Volunteer Program

I will write and catch up later becasue I am over a month behind, but to answer questions about what we are doing with the volunteer program...it is on the island of Cres, which is outside of Rijeka in Croatia. It is a small island and in the summertime is usually overflowing with tourists, but as it is November there are literally about 30 people in the town of Beli, and the volunteer program is situated just outside of Beli. So its really really dead. We are part of the Eko Center volunteer program, you can get details at essentialcroatia.com but basically we do random things to help the center run smoothly. Show guests the exhibition, yesterday we picked olives at a grove and we also spent part of the day restoring a wall on the trail. The place is set way back and it runs like a small communist colony. This is a great experience becasue then you realize why communism is a lovely idea but really really shitty. It is one persons job to cook, one to clean the toilets and the rest do the "labour" for the day like restoring teh walls or whatever. What is annoying about this is that we really have no say as to what we eat, and nothing is yours, everyone works for the good of the whole. We are sleeping in a dorm and it is freezing the worst conditins i have ever slept in becasue there is no heat in any of the buildings and the room is literally about 50 degrees. WE both have about 5 really thick blanekts on, taking a shower is totally miserable. The days arent too bad when the sun is out though. The first day we were here was All Saints Day which is a national holiday in Croatia, so we didnt work. Instead we took a 5 hour long hike around the island, it was tiring but very lovely. We read poems along the way and took in nature. We also explored this crazy deep cave along teh way..there were bats inside and everything. That part was really cool. The bulding is divided into three parts...the sleeping and showering quarters that are so damn cold i spend as little time there as possible, and the exhibition area with all the information about griffon vultures, then the place iam now which serves as a communal gathering space, also has a kitchen and a small stove we put wood into to prevent getting hypothermia. They have little odds and ends to eat for our meals but in my opinion it is quite meager...food is expensive though. Everyone here except Matt and I are vegetarians so we have been eating really random things and meatless meals with soy that other people fix...it has been an experience. As of tomorrow we will be the only two volunteers left...this weekend were joined by Dan from England, Sofie from France and a group of three twety smoethings from Croatia. There is a 19 year old girl running the program as well and a few advosr types taht pop in occasionally. In the back of the eko center are the vultures, huge ass birds that are quite scary to look at. The goal of the center is to promote the rehabilition of the birds as they are essentail to Croatias envoronment...like many species they are endangered. To protect them we have to do all sorts of random crap, restoring teh walls is for the sheep, the sheep are the food of the vultures, picking olives just seemed like free labor to me, but apparently teh trade off is that the olive oil that reslults from the olives we picked goes back to the eko centar for cooking, but not all of it of course. Personally, since we had 6 college educated individuals on board this weekend, i thought that building walls and picking olives seemed to not utlize us to our full potential, but what the hell do i know. IT is a nice little community with its definate flaws but thats just how it goes I guess...the Croatians were a nice enough group but they kept inviting me to their pity parties, and I always respectfully declined. There are times, especially here at the centar, that everyone is just rambling on in Croatian and we dont know what is going on and they dont bother to fill us in, its frusterating. There is also a little puppy here and it is very cute but such a little shit, it constantly bites your leg and is freaking out like satan. Right now it sounds like it is possessed next to me. I hope this short summary lets you guys know what we are doing...today we had our "day off" and slept for 11 hours, no joke, we are both just exhausted from traveling and ready to come home. Packing and unpacking and wearing the same stuff is just getting old. And unfortuanlty I find that I am not as excited about seeing new things becasue you get to a point where its just information overload and you start shutting down. IT has been quite the experience though. We came here Wed and will leave next Sunday morning, I will probably lose my head by then but the nature around is very beautiful. We went on a boat two days ago and spotted the birds in their natural habitat, tomorrow they are droppoing matt and i off at some random location for 8 hours to observe the birds actions in the wild and write it down. This would be much more pleasant if the weather was just a bit warmer...oh well. We have both burned through a few books, I just finished one about 14th century Florence and he is reading Huckleberry Finn!! There are lots of funny stories and other things to tell but I will tell them later on I guess. You should know that yesterday we were picking olives fro this old croatian man and he was asking us a few questions about oursleves so i told him about me being croatian and the last name is babić and so he started calling me ms. babić. Then Matt farted and i started cracking up and he says "Ms Babić, what is so funny?" And i jsut told them all that Matt had gas. Poor guy.