FURNITURE! and also LLAMAS!

We have our furniture!!!!!! After 3.5 months.

We are not quite done settling in – we still have to hang up most of our pictures (an unexpected challenge) – but most of the hard work is done.

One of the less- fun aspects of getting our stuff was the discovery that it all smelled like rotten fish. Since it had been delayed at the port, it had been absorbing the port smells for months.

So of course that meant washing everything we own. And then our brand new (literally 24 hours old) dryer stopped working while I was in the middle of washing all of our belongings.

Which may or may not have led to me screaming something about not moving across the world to be a scullery maid, but who remembers? (Derrick remembers).

But don’t worry, there’s happier news!

We have always known that there is a llama and alpaca farm in a nearby village. We have always known that they offer tours.

HOWEVER, we did not realize that the tours included getting your very own llama to walk around town for two hours.

Once we learned that tidbit, it was a no-brainer.

I got a llama-alpaca mix, and that’s when I learned a fun fact. Llamas have been domesticated as beasts of burden for thousands of years, so they are fairly friendly towards people. You can hug them.

Alpacas are too small to carry stuff, and were bred entirely for their soft fur, with no thought given to their personalities. So they’re just beautiful, tiny assholes.

I was a little disappointed that Elvis wasn’t the hugging type, but he more than made up for it by prancing.

Other stuff!

In other news, I am still going to weekly aerial classes and learning more cool stuff. I am also making friends there and getting to practice German in a very low-stress environment. Everyone speaks English, but since they all speak German to each other, I get to eavesdrop and occasionally barge in on the conversation when I can.

Coach is also making great strides. I was recently walking her through the woods when someone told me she was “so brav.”

I thought it was weird that someone would call my dog brave, so I looked it up on Google translate, and it means “well behaved.” It was the greatest compliment I could have ever received and I have been thinking about it all week.

I am trying to hike as often as I can, because we don’t really know what the winter will be like. Usually they’re mild (so we are told), but this was the rainiest summer in years so the winter might be a mess.

The leaves have not yet started changing but we expect that any day.

Most of the cows have been brought down from the mountains, which means we are in a sweet spot of being able to hike with the dog without fear of getting chased by cows.