An ciorcal de shaol na

The Barnyard has certainly been full of truly unique experiences since we arrived.

First, we’ll start with the chicks.  When we arrived, they had two new chicks all wet and freshly hatched in the incubator in their living room.  The next day, 11 more chicks were found all warm and fluffy, eagerly waiting to get out of their little plastic tunnel.  Fortunately for four of them, they got a mom, with a batch of chicks that had just hatched under a hen just that same day.  The others were put in a tall hen house with a heat light, and a large caged area for them to run around in the grass in.  It’s been interesting watching them grow up; their wings start to come in at about a week old, and they really get uglier and uglier with time.  I still think they’re absolutely adorable, but not the cute and fluffy puff balls they were when they were only a day old.

They also have about 6 geese.  I believe they’re only about 12 weeks old, but they’re HUGE!  They’re so sweet too, they’ll eat right out of your hand.  I know what you’re thinking… “but aren’t geese mean!?”… well, these geese are young, and haven’t started hissing at everything that moves yet.  Jon’s been working on fixing their little pond; its been a lot of work, but you can already tell that they love it.

Now for the ducks.  When we arrived, they had two white ducks that they had for their meet, and they have about 7-9 ducks (two of them males) that they have for eggs.  Two of the ducks were sitting on eggs in the duck house when we arrived.  One of them decided to lay on eggs in the garden, but frequently left the nest for periods too long for the eggs to survive, so she’s been a hassle.  We only just today finally put her in her own separate house with 8 new fresh eggs; here’s hoping she takes to them and sits there until they hatch.  We won’t be here to see that happen, but I have a good feeling about them.

The two ducks that they had for meat are no longer with us.  I never thought I would come to a point in my life where I would even eat duck (for those of you who don’t know, ducks are my absolute favorite animal, followed very closely by giraffes and penguins), but considering how often it was served to us in France, I’ve come to like it quite a bit.  I still feel a bit upset everytime I eat it though.  However, with these ducks, I got to see the wonderful life they were allowed to live.  Though I didn’t watch the actual killing of the ducks, and only shed a tear or two rather than balling my eyes out, I was able to help with the plucking of the ducks.  Its an interesting and frustrating process, depending on how grown in their pin feathers are.  I didn’t help butcher the ducks either, but I did watch.  I made a delicious sauce to cook them in, and we put them on the grill.  It was by far the best duck I have ever had in my entire life.  I feel like the extra love and care these little guys had while they were alive really made the difference; whether it was all in my head or not.

Now for the two ducks laying on eggs when we arrived.  Well, they hatched.  They were absolutely adorable.  I did manage to save one little duckling that had been kicked out of the nest.  He was in his egg, half hatched, and I thought for certain he just didn’t make it.  As I was talking with our host trying to figure out what may have happened, we saw his mouth open and realized that he was still with us!  We tried to give it back to the two moms, but either they didn’t want me anywhere near them or they didn’t want the duckling, because both tried to bite me.  So we put him in the chick house with the heat lamp and separated him off to keep him safe.  Then all we could do is cross our fingers; we weren’t sure if he was going to make it for the first day.  After that though, he perked up just fine, and we’ve named him Lucky, a name all the more fitting after you read the next bit.

If you didn’t notice the past tense in the previous paragraph, let me elaborate for you.  Two nights ago, we put the ducks to bed and their were 8 happy, healthy little ducklings.  The next morning when we let them out, there were only two ducklings.  6 of them somehow died the night before.  We scratched our heads and tried to figure out what might have happened.  In an effort to empty the house of both unhatched eggs and newly lost ducklings, we finally let the two moms and remaining ducklings out, after being told that it was time to do so.  We let them out on to the pond, attended to the remains in the house, and went out to watch them swim around with their moms.  We left for maybe five minutes, came back to take pictures, and the two happy healthy ducklings we saw swimming just minutes earlier were floating in the pond.  They were now dead too.  After some thinking and watching the other ducks, we decided that the main male duck (the second is pair off with another duck, and is very tame) probably killed the ducklings, because it was very apparent that he wanted to mate with the “now available” moms, and they wouldn’t so long as they had ducklings around.  Its a sad state of affairs… our first full day on our own (with one other helper, but still), and all the ducklings managed to die.  We felt like awesome house sitters, that’s for certain.

After talking with our host, we decided that after finding a way to keep the two moms separated from the others at night, we would try to reintroduce Lucky to the moms and see if they take to him.  They definitely did, and now I’ve been keeping an eye on them like a hawk ever since.  I made the mistake of getting attached to my little Lucky, and now I just have to hope he makes it okay.  So far, everything seems to be fine.  I’d definitely cry if something happened to him though.  That’s certain.

I know I said no pictures until I get home, but I can’t post about such adorable things without sharing.

Holding Lucky for one of the last times! I didn’t want to put him with the mommy ducks because then I’d never be able to again!

But look how happy he looks with his two moms!  He’s so cute on the water!

And of course, I can’t help but post this picture, too.  While Jon was cleaning out the duck house today to build something to keep them separated, he found loads of baby mice!  They’re so cute!  We took them out of the house though, and released them into the field.  This one was my favorite because he was so tiny!

I mean, look how disproportionate his head and feet are to his body!  His eyes and ears are still closed too!  Too cute.

Oh right, Happy Birthday America! 235 years old! Enjoy the celebrations everybody, they definitely don’t do any here!

Beirlín, Baile Átha Cliath agus Jenna! Gach in aon lá amháin!

First, I know what you’re thinking if you’ve been paying attention to the language of my subjects; yes, they obviously speak English in Ireland, but I thought it would be more fitting if I kept with this theme until we got back to the states, and chose Gaelic instead.  It’s really different, but cool.  Anyway, on to the post!

So after getting on the train, figuring out how to buy our ticket, and sitting down for our hour-long train back to Berlin, I found myself looking out the window with this longing to come back to this beautiful country; on different terms.  It really is beautiful, so organized, and just generally adorable.  It was then that I decided that this awful HelpX experience wasn’t going to ruin my impression of the entire country, because that just isn’t fair.

When we arrived in Berlin, we searched for lockers to put our luggage in, ate some more breakfast, and set off to enjoy our few hours in Berlin before our flight that afternoon.  The area of Berlin we were in was really nice, even though we had no idea was we were looking at.  We just did a lot of walking, enjoying the clean streets, sausages, pretzels, free apples and the beautiful sun above our heads.

As we started to head back to the train station to catch our train to the airport, I started getting really anxious.  Every passing hour I’d look at my watch and exclaim “ONLY __ MORE HOURS UNTIL WE GET TO SEE JENNA!”  I’m sure Jon thought I was a complete dork, but I couldn’t help it.  5 months without seeing anyone I knew from home, of course I was excited.

Getting to the airport was interesting.  We forgot to validate our ticket before we got on the train, so we were freaking out trying to figure out what to do, since we had already sat down.  So Jon hopped off the train at one of the stops, bolted to a validation box, and managed to get them validated and back on the train before it set off again.  Naturally I was worried the whole time, but it worked out.

The Berlin-Schönefeld Airport is way out from the city center, and extremely small.  When we got off the train at the station, I thought we had mistakenly gone somewhere else.  It was a long walk to the airport, made even longer by the weight of my backpack, but the very clever and adorable Easy Jet ads along the way made it somewhat entertaining.  Once we got into the airport, we were surprised to find that we had to go to through security before we could even get to the check-in desk.  They had some handy system of tagging bags that had to be checked verses ones that didn’t.  Then we sat on the floor for about an hour until the RyanAir desk finally opened, since this airport is too small to have seating for such a thing.  We decided to pay the 40 euros to check our two walking sticks we acquired in the Czech Republic, checked ourselves in, and walked around the gift shop looking for some delicious German chocolate to bring to Jenna.

Almost an hour of more waiting and we were heading to our gate, only to find that there was a passport check as you leave the airport.  Uh oh… we heard bad things about Germans and their enforcing of Schengen rules, and thought we were in the clear one we got past the mandatory RyanAir passport check.  So as we walk up to the passport desk, two months over our visas, the gentleman behind the counter starts flipping through the pages in Jon’s passport.  We both got the heart-beat-in-your-throat sort of feeling, and could only hope for the best.  He waved Jon through, free of the “don’t return” stamp, and it was my turn.  He didn’t spend as much time with my passport, probably because it was obvious that we were together.  Whew.

The flight itself wasn’t awful.  2 hours long, not enough leg room, flight attendants constantly trying to sell you stuff, but we managed to squeeze in a nap.  Once we landed, got our Ireland stamp in our passport, we were just fine; out of Schengen and totally legal again.  It felt nice.

Since it was pretty cheap, we opted to just take a taxi to Jenna’s apartments.  The driver was a gentleman, really helpful, and nice to talk to.  When he dropped us off, it was only about a minute before I saw Jenna walking down the street, and then I felt great.  I couldn’t feel how heavy my backpack was, how bad my feet hurt, or how cold my arms were.  We went to her apartment for a while, talked, relaxed, and then set out to find a nice place for dinner.  We found a cozy bar/restaurant in the Temple Bar district, enjoyed some bangers and mash, fish and chips and a few pints.

Since quarters were cramped, we had to sleep on the floor in her apartment, but we stole the couch cushions from the living room and slept on those.  The next couple days were filled with rather touristy things: a duck bus tour of the city, completely with Viking hats and screaming and people on the streets, more fish and chips, eating lunch in the lawn of Christ Church Cathedral, seeing St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Guinness Brewery, Carrol’s Irish Store, the Dublin bus system, lots of walking, and rain.  Good thing we read all the guide books and know that going out in Ireland without an umbrella is like asking to get pushed into a swimming pool fully clothed.

It was a very nice weekend with Jenna that I absolutely needed.  I needed to sit and talk with someone in person from home, enjoy all the excitement of the city with someone other than Jon (not that he’s not wonderful, but since she had been there a few days, she sort of knew her way around), and talk about everything that’s going on at home.

Getting to our host in Ireland was fairly easy.  Two buses, and we were met by a very enthusiastic mother of three to bring us back to her home.  The place here is absolutely wonderful, by far my favorite place so far.  They have so much to do here, so many birds (ducks, geese, and hens; baby chicks and ducklings too!), and such a successful vegetable garden.  They live in an old stone house that they’ve fixed up themselves, at the bottom of a hillish mountain thing, with the Motty Stone at the top.  I’m not sure what it is exactly, other than a really big stone that you can climb up on for views of the surrounding mountains and the Irish Sea.  We’re staying in a rather well kept trailer just at the bottom of the hill, which is nice when you’re staying with a family of five; you have your own quiet space where you can be out of the way.  I love it here.

I’ll fill you in on all the unique experiences I’ve had since arriving to “The Barnyard” (a nickname they’ve given their home) at a later time, I feel this post is long enough.  Until next time… Bíodh lá iontach!