La Casa Luz update

Hola de La casa Luz! I'm going to be back in the states in...9 days. See you then.

ok, so here are a few...like 5 photos of my trip last weekend. It took somewhere like 45 minutes to put these up, so i´ll try for the rest later. These are of palenque, agua azul, and a view from the road. More to come.

una historia

Las primeras fotos son de La Barra de Coyuca, un poquito norte de Acapulco en el estado de Guerrero, la tercera estado mas pobre en Mexico después de Oaxaca y Chiapas. Fui allá por 3 dias con Jack y Daniel de la quinta piedra una semana antes de salir a chiapas. En un lado hay el oceano, y por el otro es una laguna. Estabamos en la playa durante de la luna llena, y los pescados estaban tratando nadar de la laguna tras de la barra y en el oceano. Entonces...debajo de la luna llena, Jack, Daniel, y yo se attrapabamos los pescados con nuestas propias manos. Que chido es eso no? Nosotros comimos los pescados por desayuno la proxima mañana, y esa mañana se encontremos un hombre que se haya atrapado una tortuga y tuvó ganas que matar esa tortuga. Matar una tortuga es illegal porque estan en peligro, entoces una persona pudria ganar un chingo de dinero por una. Yo via eso hombre mató la tortuga, y estuvo increiblemente sangriente. Ick. Las fotos siguientes, después de la playa, son de una finca de cafe aca en Ocosingo Chiapas, pero primero hay una foto de mi cara después de una lucha contra el boiler...y el boiler ganó. Se me quemó. Mira a mis ojos y mi cabello y verás que pasó. Otro de estas experiencias, mi vida aqui en San Cristobal es muy tranquilo por la mayor parte. Tomé un curso de masajes por 2 semanas, 4 horas por dia y en las mañanas tuvé 3 horas de clases de español. Wow, estaba cansada esas dos semanas. Pues, espero que tú disfutaras las fotos!

Thoughts of late

So I have no pictures just yet because it takes so long to upload them, but I thought I´d share my thoughts about language, about the things that run through my head when I let them spill over into the reality of a piece of paper, or a piece of cyber paper. What would you call this place anyway? So...the thoughts on language are thus: How can a person convey themself truethfully through words. There is so much more to existence than language. There must be some kind of universal all encompasing way of communication that conveys the deepest most hard to reach thoughts and feelings, the things that are buried away where words can´t touch them. Or maybe there is a solvent, a cleaner of sorts to pour into the crevices of your soul to loosen the emotions, let them stick to the words. If only I could speak in color and sound. But i guess that is what an artist is. And am i not an artist? Can I not speak like this already? Sometimes I think not, but in reality I am more capable than I think I am. I have an incredible resource of talents than only need to be recognized by mi misma. The brain is a powerful deception. The heart, sometimes powerfully silent. How do you harness a heart? Can you mount it? Ride into the sunset happily ever after, just you and your heart? No, I think not. Everything that you can ride you need to nourish...problem is, what does a heart eat? What nourishes the thing that nourishes you? Mostly, I don´t want some fabricated brand name bullshit factory made heart food. I want the raw ingerdients. Maybe I can find them in the markets of mexico.

Long time overdue...maybe like a month or so

Soooooooooo... where to begin? I suppose I`ll have to give you the run down later because I actually need to go to a party!!!! There`s a fiesta in Yautepec tonight and I`m going with Gabby, La Doña (cook, maid, awesome woman). Tomorrow I`m off to go back to San Cristòbal to take more classes and maybe to learn how to fix bikes. We`ll see. I`ll lable the photos later, but they are of the abandoned mansion here at La Quinta Piedra, where I am right now in Morelos. Also they are of Oaxaca, the ones at the bottom. More to come later. Well, not that much later. Turns out I can`t go to the party tonight after all. I have some packing to do and I need to talk to Jack, the guy that runs the project here. So... I`ll just update some stuff instead. I have been working on a project here in Tepoztlàn, Morelos for the last month if you were wondering. There is this really amazing piece of property that belonged to a former president in the 90`s and has since been abandoned and torn apart. The project that`s going on is to restore the buildings to make a school for anyone that wants to learn about permaculture and agriculture. It`s a pretty neat project, and the people that are working on it are amazing, inspiring, and down right quirky. I think I`ll come back here some day to see how things have progressed. My time in Oaxaca was really really good and found me living with a really nice woman and having a friend named Lalo who taught me all sorts of slang and expressions in spanish that I wasn`t learning in my classes. It`s like almost half way through january now so that means I have been in Mexico for 3 months just about. Time just keeps on going at it`s own pace whether you notice or not. I feel like I have been here forever and like I just got here simultaneously. Well, tomorrow is a new adventure, and right now is pretty awesome.

Bats in the basement of the mansion

the staircase that goes to the basement...

Alice standing at the entrance

danger

the interior of the mansion

A view into a room

Best grasshopper ever!!!

The ceramics I made in Oaxaca

Lalo

y

Yo





Me hanging upside down from a really tall bridge.

A view of the mountains in Oaxaca

My house in Oaxaca

Me incase you forgot what I look like

My toilet in Oaxaca...sorry no cucarachas in this photo

My room

An overview of chiapas

Ok, back track. It´s been a while since i´ve posted any pictures. Chiapas was a really great place and I was really glad to have a house there, it made life much more enjoyable. We went to the market almost every day and bought all sorts of great fruits and vegetables to cook with. I bought nopales (a type of cactus leaf for eating) and fermented them with onions and chiles. They were really really good. I think that mexico is my soul country , and definitely my soul food style. We made a lot of friends in San Cristobal with travelers and some resident mexicans, one of which I was pretty enamored with but don´t have a picture of. The farm we originally went to work on was a pretty bum deal, so we quit and went to work for a permaculture project with some people that were really totally awesome. We worked at a few schools, and some other various places building chicken coops, terraces, and painting walls of a hostel. All in all I really enjoyed my time there and I think I´ll go back. Right now though I am in Oaxaca by myself taking classes at a language school for 3 weeks. I wasn´t that thrilled with the next farm and I wanted to learn spanish which was getting really hard to do because we were always speaking english to eachother. So I´m meeting up with Madeline and Alice in Morelos on the 15th of december for our next farm. Oaxaca is nice, but it´s much bigger than san cristobal. And I think I like the artisan vibe of chiapas more than here. My classes are really amazing and I´m learning much much more and so much more quickly than if I didn´t come here. But because school cost much more money than anything else in my trip I was a bit worried about paying for a place to stay for 3 weeks. So... I managed to meet someone on the street on tuesday and ask him if he knew of a roof or a patio i could pitch my tent and he helped me out. Hell yes. So right now I´m stying with his suegra, or mother in law up on a mountain 20 minutes or so from the center of the city. She´s really nice and the place is very modest. The toilet is an earthen thing on the ground that you throw a bucket of water in after you´re done to flush and at night there are cockroaches that crawl out of it. I have my own room with 4 walls and a roof which is nice and even a bed! There´s no running water and showers happen if you dump a bucket of water on yourself. It costs 4.5 pesos on a bus to get from her house to school in the morning, but i think it´s definitely the best option i have here in oaxaca. I get my own home stay for free when other students have to pay 600 dollars, and it´s a more authentic experience. All the homestay families here have mansionous houses, and really that´s not the mexican life. So, things are good ,life is awesome, and really anything you want and need can happen if you ask for it. Todo es posible en la vida.

mexican extention cord

Salvador, a campesino i worked with in chiapas. he speaks tzotzil and spanish.

Dos pingüinos the school build from trash and earth

bottles for windows

a flower i found the day everything lined up well in chiapas.

the first farm in chiapas, it was kind of a bummer, but beautiful

BEANS!

concrete love

this way out

Helena on the farm