preparing for el año nuevo

Christmas this year was very peaceful. No shopping, frantic or otherwise, no running around visiting folks. I just stayed at my finca, made some food for the dinner Christmas eve evening, thought about attending midnight mass but in the end felt a little sick to go, so I went to bed early. Christmas eve dinner was prawns, as tradition dictates. I contributed Mexican style rice, beans, and tortillas, and for dessert a pumpkin pie, about which tradition is silent.

Christmas day isn't a big deal at all here, it's the eve that everyone gets together with family and exchanges gifts (also on 5th of January, I'm told - the King's day ...) so I spent part of Christmas day on the computer calling home.

I'll spend New Years eve in La Laguna with my friends Vero & Rigo. I know that we'll eat twelve grapes at midnight and I'm supposed to wear read underwear (crazy Spanish traditions). After that I'll stay in La Laguna for a little while; my time at Finca Limon has come to a close, and I'm not altogether sure what I'm going to be doing next. There are some spots in Anaga (the northern and somewhat wild part of the island) that I'd like to explore; what I'd really like to find is a community where the people work with sheep. I'd like to learn to care for sheep and work with their wool, and if I can fit in some lessons on making cheese, that'll be great. I'm told that sheep are very rare in these parts (it rarely gets cold enough for sweaters, so there isn't much of a wool culture) but that if they're anywhere it's in Anaga.

So as the year opens for me, it presents a future full of mystery. Where will I go next, what will I learn and how, with whom? I'm glad for a change of pace and a little less certainty than I've had so far, it does make a day more exciting. And I'm confident that my luck will remain strong.

Here's hoping that your new year is also full of mystery, learning, luck, and positive change. Welcome 2008!

warm winter solstace

I suppose it's easy to welcome the first day of winter while wearing a tank top and smiling in the sun. It was downright hot today. The coolness that the rain brought has passed, leaving the island clean and bright and bursting with new green. When I get a glimpse of Tiede it is absolutely striking as it is covered with brilliant snow. Tiede is the tallest mountain on these islands and in fact the tallest mountain in all the EU ... or so I've heard. How strange to look around this island that is in every way tropical except that there's a huge snow-covered peak looming over the not at all distant horizon.

I hardly have a sense that Christmas is coming, but little reminders keep popping up here and there to tell me that this holiday will be here soon. There are some decorations along the autopista, and I can see colored lights blinking in the town below from my window at my finca. Today I switched on the radio and heard "Santa Baby". It's quite nice to be this far away from a sense of time. I wear no watch but I listen for the half-hourly chiming of the church bells. I use no callendar but I'm aware of bits of conversation that tell of a change coming. One fellow from a farm up the road told me today, "I'll be seeing you on Monday because I'm coming to your finca to use the phone. You know, to call home for Christmas and all ..." So Monday is Christmas ... or Christmas Eve? And what day is it today, anyway? Well, I can say for certain that I hope you're enjoying your RIGHT NOW, whenever that is.

con bici

I got out of Los Silos a little this past weekend. I took the bike and headed uphill. Los Silos is a quaint and cute little village, like something out of a movie with a happy ending - but in comparison with the mountain pueblos Los Silos looks almost cosmopolitan. Beautiful, simple, small communities where life is not complicated though it's certainly a challenge. It was wonderful to see and feel the environment change as I continued to ascend. Tiede, the tallest mountain, was sometimes visible far above to my right, the sea far below to my left. It's just snowed on Tiede, so glimpses of the mountain were striking. I stayed in a very old house, sleeping on the kitchen floor with a fire burning all night in the fireplace. I did a bit of work outside the next day, including picking the fruit from the enormous cactus bushes on the property. On the way back down to the coast I took a different road, through a forest called Mountaña de Agua. It was my first view of the forest here - a gentle, beautiful place that reminded me quite a bit of the forests of the northwest of the US. Both Tenerife and Gran Canaria had huge fires this year like what California suffered just before I left; scars in the forests were visible here and there, but when out of sight I enjoyed the illusion of an uninterrupted expanse of soft green.

beautiful rain

Today it is raining, which is a nice change. This year has been very dry, so a little rain is a relief. In the morning it was light enough and warm enough that I was out in it, in a tank top, trimming some vines, but then it started coming down harder and I spent the remainder of the day in the kitchen.

When the children came home from school and after we had all eaten the midday meal together, Zazu and Alba took me through the barranca (ravine) to walk along the mountain side via the water canal to the waterfall. This island is strange in its combinations of foliage. Avocado and Banana trees wherever the land is tamed; where it is wild, ferns and cactus grow very happily alongside each other. Everything is green and brightened with the rain. We all came back soaked, and had to rely on creativity to get warmed up again as the hot water has been out for two days.

cuentos

Finca Limón is a brisk 10 minute walk from the pueblo Los Silos. Los Silos is a perfectly quaint little town that fits perfectly between the coast and the base of the mountains. It's absolutely lovely, I really like it here. It's a tiny enough town that everybody knows everybody. I've been here a month now, and it's impossible to go into the town without seeing three or four people with whom I've shared a meal or a conversation.

Last week was Los Silos' annual story telling festival, Cuentos Los Silos. People came from all over to hear and to tell stories, and it transformed the town. I listened to a lot of the stories, but I was disappointed in my Spanish because there was very little that I could understand. Maybe I'll be back here for the festival next year ....

But Spanish or no Spanish, I got to be a part of the festival. One story was told in the form of a play, and they were recruiting actors. I happily volunteered for the job and got to run around the town´s convent-turned-library with chains and fire, trying to scare the audience. It was fun, and I got tickets to all the stories as compensation. It was really wonderful to be so intimately involved with this town.

This week it's back to regular work on the farm, which is never very difficult at all. I've been working lately on an herb garden - it's got sage and lemongrass and mint and rosemary and basil so far, today I planted mint. I won't be here to see it harvested, though; my time at this finca ends just before Christmas. As of right now, I don't know where I'll go next, but I quite like having the future as a mystery .....

custard apple

Have you ever tried a chirimoya? The English name for it is a custard apple - what a perfect description of the fruit! Sweet and creamy and bright. I had never tried one before I got to this farm, but I used to see them at home in the fancy grocery stores. You should treat yourself to one. This is my daily breakfast experience.

hi mom!

I forgot to write about Thanksgiving!

I've been out of the country for Thanksgiving a couple of times before, and it's always a little strange. It's not like being away for Christmas, where everyone knows what day it is, even if they're not a Christian society. Thanksgiving is particularly American, and even if someone has heard of Thanksgiving they don't have an understanding of what it is. So though I've tried to celebrate it on my own before, I've never quite felt successful.

This year was an exception. My job here, at this farm, is to help, but that job has been presented in a very general way. I got it in my head I wanted to cook up a Thanksgiving meal, so I presented it to Petra - the woman of this farm - in this way: let's invite a bunch of folks over for a yummy meal and ask of them an hour or so of work, then we can all put in together and get some project done on the farm that wouldn't get done otherwise. She liked the idea, and suggested we pull out a tangle of living and dead agave plants so she can put in a tree.

There are several chickens running around this farm. Once in a while they get in the garden and eat what we are trying to grow, but in general they clean up weeds that are outside the garden fence. No one knows where they are laying their eggs. There is one old cock who has a terrible cock-a-doodle-doo and who is just a general nusiance, so Petra told me that if I could catch him I could cook him up for the dinner. It's no easy task to catch a free range rooster, and from what I've heard it's no easy task to pluck and prepare him either. By chance, I caught up with him the day before T-day, but the children begged me not to hurt him so we ended up with a veggie-loaf for the centerpiece of our meal. Other than that, there was lots of fresh veggies, fresh baked bread, mashed potatoes, gravy, garden salad, and several pies.

The guest list wasn't very long, but I don't think our table or kitchen could have handled much more than what we had. And the amount of hands present for the agave project was perfect - there was a struggle involved, but in the end we won and the agave lost. I thought a lot about home and family and friends on that day. It felt good to be American that day, which certainly isn't usually the case with the reputation that our country has in the world right now. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Gran Canaria and WOMAD

I've spent the weekend on another island; I hopped over to Gran Canaria with Rigo and Vero for the WOMAD festival. Four nights of music from around the world, though we only attended two. The Canary Islands have been experiencing a severe drought this year, and even though we should have been receiving a lot of rain since before I arrived, the weather has been disappointingly clear. But I was told that it always rains for WOMAD and this year was no exception. Several times the sky opened and poured down without mercy, daring the crowd to stay for the music. We dared: people were huddled together under trees and sharing an umbrella between three or four, willing to stick it out for the music.

I didn't get to see much more of Gran Canaria than the capital city of Las Palmas, but I'm gold it's a really beautiful island, so I look forward to another opportunity.

Back on the farm now, the place looks great for all the rain. Weeds come easily out of the soft earth, the garden is brilliantly green, and the place has a generally cleaner, fresher look to it. It is strange to think of this place as home, but it felt like coming home when I returned here after four days away.

this is where i live

Hi there. Long time, no post. The computer at the farm doesn't work with this website very well so I had to wait until I saw Rigo in La Laguna in order to write.

My farm is called Finca Limon. Finca = farm (without animals), Limon you can figure out on your own. It took me a couple of days to adjust to life on the farm. The little room where I live (see video) was very dirty and I was warned that there are a couple of rats that have been getting in at night. I spent the first night cowering in a tent inside my room, exhausted but waking up at every noise. The next day was dedicated to making my living space habitable and comfortable. The rat situation is now thus: I definitely hear them wandering around at night in the trees and sometimes across my roof (which is just corrugated fiber glass; I can see and hear everything that wanders across it), but they don't seem to want to come inside and I don't give them reason to (no food in my room, etc.) so all I have to deal with is the noise. I'm learning to deal with it.

The rest of the farm has a general feeling of disorganization that at first I found disappointing but I'm starting to find endearing. There is a family that lives and works here - a mother, father, and three young daughters, but there's far more work than any of them can / are willing to do. So the WWOOFers who come are pretty much free to do as they please. Find something that needs to be done and do it - that's the deal. Sometimes there's more direction than that, but not often.

Yesterday my work day took place in the kitchen. Everyone in the household eats the mid-day meal together at about 2:30, so daily a meal to serve 8 or 10 people has to be prepared. On the farm we have a lot of big squash that need to be eaten up - green outsides with orange flesh; they smell rather like pumpkins. I pieced together some recipes from the internet and ended up with a fantastic soup. I was quite proud of the outcome. I can't very well make squash soup every day, so I'm very open to recipe suggestions; keep in mind that my ingredient options are limited: plenty of fresh veggies, basic spices, trying to avoid dairy (because there are some vegans among us), and no option to pop on over to the supermarket for that one obscure ingredient.

Today I came back to La Laguna with the fellow (from another farm, but part of the association to which Finca Limon belongs) who brings the produce to market. It took us 2.5 hours to make a 1 hour drive across the island because we had to stop at so many farms to pick up their produce. I was hoping to watch him in his route and learn it so that I could be the bring-the-produce-to-market person every once in a while, but after one day just observing in the market I'm sure I won't be able to do that. My Spanish is nowhere near good enough to sell vegetables to people who are in a hurry. Ah well, I enjoyed the experiment and I got a free trip to visit with Rigo (Vero is out of town) out of it.

Tomorrow I plan to make the kitchen my project. It's in an awful state of disorganization and even uncleanliness. If I'm to feel comfortable here, I have to work to make my environment as I desire it. With all this time spent in the kitchen and all this squash around me, I'm starting to feel the approach of Thanksgiving; I'm even itching to put together a little feast.

edit: I'm trying but I'm having a hell of a time figuring out how to get the video option to work here. Sorry, you'll have to wait to see my house ....

estoy aqui, por fin!

I'm exhausted. I smell funny. I'm here.

To my relief, my luggage was waiting patiently for me when I landed in Tenerife. Luckily Rodrigo picked me up at the airport because getting around with all those bags and a box wouldn't have been easy. After three days in transit, I'm glad to have something that is easy.

The sun was setting behind the hills so I got to see my new surroundings for the first half of the drive north. I'm on a tropical island off the coast of Africa, so you can imagine that the landscape is drastically different. Strangely shaped plants and trees and a constant coastline are as much as I know so far; I look forward to exploring tomorrow.

Now I'm at Rigo and Vero's place in La Laguna. She's been out of town for the last month, but returns home tomorrow evening. It's so nice to be greeted by friends as I enter this new place. It makes it feel somewhat like coming home. Well ... I plan to be here for long enough that I guess that's exactly what's happened. I've arrived at my new home.

moving right along

After two unexpected days in San Francisco, I'm continuing along on my journey to Tenerife. I'm in the Dublin airport now, waiting for my connecting flight. I spoke with my friend Rodrigo a few minutes ago; he is going to pick me up at the airport with a car so I don't have to figure out a bus or deal with my luggage alone. My luggage, by the way, has been located and should be waiting for me when I deplane in Tenerife. I'm completely exhausted, but glad to have everything working properly once again.

I've arrived! ... in San Francisco ... ?

I ran into a few mishaps in the course of my outbound journey. I didn't realize I'd signed up for so much adventure .....

1. When I checked in at LAX, I was told that because I don't have a visa for Spain and because I don't have an outbound flight American Airlines wouldn't be able to check me in for my flight. They were certain that Spain won't let me in. I don't know if they are correct or not, but there was no arguing with my check-in lady. So I had to purchase a ticket to leave Spain. I now am $300 poorer and I have a flight from the Canary Islands to Dublin on January 25th which I may or may not board.

2. The first leg of my journey was from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I was supposed to be one hour in San Francisco and then connect to Dublin and then to Tenerife. But San Francisco had heavy fog so my flight from LA left an hour late and I missed my connection. The next flight to Dublin/Tenerife from SF is on Friday. Fortunately, my brother lives in SF, so I have a warm place to live for the next two days.

3. My luggage (see above photo) is somewhere between Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dublin, and Tenerife, but no one will tell me exactly where until I land in Tenerife. I have been doubly assured that I'll have all of my things when I land in Tenerife - that this kind of thing is quite normal - but until I land there I can't be told where anything is because of [as if this is an adequate and reassuring explanation:] September 11. So luckily I've got access to my brother's closet because otherwise I'd be freezing right now.

So the plan is now that I'll continue my journey Friday morning, arriving in Tenerife Saturday evening. Cross your fingers for me. In the mean time it seems my choices are to laugh or to cry, and so far I'm laughing.

a few last good-byes

I ran into my elementary school principal Thursday night at Art Walk. His art work was all over the walls of a gallery: beautiful Dia de los Muertos prints. It was so awesome! He remembered me a lot. I was so happy.

He told me how to locate Mr. Martin, my 5th & 6th grade teacher. Mr. Martin was quite an inspiration to me; he's part of the reason I went into teaching. I found him the next day at the district office and had a few minutes to chat and reminisce. What a treat!

blushing and curtsying

Sundae's Ice Cream Social went very well. I had the pumpkin pie ice cream, which was a little slice of heaven.

A lot of people from various pieces of my life came together to join me in my celebration. While there are a lot of people in this world who I love tremendously, I'm not usually so good about showing my love en mass. That is, I have a bit of a difficult time with being the center of attention.

But I did this to myself; I wanted it this way. For the afternoon I was surrounded by my family and my friends from various periods in my life and my friends from work. I always come away from a situation like that feeling a little torn: one part of me naggingly says that I should compartmentalize my social gatherings as I do my interactions so I can more effectively interact. But another part of me - the part that usually wins - says To hell with that! These are all people who love you in some way or another; you should happily take on any opportunity to surround yourself with as many of them as possible! And so I did. And a great amount of love is what I felt. Thank you to all who were able to make it!

I apologize if I did not interact with you as much as you may have expected; I was overwhelmed. But overwhelmed with affection and gratitude and love is definitely a good thing!

More photos of the party will be posted soon; some can be seen here.

dealing with the man

I never figured I'd need to obtain a visa to go to Spain; I guess I overestimated the size of the welcome mat that Europe lays out. My desire is to be in Spain for two years continuously, but upon doing a little research I found out that that the automatic allotment is 90 days every 6 months. That seems to mean that after three months I'll have to find someplace else to WWOOF (which should be no problem at all) for the next three months; then I'll be welcomed back. I could have more time there if I had a student visa (but I'm not a student), a work visa (though I hear they're quite difficult to obtain), or a residence visa (which I should have applied for 6 months ago). I'll need to do more visa research, but in the meantime I'm going forward with the by-the-seat-of-my-pants method of travel.

going away? party!

A little more than a week before I leave home, I'm throwing myself a party. Bon voyage, happy birthday, good riddance! The party is on Sundae, October 28 at 2:30 pm, and because I'm turning 31 on that day we'll all meet for ice cream at 31 Flavors. Afterwards to Emily's house for a gathering into the early evening. No need for presents -- in fact please don't give me anything material. Just a smile or a hug and a kind word for my send-off. If you are reading this post, it is because you are genuinely invited.

counting down to a new life

I'm getting ready to change my life completely. On November 7th I'll leave LAX in the morning, have a quick stopover in San Francisco for a high-5 and a hug from my brother, and then fly to Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain.

Spain. I've never been there. Not even near by. I speak a bit of Spanish, but really I have to be humble when I'm conversing in Spanish. And yet I'm planning to be there for the next two years of my life. Am I crazy? I've been accused of as much.

I'll be experimenting with WWOOF, an organization of volunteers who work on organic farms in exchange for room and board. I believe that through this organization I'll find an ideal situation for myself: I'll be able to live in the countryside, learn a lot about farming and gardening, immerse myself in the Spanish language, and travel long-term in a country that would otherwise be unaffordable for me. Having not yet left home, this idea sounds perfect! But then, this is an experiment; I have yet to see what reality and experience have to say.

In the past when I've traveled I've sent out emails to a long list of folks back at home. This time I'm updating my method; though I'll certainly communicate by email (yes! please! email me! I'm sure I'll get lonely!), I'll not send mass emails about my travels. That's what this space is for. Check it as frequently as you'd like or else subscribe using the link on the left to receive regular posts in your email inbox. Either way, feel free to post your comments.