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!)

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!

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.