Hot hot hot.

Well, it's the desert. And it's certainly desert-like weather. It's been in the 90's the past few days, with very little breeze, and the goats have been drinking up water like it's their job. By the time the day is finished I'm usually covered in a delightful mixture of corn-bran feed, various animal excrement (shoes only...usually), sweat, and lots of goats milk from feeding baby goats and sheep. Today I even got the extra treat of having a bird shit on my head! It's certainly been fun working here, and I have officially confirmed that I love goats (and think sheep are incredibly dumb), but I don't plan on being a goat herder or keeper-of-animals-for-a-living any time soon; it's too much work!

Highlights of the past, goaty month in Ezuz have included:

• Baby Lindsey goat was born!
• Helping a momma goat give birth (with my own two hands!) to her beautiful baby boy in the middle of the desert while we were out grazing one day
• Learning how to successfully bottle feed and nurse very young and sick baby sheep & goats
• Finally understanding (more or less) how cheese is made, and feeling optimistic about making it on my own
• Getting rid of my yeast bread fears...and successfully making yeast bread on my own
  
• Knowing that although my socio-political values are very passionately different from a lot of Israelis, it's sometimes better to just avoid politics...
• Being surprised by a random Purim party (Jewish holiday that is especially exciting for kids involving ~3 days of costumes, parties, pastries, revelry, intentional drunkenness, and randomness) in the middle of our podunk village on Saturday morning, that involved lots of live music and a rather offensive theme of "AFRICA!" which was every terrible stereotype you an conjure up equating black people as = 'weird' tribal, primitive, jungle-swinging Africans. To end the the day of revelry, there was a Ghanaian drum and dance group "featuring real live Africans!"...enough said. (Have I mentioned that ethnic/political awareness is somewhat absent here?)
  
• The desert has been in full bloom (lots of wild flowers)
  

I'm still in love with all the baby goats here in Ezuz, but it's about time to head off and start working on some other new venture of...life. If all goes well and I don't feel too guilty about leaving the farm, Noam and I will probably head out on Friday morning. But, we'll see! In the meantime, as many baby goats as I can handle!