Wood You Believe It!

On Friday, as I was washing my hair over the sink because there was no water and no power but my hair insisted on needing a wash, I realised that there were a couple of unknown men in the front yard with a few trees on the back of a tractor. After a closer look, I realised this was the much-anticipated delivery of wood to see us through until the end of winter. And of course it wasn't until they were driving away that I remembered I could document this little phenomenon on my camera. So I didn't, but I did remember to document what they left us with:

And this is me being useful and stacking the logs up. The sun's out and I'm not wearing a coat but it's actually a lot colder than it looks.

The central heating here is too expensive to actually use so this wood is our main source of heating. It goes from a big pile under the house into this stove where it heats up the front room and then we run from there to anywhere else in the house, trying not to lose as much body heat as possible. The running helps. Most of the time there's a pot of water keeping warm on top. This is in case of a tea emergency when there is no power. The last thing you want is darkness, chillyness and no tea.

That said, should the unspeakable happen and you return home to find the power's out and the stove's stone cold, we do have a gas hob for boiling water. This is a picture from one such occasion when the British shoebox team were here:

In case you're wondering, you get used to the power going off a few times a day, usually for two - three hours. You work out how to plan around it, like boiling the kettle for hot water bottles and putting the heater on beside your bed in advance. Just to at least take the chill off the room....



So now you're caught up the on the wood/stove/tea situation. And I bet you all feel better for it.

Looking forward to the week ahead... Albanian classes continue this week, hopefully I will have fully grasped days of the week by tomorrow and we can move on to more advanced things like "I'm really sorry I hit your car but it was your fault". Although I'm sure I'll never have to use that. We're hoping to start an English class for some of the local girls tomorrow, I'll keep you posted on that one. There'll be various bible studies and planning time for kid's ministry and the like. I'm excited, I think it's going to be a good one.