Croatia: part 2.

so you've heard part 1...and i'm hoping you've not gotten bored with me bombarding the blog with croatia fever, though i do feel it has been one of the best experiences of my life so far, and i do enjoy telling some of my favourite stories from the trip over and over again. i assure you though, they're not in the slightest way boring!!

these gorgeous kids in the village!

//day 3. rainy morning so instead of exercise in the park to jolt and refresh ourselves, we lay in bed and sang frozen. we reflected on our uniqueness and ways in which we could step outside our comfort zone during our devotional time. how great is it to have people encouraging you and supporting you on trips like this? :D

rain, rain, go away!!

we dived right into preparing more crafts this morning at the iclub, cutting ribbon and counting 600 of them. we met some of our helpers again, who are around 10 yrs old, some even younger, and taught them how to make the planned crafts for the festival, so they could be more involved and serve alongside us. :) 

ribbon-cutting crew

teaching the little croatian helpers how to make the
pasta tambourine craft!

anna claims cutting ribbon is tiring!

 what was great about this session was being able to bond much more with our helpers. now that its the second time they've met us, they're much open.....to tickling, chatting and learning a handshake i do with one of my best friends! 

the two girlies on the left came with a small group of kids from the
village to help out and get involved :)

this evening consisted of doing some more grocery shopping (a team of 11 eats lots.), playing banagrams and chopping up watermelon triple the size you will find in your average tesco's! 

croatian chocolate spread - yummyyyyy

banangrams at its best

big, huh?

weightlifting watermelons up to our apartment!

we made a trip to the village again this evening after dinner, loaded with packs of loom bands. around 30 children turned up and our team tried teaching as many of them as possible to make the bands. i taught a group of 7/8 year old boys to do them and in no time they surprised me by sitting in a circle on the floor, concentrated and knitting their own bracelets! 

teaching the children how to knit their own loom bands in the
village ministry house.

i'm ever so thankful we bought the kids so much joy this evening and it wasn't as chaotic as i expected - a sitting down activity was defo much relaxing than duck duck goose and running round the fields!

success!! we've officially brought the loom band craze to the
croatia villages!

we left the village at 8:30pm and went back to the apartment to jam with the guitar, debrief and pray, and go on our ice cream walk (which is fast becoming our norm and engraved into our weekly routine!) 

we also stopped at a fast food resturant along the way, grabbing some fries cos we all know how much we love a bit of shredded potato dunked in oil! the day ended with a good game of monopoly deal and boiling and peeling 12 eggs for our potato salad lunch tomorrow.

fries - oh yes!

ice cream walks quickly becoming a norm

 

which flavour ya want?!

quality ice cream. ^^

//day4. howdy sun, you're back! we held a helpers party at the iclub this morning to thank the helpers for their time learning the crafts and helping prepare for the upcoming festival. which means.....pizza!
i also spent the time making some more props for our plays, this being a set of donkey ears and a tail :) we chilled together, continuing our loom band craze and playing some music together.

testing the ears and tail of course

loom band craze goes on!

playing the violin...or at least pretending to.....

getting to know a teen from the village (left)

 after some briefing and logistics planning for the festival, we headed back to the apartment for dinner, which included peeling potatoes into empty watermelons as bowls were scarce. 

anna captured our inventive potato peeling

once again, we drove to the village after dinner where the kids were all excited about more loom bands! unfortunately, we miscalculated how popular it was going to be and didn't have enough loom bands for them all to play with :( it was a bit dissapointing for us as we could've so easily bought more for them and they would be so happy. 

the bright yellow ministry house!

darlings!

but this wasn't the case, and God used this opportunity for us to do other activities together. this being nail painting with the girls! i can't even recount how many dainty nails i painted that evening! we also engaged in singing together (popular in roma culture) and had lots of fun dancing, even giving each other massages! - the unexpected came out from our initial disappointment.

this sweet girl wanted me to paint the same nails i wore - summery pineapple ones!

pleased with their new nail colours

their massages are g-o-o-d!

 annoyingly, i felt a bit ill-ish and as if a cold was gonna haunt me. nevertheless: ice cream walk and even hopped over to surf 'n' fries, a chicken wing shop! oh yes pleaseeee!! after some gurrrd evening snacking and games (and exercise :/), lights out shifted to 1:30am!

dipping into surf 'n' fries after fetching our ice creams

THIS is midnight snacking.

what ice cream forces you to do....or not in my case..