Lesson Number 2: How to be a Greek Celebrity.

It was a cold rainy day at the farm last friday... and I know what you're thinking..just the perfect type of weather for the red carpet!

...and no I don't mean the Oscars...

While you were all cuddling up in front of your televisions, judging best and worst dressed and gasping as Jennifer Lawrence fell up the stairs, Amy was busy becoming a greek celebrity.
She didn't wear Dior or Oscar de la renta; instead she opted for the "haven't showered in a week", covered in mud, overalls and rain boots look, and I think it was really workin for her..

A reporter and cameraman showed up at the farm last week wanting to shoot some footage for Star, (a Greek entertainment channel) about the horses and volunteering, and Amy jumped at the opportunity. OK, "Jumped" might be an overstatement, but either way, she ended up on screen and was a natural. The piece aired this yesterday morning, and when we were walking in the village last night for our weekly souvflaki and the store owner recognized Amy from it!

In other news...

One of my most favorite places to spend time is at a little cafe down the street from the flat, named Kafari (probably totally biffed that spelling) It is run by Dimitrius, a friend of Amanda and Stathis and it is usually just Amy and I, or Filola and Polivea and Dimitrius so we get to really talk and have learned a lot. We usually come and get coffee at least once, or twice on our days off. Dimitrius keeps bees, and made us a candle from beeswax from his bees.

The finished product :)

Filola picked us up on Saturday night and brought us into town to experience the "opening night" of Apokrias. Apokrias is a month long carnival/festival on the island, where they celebrate the coming of spring. (think tulip time/halloween for shepherds in greece..kinda) It is hard to explain, but essentially there is a lot of dancing, and enjoying of the local night life and costumes. The last weekend of the festival is the busiest weekend of the year, with about 2,000 people coming to the island.

The men come into the streets throughout the night, and sometimes into the bars, dressed in the traditional outfits, and covered in bells. The first night there were only a couple guys in the streets, and the noise was incredible. People line the streets to watch them dance. There are different characters and outfits. On the last weekend, there are sometimes around 25 men with bells ( I couldn't believe the noise with only three so I can't imagine what that will be like!)

Amy embracing the spirit of Apokrias.. We saw (and attempted) a lot of traditional greek dancing and are anxious to try and pick up some steps :) 

 The bells are what the goats/sheep where in the fields ( we hear them everywhere, all the time). They are very heavy, and the some dancers are wearing about 100lbs worth; and we thought wooden shoes were bad!

There will be lots more of Apokrias to experience, so thats enough for now...

Our neighbor Takos invited us over for lunch this week.. which actually turned into 5 hours of great greek fellowship, chippero and three slaughtered goats! Takos is a man of many talents, and one of them is working with leather. He made us leather bracelets, and we got to watch him make the traditional shepherd shoes that the shepherds still wear daily here.

Shoes in process..

Getting our bracelets..

 

 Skinning the goats.. this is the least graphic picture so I'll just leave the rest to your imagination :)

poor little goat doesn't even know whats coming... he was tasty though! They saved most of the goat meat for later, but we got to eat the liver and kidneys, the best part! (Filola came over and made us squid the night before so it has definitely been a week of firsts for these tastebuds of mine!)

We had feta and some kind of goat cheese that they also made on the farm

Picking our salad...

and some flowers to boot :)

The aftermath of lunch..   

There wasn't alot of english spoken and since we don't know very much Greek so we didn't talk much, but the company was great. We are loving our time here. We continue to be overwhelmed by the love and generosity we are shown by the people on the island and constantly feel as though we wish we had more to offer, even in terms of conversation!

Along with all of our other "social" events this week we had a very special tea party, hosted by Julietta, complete with chocolate cake and paper snowflake making.

Life on the farm is business as usual, This is the view from our bed most of the time.. always a least  one or two chickens, cats or dogs in view!

 Hoping you are all doing well, Sending all of our love from Skyros!

life lessons: where your food comes from

Yasas friends and family!

I am going to preface this post by saying its 2am and I am trying to get this post written before we head back to the farm in a couple hours. So just know this is being written under sleep deprived conditions and I can not be held responsible for the content, but I'm going to try and hopefully you will be entertained by this weeks adventure.

Remember those roosters I wanted to kill?? Well, be careful what you wish for because my wish came true. Stathis, who runs the farm, was given a chicken as a gift from a shepherd after he let some of the shepherds sheep graze on some of his land. The chicken was intended to be for dinner but Stathis explained that it wasn't that big and he isn't too crazy about killing animals so he decided it might be nice to have chickens on the farm and that is where our story begins.

These are some fresh eggs from the chickens that we had in the castle to eat for breakfast. Meg was convinced that the bigger eggs were fertilized and was terrified that if she cracked it open she would find a dead baby chick. So I cracked the eggs, no baby chicks, just double yolks, they would have been twins :) 

As nature has taken its course more and more chicks have been born, these three are peeping all around the farm right now. More and more of these have turned out to be roosters. This is becoming a problem, most importantly to Meg and I because they live right outside our room and the cock-a-doodle-dooing is a little bit out of control. There is also the issue that they will eventually kill each other because they all want to be top rooster; so the group consensus on the farm was that we needed to do some population control, but first one had to be caught.

Filola, Stathis' friend, has done this a time or two and volunteered to help. A couple of times when he was at the farm we tried to catch one with no success. The picture above was taken as Dimos and Filola were discussing that the capture would need to take place under the cover of darkness when they all are asleep in the chicken tree. 

Meg was way more excited about this whole ordeal than I was, she was like a little kid on Christmas morning when it was time and she wanted to be the one to actually kill it. On friday night, once it was dark, Filola went in and grabbed the biggest rooster and handed it over to Meg.

heading over to the site, she is laughing uncontrollably at this point

In everyone's best interest it was decided that Filola would be the one handling the axe so Meg got the job of holding the legs.

prepping

(Meg spent a lot of time covering her face for someone who was so excited) 

This was seconds after the fateful chop, Filola exited immediately while Meg took a minute see if it would run around without its head, she wasn't going to cover her eyes for that. Thankfully, Filola did an excellent job so there was only a little flopping, no running. 

I was actually surprised by how quick and quiet the whole thing was. The people here truly care about all animals and while it was necessary to remove a rooster, before they all killed each other, they wanted to do it as humanely as possible. The rooster had been sleeping and was very calm, it was done fast and in a way that we could use the meat. 

Next step was to move into the kitchen to prep the bird to be cooked. Now it was my turn to participate so I assisted with feather removal. 

This was also Dimos' first time killing a rooster but as the main cook around here he jumped right in, and had the cleaver ready.

Filola, clearly the expert

Then Dimos translated for us as Filola gutted the bird explaining to us all the parts and which ones people like to eat. 

Fast forward to Sunday, Filola came over again to cook the rooster for us, it was cooked with rice in what we are told it a pretty traditional shepherds' way of preparing it. We were told that meat from roosters can be tougher or grainier then chicken but it tasted like chicken to me.

Overall it was a good experience, it was a good reminder to think about what we put into our bodies and where our food is coming from, and to be reminded of what it would be like if we couldn't just run to the grocery store and buy whatever we needed to eat. If you are going to eat meat you should be able to kill it right??  :) The remaining six roosters do not seemed fazed by the impending doom that could be upon them and have continued there cock-a-doodle-dooing and all hours of the day an night but there is talk that one more may need to go so that we can have one cooked in another traditional dish.

I must sleep now, goodnight!

fairy homes and finding adventure.

Well another week has passed at the farm and it feels like it is going so fast! We have officially been gone for a month, and are allllmost halfway!

Last week, one of the friends of Amanda and Stathis, Filola, was going to take Amy and I on a walk to a tree that sort of overlooks the village and is supposed to be a really good view. (Notice how I said walk, and keep this in mind when looking at the footwear that was selected for this adventure) We never really made it to the tree, What was supposed to be a quick afternoon walk, turned into 3 hours of hiking up through the hills(mountains), forests and ridges throughout Skyros. We definitely "took the long way", And it was awesome.  It was amazing to see how diverse the terrain is on just one small island. At some points, I felt like I was in Northern Michigan, walking through a pine forest, and at others I was standing on a mountain top overlooking the beaches of the Aegean Sea. It was pretty incredible. I almost lost Amy due to high winds while at one peak, ( don't worry mom, I snagged her just in time, and am making her eat extra helpings at dinner to make sure this doesn't happen again)

 Those white buildings in the very middle, that you can see through the valley, is where the flat is, and where we started walking from, this was about a half hour into our walk.

Almost back home!

(sorry for all of the back shots, Amy is always a wee bit behind and she is our official photographer)

I keep finding myself reminded and in awe that the same God who I get to talk to everyday and who desires a relationship with little ole me, is the same God who created every inch of this island, and my home in Michigan, and everything in between.
After our HIKE, we went with Filola to a small cafe near the flat and hung out with some pretty cool greek guys. One of them, the cafe owner, spoke English so we were able to sit and talk for a while and enjoy a delicious greek coffee. Probably one of my favorite days so far.

Kostas, who works in the military and also lives in the flat, took us to a natural spring, one of the few on the island, and we collected the drinking water for the week at the flat, pretty cool!

This is another natural spring on the island, and we passed by it on our hike.

The other night, Amy and I walked to the neighbor, Tacos' farm with Amanda. He spoiled us with more greek coffee and honey still on the honeycomb, from his very own bees. We left with two large bottles of homemade wine from his grapes and eggs from his chickens. I feel like everywhere we go, we are always being given something, or treated to something. The people here are incredibly generous with everything that they have.

While mucking out the other afternoon, I spotted Julietta wandering between the fields collecting sticks, and random stones in a plastic bag. She wouldn't give me an answer when I asked her what she was doing, but instead enlisted me to collect feathers, stones and leaves.

After several minutes of collecting, she looked at me and asked if I believed in fairies.

Well of course I said yes ( What I really wanted to do was shout I DO believe in fairies, I DO, I DO, peter pan style, but didn't wanna scare Julietta)
Amy, the childhood pro of fairy houses, joined in and soon we were constructing a fairy mansion, complete with feather fairy beds and a bark welcome mat. We walked to the church nearby and picked flowers to complete the fairy garden

Our fairy supply checklist

 Our fairy feather bed and walnuts filled with apples, bread and water...Fairy food :)

 

 The complete fairy house and garden.

We continue to settle into life here. It is amazing that even though we are across the world and completely cut off from our ordinary routines, eventually wherever you are and whatever you're doing, just becomes life, but maybe just set into a different rhythm. We are living in Greece and working on a horse farm, which is amazing and exciting but it all feels so normal after a while. Don't get me wrong, I would not want to be anywhere else right now, and love love love it, but I am learning that adventure is something you have to seek, no matter where you are.  Being adventurous isn't so much about the big decisions or leaps we make, it is more in the little moments and chances we take everyday. I think of friends back home (cough cough laura) who stretch or challenge themselves through things like take a photography class, or spur of the moment weekend camping trips, or impromptu coffee dates.  Our sweet and oh so wise brother sent Amy and I this quote before we boarded the plane on our trip.

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

                                                                                                                                        - Jack Kerouac

You don't have to travel across the world to have an adventure; every moment can be one wherever you are.

The weather is getting a bit colder and rainier so we have more time spent inside the castle, but its been nice to spend some time in the quiet and all of the "noise" of the world. No internet, or Television. It is amazing how close God can feel when everything else is out of the way. 

I'll leave you with some pictures our little pony friends.

curious ponies.

 

*no ponies were harmed in the taking of this photo, it's just naptime :)

Missing everyone back home and sending our love!