Hola de nuevo,
first of all, for all those who wrote comments, i want to thank you for your funny, thoughtful, interesting notes. i responded to the comments in my last installment, and unfortunately didn´t have a chance to respond to the latest batch. next time. i did read them though.
well it´s been another action packed week. I finished my Spanish course on Monday, desafortunademente (how´s that for a word). i was having a good time studying for seven hours on my own each day and writing a silly story in spanish for practice. i will put that story in the blog sometime perhaps. in english it´s called A Dollar´s Worth Voyage, it´s the tales of an adventurer similar to me, only much more adventurous and wild, going all over the world almost on very little cash. Now I am officially a volunteer here, working about six hours a day doing all kinds of things. gathering firewood for the kitchen, sweeping very dusty rooms (in cob - earth - buildings what would you expect?), varnishing floors and doors with sweet smelling non toxic vegetable oil or something like that, helping make dinner, shoveling out the edge of a soon to be pond. it´s keeping me on my toes for sure, and it´s fun not knowing what i will do tomorrow. now my body is a lot more tired than my mind, which is the opposite of my state a week ago. feels good for a change.
i was thinking yesterday, why i haven´t had a regular conversation for more than two weeks. regular like a chat using my mother tongue, not thinking about how to say things but only about the ideas, talking quickly with ease and expressing myself clearly. like i said before, a couple of the people here at Gaia speak english fluently but it would seem disadvantageous to have big conversations in english. the one downside is i´m left a bit in the dark with being able to express myself. of course this is naturally what i expected. for someone who really loves to talk and control conversations, i think this would be extremely challenging. for me, often being quiet naturally and talking to myself in my head, it is still quite trying. so i was thinking yesterday, why this blog is the most regular conversation i´m having these days. how strange, seeing as how i´m talking to no one in particular.
this experience is really interesting for many reasons. besides the ones i´ve already told about, there is no alcohol, or chocolate for that matter, at Gaia. being used to a beer or two in the evening, i really crave a cerveza. it´s a detox of sorts, after all the various kinds of alcohol consumed in Puerto Rico and last fall´s travels in Europe. but all the things i often crave, like pizza, internet surfing for hours, milk, grapefruit juice, lots of things, i do want sometimes but generally speaking i have forgotten about them. in such a different atmosphere, i find my usual habits and addictions are not as pressing as they usually are. my habits are very much connected to the places, the locations, in which they have existed.
the weather here is really beautiful. after a week of rain upon my arrival (everyone joked that i brought the cold and wet from up north), it has been sunny and warm, sometimes hot, with just a day or two of rain.
i was running the other day on the dirt road that is next to Gaia, and i passed a big group of cows in the pasture on my left, all standing near the fence and hence close to me. all staring staring staring. the cows just can´t seem to get over this guy running down the road. maybe they´ve never seen this before, it´s possible for it´s a very quiet country road. well i didn´t think much of the cows´staring, because that´s what they all do each time i run, but suddenly one cow started running alongside the fence parallel to me. that cow got stirred up another to start running, and another, and soon enough the whole pack of 50 cows was running along with me! like dominoes. were they scared, were they hopeful for some treats, were they inspired? i don´t know. but it was a surreal experience, i just laughed outloud, running down the road with a big pack of cows alongside. and it´s hard to imagine cows running, right? because they´re always just standing around eating grass. but cows can run, let me tell you.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Friday, January 20, 2006
bear tales
Hola! Well it´s been a week since I last wrote and what a week it´s been. I´ve learned so much castellano, and there´s still a long way to go. It´s been hard for sure; learning a new language takes so much mind energy. last week when i had six hours of classes a day, i did feel a bit crazy. this week i am studying on my own most of the time, and have one hour of review each day with one of the english speaking people at Gaia. i am grateful to the language for being much more consistent (with the rules) than English, but there are still a lot of irregularities. Overall, I feel good about how much I´ve learned so far. The frustrating part is that I still can´t understand everyone in usual conversation. It sounds sooo fast, as it always does when you´re learning a new language and your mind is computing the language slowly. I see this process of learning as anologous to a growing civilization. At first there are just a small group of people living together (a couple words in my mind) and I have a handle on that. hola, como estas, que pasa, a-okay. Then the community starts to grow (new words and understanding) which necessitates more rules and social structure (language rules and structure). Then the community blows up into a city and everything goes crazy! Some people are running with their heads cut off, some are stealing from others, some have jobs and others don´t. . .it is chaos, which will hopefully turn into organized chaos in the long run. well my learning of castellano has had its initial blow up (through all day immersion and lots of studying) and is currently quite chaotic! hundreds of words and phrases and rules running around my mind, some of which i have a better handle on than others. i trust this chaos will organize itself with time.
Gustavo and Silvia, a couple with a two year old boy Tobias, are head of Gaia. They are very smart and hardworking. Silvia speaks English fluently and is one of the two who spend an hour each day with me. She said a couple days ago that she learned English through her many travels around North America and Europe. "It´s hard to learn a new language, but it´s amazing to see different cultures and it gives you humility," she said to me. I couldn´t agree more. I am so humbled to be in this amazing place with nice people who speak another language and have their own habits and norms. We all know of course that there are thousands of cultures and languages in the world, but it really hits me now that I am part of a new one. I feel like a kid in many respects. No one here knew me one bit when I arrived. A fresh start. The first chance since arriving at Acadia 5 1/2 years ago that no no one has expectations for me to be a certain way. It is an odd feeling; it makes me wonder who I am exactly. So it is a rebirth of sorts. Add that on to learning the language from scratch, and you can see why I feel like a kid. At meals I generally sit quietly and listen to the table conversation. Most everyone talks a lot and tells good stories so it´s easy to listen. At this point I´m understanding about 1/3 of what people are saying. Grow, fraction, grow!
I wrote a couple haikus in castellano the other day. Haikus are three line poems of Japanese origin, with the lines being 5-7-5 syllables. Some of my lines don´t have perfect syllablization, but it´s close enough. i´ll leave it to you to try to figure out the meaning or to translate it on the internet.
me siento bien
en un lugar hermoso
se llama Gaia
siempre cantando
la musica llena
el corazon
hormiga negra
trayendo una flor
blanca, que lindo
estoy cansado
aprendo castellano
esponja cerebro
Gaia is well known in the ecovillage world. There are often people coming for tours on the weekends, and two men even came yesterday to film the place for an Argentinian TV show! I think the show is called De Costa a Costa (from coast to coast). It was quite strange. They filmed us setting up lunch outside and starting to eat, and then they had lunch with us. They did some interviews, but not with me, since a super slow bumbling spanish talker is not going to catch the viewer´s eye. Maybe they´d like my rustic North man charm though. Who knows these days with TV, I sure don´t. I wonder what the show turned out like. Let me know if you find out.
All six men (including me) at Gaia have beards. Gustavo has the biggest; it reaches half a foot or more from his chin. People generally wear plain, easy going, well worn clothes, and i guess you could say we look like a group of hippies. Not nearly as flamboyant or colorful as the sterotypical sixties hippes though. As far as I can tell most people in Argentina are clean cut and the men don´t have beards, just like in North America. When the TV men arrived, with short well groomed hair and beardless faces, it reminded me of this fact. It was nice to see them getting along with everyone and laughing together at lunch. Appearances often matter so much, but it´s up to us to believe whether they should or not.
The three kids at Gaia are adorable. Tobias is 2+, Suyai (pronounced soo-shai) is just about 2, and Cecilia is 4. They play all the time around the dinner table and teach me words, and sometimes ask me how to say things in English. Very smart. They, especially the two younger ones, alternate between fits of laughter and fits of crying. Boy oh boy, it´s hard to imagine having a two year old of my own. As my mom and dad tell me, I was a very tempestuous two year old, having long fits of screaming-crying. Thanks for being so good to me mom and dad, and props and respect to all you other parents out there.
Gaia is a sort of wildlife sanctuary in the locale because wide-open, unprotected crop and grazing fields surround us for miles. The eucalytpus-like trees that I referred to in my last installment really are eucalyptus. they are huge and beautiful, and i like the smell so much. Reminds me of a beautiful park in San Francisco to which we would take Pepsi to run wild with other dogs. Anyway I have seen a lot of interesting wildlife. Birds of all kinds non-tropical, toad eating lizards, foxes, armadillos, tarantulas, and bugs bugs bugs. The other day I saw a swarm of tiny ants ripping apart a beetle a hundred times their size. When i noticed the scene the beetle was already in two, and both parts of its body were moving and fighting for control. nature can really be gruesome at the large and the small scale.
Hope you are all well! Amor,
Jeremy
Gustavo and Silvia, a couple with a two year old boy Tobias, are head of Gaia. They are very smart and hardworking. Silvia speaks English fluently and is one of the two who spend an hour each day with me. She said a couple days ago that she learned English through her many travels around North America and Europe. "It´s hard to learn a new language, but it´s amazing to see different cultures and it gives you humility," she said to me. I couldn´t agree more. I am so humbled to be in this amazing place with nice people who speak another language and have their own habits and norms. We all know of course that there are thousands of cultures and languages in the world, but it really hits me now that I am part of a new one. I feel like a kid in many respects. No one here knew me one bit when I arrived. A fresh start. The first chance since arriving at Acadia 5 1/2 years ago that no no one has expectations for me to be a certain way. It is an odd feeling; it makes me wonder who I am exactly. So it is a rebirth of sorts. Add that on to learning the language from scratch, and you can see why I feel like a kid. At meals I generally sit quietly and listen to the table conversation. Most everyone talks a lot and tells good stories so it´s easy to listen. At this point I´m understanding about 1/3 of what people are saying. Grow, fraction, grow!
I wrote a couple haikus in castellano the other day. Haikus are three line poems of Japanese origin, with the lines being 5-7-5 syllables. Some of my lines don´t have perfect syllablization, but it´s close enough. i´ll leave it to you to try to figure out the meaning or to translate it on the internet.
me siento bien
en un lugar hermoso
se llama Gaia
siempre cantando
la musica llena
el corazon
hormiga negra
trayendo una flor
blanca, que lindo
estoy cansado
aprendo castellano
esponja cerebro
Gaia is well known in the ecovillage world. There are often people coming for tours on the weekends, and two men even came yesterday to film the place for an Argentinian TV show! I think the show is called De Costa a Costa (from coast to coast). It was quite strange. They filmed us setting up lunch outside and starting to eat, and then they had lunch with us. They did some interviews, but not with me, since a super slow bumbling spanish talker is not going to catch the viewer´s eye. Maybe they´d like my rustic North man charm though. Who knows these days with TV, I sure don´t. I wonder what the show turned out like. Let me know if you find out.
All six men (including me) at Gaia have beards. Gustavo has the biggest; it reaches half a foot or more from his chin. People generally wear plain, easy going, well worn clothes, and i guess you could say we look like a group of hippies. Not nearly as flamboyant or colorful as the sterotypical sixties hippes though. As far as I can tell most people in Argentina are clean cut and the men don´t have beards, just like in North America. When the TV men arrived, with short well groomed hair and beardless faces, it reminded me of this fact. It was nice to see them getting along with everyone and laughing together at lunch. Appearances often matter so much, but it´s up to us to believe whether they should or not.
The three kids at Gaia are adorable. Tobias is 2+, Suyai (pronounced soo-shai) is just about 2, and Cecilia is 4. They play all the time around the dinner table and teach me words, and sometimes ask me how to say things in English. Very smart. They, especially the two younger ones, alternate between fits of laughter and fits of crying. Boy oh boy, it´s hard to imagine having a two year old of my own. As my mom and dad tell me, I was a very tempestuous two year old, having long fits of screaming-crying. Thanks for being so good to me mom and dad, and props and respect to all you other parents out there.
Gaia is a sort of wildlife sanctuary in the locale because wide-open, unprotected crop and grazing fields surround us for miles. The eucalytpus-like trees that I referred to in my last installment really are eucalyptus. they are huge and beautiful, and i like the smell so much. Reminds me of a beautiful park in San Francisco to which we would take Pepsi to run wild with other dogs. Anyway I have seen a lot of interesting wildlife. Birds of all kinds non-tropical, toad eating lizards, foxes, armadillos, tarantulas, and bugs bugs bugs. The other day I saw a swarm of tiny ants ripping apart a beetle a hundred times their size. When i noticed the scene the beetle was already in two, and both parts of its body were moving and fighting for control. nature can really be gruesome at the large and the small scale.
Hope you are all well! Amor,
Jeremy
Friday, January 13, 2006
Jerbearticus conquers the Andes
I didn´t actually conquer them at all; it just sounds good. I did, however, cross the Andes in my final plane from Santiago, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Amazing! And surprising. Amazing because they are huge mountains, and I saw a half dozen glaciers in the upper reaches, along with some snow. Surprising because the plane crossed them in ten minutes! I guess the Andes aren´t wide at all. . .400 miles an hour, ten minutes of travel would roughly make that section of the Andes 65 miles wide. hm.
I took an hour+ taxi from Buenos Aires right to Gaia Ecovillage, and have been in a dream world ever since. Don´t get the wrong idea; it´s not like a heaven where no one works and everyone relaxes and picks ripe fruit from trees as they please. It is, however, a very different atmosphere than i´ve ever experienced. Fifteen people live here - twelve adults 30-50, with one grandmother, and three children 2-4 years old. They are all from Argentina, as far as i know, except there´s a volunteer here my age who, amazingly, is from southeastern Pennsylvania! Near the Delaware border. Her name´s Abby, she´s been here for almost two months, and is leaving this weekend I think. I greatly admire her fluentness in Spanish.
Speaking of which, Spanish (or Castellano, as they call Latin American Spanish) is the main language at Gaia, of course. A couple people, and Abby of course, speak English, but they and I are trying to limit English conversation so I learn more quickly. This week I am learning Castellano for six hours a day. Intense! Cosas (things), verbos, las partes del cuerpo (body parts), and so much more. I am totally saturated. I have not slept normally because my mind keeps trying to say sentences and conjugate words at all hours even though i have no desire for it to do this in the middle of the night. I will get by, though, and I am learning a lot. I feel a bit crazy at the moment (which heightens my dream world experience) but am having a great time so far. Everyone´s so kind and helpful. The food, which is just about vegan, is prepared (and some of it grown here i think) mostly from scratch and is so tasty! Both lunch and dinner are big, social meals and supper might stretch into a two or three hour affair. Everyone gets up at 7am and works maybe 6-8 hours a day - cooking, cleaning, office work, building and maintenance, tending to the garden, with the women and men appearing to generally be in their traditional roles. It´s hard to say though since I´m not helping out with any of that yet.
Three wind turbines on site power the whole community, the biggest electricity consumer of which is certainly the fridge. no microwaves, electric stoves, clothes dryer. solar water heaters (and a stove for rainy days) make for fine showers. The main building´s walls are made of mud, its roof of thatched straw, and its skeleton of wood. it´s a very comfortable, pretty abode, and definitely doesn´t look like your usual North American home. I guess it looks like one of those magical forest homes in a fairy tale, where maybe a magician lives. Other buildings here look more usual.
We´re at latitude 30 or 35 degrees south, I believe, and I would describe the climate as lush mediterranean. there are a couple palm trees here or there so it must never snow, but it´s definitely not jungle. Big eucalyptus-like trees tower over the property, while there is some undergrowth of bushes and bamboo. The countryside is beautiful here, and is dominated by fields of corn and golden grains, and cows. Cows must be very common because a native plant is called pata de baca - cow legs. i don´t yet understand why it´s called that though.
My Castellano teacher is very nice and speaks oh so clearly. The funniest moment so far was when I said "condoms" (condones) while trying to remember how to say "shoe laces" (cordones). My French has been quite useful while learning, as many words are near identical spelling to their Spanish counterparts, though their pronunciations are very different.
Just so you know, you can write in comments to me by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each blog installment.
Hasta luego,
Jeremy
I took an hour+ taxi from Buenos Aires right to Gaia Ecovillage, and have been in a dream world ever since. Don´t get the wrong idea; it´s not like a heaven where no one works and everyone relaxes and picks ripe fruit from trees as they please. It is, however, a very different atmosphere than i´ve ever experienced. Fifteen people live here - twelve adults 30-50, with one grandmother, and three children 2-4 years old. They are all from Argentina, as far as i know, except there´s a volunteer here my age who, amazingly, is from southeastern Pennsylvania! Near the Delaware border. Her name´s Abby, she´s been here for almost two months, and is leaving this weekend I think. I greatly admire her fluentness in Spanish.
Speaking of which, Spanish (or Castellano, as they call Latin American Spanish) is the main language at Gaia, of course. A couple people, and Abby of course, speak English, but they and I are trying to limit English conversation so I learn more quickly. This week I am learning Castellano for six hours a day. Intense! Cosas (things), verbos, las partes del cuerpo (body parts), and so much more. I am totally saturated. I have not slept normally because my mind keeps trying to say sentences and conjugate words at all hours even though i have no desire for it to do this in the middle of the night. I will get by, though, and I am learning a lot. I feel a bit crazy at the moment (which heightens my dream world experience) but am having a great time so far. Everyone´s so kind and helpful. The food, which is just about vegan, is prepared (and some of it grown here i think) mostly from scratch and is so tasty! Both lunch and dinner are big, social meals and supper might stretch into a two or three hour affair. Everyone gets up at 7am and works maybe 6-8 hours a day - cooking, cleaning, office work, building and maintenance, tending to the garden, with the women and men appearing to generally be in their traditional roles. It´s hard to say though since I´m not helping out with any of that yet.
Three wind turbines on site power the whole community, the biggest electricity consumer of which is certainly the fridge. no microwaves, electric stoves, clothes dryer. solar water heaters (and a stove for rainy days) make for fine showers. The main building´s walls are made of mud, its roof of thatched straw, and its skeleton of wood. it´s a very comfortable, pretty abode, and definitely doesn´t look like your usual North American home. I guess it looks like one of those magical forest homes in a fairy tale, where maybe a magician lives. Other buildings here look more usual.
We´re at latitude 30 or 35 degrees south, I believe, and I would describe the climate as lush mediterranean. there are a couple palm trees here or there so it must never snow, but it´s definitely not jungle. Big eucalyptus-like trees tower over the property, while there is some undergrowth of bushes and bamboo. The countryside is beautiful here, and is dominated by fields of corn and golden grains, and cows. Cows must be very common because a native plant is called pata de baca - cow legs. i don´t yet understand why it´s called that though.
My Castellano teacher is very nice and speaks oh so clearly. The funniest moment so far was when I said "condoms" (condones) while trying to remember how to say "shoe laces" (cordones). My French has been quite useful while learning, as many words are near identical spelling to their Spanish counterparts, though their pronunciations are very different.
Just so you know, you can write in comments to me by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each blog installment.
Hasta luego,
Jeremy
Monday, January 09, 2006
leaving on a jetplane
Jerbearticus the Procrastinator, oooo it sounds so evil.
Leaving in three hours for this ecovillage in Argentina: www.gaia.org.ar/english
What is an ecovillage? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecovillage
More in about a week, as I'll have to go to a nearby town to get on the internet.
Fingers crossed. . .
Leaving in three hours for this ecovillage in Argentina: www.gaia.org.ar/english
What is an ecovillage? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecovillage
More in about a week, as I'll have to go to a nearby town to get on the internet.
Fingers crossed. . .
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