The Update #54 – Back to Work

Okay, we needed to get back at it again. Quite honestly, we are super happy to be in this beautiful place and the tasks they have for us sound nice. Still, we had to scrape together some motivation to get back to work.

And the first day was quite a tough day. We worked all day in the greenhouse and had to make the very hard ground full of stones airy by throwing the soil through a sieve to separate the stones from the sand. The places where we stood were only very low so we could not stand upright and to throw the sand on the sieve you had to throw around a corner. The physiotherapist dares to tell you a perfect recipe for back complaints. And Jap felt it. Fortunately, I only had severe muscle pain, but Jap threw his back out almost immediately the next morning because his back was so tired from the heavy work. Oops. But we also did a lot of other things besides this. My personal favorite: digging with the excavator. I always thought it was super complicated to control such a big machine with those joysticks, but I quickly got the hang of it and it was super fun to do. Another favorite was the mitre saw. With this, we had to saw a lot of planks for the fence we are making in the garden, but it is something we have never done before and therefore super fun to gain experience with. We learn a lot of cool things here, which is awesome. And to be honest, I often feel like a city girl because I’ve never done a lot of things before. Like cleaning the chicken coop. In the beginning, I was just a bit afraid of those unpredictable ladies, which I found very strange since I grew up with birds flying through the house, but I found these ladies just a bit different and they were clearly in the majority in that small coop. And to be even more honest, when I first got into it, in my defense at first with the wrong tools, I hated the job so much that I walked over to Jap and said: “I’m cured, we never going to take chickens.” But after I finally had the right tool it got a bit better. After the coop was completely clean and the chickens were rolling through the sawdust in the coop, it was so touching that I want to have chickens again. haha. Furthermore, our days consisted of planting many plants in the vegetable garden, baking bread, and doing a little cleaning.

It wasn’t very difficult to decide what to do on our days off. We couldn’t hike or do anything else and we could use some relaxation, especially Jap’s back. So we went to the hot springs which the area is known for. On the first day, we went to the most famous, Radium Hotspring. This was just a big hot outdoor pool filled with, natural, hot water from a natural spring. The water was 39 degrees and it was lovely! It was fairly busy but not annoyingly busy. We spent almost 3 hours in the bath and enjoyed the view and chatted. And what was perhaps an equally nice highlight: in the evening we could go wild camping for the first time. For once not in a parking lot, but just in the great outdoors. Here in Canada, you can stay overnight in the so-called Crownland, and that was where we stayed. The view was beautiful and the weather was good enough to eat outside. We have enjoyed this very much.

The next day it was a hot spring day again. But although the other was also filled from a natural source, the environment was quite man-made. Today we would go to an all-natural spring that falls like a waterfall into a river. It took some searching and we were a bit shocked by the warning signs that there is a bear in the area. But the spring was spectacular. It was very beautiful. The water was nowhere near as warm as the water at Radium, it was more around body temperature, so we were happy that the sun shining. But we also spent hours in this hot spring. It was very quiet, often we were there at the same time with one other family and there were several baths.

After this hot spring, we were so wrinkled and softened that we went back to the house. Also partly because there would be a pizza party in the evening as they call it. They have a pizza oven in the garden and if the weather allows it, they fire it up, on average once a week, and invite a whole bunch of friends. Everyone brings some toppings and they take care of the dough, super fun! Of course, we didn’t want to miss that.

On Sunday, our last day off and the last day with beautiful weather, for the time being, we went for a walk close to the house with Nicola and his dog Sanka. A walk of 13 kilometers to a waterfall starts less than 5 minutes from the house. Marc had the idea that there would be no snow since the snow around the house is also pretty much gone and it’s so close. However, he had overlooked the fact that the temperature in a dense forest is much more stable and the snow melts way slower Of the 13 kilometers, we have not walked in the snow for less than 500 meters, haha. And in some parts, the snow was still really deep and we sank with our legs up to our knees in the snow. We also lost the trail because of the snow. That wasn’t a big deal because we just had to keep following the river, but because of that we walked through the loose deep snow and that was super tiring. But eventually, we found the path again and we walked through a beautiful valley and found the beautiful waterfalls where we had a nice picnic.

Until the next!

Love,

Jap and Lon

Spendings of the Week

Budget per day €54 and per week €378 and per month €1700

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