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Okay, okay.  I'll start blogging again!  Thanks to those of you who gently bugged me - this will be a good habit to get into now!

If you haven't heard, I'm embarrassed and apologetic, but I'm officially 6.5 months along with a baby girl in tow.  She's due July 5.  It has been an extremely easy pregnancy so far - no morning sickness, no weird aversions or cravings.  Since this seems to be an appropriate venue for funny stories, I can tell you about the 4 random moments where smells were influential.

One morning, Kelly was having ketchup with his breakfast.  (Now, I am usually the person who has breakfast with her ketchup.)  I had to order him to the opposite side of the couch as the smell of his ketchup turned my tummy.  What was the delicious smell later that day?  Little Ceaser's.  Go figure!  Another day, sweet Kelly had to clean the chicken coop all by himself as I could not deal with the smell of chicken poop.  It usually doesn't bother me.  In the evening, we'd been snacking on pickles and playing board games.  I had to move the jar of pickle juice to overcome the nearly overwhelming desire to chug it.  Ugh.

Today I had a routine check-up.  All seems well and fine, but I should weigh about 166 and I weigh 161.  My doctor ordered an ultrasound out of an abundance of caution, but it doesn't seem like there's a reason for worry.  However, she told me to go get a shamrock milkshake at Burgerville.  Doctor's orders.  Best appointment ever!

Lots of love,
Megan

Family, Camping, and Chickens

Last weekend, I headed down for a family wedding down at the beach.  Shawn is the child of my mother's cousin, Susan.  She and her sister, Nancy, have been so sweet about inviting me to family functions.  I feel lucky to have this extra connection to my mother's side of the family.

After a brief ceremony conducted by Susan's husband, we headed inside a beach house for a reception.  It was terrific to catch up with everyone.  Below are Nancy and my Uncle Randy (mom's brother).  I wasn't sure if any of her brothers or their families would be able to make it, but I was delighted to see them!

The next weekend held Let's Go Camping at Wallowa Lake.  I'd been really looking forward to it as Kelly has never been to Wallowa Lake.  Unfortunately, a job went really long and he wasn't able to go.  I drove 6.5 hours to the campground which is almost in Idaho.  This picture doesn't really do it justice: Wallowa Lake is a gorgeous, glacier-cut lake.

This was the view from our group camps along the river.  I am standing with Jimmy, one of the co-coordinators from Let's Go Camping.  Jimmy and Jill, his counterpart, are incredible human beings who have crafted one of the most successful programs for folks new to the outdoors that I have ever seen.  It is a pleasure to volunteer with them!

The following, one of my hens collapsed on her first birthday (hatchday?).  She'd been sneezing, but she's had the sneezies before, so I didn't think much of it.  Kelly helped me get a little travel kit together and I rushed her to the vet.  She was extraordinarily groggy and weak.  The vet wasn't sure what was wrong, but did tell me that birds end to hide illness until it's nearly overtaken them as they would seem vulnerable to other birds in the wild.  Well, shoot.  He gave her an injection of antibiotics and one of B vitamins.  He sent me home with two B vitamin injections and a feeding tube.  For almost the remainder of the day, Kelly and I syringe-fed her mash and water.  I've nursed chicks before, but the results have not been outstanding.  I am thrilled to say, though, that by the fourth day she's eating and drinking independently, perching, and walking a little bit.  We're not out of the woods yet, but I have a lot of hope.  Below, Austra and I are hanging out and watching Aladdin together.

 

I've had a couple young Ameracaunas in a cage inside the coop for three days and tried integrating them into the flock today.  I was all set up with books, this blog entry, and a comfy camp chair to supervise the process.  Unfortunately, my older birds seemed a bit too eager to show their dominance.  I'm going to give them a few more days then try again armed with tricks this time!

 

Finally, yesterday I said goodbye to prime 29 and turned 1/3 of a century old.  Kelly and I went berry picking in the morning and snagged some late season marionberries and blueberries.  In the afternoon, we cleaned the pine needles off our driveway and tidied our kitchen.  Kelly cooked me a delicious meal and blueberry guh for dessert.  My roommates came home and we played games in the evening.  It was a super huge treat as Kelly made sure I didn't have to cook or clean.  Wowee zowee!

Thanks and Back Home Business

To all those of you who sent emails and comments, thank you!  Your well-wishes meant a lot as we were on our journey.  I'm certainly working hard to respond to them, so if you haven't heard back yet, you will!

On the first day back, rather than fall asleep, I put things away and cleaned cleaned cleaned!  It felt good to create a "fresh start" immediately.  I was completely exhausted by bedtime, though.

The rest of my days have been filled with a variety of things.  I've been helping Rusty out at his place a bit.  I've picked blueberries, played safety as he re-topped a noble fir, and denailed scrap lumber.  The scrap lumber project has taken quite a bit of time and I have a few little blisters, but I'm quite proud of them!  I am as good with a hammer as I ever have been in my life and it's very satisfying.

My roommate, Erin, celebrated her birthday while we were away.  As I enjoy baking quite a bit, I offered her a belated cake/pie/cheesecake.  She was delighted, but overwhelmed with all the choices.  After going over some of my specialties, she selected key lime cheesecake, much to Kelly's delight.  What a great choice for a summer birthday!

There were also four huge zucchini waiting for me in our household's community garden when I got home.  Knowing that they're not great for fresh eating when they're so aged and five people can only consume so much zucchini bread, I looked for some other ideas.  At this blog, the author suggested zucchini pineapple.  It really does taste like pineapple with a slightly different texture!

 

Tomorrow is helping out a friend and heading to a family wedding on the coast!  This weekend will hold Let's Go Camping at Wallowa Lake.  I'm crossing my fingers Kelly will be home and not working over the weekend so he can volunteer too.

 

Take care,

Megan

Home safely!

We are back home safely!  For now, we're going to have a shower in our own shower and a sleep in our own bed. Yay!  Here's to hoping our diabolical plans avoid jetlag!

Last Full Day

So today began our last full day. We got up and got our stuff together, cleaned the sheets we had used, and got the gifts for our hosts laid out for giving after breakfast. We had one last great breakfast with them and before the first of them had to leave we get them the gifts we had gotten for them. These consisted of the deck of cards we had for all of our hosts along with the Oregon post card thank you, and some other things we got from the store early this morning. Martin and Maryna were great hosts and staying with them and having them let us blend into their daily lives was a great experience and we had many great conversations exploring the similarities and differences between our cultures.

We then hopped on a train for a quick stop in the town we spent our first night in to pick up a couple fragile things we had eyed when there a month ago (wow! yeah, a month!), aka Heidelburg. We really can’t say it enough it’s a great little town and is more worth a visit than Frankfurt or Munich. After getting lunch at another kebab shop we got back onto the train to head up to Frankfurt, so that we could check into the hotel we reserved right next to the airport for easy travel in the morning.

So yeah, here we are nearly at the end of our trip, and while the experience has been really fun and exciting we are both kind of ready to be home again. The places we visited were great and the history we saw and the history we observed being uncovered still, really puts the really young nature of our own country into perspective. It also makes me wonder if there are places where Native American sites of wonder and importance were covered up, filled in, and built right over the top of in order to remove knowledge of them out of fear and spite.

Well it is about time for bed here, we have an early morning and a 20 hour journey in order to make it home. We look forward to seeing you all again soon!

Crazy Bike Adventure!

Starting out slowly in the morning is pretty great.  Today, I had never seen so much food on a breakfast table before.  We had a delicious start with several kinds of bread, cheese, cured meats, homemade bran muffins, cereals, and fruits.  I wanted to take a photo, but the camera was upstairs and I was enjoying the climate around the table far too much to move.

After a leisurely breakfast, we debated a bicycle tour or a canoe tour.  In the end, we settled on a bike tour.  Martin was feeling a bit under the weather, so he stayed home to rest.  Powering along well-developed cycling paths on our rented bikes, we stopped at a lake to try to watch birds, but animals have the sense to rest in the heat of the day, so we simply stopped at a lake.  We also dropped by an old church in a small village.  One of the buildings had this painting, showing the tale of the Hedgehog and the Rabbit.  It is similar to our Tortoise and  the Hare.

After this, we arrived at our most significant destination, a mill.  We first enjoyed a bit of shade along with some desserts.  We sampled a cherry cheesecake and a citrus yogurt cake.  They were quite refreshing after a long ride.

Once we had appeased our hunger and our taste buds, we dropped inside the mill.  The first floor was the gift shop/bakery counter.  On the following four floors, old milling equipment was displayed.  It was clear that this equipment was no longer in use, but it was still interesting to see.  Unfortunately, all the signs for the equipment were in German, so we mostly guessed at its purpose.

Here is us on our bikes in front of the mill, ready for adventure!  The stream that runs under the bridge heads to the left side of the mill and was once used to power the machinery in order to grind the flower.  Quite the picturesque day, huh?

We also sidetripped to a local castle.  There wasn't a whole lot of information or the opportunity to go instead, but it was still lovely to see.  It was situated on some nice green grounds, providing many lovely places for picnics.

As we were riding back towards Marburg, Marina spotted a cherry tree.  We waded into the grass to find that someone had already picked all the reachable cherries.  Undaunted, Marina parked her bike at the tree trunk and shimmied right up, creating a pouch to pick into from a scarf!  I loved watching another determined, creative soul when it came to gathering ripe, seasonal produce!

Later on down the road on one of our breaks to double-check the map, we passed some chickens.  CHICKENS!!!  I attempted to befriend them with cherries.  I didn't quite make a friend, but it was nice to commune with the fowl.

Here is a view from the way back.  Do you see that tiny hill between the trees?  We biked around the far side and well over to the right (off the picture), though more small villages before reaching that destination.  We were pretty pooped at this point.  Kelly especially as his bike wouldn't change into the lowest gears, so the many hills we climbed were tough nuts to crack!

 

In the end, we estimated we biked over 60 kilometers over the course of about 8 hours.  This is over 37 miles.  We were very grateful we had done all the walking previously to at least sort of prepare for this undertaking.  Let me tell you, though, we have a couple of very sore tushies!  I don't really want to think about how our legs will feel tomorrow morning.  All this aside, we are mighty!  Rawr!

 

Returning to the flat to a slightly anxious Martin at about 8pm, we mostly dropped our things and turned around to head out to dinner.  We tried a Vietnamese/Thai/Chinese restaurant about 1.5km from their house (more biking - yay).  The food was plentiful, delicious, and well-earned.

 

Kelly and I still have to discuss our plan for tomorrow, but we know we will be heading to Frankfurt and checking into a hotel near the airport so we can catch our flight the following day.  It has been an amazing trip, but we're also very excited to return to the comfort and familiarity of home.  We really hope, though, that a lot of the wonderful CouchSurfers and travelers we met along the way will some day turn up in the Portland area.

 

Wheel never stops turning,

Megan

Marburg, Farmer's Market, Flea Market, Grilling in the Park

Today we got up a little later than normal, mostly because we were having such a great time chatting with our hosts last night that none of us noticed that we had stayed up until it was three in the morning. So we all ate some breakfast and headed out to the farmer's market to get some food to grill for the evening since the day was so nice. An interesting difference between a farmer's market here and back home, is that here a farmers market meant a place to go to get food or food plants, there wasn't a small presence of food with a ton of arts and crafts supplies like we typically get at home.

We then walked around the flea market for a bit looking at the array of random items that people brought for sale. After an hour or so there we decided to go relax at a café nearby, but unfortunately it was closed. We did however get to see a stereotypical Marburg old building which over the years has become not so straight and that is apparently due to the fact that too much sun exposure on mostly one side for 300 years warps the wood. Also pictured below is the slate siding that some of the older houses have, but newer or more recently updated or renovated ones don't have, because the cost is way too high since ever stone has to be hand formed in order to fit on the house correctly.

Back at our hosts' flat we relaxed for a bit of lunch and cooled off with a German style milkshake. It is not what you think it is though. It is basically a milk and yogurt smoothie sans ice cream or ice and they are actually pretty nice on a hot day.

Later we went to the park to grill, play some frisbee, and hang out in the sun for dinner. This is the disposable picnic grill that they picked up to cook with. It is basically an aluminum roasting pan filled with lump charcoal, fitted with a piece of expanded metal on top, and a small wire frame to keep it off of the ground. All in all it worked pretty darn well to grill the array of sausages we picked up from the market earlier.

 



We then taught them how to play Yamslam and Timeline after we got done eating which went pretty well, but it soon became evident that Timeline was definitely made for Americans mostly, since there were a lot of things that were pretty much entirely American history events included in the game. That aside our host Martin won both of the games we played.

Afterward we headed back to the flat and chatted for a while longer and then headed to bed. It was a great relaxing day with very good company and the kind of day that was definitely more our speed as we get to the end of our whirlwind tour of Europe.