"Orichi...Orichi."..Sounds, Smells and Sights of Autumn

At first the van driving around the village with it's loudspeaker blaring: "Orichi, Orichi..." sounded vaguely familiar. It reminded me of the 'alte sachen' truck that comes around back home in Israel - a kind of 'rag and bone man' who collects old things to be resold such as old furniture, fridges, etc... But this was a much smaller vehicle and I was curious to know what it was they were selling or buying.

'Orichi' means walnuts in Bulgarian, and these were walnut traders. They come in to the village mostly to buy walnuts that people have collected by the sack. Some people have large walnut trees on their property, but many others take to the woods that surround the village and rummage among the leaves for fallen nuts. You can easily spot the people who out walnut hunting. They carry long sticks and bags and if you look closely most of them have black-stained hands which is what happens to you when you peel off the outer green husk that encloses the nut inside. These nuts are stored in a dry place for several months after which they are good for eating and keep well.

A neighbour told me a story of something that happened last year. One old gentleman had saved up several bags of walnuts hoping to sell them to give him a little extra income. The traders asked him how many bags he had and he told them - five. They agreed to buy them all and he went into his storeroom to bring them out one by one. As he disappeared inside to bring out the last bag the traders zoomed off taking the other four bags with them...Although the villagers laugh when they retell the story it seems rather sad to me, but fortunately our own experiences here over these past few months have only been good and and don't in any way reflect that kind of heartlessness - on the contrary we have only met true generosity and kindness.

The autumn here has been glorious. Although the temperatures have gone down a lot recently there is a stillness in the air that makes it bracing and refreshing, rather than the bitter cold that can really get you down when accompanied by wind. People are lighting up their wood fires and that leaves a smoky smell in the air that reminds me a lot of the autumns of my youth when most people in the UK still had coal fires rather than central heating. Indoors here it's toasty warm and it's great to see how multi-purpose the 'petchka' is - providing us with heat, a place to cook, warm our water and dry our clothes.

The last of the summer vegetables are being enjoyed fresh or are being bottled for the winter. People are covering their remaining tomatoes against the rain and cold so they don't spoil before ripening, and others to be on the safe side are picking them green for frying or making into preserves and chutneys. In our little garden we still have some peppers, leeks, parsley, tomatoes and courgettes. Although nowhere near enough to provide all our vegetable needs it has been great to have had a constant supply of food from the garden to supplement almost every meal.

Here is a short video - a compilation of various photos taken while out with Lielle recently (we go out a lot with her lately now that she has learnt to ride her bike!) - simple views of the village in glorious autumn technicolor with Baba singing in the background. Enjoy!

Alternative Building Techniques - Our Succa!

We had great fun making our succa (the temporary dwelling we eat in during the Jewish Sukkot holiday).

Our neighbours helped out by providing us with corn stalks which we used for part of the walls and the roof. You can check out a video clip of how we made and decorated it on Lielle's Blog: www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/succot.html

Helping with the corn - continued: Video Clip

A Chance to Lend a Helping Hand

Our neighbours here in the village are so helpful and generous - it felt really good over the last few days to be able to help them in return. There are many jobs to be done at the end of the summer, getting the harvest in before the wetter, colder weather begins. Here you can see how we helped a little with the corn. It's wonderful to see how the whole plant is used: the cobs themselves are to be ground into chicken feed and some of the stalks and leaves get chopped up for cattle fodder.

Here everybody helps everybody, and while that is so refreshing for us, here it is just the norm - it's just what you do. I'm not really sure whose corn it was we were picking but one person got the stalks for his cows, another got the cobs for their chickens. A woman down the road was getting the husks to weave into mats, and our neighbour drove back to the field with a trailer especially to bring us back some stalks for building our succa. Everybody around was helping, old and young, singing, laughing and joking all the while. Although there was plenty of hard work to be done it was done with fun and a sense of community spirit.

I remember my Dad telling me of holidays he spent as a child, hop-picking in Kent. For his parents it was a working holiday but he remembers the time very fondly - and now I think I can really appreciate why.

Here's a short video (more to come later).

Home-made Grape Juice

Dani recently decided to make his own grape juice from the vines growing in our garden. It's absolutely delicious and we shall be using it for kiddush over the holidays and Shabbat. On Lielle's blog you can check out a video we made of the whole process .... and also some out-takes of something we didn't expect to happen....

Check them out here:

www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/making-grape-juice.html

www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/out-takes.html

Harvesting Sweetcorn Video - Part Two

OK - I think I may have this video upload thing sussed out now. I realize that the problem was with the size of the file, and I have finally fathomed out how to compress files to take out less room. As you can see - the whole family are on a learning curve here! Hopefully I shan't have to keep cutting my video clips into pieces from now on!

Harvesting Sweetcorn Video - Part One

I had a bit of a problem again uploading this short video - so it's been split into two parts. It's interesting that most of the sweetcorn grown here is for animal food and is only picked when it's really ripe and all the sugars have converted to starch. Nothing is wasted here... the strong stalks are used for various purposes (maybe more about that later when we find out what exactly they do do with them) and even the empty cobs (the part that's left when the corn has been taken off) are burnt in the wood stoves to help get the fire started.

Homeschooling Update

Both Dani and I are continuing to thoroughly enjoy our role as Lielle's new teachers.... and Lielle seems to be a very motivated student! The system we have adopted is a semi-structured one where we give Lielle a range of subjects to choose from and she organizes her time-table each evening for the next day. Hot favorites are still English and Cookery, but she is also regularly choosing Geography, Science and Nature Studies. Maths is incorporated into the time-table with ongoing games throughout the day and her writing and reading skills are merged into the other subjects that she chooses. Without even trying she is learning more and more Bulgarian every day too.

We try to connect all the various subjects to each other so that everything has relevence. Today was a great example: Yesterday we noticed our neighbour working hard in her garden cutting maize (sweetcorn) and we offered to help her. At 9 o'clock this morning we turned up for work (but she wouldn't let us start until we had eaten some home-made bread and plum jam!) We spent a good couple of hours helping out. It was great physical exercise for Lielle, as well as a real fun and hands-on way of learning about how corn grows and what it is used for. When we came home we gave her a page of questions to answer relating to what she had learnt that morning and she also wrote a short account of what we did there and how much she enjoyed it. We finished off the days' studies with some artwork using paint and corncobs and leaves - all in beautiful autumn colors.

At the moment we are spending around 3 hours each day on homeschooling, but our aim is for Lielle to become a more independent pupil as she masters reading and writing, enabling us to spend less time one-on-one with her as she gets on with many of the tasks by herself.

A few days ago her day began with Cookery and Sport followed by English and Maths. You can check it out in this video clip on Lielle's Blog www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/school-of-life.html

Changing Seasons

Autumn is coming and it is very much felt here. The weather has been glorious these past couple of weeks: the heat of the summer has given way to a softer warmth during the day and a gentle coolness in the evening. A quiet breeze is felt most of the time and two trees down the lane (maybe they are some kind of poplar), rustle their leaves so intensely I can almost hear them from my bedroom window. The autumn colours are everywhere: bright red apples, rosehips and berries and golden orange of the ripe corn being harvested in the fields and gardens together with enormous pumpkins of all shapes and sizes.

This year saw a lot of rain at the beginning of the summer and as a result the lanes and grass verges are still quite green. Some of the leaves are just beginning to fall from the trees, but most are still well-covered although starting to change their hue.

It's not just by looking at the nature around us that we see the first signs of autumn. The imminent change is reflected in the stores and market stalls selling warm socks, wellies, and all sorts of petchka parts to make sure that the wood fires that will soon be burning in every household are in good order. When we go out for walks we make sure to bring back a supply of dry sticks for getting the petchka started on chilly mornings!

Check out Lielle's Blog to see a short video of her and Dani cutting our enormous pumpkin!

www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/our-very-own-pumpkin.html

Busy Doing Nothing...

"We're busy doing nothing, working the whole day through ..."

Those opening song lines are ringing in my mind right now as we are trying to adapt to our new lifestyle here. We are busy pretty much every day from the moment we wake up until we finish supper and head off to bed in the early evening .... but what are we so busy with? Work, chores, jobs, having fun?? Well it's all of that - but I'm realizing that I need to do a rethink and redefine things because certain words seem to have certain connotations and perhaps some of this confusion is what has lead us in the past to a lack of satisfaction in our normal rat race lives.

Your 'work' or your 'job' seems to have more prestige in our society as it can be quantified according to how much money you make from it. This attitude relegates other work, that you don't get paid for, such as household chores, to a lesser status, and in turn we tend to feel less value and less satisfaction when we do these 'chores'.

Once we appreciate all the work we do and don't define it's importance by how much money we made from it there seems to be a lot more general satisfaction. Now that we have no income it is easier to realize this distinction. At first I was considering jobs like: mending roof tiles, plastering walls, etc. "work" (as they could be quantified by how much we would have had to pay someone else to do them), and jobs like hand-washing, cooking, cleaning, etc. "chores". Somehow the former seemed to have more value. But the truth is that sometimes the things that really need to get done are the more mundane things - but that's no reason to undervalue ourselves.

For example: with these new thoughts in mind I am really enjoying cooking and trying out new ways with food - in the past getting a meal on the table at the end of a day's "work" most definitely felt like a thankless chore. I've even started making my own bread and cakes - something I never used to enjoy!

Similarly with school-work. Getting Lielle in the past to do her homework could definitely be classified as a 'chore' - something to get over and done with as soon as possible; but now we are homeschooling her, spending several hours each day learning together or in one-on-one study we are appreciating what a delight it is and just what great value it has for all of us.

It's surprisingly not so easy just to let go of our old ways and to appreciate the time we now have available to relish in each and every task - appreciating ourselves and each other more in the process.... but it is happening, slowly and I think we are all very thankful for the opportunity we have now to learn this.

First Day "Back at School"

Lielle has learned so much during these last couple of months since we started our trip, but so far we have just followed her own curiosity and spent time answering her questions and sharing observations. We feel though that we can all benefit from adding a little more structure and routine to our homeschooling and we decided that today - 1st September, when all Lielle's friends in Israel go up to second grade - is a good day to start.

Yesterday we asked Lielle which lessons she would like to begin with and she chose English, Cookery, Reading and Writing. We've all really enjoyed the morning and we are thoroughly looking forward to continuing.

On Lielle's blog you can check it out on a new video clip:

www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/back-to-school.html

Mud Plastering Video - Part Two

Here's the second part of the mud plastering video. Lielle decided to say a little bit about the wasp that she noticed while we were working..... check it out on her blog: http://www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/nature-lesson.html

Voditsa Garden Opera

Lielle loves singing and dancing and has recently been listening to music from the the opera 'Carmen'. While humming some of the tunes to myself as I was working in the garden the other day I remembered how when I was a young girl we had a family game, usually while on a long car journey, where we would take the tunes from this famous opera and make up new words....

Inspired by this we made our own little Voditsa Garden Opera .... it's very short, and in Hebrew but describes the abundance we feel here and our wish to share. Enjoy!

(A rough translation to English: Here in Voditsa we have a garden with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers - green and red! Come eat, share and enjoy!)

Getting Plastered!

As promised - here is a short video about our latest project... replastering the entrance, with mud. It has been great fun and a we learned such a lot from the hands-on experience. For Lielle it was also a nature lesson as together we followed how a wasp was coming along to collect the mud for building its nest.

(For some reason the video didn't want to upload so I split it into two parts - here is part one - part two to follow soon).

The family is reunited!

Dani arrived five days ago! He surprised us all when he showed up at the village about 6 hours earlier than we were expecting him having sussed out all the various transport options from Sofia. Since he arrived hungry one of the very first things we did was to show him the garden and he picked himself a salad. There is nothing quite like eating fresh food from your own garden that has been picked only minutes before! Check out the video above.

We have already got stuck in to a few of our projects: Together we have almost finished the mud-plastering in the entrance (more about that soon), and Dani has painted over the wallpaper in the guest bedroom to at least give it a nice fresh clean look. The time just whizzes by between working, preparing food and eating. We still have the bigger projects ahead of us: dismantling the old summer kitchen and making seating areas outside, organizing the compost toilets and shower room... the list goes on ... but we are doing it all bit by bit and by the end of each day there is always something to tick off the list, however small.

Now Dani is with us we have decided to establish more of a routine to our day and have started off this morning with a bit of homeschooling. Dani is teaching Lielle maths and after lunch I shall sit with her to learn about the upcoming Rosh HaShana holiday and make cards to send to the family back in Israel. The idea is that she will become more of an independent learner and will be able to get on with many of the subjects by herself. Watch this space!

Wishing on a star

Last week was the annual Perseid meteor shower that often gives a lovely display of 'falling stars'. It promised to be a good one as the viewing conditions were pretty much perfect: a new 'early to bed' moon and a cloudless night meant that there would be dark clear skies. The Bulgarian village where we are living is far from a big town and has very little 'light pollution'.

We were hosting a couchsurfing friend from Israel and together with him and our neighbour Dancho, Lielle and I set out a large inflatable mattress in the grassy lane that joins on to our house and laid back to enjoy the show. Although we were out pretty early and well before the peak we saw maybe 20-30 in a couple of hours.

I told our neighbour that he should make a wish each time he saw one and asked what he was wishing for. He replied quite simply that he doesn't feel he needs to wish for anything. He has good health, good friends, and everything else he needs. And this reminded me just why we decided to make this move in the first place. Our lives so often become one big wish list of things that we want. Often they are unattainable or if we do attain them we quickly become obsessed with something else. How refreshing it is to just live in the moment and enjoy what we already have and to really appreciate it.

Let's get this show back on the road!!

It's rather strange that the whole reason for setting up this blog was to document our year away 'living the alternatives' and that only now, six whole weeks after leaving our old lives behind, have I got around to writing about our experiences so far. Since leaving home Lielle and I have immersed ourselves in our new experiences from morning to night, leaving me very little energy come evening for sitting down and writing about it all.

The original plan was that Dani would take a week or two after our departure to tidy up his work affairs and would then be joining us, but the weeks rolled on by until.... TODAY! We received a surprise phone call a few hours ago telling us that he is on his way right now! While Lielle and I have both loved the laid-back time schedules and holiday atmosphere I think that we both feel that the time has come for a little more routine and to start getting stuck into some proper work, both projects on the house and with the homeschooling.

So, a few updates since the last post:

* Never underestimate how important it is to have backup copies of all your important stuff on the computer! Shortly after we arrived in the village I spent several hours right into the night editing and filing photos of our trip. I must have been really tired or just generally disoriented but when I thought I was deleting an empty folder the computer asked me: "Are you sure you want to delete these 34,867 items?" Silly me assumed that it was the computer that was wrong, so I hit the 'yes' button and it prompted me with: "Are you sure you want to proceed as these are too many files for the recycle bin and will be permanently deleted?" I clicked 'yes' once more ... and within seconds saw all my 6 years of family albums flicker and disappear before my very eyes. When I checked out the file that I thought they were all in and found it empty I was devastated. I was never so thankful that I had taken the time to transfer all my photos and personal documents to an external hard disk, although unfortunately all the new photos of our visiting friends on the way to the village were lost. Some of them were able to be recovered when I was introduced to a program that can be downloaded from the internet to recover lost files - but I had left it too late to recover them all. Still, I've learned a good lesson.

* We must be the world's worst (but luckiest) when it comes to leaving things until the last minute. Lielle's passport arrived via France just two days before we left. The even better news is that since we left home it has been confirmed that I was due for severence pay from my last job which I held for around 14 years. The pay has already been put into my bank account and should provide a safety net for the project. Although we knew the project would be very low budget we also knew that it would be impossible to live without any money at all. It's very good to know that we shan't go hungry and can afford the travel costs between our various destinations.

* One of the last things we did before we left home was to spend a few hours on the beach watching the sun go down with the children and the grandchildren. These precious family moments are the ones that I shall most treasure and they make me realise that, with all the learning we shall be doing this coming year, the main thing is to learn about ourselves and each other and to relish living in the moment and being in each others' company.

* Now that Dani is on his way (he should be sitting on the plane right now waiting for take-off!), I am hoping that I shall find the time and a few quiet moments every few days to keep this blog properly updated. I have so many ideas in my mind of things to write about and share.

Final countdown - Only One Week To Go

This past month has just whizzed by. With so much to actually get done I have barely had time to sit down and write about it all. Now, with only one week (almost to the hour!) before we leave, it's time for a quick update:

• All our 'memories' (old photos, letters, kids' art, etc.) are all packed and stored. I decided in the end that there just wasn't time to make memory boxes for the kids as I had hoped. Never mind, that will be an interesting and nostalgic project to look forward to when we come back home, together with converting all our old family videos to digital format for future editting.
• I finally got around to sorting out my old computer and transferring all the files to an external, portable memory. It amazes me just how much of your life (documents, photos, favorite music, etc.) you can fit in something the size of your back pocket!
• Applying for Lielle's passport is a work in progress. We're hoping it'll reach us before we leave as new arrangements in the British Consulate meant that it needed to be processed in Paris. Fingers crossed!
• The last couple of weeks has been a time for saying goodbyes to friends. I spent a wonderful evening with 5 of my dearest girlfriends. The intimate atmosphere of such a small group generated such good energy and I have a lot of exciting projects to look forward to with them on our return. A couple of evenings ago we held a farewell, sushi-making get-together for our Couchsurfing friends. I feel truly blessed to be part of such a wonderful community. This whole plan of ours for a year of travel and personal exploration would never have happened without it.
• One of the highlights of this past month has been learning paper mache together with two good friends - and making two new good friends in the process, Tami and Uzi, who run the course. Wednesdays mornings have been something to look forward to as, in addition to learning a new skill of making beautiful and useful items out of waste paper, spending a couple of hours in such an intimate and open forum amongst trusted friends is just so good for the soul.
• After some uncertainty, we finally received confirmation that one of my elder daughters, son-in-law and grandson will be taking over our rental contract and moving in to our house. The furniture arrived a couple of days ago and they should be moving in tomorrow. Although a little cramped for two families it's only for a short while and we all gain from it. It's the house where my daughter spent a big part of her childhood and she has fond memories of it. For us it means we have somewhere to store a few things which is a big load off our minds.
• I sometimes wonder just where my faith that everything will work out fine comes from. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts our trip is very low budget and even now, just a week before we leave, we're not exactly sure where all the funding will come from. This last month has seen a few interesting developments in that field. A chance conversation with my daughter-in-law brought to light that I should have received monthly child benefit for Lielle, which for some reason we never received since she was born. I checked in out, and sure enough, somehow or other we had fallen between the cracks and within just over a week my account was credited with the amount due to us over the last seven years! Also, looking through all my old paperwork I discovered that I was owed severence pay for a job I had 12 years ago - a couple of hours in two different offices was all it took to arrange the money owed me there. It turns out that there are millions of shekels owed to people who don't realize their rights. Definitely worth checking out.
• Although Dani has been working hard to tie up all the loose ends of his business it's becoming clear that he won't be able to join Lielle and I right at the beginning of the trip (the part where we travel from Greece to Bulgaria visiting friends along the way). The plan is that around 10-14 days after we leave (about the time we arrive in the village) Dani will be joining us. I must say he doesn't seem too perturbed about it. That might have something to do with the fact that those days are the final ones of the World Cup ;-)

Well, that's a rough update of things we've managed to achieve since the last post here. I still need to sort out health and travel insurance, and at the end of the week we have the Young Entrepreneurs' Workshop that I'm organizing for Lielle and her friends. I shall be attending a couple of evening paper mache sessions in a last effort to finish a couple of projects that I've started; and another evening I'm spending with my son Yair and his friends from the Rimon School of Music as they wrap up the end of the school year with music performances in a well-known Tel Aviv cafe. And last but not least, I really want to spend a quiet early evening surrounded by my grandchildren watching the sunset over the beach. A few weeks ago I was at the beach with them early evening and just as we were about to leave my little grandson, Israel-Shalom (almost 2), hypnotized by the sunset looked at me and said, in beautiful Hebrew: "Wow, what a beautiful sky!" I just had to sit down with him and enjoy it. Those moments are so precious.

The Tooth Fairy

One of Lielle's top middle teeth fell out last week giving her that charming toothless grin appeal so typical of 7-8 year olds. This was her third lost tooth - the lower middle two both fell out within a week of each other last summer in Bulgaria. I remember how excited she was then about the tooth fairy and how thrilled she was to receive a small gift and a little note.

This time round she asked me straight up if there really is a tooth fairy, or if it's the parents. I could sense that she really wanted to know the truth, but that the truth might not be what she wanted to hear. It reminded me a lot of the Father Christmas dilemma in my own childhood. Suggesting that she put the tooth under her pillow, I kissed her goodnight and promised that we'd see what happened and talk about it in the morning. I knew that this would be the last time that she, and I, would be experiencing the magic of this particular aspect of childhood naivety.

I could hear her fiddling about for some time in her room before she finally settled off to sleep. When I crept in just before midnight I found a little handwritten note next to the tooth:

"Dear Fairy, Do you know a fairy called Julie? I believe in fairies. When you take my tooth you can take the little bag too as a present". Along with a 10-shekel coin I left a little note thanking her for the gift.

Lielle woke us up excitedly at 7 am, the coin and note in her hand, and with a cheeky grin and a knowing look in her eye she said: "Ima, this looks just like your handwriting!" So I smiled and admitted that maybe there is a fairy called Julie, and when she insisted, I showed her where I had hidden the tooth, the bag and her little note.

It was interesting to hear the excitement in her voice as she realized she was now a party to one of the secrets of the grown-up world, but at the same time just a hint of disappointment at the realization that that particular part of childhood innocence can never be brought back.

Amongst the challenges that face us during this coming year of homeschooling will be helping Lielle become more independent, more 'grown-up', while at the same time preserving the balance and giving her ample opportunity to enjoy a wonderful childhood. I think we're up for the challenge!

Just 6 Weeks To Go!

I can hardly believe that in just six weeks to the day we shall already be on our way. There is still a lot to get done but it's amazing how this trip has focussed us and what we have managed to achieve already. Dani is well on the way to closing down his business; repairing tools to be sold and getting stuck in with his mountain of paperwork which has always tended to get pushed aside. In the meantime I have had a mega sort-out of all our 'stuff'. I'm so glad that I started that process about six months in advance as it has enabled us to find appreciative homes for a lot of it. Having (between us) eight older children is a big advantage too as we are going to loan out some of our things to them for the year. This means that when we get back and need to start all over we shall have some of the basics such as furniture.

So, what's still on the 'to do' list?

• The personal things like photos, letters, etc. still need sorting so that they can be packed and stored. I'm wondering if I have enough time to make personal memory boxes for the kids and give them each their own things now that they're grown up? That could well take up the whole six weeks though, and I have to wonder whether they would treasure them as I have done all these years.
• There are also loads of files on my old computer (things I've written, photos taken, etc.) to go through before I give it away. Most is probably rubbish, but what if I deleted some gem by mistake? That looks like another big job.
• I need to get Lielle's British passport sorted out.
• Insurance: I seriously wonder if my current insurance policy is what I need and worth continuing with, plus we need to think about our travel health insurance. I could really use some guidance here.
• I want to say goodbye properly to some of my best friends - need to arrange that.
• I have decided to arrange a one-day 'Young Entrepreneurs' workshop for about a dozen girls on the first day of the school summer vacation just before we leave. This will also be a last opportunity for Lielle to spend time with her friends while hopefully making a little more pocket money for the trip. The idea of the workshop is to do arts and crafts, baking, etc. and then sell the produce at the end of the day after learning some of the basics of advertising and marketing. There will also be a second-hand stall where Lielle may be able to trade some of her last remaining toys and books that can't come with us.

Belt-tightening

Although our planned year away is very low budget there are still certain things that will need to be paid for: food and transport are probably the two main things. Over the past year or so we have surprised even ourselves at just how much we have been able to reduce our monthly outgoings in preparation for the trip. Here are some of the ways we managed to spend less (you'll notice that some of the 'decisions' we made were actually fate-induced), for instance:

When one of our cars was written off in a traffic accident we decided the time had come to make do with just the one we had left. And it wasn't so difficult. It did mean planning a bit more in advance so that we could each get maximum use of the car with minimum inconvenience to the other, but all in all the biggest difference we felt was the positive one of less petrol, insurance and repair bills. Several months later the other car suffered damage beyond reasonable repair, but this time good fortune stepped in and one of Dani's children who had upgraded their car agreed to loan us their old one until we leave. Although the ongoing expenses remained the same we are now thankfully relieved of the problem of selling the car at the last moment which is a big plus.

Similarly, a few months ago our second hand washing machine broke down and needed an expensive repair. My daughters who live nearby offered to help out and do our washing for us which is greatly appreciated. In order not to overload them we do some items by hand and are much more aware of only washing clothes that really need it. It's suprising just how much less washing we generate now than before. This has not only saved us having to buy a new machine, but has also caused us to adopt habits that will serve us well during our year away.

After becoming annoyed at the ever-growing cable TV/internet bills for less service we decided to cancel them. Not having the living room dominated by TV has been a big plus in itself, and the internet has been covered by using it during breaks at work, or picking up local wifi signal at home.

Other areas where we just decided to cut down (for varying reasons from "it's not that difficult to do", to "it's ultimately better not just for our bank balance but also for our health/the environment, etc") include: drinking only tap water (instead of bottled drinks) and cutting down on water usage in general by watering the garden with 'grey' water from the kitchen/shower and only flushing the toilet if there's something really offensive in there. None of us family members is offended by the others' urine, so when it's only us at home this saves a lot of pure drinking-quality water being used to simply transport this natural waste from one place to another. The water rates in general have recently been increased a lot and we have noticed a big difference in our water bills compared to our neighbors.

Some of these changes were achieved by a simple shift in mentality. Once you have set a goal in mind that you are passionate about, if that goal involves money to be saved or debts to pay off you actually psyche yourself up to get a thrill out of not buying something. Resisting the urge to buy something actually gives you a buzz as you realize it is in your power to bring that ultimate goal one step closer.

It also helps to look on the bright side and see the positive aspects in everything: cars and washing machines breaking down don't immediately strike people as being positive, but the way things worked out these things not only brought about a reduction in our expenses but also made us super-aware of just how kind, generous and helpful people can be.

From Another Angle

One of our daughter's projects as a new homeschooler is to document our year away by keeping a photo-journal. Although most will be handwritten she will also be putting up pictures and showing her side of the story on her own blog. She will be writing in Hebrew and I shall add an English translation.

Crazy ideas... Win-Win-Win

My mind is always ticking over.... The other day my thoughts wandered to the extent that I was wondering what I would do if I came unexpectedly into quite a bit of money (not that that's very likely to happen!). I surprised myself by thinking how bothersome this might be! I'm quite convinced that the whole beauty of our project is that it is without money changing hands. It has evolved like this because we never have had much money to start with so I just had to think of alternative ways of achieving what others may have thought only money could buy. This has been the whole beauty of the project so far, and that's how I envisage the whole thing running in the future.

But since the niggling question was already in my brain, I had to delve a bit deeper and come up with an answer, and I didn't have to delve too deep to find some inspiration. Whilst in Bulgaria recently serendipity granted me the opportunity to spend a few days with an amazing woman and watch how she puts some of her philosophies of life into action on a daily basis. She's not super-wealthy, but has a steady income which provides just a little more than she actually needs for her own modest lifestyle. I witnessed the smile of gratitude on the face of an elderly woman with whom we exchanged greetings as we passed her, sitting on a low stool outside the supermarket. That particular day was warm and pleasant, and she was there as usual with her various sized bottles of home-produced goat's milk, hoping to sell them all before going home. My new friend told me how a few months before, when the weather had been well below freezing for weeks on end, she would buy all the woman's milk enabling her to go home to somewhere warm. She didn't really need the milk so she gave it to the cats and dogs she found herself taking care of.

A similar encounter awaited us in the outdoor market. I stood by and watched her exchange a lively banter with a stall-holder there, letting herself be easily persuaded into buying much more fruit and vegetables than she could possibly use herself (the extras to be later shared modestly amongst her neighbors). As we left the stall-holder gave her a broad smile. "Did you notice her teeth?", my friend asked me as we walked away together from the market place. "I'm sure she would want to have the dental work she needs done if she could. But she has several children at home and works so hard just to feed them and give them a good education. I bet she happily puts their needs before her own." Regularly buying from this same woman each week, exchanging a few words and a smile, was her way of validating this woman and showing her how her selflessness, hard work and determination were appreciated.

So how did these random musings inspire me? If one day I should have a little spare cash, how would I like to see it used? You'll have to bear with me here if this sounds a bit rambling, but there are a few different thoughts here that all meld into one idea at the end...

I really like Win-Win situations. Even better are Win-Win-Win situations. As I've mentioned on previous posts, since we will be homeschooling our daughter while in the village we are interested in attracting other traveling/homeschooling families to spend time with us and to share their skills. We are also hoping to involve the local children in various activities, broadening their horizons and giving everyone a good opportunity for some cultural exchange. Over time we hope to build up a resource centre providing educational materials and workshops for ourselves, the local children and those who come to visit. One of the things that I feel really brings people together is music and I think that music workshops could be a really excellent way of bringing kids together.

Here in Israel I happen to know someone whose work I really admire. He also brings children together through music: Arab and Jewish children. Separately he teaches them through their respective schools to play the ukulele, and then they get together for rehearsals and performances where they play together, laugh together, have fun together and get to understand each other a little better.

How would it be, I thought to myself, if we could arrange some kind of funding to bring someone like this guy and say 4 of his most promising students to Voditsa to present a summer workshop? This could be an excellent way of rewarding and encouraging outstanding students. They could come to Voditsa for say a week, where maybe a dozen or so willing and eager local children could take part in an intensive introductory workshop. We are hoping to build up a collection of musical instruments. The ukuleles purchased or donated especially for an event like this could be loaned out to the local children to practice on... maybe it could become an annual event to be looked forward to year after year?

But the idea doesn't stop here... why not do something similar with sports activities? dance? yoga? arts and crafts? cookery? drama?

Do YOU know someone who is passionate about what they teach? Maybe they have students who could be rewarded by a trip like this for their achievements? How can we raise the funding? Would YOU like to be part of something like this?

Building Projects

To further our plan for turning our homestead in Bulgaria into a comfortable and cosy place for traveling families to stay we have several projects in mind that we shall be working on in the near future. Just how far we get with them and the order in which they are tackled will depend to some extent upon the various material, financial and human resources available to us.

Summer Kitchen: Faulty guttering and a few loose roof tiles combined to create some serious damage over the last year to one of the small outbuildings. We intend to completely dismantle the building and recreate it as a covered, partially enclosed summer kitchen. We are hoping to reuse most of the old materials (mud, bricks and roof tiles) and incorporate some decorative elements which will turn it into something functional and creative.

Compost Toilets: Definitely room for improvement here! We don't intend to get rid of the old outside toilet just yet, but we do hope to add some more aesthetic compost toilets, both inside and outside the house.

Hayloft-to-Den Conversion: We would like to clear out one of the haylofts and turn it into a cool space for older kids as a den or story-telling corner. For younger children we want to finish sorting out the ground-level playhouse in the garden.

Cowshed-to-Craft-Workshop Conversion: This is a bigger job and to do it the way we are thinking of will mean we shall need to acquire a few new skills first, such as working with natural mud and lime plaster. If we manage to make the place really cosy it could also double up to provide additional sleeping space when we have a lot of guests.

We shall be documenting our progress with these various projects and hope to be able to post some impressive 'before' and 'after' photos over the coming months!

Family Friendly Travellers' Rest

... that was the title of a message that I posted on the Family Welcome Group forum of Couchsurfing almost 14 months ago!

The post was quite long but here is a short extract from it:

"....So what is this dream? - I would like to create a space, in rural Bulgaria, where people traveling with children can stay and share their experiences and skills. It would be a cross between couchsurfing and volunteering. No money would change hands, but there would be an exchange of skills and resources. Children could feel at home enjoying the simple life in the village. Parents with skills such as arts and crafts, story-telling, music, dance, languages, drama, cooking, photography ... (the list is almost endless), could share them, enriching us at the same time. I envisage that local children from the village would also become involved, making for a lively and interactive cultural exchange. Maybe we could provide computer / internet services that would allow long-term family travelers to take some time out for making a digital scrapbook, or editting video clips along the way?

Right now these are ideas whizzing around in my head and giving me a great feeling of excitement. I would love to hear other families' feedback.... "

I got some great feedback which was all the incentive I needed to push the idea forward - and this blog is the result.

For a more detailed description of just what we can offer and what we hope to get in return you can check out our 'participate' page.

How We Built our First Cement Seating Sculptures

The first stage was to collect the materials that were to be incorporated into the basic structure. We collected old tires, discarded furniture, newspapers and lots of plastic bottles. We discovered that we needed more bottles than we had used ourselves so we actually had to raid the local recycling collection point for a few extras!

The next stage actually took several days. The materials that had been collected were gathered together more or less in the place where the structure was to be built and were looked at earnestly from all directions. This is also the stage where you need to think what the structure is all about: how you think you'd like it to look, whether it needs to be functional, etc. The importance of this stage shouldn't be underestimated - it was surprising how many times I changed my mind before arriving at the final result. You need to keep in mind that the one-off nature of using materials that just happen to be available means that the project is created more by evolution than by design. The good thing about this stage is that is can be done quite effectively while enjoying a cup of coffee or a nice cold beer!

Once the 'bones' of the structure has been decided upon by placing the larger items (tires, old chairs, etc) in the appropriate places, the gaps are filled and the various elements are brought together by the addition of scrunched up newspapers, building rubble, plastic containers, etc. These are all kept together by covering the entire structure with thin chicken wire. We found that the easiest way to attach this to the base was with a staple gun.

A few important points to consider: The inner part of tires and other empty spaces need to be filled otherwise the sculpture will soak up enormous (and expensive) quantities of concrete. Remember to put lids on plastic bottles so they retain their shape and don't get squashed under the weight of the concrete. Also don't forget to take into account that the concrete needs to be several centimeters thick and this will alter the dimensions of the finished product. This is particularly important to bear in mind if the sculpture is to perform a function such as being a comfortable place to sit.

The next part of the job, covering the structure with concrete, is pretty hard work - especially if you're mixing the concrete by hand. It's definitely a job for at least two people: one to keep the supply of concrete coming and the other to apply it. Having made three cement sculptures so far I have to admit that I am really looking forward to the opportunity to work with mud. Apart from the fact that it is much more ecologically sound, it is also much more forgiving. There is no need to work against the clock since it doesn't set as concrete does, and the work can be carried out over several days if necessary and not hours.

Over the next few weeks I hope to work on a short video tutorial showing how we made our most recent sculpture - in the meantime here are a few pictures of the finished projects.

Cement Seating Sculptures

One of the projects we hope to get started on as soon as possible after arriving in the village is to arrange an outdoor cooking and general chilling area. We already have a rough plan for a seating sculpture which is to incorporate the recycling of various unwanted items. Here in Israel there is no shortage of available materials to use, from old broken chairs to tires, building rubble, plastic containers, and more which pile up day by day in unofficial dumps around the country. In Voditsa this might be more of a problem - but a good problem in a way. There is very little wasted in the traditional rural villages. While eco-warriors around the world are challenging us all to 'Reduce, Reuse and Recycle', Bulgarian villagers have been living this way for centuries.

The idea for the seating sculptures came a couple of years ago when a friend invited me to join her on a trip to Kibbutz Lotan in the south of Israel. The kibbutz runs internationally renown permaculture courses and they do a lot of building and sculpting using a combination of natural and recycled materials. One of the advantages of their location is the weather - the barely 6 days a year of rainfall means that outdoor structures can be covered with mud without undue worry about weather damage. I came away from there there totally inspired and raring to go! My only problem was that where I live in the centre of the country rain would be a problem. I decided on a compromise: the basic structure would be made of recycled materials, but the covering would be cement.

I shall write more about the various stages in contructing the seating sculpture in my next post. In the meantime check out these amazing camel sculptures in Kibbutz Lotan. They are made with old car tires and mud!

Summer 2009 in Voditsa

Heading back to Voditsa in less than two months has brought a flood of memories back from last summer. Here are some of the highlights:

There were many 'unknowns' before we left Israel last summer. As it turned out the electricity was fine and just waiting to be switched on. The leaky tap we had been told about was the only real plumbing problem, and our wonderful neighbours Dancho and Stefan were a great help in getting that sorted within hours of our arrival. The weather was hot, but pleasantly so with occasional thunderstorms every couple of weeks.

Despite our intention to set up a compost toilet we managed the whole summer with just the original outside loo (with supplementary chamber pot in the bedroom)! Bathing was no problem either with a makeshift shower area outside using water warmed up by the sun during the day in plastic beer bottles.

Another project we thought we would manage but didn't even get started on was the outdoor living/cooking area. Hopefully that will get done this summer. What we did manage to do was to give most of the rooms a good clean and painted two of the bedrooms.

We did a lot of work in the garden and even managed to get some tomatoes and peppers going (though we had to leave just before they were ready for picking). The barn area and playhouse got tidied, and a couple of windows and doors got painted as well as the main entrance gate. Most of these jobs were achieved with the help of friends and family who came out to visit us: Bartek and Gosia (Poland), Ahava and Ravit (Israel), Nasta (Greece), Carole, Tina and Nikki (UK), Yair (Israel) and Yak (Czech Republic). In addition to the physical help they contributed they also kept us well-fed, in good spirits and provided some wonderful musical interludes. Thank you all.

Bartek managed to get up into the loft. It looked very sound and dry - fortunately no unpleasant surprises there! On the other hand, a trip up to the roof above the kitchen showed fairly extensive rodent (?) damage. That's something we shall have to take care of next time as it's causing the kitchen ceiling to bow.

We learnt how to bottle preserves for the winter, and how sing a few Bulgarian folk songs. We enjoyed being around each other as a family and having time for each other, never hurrying anywhere or being under pressure to get things done to a deadline. We were also treated to a road trip which enabled us to visit Varna and Nessebur and other interesting places along the way, and we became good friends with the local children after organizing some art and craft activities. These were all precious experiences.

We didn't get a donkey (though I haven't yet given up on that one!), but we did buy two chickens and were given a small rabbit (which we should have named 'Houdini' as he managed to escape from every place we put him - and eventually ran away).

Project Bulgaria - Checking Out Some of Life's Alternatives

In just 8 weeks from today our lives are going to be changing drastically. We have decided to take a year out of our 'normal' lives to experience different alternatives: we shall be homeschooling our 7 year old daughter, getting back to basics in a village in Bulgaria, and generally getting as much hands-on learning experience as we can in alternative building, recycling, organic gardening, self-sustainability and more.

For approximately one year we hope to leave behind our routine of regular jobs (as a mechanic / teacher), and take time to discover what really is the essence of a good and healthy life. We are looking forward to living in a community where money and material possessions are not the main motivators, where the pace of life is governed by the seasons, and a good day's work (with liberal breaks for socializing and enjoying life's little pleasures) is the order of the day. We are looking forward too to having more time to get to really know ourselves, as individuals and as a family.

This plan has come about as a result of dreaming, believing and determination... and of course the guiding hand of fate that gave us a gentle push here and there in the right direction.

Before deciding to publish this to a blog I wrote down my own private thoughts explaining where this idea came from and how the whole plan developed from the original dream. These original articles explain quite a bit of the background and can be found here.