Hi parents and friends and friends of parents:
We are outside of internet access at a sustainable farm, on the lovely little island of Ometepe, called Bona Fide. You can look us up on the internet! We’ll set the scene for you: We are directly above a lake, there are rolling hills around us, and (when it’s not raining) there are two stunning volcanos staring at us from across the lake. Everything here is built from wood that was grown here. Some of us are struggling a little bit with being in the “jungle” for the first time, but all of our new sons and daughters (by which of course we mean YOUR sons and daughters 🙂 are beating their fears day by day. We have seen bugs larger than we believed to be true, bugs that we never believe existed and spiders galore. Tarantulas are not a rare sight here – there were two large ones fighting in the leaders’ cabin on the first night. If nothing else, life is exciting here in the jungle where there is so much of it around! Bats dive bomb us at night and we are becoming very adept at navigating muddy trails and machetes (but not both together!). Many of us have been bitten by our first fire ants, and we are still surprised that such a small creature can be so flippin annoying and aggravating.
Here we wake up early and meet at 6:45 to start our day with an hour’s work from 7-8. Usually this work consists of cutting banana trees; hauling wood, dirt or sand; working in the nursery; working in the kitchen or some other exciting task like feeding the chickens or pigs. We take an hour for breakfast and then go right back into work from 9-12. We break for lunch and then sometimes we have workshops at night – learning about permaculture, or natural medicine, or basket weaving (this is not a joke!) or making chocolate from actual cacao. Sometimes we have free time to hang out in the hammocks, or go into “town” or head down to the lake to swim. We are on solar power here, and there is only electricity in the communal kitchen area. So in our free time we are often playing cards or voraciously reading through books on the communal shelf. We head to bed fairly early in order to get up and start out a new day in the morning. Unfortunately we have just missed coffee season here, so we are drinking a lot of cacao in the morning to make up for it.
This farm is run by the fabulous Mitch, and Vince, who is the volunteer coordinator. It has been really nice to be supported by awesome male energy after coming from two weeks of being in programs run by phenomenal, powerful women. Both are so necessary for our growth and development and we are enjoying the depth of both spaces.
On Sunday we will come out of the jungle and head to the beach, where we take our last week of Spanish classes and homestays. We are working on what to do for our independent travel week (we think we might be moving North!) and we will have TWO blogs coming as soon as we hit internet.
We all miss you very much!!
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