Eastern Europe.

Something I realised yesterday is that if I don't do much, I don't have much to blog about. I have had a couple of lazy weekends. But not this time! I finally have something to tell you about. Last week at church, there I sat, not understanding a thing, looking up words on my phone. Suddenly I  heard my name, looked up, realising that I was being invited to go and help someone with their garden. With nothing else planned for the weekend, I went for it thinking this is a good chance to associate more with some Czech people and learn a few new words. It ended up being an excellent day.

Upon getting into the car, I was told the journey would be 16-17km. Not too bad for a Saturday morning drive. Thirty minutes later it became apparent that I had misheard. It must have been 60-70km away. I got to see some nice Czech countryside. Just under an hour in we pull over to the side of the road, the driver turns to me and says, in his broken English, "we make technical stop," hopped out of the car and dived behind some bushes.

Upon arrival at our destination I came to the conclusion that this would be the day my jokes about people harvesting my organs would come back to haunt me.

This was the scene I was greeted by. I wasn't sure what kind of gardening I would be getting involved with...when there is no garden. 

This lady lives alone on a small farm-type thing. We were going there to chop up wood for her winter's supply of firewood. She seems to live completely off the grid. There were chickens for eggs, a pig for something, ducks, rabbits for eating, hay to feed animals with. She has a barn. The following are some pictures of us at work.

Below is Sergei. He had the most fun job.

Gulash. We really Czeched it up. The gulash was delicious.

Don't get too attached to those rabbits...

This was my wood chopping stump. It took a while to get used to it, but after a bit I managed to successfully chop some wood like they do in the movies.

The difference is my axe was just an axe. Those wood splitting axes are very heavy and are designed to just fall onto the wood and split it. I was about as successful as this video:

This guy will probably be dinner in the coming weeks...

As a thank you I was given eggs that were freshly laid that morning.

All in all it was a great day. I enjoyed chopping wood. I enjoyed learning some more Czech. This was by far the most "Eastern European" living here has felt. Lets see what happens next weekend.