One of the things I really wasn’t prepared for are all the dogs. I’d been told. Everyone told me. And yet I’m still surprised.

Fiona lives next door to the house we were working on today. True to form I was in my usual role of ‘go-fer’ and was fetching gallon buckets of water for the cement mixer all morning and Fiona came over to us at lunch. I’m assuming she was looking for dropped crumbs. My roommate started to play fetch with her and it was all downhill from there there. I was wearing gloves and Fiona and I played just like I used to play with my Katie-dog. Gloves and jeans are all super awesome toys. So the rest of the day Fiona and I played while I fetched water. It was fun for me and it kept Fiona from tripping everyone else.

Time for dinner.

In the rain. Ok that’s a bit melodramatic, it was drizzle. It’s been raining pretty steadily here for several days, turning the dirt roads into treacherous areas where Habitat liaisons fear to tread.

I had a hard time understanding that. The dirt here is clay, which can be like grease. BUT it’s full of all kinds of rock. All sizes from tiny gravel to the ankle turning kind. One of my teammates was videoing the drive up the hill to the worksite and caught me telling the driver that the road “wasn’t anything close to as bad as he lead me to believe.”  Apparently I’m in the minority in that opinion though.

Today at the build site we stuck styrofoam insulation to the outside walls and started the stuccoing.  I was struck by the similarities between building a house here and being around various building projects when I was a kid. It made the day kind of surreal.  We met the family today. All very nice and friendly. Very helpful as well. At one point someone was doing something with the mortar and the mom came and shooed him away. Very clearly she was going to do that herself.  A great build day was had by all of us.

Tonight we were treated to a visit to a local orphanage where about 10 girls live. All about 13 and all reminding me of Holly.  We followed the visit to a local hangout where we had either pizza or pasta. The girl next to me got corn on her pizza. I’ve never seen that before. She offered to let me try it, but she had also gotten mushrooms and I really don’t like those, especially on pizza. I’ll have to try it when I come home.

Tomorrow we’re going to a different site and will be building out some of the walls. Different family, and the house just got the foundation poured a week or so ago.  After that we’re heading to the Bear Cave. Full days all around, the week will be over before I know it.

If you’d like to see some pictures, some should be showing up on Facebook soon. Look for Habitat for Humanity Beius.

Gnocchi tonight instead of brain. The zombies can rest assured that their favorite food is safe from me.

.The adventurous part of me ordered fried brain for dinner. With a side of fries ‘just in case.’   When it arrived it looked like this:

Kind of egg roll looking. Definitely battered and fried.

The inside was slightly gray and sort of mushy. So far so good. Several of my teammates were very interested in how it was, so I waited until most of them were paying attention somewhere else before I took the first bite. The last thing I wanted was to have people see me be sick if I didn’t like it!

The bite went in. You might think it would be slimy feeling but it wasn’t at all. I want to say kind of like tuna salad, but not exactly. It tasted very much like I remember liver tasting.

Apparently my face got very red while I was trying to determine whether or not I liked it.

In case you’re still wondering, I did not like it at all.  Taking a page out of my old ‘I really cannot eat this book,’ I grabbed my glass of water. And then I had to convince myself that I really could swallow without vomiting.  Once that was accomplished, down it went with a fast chaser of water.

My roommate was sitting across from me and said there was no way to really tell I didn’t like it. Whew!  So I munched on my fries and the team leader ordered a bowl of vegetable soup.

The soup was phenomenal.

I’m not sure at this point exactly where yesterday ended and today began. In my head, I fell asleep yesterday and woke up today. That’s not precisely how it went, but I haven’t really experienced jet lag yet, so it’s what I’m going with. I am going to take a melatonin shortly though – just in case. 

The Paris airport was pretty much just like every other airport I’ve been in. It had shops with overpriced things, a lot of which I can acquire at home. That helped with the spending thing. I’m not going to spend €75 for something I can get at home and not lug it across the planet. 

I’ve been in Budapest for about 5 hours now. The people are friendly and very helpful. We had dinner at a place named Guliver’s and it was wonderful. I shared a bottle of cab with two of my teammates and we took a picture of the label so we can hopefully pick some up on our way back through next Saturday. 

I watched a little of Avengers in Hungarian this afternoon. I had no idea what they were saying, but I recognized the characters!

Time for sleeping now. We’ll be in Romania tomorrow!

We arrived at 8:20 am local time. This is 1:20 am for those of you in MN. We wandered around for a few hours, had a morning snack, and have been hanging at the gate for the last hour. The absurdly strong coffee on the plane has kept me going strong all morning, but I think I’m about to hit the wall. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

Our flight to Budapest has been slightly delayed, but not enough to make a difference.

Yes, there will likely be napping on the flight. Hopefully a snack too.

When I said I was going to crash until morning I was really thinking later in the morning than midnight!  They woke us up a little while ago with the strongest coffee I’ve had in quite a while.  Fortunately it also came with cream and sugar and I have been able to get it down. They also gave us a cute breakfast ‘snack’ that was more than I normally eat. Croissant, yogurt, cheese and a cookie. Also orange juice and a mini mentos mint. Those suckers are small when normal sized, this one is really just a baby. 

Karin has suggested cafe au lait and chocolate croissants during our 4 hour layover in Paris followed by a little shopping.  I’m being told the airport is fabulous, so I’m looking forward to experiencing it.  The nerves are calmer than before – I’m remembering how to fly. It’s been long enough that I had trouble ordering wine in Minneapolis. They’ve replaced servers with iPads!  The bartender came around and very nicely showed me how to do everything.  Wave of the future I guess. 

I’ve now had 2 glasses of wine, 2 glasses of water and something that they said was chicken.  I’m watching Terminator Genesis and playing with my phone.  I tried to take a picture of the moon, but there was too much reflection for it to work. Most of the team flying with me are actually on the same row, but not right next me. Fortunately for the guy sitting next to me we don’t know what each other well so there’s no talking.  I’m not sure what time it is exactly, my watch says 7:30, but with changing time zones its really hard to say.  When my movie is finished I’ll make a final bathroom run and then locate my sleep mask, take my melatonin and crash until morning.

Goodnight. 

Were arriving in Budapest today around 3 PM.  I’m not sure what we’re doing once we get there though. We’re all arriving at different times. 

Tomorrow we trek across the border to Romania.  I learned that we may actually get to work on two different homes. Our first one is ready for painting. The second one just had the foundation poured so we may get to do some block work there. 

We build on Tuesday and Wednesday all day and then half of Thursday and half of Friday. Back to Budapest and hopefully a Turkish bath on Saturday. I fly out at 6:35 AM on Sunday.