foley's--speed dating. I have to say that I was basically forced into attendance, but it was more entertaining than I expected. While overall the guys were older than I'd want to date (despite everyone's claims to the contrary), I met some funny people (well as much as you can tell in 4 minutes), as well as some strange people.

For instance, I had this conversation:

Me: "Hey, how's it going?"
Him: "good, i'm (insert name here). i'm a little drunk."
"oh yea?"
"yea, i was a little nervous so i started drinking a lot when i got here and now i'm kind of drunk."
"mmm...so how's that going for you?"
"i'm drunk. my name is (insert name here)."
I know.
"I'm from mississippi"
you don't say...
ding!

After that, we headed over to the TAB 4th anniversary party at Super Deluxe, which featured free cotton candy, cool tshirts, and some so-so 30 second pitches (nothing beats Pecha Kucha). Then, it was back to BMT, as I'm house sitting for Peter and hitomi who are off to Hawaii. Venus is sulking, but she'll survive, even if I did make her go for a walk in the rain.

xoxo
D

2008-09-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

Senso-ji (wiki) pictures here.

2008-09-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

My fortune from Senso-ji:

"Number 15 Bad Fortune"
"Every year your servants will get fewer and fewer and you will be alone. Even if you stay in bed for a long while, you'll never get well. It's too dangerous for you to bring the boat to dshore. Just like a dragon loses its treasure ball, you will lose your hope.

Your wishes will not be realised, a sick person will never recover, the lost article will not be found, the person you are waiting for will not come, building a new house and removal are not good, making a trip, marriage, employment are bad."

And no one told me you could bless it away if you hung it up on the metal thing, so I'm screwed. I wouldn't spend too much time around me if I were you.

It was a good run folks, it really was.
xo
D

2008-09-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

Sooo...first day of school today!

For the next 3 weeks or so we have intensive Japanese classes as opposed to Japanese 2x a week and other classes mixed in. So M/T,Th/F, we have 3 hours or so of Japanese each morning.
Yesterday we wrote placement tests and had short speaking interviews, and as expected, I conclusively proved that I know very little nihongo indeed!

However, that's fine as I seem to have ended up with a very nice teacher (though she seems to alternate with another teacher through this course and I'm not sure who I end up with for the semester) and only 5 kids in my level. I'm sort of at the bottom end, so she'll be helping me catch up (and one other guy) at the end of each lesson. Today was sort of a review day--we did self introductions, watched a ridiculously hilarious dated movie, and then practiced up for our field trip to Asakusa tomorrow. I'll finally get to go to Senso-ji! (Last year I sent Navina while I went to work, so I've not been yet). I feel like I'm back in gr. 4 again going on a field trip--we have a sheet of different places we have to find and describe and then we have to (and this is going to be entertaining), find three Japanese people off the street and ask them three questions. Eeek! We practiced in class today, and our sensei was the 'tourist' it was so funny because she kept rushing past and not talking to us and pretending to be scared of us.

So far decently good I suppose--I think I spoke more today in class than the entire year at SFU, so that's good! I have to do it now, so hopefully it will be easier...I have to study over this weekend, but that should be OK--it's a 3-day one!

After class I went to work, which was fairly uneventful for me (not at a critical stage with BAB yet), and then had a bit of time, so I went to Tokyu hands where I got tracing paper and pastels to start a new mural on my wall like I did @ york (pin the paper up and draw on that and you can't really tell it's not directly on the wall) and also got some back to school stationery, b/c paper rox my sox!

Following that, I headed to Jingu, which I miraculously remembered how to find after a month off and played futsal with the onnabelievables. It was so fun! There were only 6 of us, so we played 3v3, which was a good run around!

After that it was home (which now takes 1.5 hours from there, ouch!) and I made it in about 30 mins before curfew (wouldn't want the door to get locked on me!) and now i'm just chilling out trying to decide if i want to study or start making my wall mural...

xo
d

2008-09-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

NxE's Fifty Most Influential Female Bloggers can be found here. I need to step away from the computer and get moving or I'm never going to get to work...especially if I start clicking those links!

Ridiculous dorm rule number....we're not allowed to use the stairs...elevator only, sloth people!

xo
d

2008-09-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

Today's order of the day was heading to IKEA to improve the bland ness of this here room!
Hoka and I headed to shin yokohama eki and then jumped on the free IKEA bus(!!) to a huge IKEA. It was great, if utterly crowded! I got a new bedspread, light duvet (the one they gave us could deal with a Ft. McMurray winter!) a very handy wire basket holder thingy, 3 cacti, some fabric, and a serious craft bug!

I ended up recovering my headboard, stretching fabric over a frame that I also bought (a trip to the hyaku en shop to buy a hammer, measuring tape, screwdrivers, etc was also required!) framing fabric, and (far)tistically placing cacti on said frame...I also put together my basket thing and moved a bunch of food and stuff into it (a shopping trip to SATY for food was also required!)

A couple of us ended the evening watching Sex and the City, eating pasta w/ sausages (I decided to complete the suzy homemaker day and cook), and (thanks to poor Hoka) filling out takkyubin slips, as it's back to work tomorrow for me....

now to figure out how to recover the chair cushions without doing anything permanent!

xxo
d

2008-09-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

Well as you can see, I'm kind of moved in now...Tomorrow I'm going on a field trip to IKEA to get some storage and some color! The rules are, as expected, pretty ridiculous! Especially the 11pm curfew. And the 'no boys' rule, which they take very seriously! Hitomi and Peter drove me down here with some stuff today and Peter had to wait in the common room while Hitomi and I took it up to my room!

The other totally ridiculous thing is that the boys are in a different dorm (well, obv) but they don't have any of the same rules! Besides that being of dubious legality in north america, it's just plain ....!

It's a nice place though, if small (and totally lacking in storage!) It's great having Peter's place here though, A as a place to escape on weekends and B as a place to pilfer housewares from--we were given one rice bowl, a side plate, 3 forks, and 3 spoons (no knives), and two teeny tiny glasses...

It's pretty funny, there are signs downstairs to all the Japanese residents along the lines of 'on September 1, you will be joined by these foreign students' and then lists our names and room numbers!

Right, I think it's off to bed (or some desperatly needed katakana/kanji studying!)
xoxo D

PS: GOOD LUCK to Karen Brain and VDL Odette as they ride for Canada at the Beijing Paralympics this week. Follow them here and here.

2008-09-03T07:02:00.000-07:00

And...another crazy day. I don't know that I've had 3 days this busy in a row for quite some time! I don't want to go home though, it's so much fun!

Today was another fairly early start, with a light breakfast in the Club L lounge before I headed up to the spa for my Harmony Massage. It was a lovely way to start the morning, especially with the storm raging outside (I actually woke up from the thunder). Following that, I went for a facilities tour and got to see some other types of rooms, all of the restaurants, etc.

After a juice and muffin in the lounge (oh how i love the lounge) it was time to race across town to Aberdeen to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, which is an amazing ode to glitter and kitsch and all things Chinese. I took the correct bus, but I think I got off on the wrong stop and was just lucky to see a little sign directing me along the harbour walk...I kept walking and walking, past little fishing skiffs, etc. until I came to a pier saying 'JUMBO' with a super-cute dark wood ferry tied up to it. I hopped on board, crossed my fingers, and a few minutes later got puttered over to the restaurant. Which is amazing on the outside. It's really quite the place!

I was actually there to meet Karen and the rest of the Canadian Paralympic Equestrian team, so there was no time to explore the complex (I think there are multiple restaurants and stuff) before heading in to join them for a tasty lunch. We had various pork buns/dumplings/rice/veggies/etc before finishing it all off with some ice cream. Very nice! Then everyone headed to Stanley, and I got to go with them, jumping in to one of the team's Olympic-provided cars (cool!) and heading out there. They only had about an hour before they needed to head back to the barns, so it was a bit of a power shop all around, with many silk tops, sunglasses, and jewelry all being procured. I bought myself a silk top as I hadn't yesterday and was kind of regretting it...It's a really pretty teal with a Chinese cut/neck line but doesn't have a brocade pattern, instead there are sort of creamy embroidered flowers...(in a fairly western style)

Following that, everyone headed off to the barns and I headed back to the hotel, arriving here at 5:45, just in time to meet up with 15 other hotel guests for a 45-minute tour of the markets around the hotel. There was a girl there who was a new staff member at the hotel and so she was on the tour. She's a 19 yo HK-born expat, so it was cool to talk to her about that...The tour was interesting and encompassed the Mong Kok food/fruit/wetmarket, Ladies Market, sneaker street, etc. the food market was most interesting, with a dried seafood stall, open air butcher, crazy fruits, and the scary scary toad killing stall, where there were poor innocent (ugly as all get out) toads in an aquarium, which were then plucked out, decapitated and skinned in a matter of moments. Madness. I gather the goal is to have them still twitching when you get them home. Tasty?

Markets to hit up on the next trip: flower, bird, and goldfish. Also: bartering. I must do that next time. I'm an idiot/confrontation-hater and there for paid list price for everything at Stanley. Haha! Still decent prices though...It would have been good to take this hotel tour earlier though, as the woman said if it was HK 10-30 not to barter, HK 100-200 to try and get 10-20% off and if it was HK 200 or over to cut it in half. I made a few HK 200 or more purchases at Stanley. Ah well, live an learn!

Following that, I went to work out...at the Science Museum haha. They are having a sports exhibit in honor of the Olys, so I went and threw pitches, sprinted, wheelchair raced, balance beamed, etc. It was fun! (Though chotto lame to do it on my own!) I had a quick tour through the fitness challenge part of the regular exhibit (free on Wednesdays seemingly) before having some dinner and then heading back to the hotel.

A quick stop by the lounge to book an airport shuttle and order a lavender pillow from the pillow menu and then blogging/tv/packing i suppose :( and then bed...glorious bed!
xoxo
D
(you know the deal...click the pic for pics)

2008-09-02T09:08:00.001-07:00

A very short clip of the light show in HK's Victoria Harbour. It's a pretty cool show, apparently it's in the Guinness Book of World Records for shows of this kind...The Star Ferry was definitely the way to see it, too.

2008-09-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

Day two is on the books and all I want to do is sleep! However, I'm being a good blogger girl as something tells me I won't be any more energetic to blog at 11pm tomorrow after another full and exhausting, yet fun day.

Today I woke up at about 7:30 (my phone in the hotel plays an obscenely happy 'its the morning, rise and shine' song. if I wasn't on vacay I'd probably want to beat it up). However, I happily bounded out of bed (or, well, eventually dragged myself up) and ended up in the lovely lovely shower here. Its a rain shower, but also includes a regular hand held shower. Basically no chance of that annoying 'I'm cold cos I'm wet but I have to rinse my hair and there's not enough 'spray' to do all of that'. Very nice! After that I headed down for a lovely buffet breakfast at one of the hotel restaurants. There is a huge selection, including all of your typical 'western' breakfasty foods, fruit, pastries, etc., plus all the sushi and fried rice you could ever want at 8am.

After that I headed on the MTR to Central to go to the Japanese consulate and get my visa sorted. Other than having to get yet more photos taken it was pretty straight forward. Central and what I saw of the surrounding area on HK Island is much more what I was expecting I think--a big, clean, modern city with British things like pret a manger and 'mind the gap' on the trains, but some kanjis thrown in as well. Its pretty businessy and I didn't spend too much time down there before jumping on a double decker bus to Stanley. (Thanks to Jordon for the suggestion). It was a gorgeous ride out there, along the water, on this twisty winding road with somewhat of a cliff on one side and a mountain of rich greenery on the other. There were gorgeous bay views, peekabo looks at the city, and glimpses of absolutely gorgeous mansions along the way.

Approximately an hour later we pulled into Stanley Market, which was pretty cool. I got my shopping bug out today! I got a couple of leather(ish?) bags, and then a bunch of presents so I can't talk about it! I spent an hour or so wandering around all the stalls in the market and then walked along the promenade thing by the water. It kind of reminded me of the Bahamas almost, with the colorful and tasty-looking eateries right by the water. At the other end of the walk is a cool building, with tons of columns. Apparently, they had to dismantle it for some reason and keep it in storage, so they wrote numbers on all the bits. Except the ink washed off, so when they 're-mantled' it they weren't quite sure where it all went, and managed to end up with 6 columns spare! They're now just standing there in a pretty row.

In said building is a really nice martime museum that I went in on a total impulse as they were having an olympics exhibit. In the end, that part was cool, but the heritage stuff was really cool as well. They had some GORGEOUS models and artifacts and stuff. Some cool history but not to much and also some nice interactive displays. In the modern gallery, as well as the Olympics stuff (all concentrating on rowing/sailing/canoe-kayak, etc), they talked about shipping and modern boating. There was a morse code game (its harder than it looks!) and a full size bridge deck from a shipping boat in front of a huge three-screen simulator so you can try and steer into the harbour. unfortunately i had no idea where i was going so settled for crshing into a star ferry instead, which made for a lovely shudder and crunch.

Following that, I got back on the bus, wound my way back to central, and happily listened in to the conversation of the Calgarian tourists in front of me. Nothing interesting, just a wrap up of their shopping, but passed the time :)

From Central I jumped on the MTR and came back to the hotel to grab my other camera and headed down to the club lounge for a snack and a chance to quickly deal with any urgent emails and finish up an article before jumping back on the MTR to central to get on my 7:20 Star Ferry boat tour. It was really nice! We went around the harbour and then paused to watch the light show. It was incredibly hard to photograph, but pretty cool looking. I met a lovely couple from the Netherlands who were beside me on the open air deck. They'd also gone to Stanley and the Maritime Museum today! They're off to Sydney and Perth after this before heading home.

After we bobbed our way back to port I went back to the mall by the hotel and got a pretty silk shirt from H&M and then grabbed a picnic of a sandwich and chips at the huge grocery store in the basement of the mall. I also got a pear, but it was funny cos there were like a dozen or so pears strewn in with whatever was next to them, and so I just reached over and grabbed one, and the lady that was over in the 'main' part of the pears stepped over to me and grabbed it out of my hand! I guess she was saving those ones. It was hilarious. (Things like this are the subtle differences between here and Japan, where there's no way that pear would have been taken back off me!)

After all that, I *still* wasn't done, and took my computer up to the pool for a lovely lovely swim (la mac stayed on a comfy cushion under a cabana) before I toweled off and settled in under the stars (er, smog) to upload some photos and start this blog. When the pool closed at 11, I came back to my room, had a picnic in my bed (what vacations are for, really), and finished this.
(click the pic for pics)
whew!
xo
D

2008-09-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Whew, long day and I'm totally exhausted but I'll try and be a good girl and blog before I roll over and collapse!

Today was the big travelling to Hong Kong day, which was quite exciting! Took the 6:33am (yuck) Narita Express from Shinjuku, which was a really easy trip (much nicer than the airport limosuine I think!) and had an easy check-in, exit immigration, etc. Flight left uneventfully at 10ish and I was very excited to find that ANA, whom I've never flown with before, has seat-back, on demand entertainment, featuring Sex and the City! Woot! Unfortunately, I managed to knock the button on the seat 2/3s of the way through, sending it back to the beginning. At the time, I couldn't find the ff button (it was hidden!) and so I gave up on SATC and watched 'What Happens in Vegas' instead. It was cute enough. I also managed to write most of an article on BA, which seemed ironic, yet productive. The only complaint? The WORST food I've had on a flight, quite possibly ever. Easy and quick at just under 4 hours, though!

Arrival in HK was easy, I didn't have to say a single word to the immigration officer, not even a token 'business or pleasure?'. Strange. She did, however, talk to herself for the entire time I was standing in front of her. It was really, really weird!

Mentally squealed at all of the Beijing signs and then jumped on a bus to my hotel. It took about an hour and we got to see a fair amount of the city as we were driving in. It's nice--more tropical than I was expecting, though I guess it is about 4 hours south, and TONS of high rises! It made me realise just how flat Tokyo really is. (also seen today that made me realise i hadn't seen it for a few months: guys with no shirts and pda in the mall).

Got to my hotel and checked in (I think I'll have to do a seperate post on the hotel, but suffice it to say that it is very nice) and then called one of my friends from SFU who hasn't quite gotten back to Vancouver yet and also Karen, here to compete for Canada in the paralympics to make plans with both of them. That done, I went down to the Club L and had a quick snack before exploring the huge mall next to me for a bit and then meeting up with Vicky. Its funny how many Japanese things there are here! Seibu, Muji, shu uemura, italian tomato jr, yoshinoya,...and that's just in the mall next to me! There's also an H&M!

The shopping seems pretty good here, and cheap, but I'm having a ridiculous time trying to convert the currency in my head, either to yen or CDN. Luckily, my phone (in the hotel) seems to be able to do that (as well as send texts and check the weather).

Vicky took me shopping in the nearby neighborhood and also basically fed me for 3 hours straight! We got some street food that is apparently very traditional in HK--bascially a block of fermented/rotted tofu, some really tasty sort-of-waffle type snacks that are somewhat hard to describe, watermelon juice with lemon jelly, and for dinner a sort of cousin of ramen that included balls of meat (or fish). Whew!

I'm fading fast here, so first impressions? I like it, it seems like a cross between Ueno and Kabuki-cho and a bit of something all its own! I'm sure I'll have more to say on the subject after some more exploration tomorrow.

Click the picture for more pictures.

2008-08-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

In less than two weeks I will have gone to Hong Kong and also moved into my new dorm...Hong Kong will be fun, I'm def. looking forward to that, ESPECIALLY the hotel!

The dorm should be interesting, too. I found out a little bit more about it today. Here are some of the key points:

on the (big) plus side, it sounds like we get a bathroom and kitchentte in each room. That seems to good to be true, so I won't actually believe it till I see it. It would be amazing/great if that were true though!

on the holy-crap-are-you-kidding-me? side:
curfew (yes, curfew) is at 11pm. I have NEVER had a curfew in my ENTIRE life.
while in the dorm, there is an 'in/out' board where we have to designate whether we are, indeed, in or out, at all times. I suppose this is to stop us from taking the first train home and just arriving home when they unlock the doors again (oh yes, they lock us out after curfew!) at 6am.
Males aren't allowed in the dorm at all
male family members are...but only as far as the common room. I guess Peter will never see my shoebox.
I have a yokohama address! (that's sooooo on the other side of 'the loop' haha)
I have an 11pm curfew!!!!

As it was so kindly put to me in the office today, I'm joining a nunnery!
Not that I wasn't in a self-imposed one anyway, but at least I had the option of staying out til first train and skulking home with a bento at 6:12am if I wanted to...or if there was a kick-ass costume party in Koenji or something.

well, an adventure it will be!
xo
D

2008-08-23T04:31:00.000-07:00

Today I headed to the very very end of the Odakyu sen, to Katase Enoshima, to see the Molet's play on the beach. It was a pretty great show and a fun day all around. It was also nice to see them all play during the day, not requiring an all-nighter :)

While it was on the beach, it was in a beach cafe, so it was covered, though there is plenty of natural light and open windows. It was perfect as today was cool and cloudy--not a late August in Tokyo day at all. In truth it was lovely even though I didn't go swimming beyond a bit of wading with Yo-chan thanks to the less than stellar weather.

Back in the cafe, however, there was plenty of dark wood, comfy-looking leather chairs, surprisingly tasty food, and good entertainment. It was a pretty full-day affair, and the Molets were up basically first followed by some other bands and singers as well as cabaret-style dancers. Some of the same wigged, pastied, dressed up girls, in fact, as from the cabaret night the molets played at in Shibuya awhile ago.

It was a good group of people today and everyone seemed to be having a really good time, right down to the toddlers who were bouncing away and wandering on stage occasionally. It was great to see little kids there, its not an event they would have been allowed at at home (too much liquor and skin) but the kids were way too young to see the burlesque girls for what they were and were much more enthralled with the silver and pink of the costumes than the fact that there were pasties flying through the air.

Good music, good friends, good food, good fun :)

For pictures click the pic.

xo
D

2008-08-17T04:13:00.000-07:00

So this weekend, Amy and I decided it would be fun to climb Mt. Fuji again. We only decided to do it last week, but we figured it would be OK, given that we'd both done it before. So we booked bus tickets (which proved harder than you might think to use, given the language barrier!), got O2 and headlamps on base, and set off yesterday afternoon.

We arrived at Fuji san at about 7 and set off...It was quite cool up there, I was surprised! I guess when Helen and I did it last year, it really was unseasonably warm, as it wasn't nearly as chilly as yesterday's climb was. Off to the side was a lot of lightening, which was pretty interesting. It lasted for a few hours and didn't seem to move too much. Which was handy as it was aways away--where we wanted it!

My number one goal for the expedition was to make it up and down without puking a la last year, which I thought was food poisoning. Unfortunately, it turns out that I'm just not designed for high altitude, and so after summiting in 5 hours (maybe we should have gone a bit slower?!) We huddled first under a small bulldozer and then in some rocks in the BRUTAL wind, and then I puked again, not once, but twice. It's turning into quite a pattern--wake up, puke, watch sunset, drag myself down a hill). I'm not entirely sure how cold it was, but we'd seen that it was 6C a couple of stations down, so assuming it was a bit colder, maybe 4-5C and then factoring in the wind chill I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was below zero.

It's a pretty big mountain really--3778m, and the walk down, at least, is about 8km (there are a LOT of switchbacks). Going up is more direct, but also much more rocky...

However, we got a pretty good sunset, so that was good, and I am glad we did it, even though I certainly won't be climbing again any time soon!

Click on the sunrise to see more pictures.

xox
D

PS. GOOOOOO Canada! We're finally beating Togo in the medal standings!

2008-08-10T09:44:00.001-07:00

Coldplay sings The Scientist right next to me. The quality is a bit shite, so I'd only watch if you're really a fan...I was using Peter's head as a tripod though, so at least it's basically still!

2008-08-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

Coldplay runs right past me

2008-08-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

Some pictures:Right after Coldplay

Yes, we were THAT close (for two songs, at least)

(The guy with his back to the camera (in black) is the one who gave me a high five).

The guitars used to make the magic that is The Scientist 20 feet from me.

Caravan at the Beach Stage (saturday am)

At the Beach stage during Xavier Rudd (just about the time we said hi to the Bedouin frontman)
Alicia Keys

2008-08-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

Wow, amazing weekend! Went to summer sonic at Makuhari Messe in Chiba today and yesterday. Yesterday was absolute madness! I saw 10 bands--Caravan (1/2 set), Blood Red Shoes (just a couple of songs), Band Of Horses (so good!; third row), Santogold (really like these guys!), Cajun Dance Party (a couple of songs), Trivium (one song), We Smoke Fags, Death Cab for Cutie (15th row, amazing!), The Fratellis (more on them after), and The Sex Pistols (just a couple of songs, just to say I've seen them).

Today, Peter came with me, and we did a more relaxed day... He went to the beach stage for the most of the earlier part of the afternoon and chilled out at Bedouin Soundclash and Xavier Rudd. I'd already seen Bedouin last year so I stayed at the indoor stages and saw The Polysics (One song, just to say I did), Biffy Clyro (1/2 a set), and then totally by accident but he was great, a DJ named Junkie XL, and that was pretty much it before I wandered back over to the other half of the venue (this place was freaking huge!! 6 stages and plenty of room for roughly 50,000 people per day to not seem that crowded). Over in beach land, I chilled out for most of the Xavier Rudd set before we headed over to the Marine Stage (the biggest one, we're guessing about 30,000 people) for the end of the Radwimps, Alicia Keys, and Coldplay. Amazing.

I skipped JUSTICE and The Ting Tings (along with tons of others, but they were on my 'list') partly because of logistics and partly because they were too strongly tied to 'us'. It's weird enough as it is right now, especially since there was always music with us, and with music being hardwired into my brain and my memories I wasn't sure how that would be...Avoidance is good sometimes.

Highlights/thoughts/observations:

Santogold was really cool--her backup dancers had a great robotic thing going on, where they showed absolutely no emotion and just did there thing. It was a good show.

Death Cab was a great show, of course. I was close enough to see well and still have some space to move... they did a nice set!

The Fratellis. Wow, crazy show! I pushed my way to the second row, and to my surprise, ended up in a massive mosh pit. I had NO idea that was coming since the crowds in Japan are usually ridiculously quiet and polite (in the middle of the Radwimps, with a crowd of probably 10,000, we could actually WHISPER to each other between songs). Anyway, the Fratellis brought the freak out in the crowd and it was INSANE. I have never been in anything quite like that before. Just bodies and dancing and sweat (oh the sweat), and heat, and chaos. It was like one of those super crowded rush hour Shinjuku trains that was dancing for all they were worth. I was SOOO tired when I dragged myself home! I felt like I'd played about 2 soccer games during that set!

Getting a 'hey, how's it going?' and a grin from Bedouin Soundclash frontman Jay Malinowski as we were all at the beach stage (other celeb sitings: a band (no idea who) at McDs and walking back to the event, plus another band standing behind us at Coldplay. Also, potentially one of Alica Keys' backup singers standing behind us at Coldplay.

All the differences between how an event like this might be run in Canada, or, especially, the US: off the top of my head:
You can take food/drinks in, so A), you can bring stuff, and B) the stuff in side is cheap(er)
They don't look in your bag
Everything is VERY orderly
When they tell you to wave your arm up like a dork to show your wrist band for reentry (yes, you can re enter), everyone actually does it
Various bands/artists just wander around (see above)
When 35,000 people leave Coldplay at once and need to walk 20 minutes to the station, including over fairly narrow overpasses, they do so orderly and quietly
The audiences are quiet and don't dance much. When they do dance, it's mostly 'up'. Presumably for economy of space.
When the schedule says the band will be on at 2:55, they'll be on between 2:54 and 2:56, even if its the last band on the last day.

Now, for the most amazing part of the night: Coldplay! I looooove Coldplay, and have for a good 5 years now. I've seen them before, in Toronto two years ago, and while it was a good show, I have to say that it wasn't amazing. Probably because I had the cheapest seats in the house, and went alone. Anyway, tonight, Peter and I were there and had a good spot. To try and explain; this was in a baseball stadium and we were on the floor. They'd divided the front half of the floor into L and R (we were in L) and into front and back. We were at the VERY back of the front section, so that we could lean over the fence that was behind us. We were really close to the audio tent as well. Running between the front and back and left and right were aisle ways where they had staff/security/the occasional band.

About 2/3s of the way through the set (which was 30 mins longer than it was supposed to be), The entire band jumped off stage, ran down those aisle ways, and ended up on a tiny stage we didn't know was there, RIGHT BESIDE US!!!! They were probably only about 10 people away. It was freaking amazing! And when they started playing The Scientist, my FAVORITE song in the entire world, I actually nearly started to cry. I was certainly on the verge of hyperventilation (this is the song that got me liking coldplay, but more importantly, was a big part of the soccer slideshow that maggie made us before we went to BCs. and won. anyone on that team will understand why the song is so amazing to me). Anyway, moving on...So they were SOOO close and it was sooo great!!! I was soo happy we'd lucked into that spot. And then, bonus, as they were running back to the stage, the bass guitarist gave me a high five! Cool!

Then, the next song (Clocks) was pretty great as they brought Alicia Keys out to play the piano, which was pretty great. Overall, they had a great set, but the last third, from basically the second small concert on was just amazing. I even got a piece of the confetti they blew out of the stage at the end (some shiny mylar butterflies).

We wrapped up the night with some cup noodle, in Peter's car, with the top down, parked outside the Messe, blasting Coldplay. Classic.

Next post will have (slightly not allowed to have been taken) pics and video.

2008-07-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

It was Mike and Jen's (and Paul's, though he didn't come for obvious reasons) leaving do on the weekend, and they did a pretty fun and Japanese-y thing for it--a BBQ/beer garden on the top of a department store (because where better to put the hundreds of drunken Tokoites?).

It's the sort of thing that would never be allowed at home--two elevators, hundreds of people , a big roof, and open flame on every table... umm fire hazard? Not to mention the open-air alcohol (serve yourself), kids running around, and the pet store you had to walk through to get on to said roof. However, that said, it was lots of fun and a great evening. We did a 2-hour nomihodai/tabehodai, which basically means "eat as much lamb and veggies (and random, un-ordered sausages) and drink as much beer/juice in two hours as humanly possible" (another reason this might not get carried out at home...gaijin can eat a fair whack of food and dispense with a number of pitchers of Sapporo in two dedicated hours.) It was quite funny when they tried to get us out. (of course, closing at 10, means closing at 10). They played Auld Lang Syne (as you do) and then when that didn't work, came over and very politely told us we'd have to leave soon. The word soon was their mistake there! Finally (though probably only at about 10:04, and in our defence, we weren't the last table), the one guy (poor guy) who spoke English came over and told us that the elevators would stop running and we'd be stuck. So we left and headed to a random 5th floor darts bar with astroturf on the ground (again, as you do), for a quick one before last trains started to be an issue and we split up.

Sad to say good bye to Jen and Mike, but we've promised cross-continental trips, and I'm going to follow through on my threat to visit them in NYC at some point :)
xo
DThe little yakiniku ( I *heart* yakiniku) grills...our gas canisters kept running out and having to be replaced and shaken and things...i'm sure not up to US code!, Also: a huge platter of lamb, and an even huge-r platter of veggies...
Quite the popular event, this Ginza roof BBQ thing!
Wahay, it's Dani with alcohol! No, I didn't drink it, and yes, Jen was laughing at me, and yes, this was photo-worthy, and yes, I'm crap at pulling beer. Let's see, 7 parts foam, to one part beer. oops!

2008-07-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

Went to a baseball game with Amy and Zach on the weekend in Yokohama which was good fun, if bloody hot! It was the first few hot days of the year over the weekend and the entire stadium was a sea of fans moving at warp speed (as in paper fans, not baseball fans). Amy and I got hot pink Yokohama Baystars fans, which are oh so kawaii and oh so needed at the time! The hanshin tigers , which is an osaka-based team with a huge following had a LOT of fans at the game. i even saw a woman in a pink yukata with the tigers' logo all over it!

There were a few differences between the mariners game and the baystars game (beyond the fact that it was significantly hotter at this game and that I wasn't there with A)

+there's no cover on Japanese stadiums!!! (hooot)
+food and souveniers are actually reasonably priced. probably because you can bring your own in
+there are cheerleaders here
+i was very worried for the health and heatstroke-safety of the mascots (poor, poor buggers)
+there are songs for (according to hitomi) many of the different players as well as the different situations they might find themselves in
+the field was astroturf, not grass (but had carefully striped 'grass' in two different colors in order to give the appearance of being mown in two directions)

All in all, a fun day for sure and the time spent on the train let me read Anthony Bourdain's great memoir No Reservations. I definitely recommend it! What I don't recommend, now, is fish on Monday, lol.

--

On Monday Peter quietly slipped in to have the plate taken out of his leg. He came home today and brought said plate and the big-ass screws with him in a baggie. the whole contraption looks rather like a giant piece of mechano(sp?).

While he was busy doing that, I took advantage of my day off to show scotty's niece around a little bit. she's visiting for a month from sask and so far loving tokyo (as she should be!) We went to odaiba (despite the fact i nearly lost us a few times since i hadn't been able to pre-plan the route on jorudan!) we checked out venus fort (there are loads of pics in last year's entry about it...do a google search for venus fort gaijinbedbug and it comes up). and while there did print club (for my first time!) it was SOO fun! We didn't quite know how it worked the first time, and didn't go from booth A (where it lets you pick a theme and then tells you how to pose) to booth B (where you get to decorate them) so we thought we'd lost those ones and went to do it again in a different booth (this one 'glitta' themed). Having learned from the people who went in after us in the original booth, we went into the first booth (more like a small room, really, way, way bigger than the ones @ home and with a sweet touch-screen system) and picked a theme (or more accurately, time to chose ran out so we went with their 'osusume' we then picked 6 poses, which it directed us into one at a time (with a different background for each superimposed in after).

Then, part two, which we'd faffed up before was to go to the next booth where our blank images popped up and on a split screen (so we could each do it) we both used pens (a lot like hte pens from the leapfrog books) to add all number of clip art things ranging from writing (kana or romaji), the date, random clip art stamps, etc, etc, etc. it was pretty amazing. we also got to pick the arrangement of the photos, and chose the 10-minute option, so we had 10 mins to decorate, though i think we got longer. once we were done, we went out to wait for our photos to print, and discovered our original photos (totally un-edited lol) in the printer. Keeping in mind tis was a totally different printer than they would have come out of, I guess some one figured out who we were and where we were and put them in for us. V nice!

--

Today (wednesday) after work I went to play futsal and I'm really glad I did even though @ the office it was a bugger to gather the energy to go! Luckily it wasn't *too* hot and we had a lot of fun...there were 8 of us which was perfect for 4v4 futsal...i scored a nice one-time curling/top corner goal off a corner from one of the other girls...it's strange how natural it feels to play, even when i haven't played in what seems like forever (2 weeks) and forever and a day before that (ok, that was actually forever and a day! like february when i was playing with the crazy guys @ hamilton?!)

Got home and peter was home from the hospital so it was good to see him (though i did visit sanno this am and bring him coffee on my way to work...SUCH a nice hospital!). Tonight he watched a DVD called earth, which is a spectacular production, but had WAY too many cute bay animals nearly dying, creatures getting attacked, etc. I left 2/3 s of the way through and escaped up here to blog.

So there you have it...a blog that's not bordering on porno (but it was art, i tell you!)
xoox
D
PS. If you listen to nothing else this week (since the BEST RADIO SHOW EVER, AKA this american life, was a %&$*# rerun this week you are off the hook for that), listen to WNYC's Radio Lab Podcast from March 25, 2008 entitled War of the Worlds. (thanks to Jordon for passing along the WotW goodness!)

Orson Wells, HG Wells, some poor people in 1938...and so on...I won't tell you what happens because you'll be listening to the story soon enough. And even if you do know the story of that bloody brilliant/crazy/stupid/amazing hoax, I bet you haven't heard all that Radio Lab will tell you!

OH! and another big PS--only 1 month till Beijing!!! Citius Altius Fortius! (and just because I have to do at least one gymnastics olympic year prediction after the dozen or so blogs + forum I've been religiously reading recently: Shawn, Nast, A-Sac, Chellsie, Pezek (I guess), Bieger (unfortunatly), Alt 1: Sloan, Alt 2: Hong, NTA: Larson. Unless shayla gets her 7.0 A score on bars and deals with her herniated disks, in which case, she jumps into the bieger spot and everyone else shuffles down a place. IMO.

Now, really, bed.
xo

2008-07-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

We went out for dinner at Beacon last night, a nice steak restaurant in Aoyama. It was really good and we all enjoyed the evening. While there, Hitomi said she spotted a well-known Japanese artist, Murakami, who recently saw a sculpture get sold to the US for something like 5 million dollars.

The sculpture (keep in mind it's 2 metres or so tall):
The name: My Lonesome Cowboy
Warning: probably not for those under the age of corruption.

Brilliant.
Off to a Yokohama Baystars game today, should be fun!
xoo
D

2008-06-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

A few more from the Koenji Connection...

(Happy early birthday Canada!)
Marie, in da house...what an aristochat!

2008-06-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

My Day. In Pictures. (It was a long one...up from 7:30am-7:30am. Oh man)

It all started with Hoop Wake Up with Deanne in Yoyogi Koen...Good fun, and we decided, very good to get out of the house to do something, even if being in the park by 9 seemed early at the time...I even walked down there! There was the typical assortment of weekend-in-the-park-ers, which was cool--two standard poodles learning frisbee tricks, a guy with a trumpet, a few tai chi groups, a big running group, some photo shoots, and two girls with hoops. Post hooping out to Mika, I raced home for a shower and costume change before meeting Marie at the Four Seasons in Yurakucho for brunch at the ekki bar and grill (for Weekender). It was really nice and we had a lovely 'ladies - who- lunch' type of brunch...It was like a set course (you could pick from one of about 4 sets, i got 'contemporary'), where you started with a soup (pumpkin), then moved on to about 6 mains on a tray, with each one being tiny and pretty (included mushrooms on brioche, a grilled pepper wrap, a salad, and some super tasty waffles), and then there was a dessert tray, which was so good and had some rocking cheesecake! Followed off by coffee or tea, and either veuve cliquot or krug yellow label throughout (of course, that was a bit lost on me...I had about 3 sips through the entire thing). Still, a lovely brunch in a lovely restaurant. Then, since I was in Ginza, I made the obligatory trip to my mecca, AKA the apple store...5 stories of lovely-ness...iPod touches, mac book air and mac book pros are SOOO pretty...LOVE!
Then, Meguro for a time killing coffee... (For those keeping track of time, its now 4-5pm)
Then, a three-hour self-defence for women class put on by Sun and Moon Yoga. Illustrated above is the heel of the hand punch, which we learnt...(can also be used on a guys elbow should they be on top of you trying to rape you). It was a good class and we learned plenty of techniques, though whether or not I would have the presence of mind to use them remains a bit to be seen!
Then, it was home for a quick costume change (literally) before heading back out to Koenji, where Jordon was co-organising a costume party with lots of djs at the koenji connection. Which I couldn't find to save my life (even though I'd been there before, too!). Finally, after being sent on a wild goose chase by some restaurant promoters (maybe they wanted me to give up and go to their place lol) I ended up in Lawson. The poor girl had NO idea where I wanted to go, but I finally found their map on my keitai (thank goodness for net on phones in japan) and then instead of just pointing me in the right direction, she actually left the store and ran with me up the street to find it...Only in Japan!
Buuut, I made it, and it was a fun night! There was a surprisingly high percentage of people in costume in attendance...I whipped out the flapper costume stand-by, and Jordon was a ghost (except for most of the night when he wasn't--I gather it was a bit hard to see through lol). His gf was dressed as him which was cute--his tattoos had been drawn on her arm, etc..Then we had the cute 70s rocker chick (?), an aristocat, and a michael jackson wig, passed around through various people...It made most people look like MJ, and Jordon look Amish.
(Like seriously. Doesn't he look like he doesn't believe too much in electricity? So funny!)
The west coast of Canada was also very well represented, with like 4 (out of 15 or so) of us being from Vancouver (/Victoria). It was a first-train/last-train? night that ended up being a first-train night for nearly everyone....This city is great in that you can go home, at 5am, in a flapper costume, at the end of June, without anyone staring at you.
And of course, even when sober, Origin (or Yoshinoya) is the perfect end to the night (beginning of the day). Tonkatsu bento onegaishimasu!

And that's that!
xoox
D

2008-06-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

Conbrio is here! Isn't she cute! It totally sucks I can't see her, but this is the newest member of our family...so cute!

So I've been getting in trouble for not blogging enough...Mostly, I've just been at work, so you're not missing too much! I have a basically 4-day weekend now though, which is pretty exciting! I did absolutely NOTHING today! Slept in, then watched 8 episodes of The Paper on MTV, took Venus for a walk to Origin for a tonkatsu bento for lunch, had a nap, and now Peter, Hitomi and I are watching 'I survived a Japanese Game Show'. SOOO funny. I love it!

Last weekend was fun though--I went to some hoop dancing classes for an article for BAB, but I really enjoyed it, so I'm going back for more, tomorrow morning, actually. Also had a nice dinner at the Akasaka Biz Building (they've built a big development since i left) with a bunch of the old cpi crew, many of whom are leaving, either permanently or for the summer :( We also had Emma's leaving do at lunch this week :( It's going to be sad to see her go! I hope she and Mads are happy back in Oz.

Listened to a very very interesting NPR show a few days ago, about a brain scientist who had a huge stroke when she was 37 or something...She talks about the experience, but because of her expertise on the subject, she can obviously explain it very well. Listen here.

And that's about it! (I have no idea how i wrote so much last time lol). Maybe I can get some pics of the hooping tmw...That would be good.

xo
d

2008-06-18T17:31:00.000-07:00

A SIXTH foot?!

How bloody bizarre....I love how the Vancouver Police Constable says "All I can say is....I've never seen this before..."

You don't say? You mean it isn't common to have five right feet and a left one wash up around the west coast of Canada in a little under a year? Shocker that one!!

In other strange news, a small town in one of the Dakota's had a mayoral election where exactly NO ONE voted. The incumbent is planning to take the second term (he was running unopposed). You would think his wife would take the position but she was running (also unopposed) for town selectman, so she couldn't even vote for the poor guy.

And, somewhere in Eastern Europe (I think), the town happily voted in a dead guy. He died after voting had started, but they all knew what they were doing...someone was quoted as saying 'but i still wanted him'....must make the guys who still have a pulse feel loved!

ox
d
ETA: correction of left vs. right feet thanks to the comment...

2008-06-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

Couple of fun girlie nights out recently--last night was my first practice with the 'onnabelievables' women's soccer team. Good fun! It was nice to kick a ball around again, even though my touch is shocking as to be expected. It seems to be regular practices and then games and tournaments as they come up. They seem to have just come back from a weekend tournament...

Tonight was also girl's night out at paddy foley's. it was a good group and plenty of canadians--a couple of us passed on the news about the lululemon in aoyama having a going out of business sale at the moment--everything is 30-50% off. SO exciting! (well, not that they're leaving, but the sale).I got a great bag there which is plenty big enough for me to tote my life back and forth between home and the office.

speaking of the office...i should go to sleep or i'm going to be a MESS there tomorrow...busy week, so i'd best be going!
xo
d

2008-06-16T02:18:00.000-07:00

I've been saying they should do this forever!! Too bad it's just a marketing stunt haha
Fly-by-weight...
d

2008-06-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

Just a quick blog before bed...Had a pretty lazy morning today, watching the finale of America's Next Top Model (only like 2 months late!) , making the rounds of all the gymnastics blogs I read (addicted2gym, gymnastics coaching, polish101, gymnasticsnstuff, gymblog, ozgymblog, etc.), plus the articles that the IG aggregator found, and, of course, the forum...There may (or may not) be some sort of addiction here ;)

Then, peter was going out for brunch which meant I got a ride basically to the library, where magically my card still worked. These friendly turtles were in a pond outside the entrance.
Books in hand, I walked from The Harajuku side of Omotesando to Aoyama to check out the lululemon there and picked out the bag I want to get myself (but probably in black). The store is a decent size, has a pretty good collection, and is actually, between the 5 (vs 14) % tax and the exchange rate, possibly a very slightly bit cheaper than shopping from home. Bonus :)

That done, I made my way to the Roppongi-area for Mads and Emma's leaving drinks at this fun bar/restaurant called the Rolling Stone Cafe. Perhaps copyright only becomes an issue if you throw the extra 's' in there? While its definitely sad to see them going, it was really great to see Jen and Mike (and little paul for the first time!), karin and nico, kieron, etc...it was like old-home week with the office crew.

Random but: I just found a review saying the rolling stone cafe is actually owned by rolling stone magazine. interesting. It's a nice place and has a huuuuge outdoor terrace. (for those in tokyo, it's diagonally across from the starbucks/tsutaya at the bottom of the hill near roppongi hills.)

Speaking of Roppongi Hills, here's an interesting bit of public art (?) that fills a huge shop window (didn't that used to be louis vuitton or something?) that explains how the logo was created--R.Hill's kanji means 6 trees--which was eventually represented by the 6 dots...

Came home just after 8 and chilled--did some takkyubin slip writing, had dinner, vaguely listened as peter and hitomi watched the wire, wrote some emails, and now, this blog...

time for bed though, as it's an early morning for work tomorrow.
xoxo
d

2008-06-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it was our golf tournament today at Windsor Park in Ibaraki. We had quite the adventure getting there (things started looking down when we were sooo far off track that we were no longer on the map!) but we got there eventually and had a nice lunch before heading off for a casual 9 before coming back in for the prize-giving ceremony (winner of the event received a weekend test drive in a jag, but everyone got a prize...there were some pretty cool ones including 3days accomodation in saipan, some nice dinners out, champers, etc.). Headed home after that, and got in around 10--its about an hour by 'Fresh Hitatchi' (baby shinkansen) and then a 20 (or hour and 20 minute, depending on directions or lack there of ;) ) ride from the eki to the course...In tokyo, the fresh hitachi also goes only to ueno, which is about a 35 minute subway from our house. So its a bit of a trek all in all, but lovely to go out into all the greenery (though the 'wow! there's trees!' thing wasn't as exciting this year as last where it had been like 8 months, not 8 days since being in Canada).

Anyway, here are some photos from the day and surrounding countryside:
Finishing hole, taken from the clubhouse facing out
lovely location!!
clubhouse in the background...

Finishing up the 18th before heading into the clubhouse
rice!!
countryside-japan is veeery different to tokyo!
that's a bad day...it's never good when your truck ends up t over a in a rice paddy!
the jag and range rover that you could win a weekend ride in.
above: our golf cart in action (if by action I mean a still shot), below: our golf cart in action (if by action I mean video)

(wow, very cool, if it works you can now upload videos directly onto blogger, very nice!!) Assuming it does show up, these are the cool golf carts--you get a remote control, and press the button to start and stop, and the carts follow predetermined (magnetic, i imagine) paths around the course, stopping automatically at tee boxes and greens and things in the event you forget to press stop.

xo
D

2008-06-12T06:15:00.000-07:00

Some people *cough* Alia Sabur *cough* are just WAY too smart.
Click here to read about the youngest prof in the world--in 300 years--she's not even 19!

2008-06-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

Well I guess it's a good thing that I never made promises to blog every day this trip like I did last time, as I'm already not doing too well! The combination of work and jet lag has made this first week-or-just-about go fairly quickly, but has also meant that I come home at 8:30 or so, take Venus for a walk or run, eat something, try and stay awake at least until ten and then sleep, not well, until anywhere between 5 and 8. Last night, I came home at 8:30 and went straight to bed, jetlag be dammed...Well it didn't work out so well as I only slept from 9-2am and then was up until 5 when I slept again till 10...(day off work) It's only 8:20 and I'm already dragging again. So yea...I dunno, but not so good.

Hopefully taking today mostly off (I only worked for a couple of hours from a Seattle's Best, which I discovered had free wifi) will help. I also hung out in Shinjuku Hands (seemingly Tokyu Hands has been rebranded for each location) and in Franc Franc, where I concocted a plan for making purses out of pillow cases (stay tuned lol).

Went to the gym with Peter today (I know!, hey?) and so that was good. He goes 2x a week and I'll try and take one of those days off work each day to go with him... I get in free with him as his 'minder' (HA!) and it's a pretty sweet facility. I think my fave part was either the locker keys which are like big, flat, round magnets you wear on a bracelet type thing--touch it to the door and it automatically opens, or the strange and hilarious horse-type fitness machines they have... I'm totally going to try one next time--I couldn't figure out what all the buttons meant this time and no one scurried over to help. Granted, I could have scurried to ask, but....

After that I went up to his office quickly and then went to do the Shinjuku stuff, and then back home. It's strange as I feel very much at loose ends right now. Maybe because I was very rarely alone the last few months before I left, and spent so much time just chilling at A's, it seems weird to be alone, I miss the chillage, everyone else at home, and...I dunno...I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm sure (and hoping!) it's just first week readjustment/jetlag exhaustion/whatever...

in any case, this is getting whingy and boring, never a good combi..so, i love you and i miss you or i'm happy to be seeing you again, depending on who you are!
oxox
d

2008-06-08T23:40:00.001-07:00

Wow, cool (literally)--Tokyo has a year-round Absolut Ice Bar. It's not cheap (35$ gets you a cape, gloves, one drink, and 45-minutes), but it would be amazing in the height of summer, and make quite the blog entry! Check back, as I may well go. Check out another site here.

2008-06-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Went to Shimokitazawa for an early morning walk yesterday (well, 8:30-10ish or something) and, especially when I first got down there, there was pretty much nothing open. However, the closed stores were still pretty cool as many of them had painted metal shutters in front of them. Here is just one block's worth.

After my shimokita adventure I came home for a bit and then ended up going into the office for awhile. That actually probably felt the most normal of everything so far, not sure why. I tried to reload my pasmo card at the eki though and accidentally bought a Y800 ticket instead, oops! so i managed to get it refunded at the gate, before remembering you don't really do returns in Japan. I didn't want to keep the ticket though, as the eq. to $8.00 gets you a looong way here! Like Odawara or something...it's only Y160 or Y190 depending what station I go to when I'm going to work...

Went to the office at about 2 and got home about 9, with jet lag in full force. But I managed to force myself to run with Venus (the lazy puppy!!) which was good but soooo humid and sticky already, July is going to be unpleasant! They were filming something in a park nearby that we ran past which was cool...

Here are a few random keitai pics from the day:
These are like kitkat balls, coated with mango flavoring. Pretty good actually. Did I mention I love combenis? Did I mention I can't eat this crap all day every day? Lol
This little old lady was driving her scooter and then saw someone she knew at a shop on the corner behind her to the left, so she just abandoned her scooter and tottered over to chat...quite funny.

K, off to get ready for work now...miss you!
ox
d