Eurojournal - 21 July 2006

We have had 3 days of sun. Yesterday we had lunch with Csaba and his family at our house. That was fun preparing food for them. Lunches are the main meal here. We had pasta with homemade sauce, veggie soup, fresh baked bread from the store, tea and red bell peppers (paprika here). Liam ate the entire bell pepper and loves all the sweet peppers here. Everyone eats the yellow bells (paprika) here. I made some oatmeal raisin cookies the night before. I have been withdrawing from processed treats. I think I have baked something 3 times this week! We have been giving most of it away though.

Earlier in the week James and I witnessed some interesting behavior among the storks. When they are eating they make this creepy sound. One of the storks left the nest, circled it and stood at the other telephone pole. It turned it’s head backwards and upside down and clacked it’s beak. Almost like a victory dance. We were perplexed at what was happening. The nest looks crowded full of big storks, the babies must be small. We asked Csaba at lunch about the storks and he told us about them. The ones we saw with the dark beaks were the young even though they were giant. They nest for 3 months here beginning in June and leave for Pakistan or Africa in August. In that 3 months the babies are born, grow and fly. There are 3 babies born and one, the weakest, is usually dumped out of the nest immediately. We saw one baby fly well. It circled high in the sky and glided as if it were experienced. The other one was still trying to jump up and spread its wings in the nest. The parents remain a couple for a lifetime and travel south together and return to the exact same place next year. Because of the ponds here, our village has the highest concentration of storks than even Holland.

The children have been playing cards, dodgeball, making a mini-cave outside out of dirt and having tea parties complete with British accents. We have been playing Go fish with them too. Byron has been spending about 1 hour a day teaching Luna and Liam Spanish and learning about teaching methods as both children learn in a very different fashion. Right now they are outside making a teeter totter out of sticks and rocks.

Recently, they have been getting squirrely and fighting and it is driving us crazy. We had a family talk last night and established some guidelines. I am trying to focus a lot of attention on the children today to intervene before they fight and encourage them to take a “breather break” (space from each other with some nice deep breaths) when they start to feel frustrated. I saw that Liam took a voluntary “breather break” before things got difficult between he and Luna already.

James goes to Csaba’s everyday for a few hours to learn Hungarian. I have been working on a Soduko puzzle book someone from our church at home gave us. My type A personality is starting to surface as I need something else to do. Last night I thought I’d take up jogging setting goals each morning. We’ll see how far that goes as I absolutely loathe running. Cycling on the other hand I love. I’d love to bike up the hills here.

We have been trying to figure out the bus schedule or rent a car but things keep coming up. I am hoping to take the kids to the castles and Black Sea soon.