-Rock, Paper, Scissors Holiday- part 1

Last July I paid my Slovenian friends a visit. A few weeks before I left to Slovenia I was speaking to Izak (one of my Slovenian friends) and he asked me, if when I came to Slovenia if I would join him and his cousins on their camping trip. I thought "his cousins" meant Kristjan, Matej, Filip, Kristijan Korat and Alja (girl!). Because up until that point whenever he had said that we would see his cousins, Alja had always been there. But Alja had made other plans for that week. She wouldn't be there. I found out about that when we were about ready to leave for Croatia. Zippora and 6 boys, on a camping trip. The beginning of the saga..


Day 1:

We arrived at the campsite. I saw all the little creatures and suddenly I had enough of my skirt and short sleeves… so I nicely swapped them for my half long coat and jeans. Izak saw me come back and said ‘are you hot my dear’ (as if I had not noticed that it was 23 degrees (Celsius) outside. ‘No’, I said and explained to him that I don’t like bugs to walk all over me. He laughed at me a bit, pointed out that I was a pathfinder and then everyone went back to work. UNTIL all of a sudden both of them started swatting around them and Izak asked me if I brought an extra coat. Mosquitoes. Lot’s of them. Great!

To be continued..

Day 2: or actually, the end of day 1. Izak, Kiki and I were alone at the camp, the rest would come later. It was time for dinner. Egg and macaroni and some vegetable I don’t know how to call.
So Izak asks: ‘How do you know if the oil is hot enough?’ And as I’m thinking about the answer, he spits in the pot*… (AAAHHHH) The oil starts fizzing. ‘It’s hot enough!’, he says.

There were no plates yet so all three of us ate from the pots. I’m used to them (a lot of Slovenians I’ve met) putting cutlery in their mouth and then back in the jam or peanut butter jar, pot etc. But usually I’ll get my food out of the pot first and then they can work out whatever they want to do with their food. Anyway. Eating from the pot. So I’m eating where they are not right? Like having my own little corner in the pot. But I tell you they were following me. Wherever my fork was, Izak’s fork was also.

I killed one mosquito that night. I prayed for a good night’s rest and fell asleep. Around 6 am I woke up, there were 4 mosquitoes in my tent. I killed them, but their brothers kept mourning over them just outside my tent and not softly, so I listened to my iPhone a bit, but I didn’t have my charger on me so after about 45 minutes I got up.


* When Kirc (Kristjan Virtic) heard about this he looked at me rather disgusted and asked 'is that the food we ate from the next day also?' (yes it was) 'Couldn't you have read this to me before?!'
** Izak later explained to me that his professor had taught him this 'trick'.

SECOND DAY!
The rest would come at 6 am (they would leave Koper at 4, which was the main reason I wanted to get to the camp the day before). They came at 8, or 10 even… I ate some bananas for breakfast, had bought them in the village. These boys watched Brüno recently, they talk about that a lot.. I really don’t care that I don’t understand them then :) ! I was laying around a bit, I couldn’t find anything better to do. It was too hot to study and we would go swimming at 4 pm. Oh yeah, we’re on a field where there is no running water. So we’re working with containers/jerry cans. Showers, no! Toilets, no! So they built a toilet. A real toilet bowl, with a hole under it and screens around it on 3 sides. Izak was explaining to me how it works: aim well, no sounds, no smells and you’ll get bonus points. If not, you’ll get minus points. And as he was telling me to use the toilet well especially since we didn’t have a toilet brush and all (he said he said it in English so I would have no excuse), all I could think was ‘Do you really think I’ll EVER sit on your toilet? I really don’t feel any need to!’
Oh dear.. ‘If I would be on Facebook these days my status would be “Zippora is learning how to hold it’. Really twice a day is possible. I went yesterday evening and now it’s almost noon and we’re about to go in to town, meaning we’re about to use a bathroom! I know I just said we’re just about to go, but they said that yesterday. We were supposed to leave at 4pm to go swim and at 3:45pm eeeveryone was still chilling. 5 minutes after, they decide (after a break of 3 hours!) that they have to go to the shops and the kitchen has to be built.. In the end we left around 6. Jokers. Anyway, they’re fast swimmers and they can stay in the water and swim for a while.. which means so did I. It was fun. When I came out my hair was no longer straight. Not long after my hair started growing. Filip thought it necessary to imitate me. You know I had to hit him with my bag right? On our way back we went to “shower” at a well. That was interesting.
That night I realized how much Izak hates doing the dishes when he said something in Slovene about girls. So I asked for translation. Something along the lines of ‘Next time they should bring more girls to do dishes’ he said he doesn’t mind helping but he just doesn’t want to do all of it (but I’ve seen how he helps and sometimes he helps from a chair :)). I don’t care about doing the dishes. If it has to be done I’ll do it. Easy peasy. So I suggested to do them in the morning if they would put it in water for me after they’d finished eating. They thought that was a good plan..so I can stay.