Things are looking up

I made the bread all by myself today in the house, and of course I was sure the whole time that I would do something terribly wrong and end up with unrisen hard lumpy loaves. Ginny had kindly gone over everything I needed to do, step by step, but 10 minutes after she left I started to forget what she had said, and the directions on the back of the flour were in Norwegian, so panic set in a little bit as I started out.

But of course I underestimated myself as usual, and the baking was really easy, and I actually quite enjoyed it.. I´ve heard people say that kneading dough is therapeutic and now I finally see what they mean. It really was a very calming experience, and when I took the loaves out at the end they looked great and quite edible, so I felt very rewarded.

It's nice to feel like I finally did something right!

Now if only this dry cough and runny nose would vanish, I would be perfectly content. You don't get a photo of that. It's not pretty.

Oh and I'm continuing to learn how to drive a stickshift. Today Pete gave me a few lessons on the old diesel 4WD Mercedes Jeep thingy that we drove up the old sheep road up the mountain. I drove it back down 5km on my own with Pete on the 4Wheeler behind me, and although I mostly just had to ride the brake and make sure the thing didn't throw itself into a ditch when we went over a massive rock, I was quite proud that I managed it and didn't stall or panic or do anything terribly wrong.
I don't have any photos of me driving the Merc, but here is Pete driving on a tame part of that sheep road.

He also taught me how to drive the 4Wheeler, which was MUCH simpler, and oh man I see why those little punks upstate were so crazy about their quads. That thing is so much fun to drive! I hope I can take it out again sometime!