Sweaty Beating

Yesterday was a fun day. It started out the usual way . . . Olga and I went to center to buy food, etc. Then we ate lunch around 1p.m. and then we usually head to see Marina around 2ish. However, James said he needed a short nap first, so I went outside to listen to my cd player and enjoy the sunshine. A few minutes later Olga came out and asked me to go mushroom hunting with her in the woods. Great! I thought. So, off we went with very little sucess. I found one good and edible mushroom, but we found tons of "bad" mushrooms that would make you sick if you ate them. While in the woods we saw some goats being herded by an old woman and her dogs. Olga told me the only animals they have in the woods besides birds of course, are wild boars!!!, rabbits, and fox. She never mentioned that we'd pass a herd of LARGE goats with BIG horns. I was glad to see there was someone with them guiding them along. I would have been really freaked out if we saw a wild boar! Well, while we were out there, the girls came down from the school for a visit and James was looking for me with no idea where I was and I guess begining to freak out a bit. Once he realized Olga was missing too, he calmed down. I guess he's worried about lossing his wife in another country - hehehehe! :) I asked him if he thought aliens had taken me . . . he didn't think it was funny.

So, we visited with the girls and then after dinner Olga and Constantine invited us to use their sauna and pool behind the house. They have a sauna in the house with a very large bathtub/small pool, but this one is a LARGE sauna and LARGE pool out back. So we said that sounded great and they gave us instructions on how to experience the full effect. There is three rooms in the sauna: one where you enter and can add wood to the fire that heats the sauna, one that is hot, but not REALLY hot, and then the REALLY HOT ROOM!! Let me tell you, I have been in saunas before, but NEVER ONE THIS FREAKING HOT!!!!!!! They also gave us raw honey to put all over our skin while in the sauna and that was to make our skin soft as silk. They also have a huge bowl with boiling hot water in it that had what looks like a bunch of oak branches and leaves tied together - like a little broom, steeping in the boiling water. We were told to take turns slapping the oak leaf broom on one another while the other person lays down in the really hot room. Well, I managed to get the oak leaf tincture on James a little bit, but he had entirely TOO MUCH FUN beating me with the oak leaves!! I think he was getting me back for running off in the woods earlier that day and making him worry :) I finally yelled at him to stop the oak leaf beating and he did. So back and forth we went between the two hot rooms, as instructed. We were both sweating like NEVER before!!! I could feel my heart beating in my back and could hear it in my ears! I thought I better get the heck out of there and on top of that, it makes your body feel that it needs to cleanse all toxic material from you which means you also feel that you need to run for the bathroom!! Great . . . so we went outside and James was feeling sick by this time and like he needed to get to the restroom fast, and I said that there was one more thing we needed to do . . . jump in the pool. Remember, it has snowed here and that water is VERY cold. So, he said he just couldn't and I said okay, but I need to experience this in it's entirety, so wait a minute. I couldn't get up the nerve to dive in the deep end and swim to the other end where the ladder is, so I went over to the ladder which is still about 6 or 7 feet deep, and jumped in! OMG!!!!!!!!!!. . . . I could not get up the ladder fast enough! Holy Cow!!! That water was ------- cold!! I got out freezing and then this sensation of burning began to creep up my legs from my feet up and then I was warm and comfortable. We did feel really good once we were cooled off and our skin was very soft as they said it would be.

The girls just showed up - gotta go, more later.