Hey everyone, my name is Mira and I am the Bilbo Blogging’s for this past week. I’d like to apologize in advance for only doing one post; sadly the wifi ability on the farm was limited. Otherwise I would have done a post every day.
Wow, I can’t believe that we have only been abroad for 4 weeks! It feels like we’ve been gone for soo much longer. But enough about all that since I know you’re all DYING to know what we’ve been up to and wanna hear about what the group is doing. Get ready because I’m about to dish out the dirt and give you the goods.
On Sunday morning our party of 14 arose much earlier than usual, for it was the day that we would all do yoga together as a group while following/learning from our beautiful (and certified) yoga instructor Danae, and her brilliant assistant (and translator), both of whom are volunteers on the farm.
Everyone in the group converged and met in the Owla (a large pavilion on the farm, used as a community space by the ITZA group) at 5:30 am, our eyes filled with sleep, but none the less ready for out day of yoga. Our morning started with Danae taking us to watch the sunrise, and then for the first couple of hours we did the typical stretches and poses (sun salutations) you’d see done in a normal yoga setting the stretches and poses that we had been doing. Before everything relied on our own flexibility and balance but now, circled up we following Danae’s instructions no longer did we rely on our own personal balance and flexibility, we were soon relying on the groups balance, strength and flexibility. I’m not going to lie, I do not by any stretch of imagination have the best balance in the world so you can bet that I fell multiple times, but other than that we did pretty darn well, if I do say so myself. Everyone seemed to be having a blast. For me the most fun and not to mention coolest exercise Danae had us do was a simple trust exercise. We quickly were divided up into pairs of 2. We were asked for one person to be the guide and the other to be the person who would be guided. Loosely taking our partners hand, we all did one of the hardest things for anyone to do, put all your trust literally into someone else’s hand.
After spending all of Sunday doing nothing but yoga, you could pretty much say that on Monday we were all super sore but I can promise you that didn’t stop us from jumping for joy when Ryann came back from the local clinic wearing a pair of shoes. Yeah, that’s right you heard me, Ryann was wearing a pair of shoes, as in shoe on each foot, with not a hint of her pink cast in sight. The moment Ryann walked back into the kitchen without her cast everyone cheered and clapped, even the volunteers, but out of all of us, I don’t think that there was anyone who even came close to being as excited as Ryann was that day. As if Ryann finally getting her cast off wasn’t good enough our afternoon activity that day was learning how to make tinctures with Mitch. We learned about different kinds of plants and how they benefit the human body. We were shown the proper way to harvest plants to prevent damage. But the icing on the cake I must say was Chris’s absolutely adorable duckling who the boys for some decided should be named Pablo Escobar, don’t ask me why because I honestly don’t know, personally I wanted to call the duckling Napoleon. Unfortunately and through no fault of Pablo Escobar/ Napoleon that cute, adorable little duckling somehow managed to create a rift within our group for you see there were a few of us in the group who wanted to adopt Pablo Escobar/ Napoleon and then there was a large majority of the group who didn’t want to adopt Pablo Escobar/ Napoleon. But after a great deal arguing and whining the group agreed (with much from relief our parents I’m sure) that we would not in fact adopt Pablo Escobar/ Napoleon.
On Tuesday, after we had finished all our work for the day, the Carpe group washed up, ate lunch, cleaned their plates and grabbed their bags as quickly as possible because we were on a mission. ITZA’s mission was to go swimming, the last bag was shouldered and everyone’s bug spray and sunscreen had been applied, and we were off, marching towards town. The target destination: Ojo del Agua, a mineral pool on the island. Once we got to town we clambered aboard a local bus. Mission complete: we had at last arrived at Ojo del Agua and it was even better than we imagined.
Wednesday and Thursday the group was split, both days we traveled (half the group per day) to a nearby house, owned by a local to weave baskets, and hats, some even got the chance to make baseball caps, on Friday we practiced some of the dance moves we learned at the language study school in Matagalpa, and learned some new turns (dancing seems to be an activity the entire group always enjoys). There’s nothing better than watching the group try to salsa in hiking boots. Friday night ended in some much needed rest, in the morning Noah, Tyler, Ben Taylor and Alex set off to climb one of the two main volcanoes on the island. The rest of the group enjoy a relaxing morning filled with chatter and giggles before heading into town to Nevise’s house, there we made Banana and Vanilla bread as well as Ginger cookies (all of which tasted delicious)! We were in for a treat later that evening, no but actually. The group met back up at restaurant for dinner, it was quite clear we had so much to share as the table was soon filled with questions, answers, jokes, and stories from what went on during the day. The baking group announced and shared the goodies with the brave and mighty volcano climbers, which we hoped held them over considering dinner seemed to take forever to arrive. Dinner wasn’t like our usual farm meal; Carpe did the honors in paying for a lovely dinner celebrating our one-month anniversary together. It being our last night on the farm/ with the farm volunteers, just before finishing our meals, a few of the volunteers showed up with cake and more banana bread. The group’s jaws casually dropped as we saw a beautiful double chocolate cake with cherry candies on top sitting in front of us. Being full after dinner didn’t stop anyone from taking a piece or two, maybe three. We walked away that night with super filled bellies and yet another memory to put down in the books.
P.S. I will be adding pictures to this post later so don’t you guys worry about that.