Marriage is the next adventure!

And it will be an adventure in Acadia! We’ve picked a date– August 18, 2012–and have rented a house right on the ocean. We will get married either in the morning or afternoon depending on the weather!

The “reception,” by which we mean fun, outdoor activities and dancing, will be that evening, or all day if we have the wedding in the morning!

We encourage you to stay for more than just the wedding day, as this is a lovely area to explore, but book your accommodations soon! Things fill up very quickly, especially in August, as this is a vacation destination-ismo.

Please RSVP as soon as possible to: sevansbr@gmail.com

Location: 740 Oak Hill Rd., Trenton, ME

Please see the page tabs above to see more about Carpooling and Directions, Activities in Acadia and Accommodations

We’ll keep you posted with more news soon!

xo~ Sam and Aubrey ~xo

Directionless deeds, sturdy steeds (and European Adventure Blog Closure)

….And here we are, just over six months later, and we’ve successfully left you on the edges of your seats, waiting both with great anticipation and a bit of trepidation about what’s coming next. Little did you know, this big question mark is a pretty accurate summation of the lack of direction in our lives post-European workation. In fact, by writing nothing, we have at least communicated our indecisiveness about “what comes next,” even if we have not shared the details of this open-ended journey.

After we left Spain, we headed back to Paris to pack: pack up all of the baggage we’d brought with us initially (and had gradually ditched along the way), AND pack as many last-minute activities and as much “meaning” as we possibly could into our last couple of days in Europe. This inevitably led to a checklist of things we wanted to accomplish: 1. Visit with Anita, JR and Cloé, 2. Buy and consume French patisseries and chocolates, 3. Call Severin—a friend and fellow worker from our very first farm—who was now living in Paris, and of course, 4. Stroll about in the “city of love,” taking it all in.

A phone call to Severin began our days’ adventures, as what we thought would be a fat chance turned into bonne chance, and 20 minutes after contacting him we met up with him for lunch. Besides a great opportunity to catch up on the news of Mazy—our very first farm—and feel like our trip had come a bit full circle, Severin also provided us with an insider’s tour to Paris, as well as it’s tastiest confections. We saw a beautiful edible community garden, a beautiful old Japanese Pagoda which is now a theatre for independent films, and sampled caramel-coated pear mousse among other treats in the Tuileries gardens. And Severin had one more surprise up his sleeve: it just so happened that Scott, the Floridian who had been with us for grape harvesting as well as hitchhiking adventures back in September, was actually living with Severin in Paris, and had been taking French classes at L’Académie Française. And not only was Scott was in Paris, but now, after what seemed like just a few short months, he actually spoke French, and was even sharing little known insights with us about French grammar (refer back to our post in on 9/19/09 to better understand the full impact of this transition).

Finally we were off, but not quite home: this saga would not be complete without a trip to a land famous for its adventurous journeys: Middle Earth. We only had time to stay a short week, but we managed to: learn about the trolls and giants that formed the landscape; hike through the ash of active volcanoes; watch parades of icebergs, recently calved from glaciers, move out to sea and then be swept up like jewels on black sand beaches; dodge the nesting terns and gulls diving at us from steep cliffs; frolic in caves behind thundering waterfalls; visit houses built into the sides of grassy knolls; roam between hot springs and geysers; try to sleep despite the fact that the sun never set; visit the site of one of the first parliaments assembled in the world; take a tour of a facility which harnesses energy from the earth in order to power the country; try to decipher letters such as Þ, ð, θ in their unique language, and stand in the rift valley of the Eurasion and North American divergent tectonic plates, in a place not quite belonging to either. Now, if you’re up on your geography, you’ll realize that this rift valley– of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge– is not anywhere close to where the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed, in New Zealand. However, having visited Iceland, I am certain that JRR Tolkien’s inspiration came not from a land of Kiwi birds, but instead from a land of small, stocky horses (which we were warned NOT to refer to as ponies, as the natives will be very offended!). I could just picture hobbits hopping on their backs to traverse the rough-hewn peaks, just as we jumped in our trusty steed—our rented Skoda—for our own adventures.

We had rented this car for a pretty reasonable price from a company called “Sad Cars”—we never did find out why they had such an optimistic company name—and immediately got a flat tire. Fortunately, they provided a full-size spare, and so we were able to continue on, being very careful to follow the driving guidelines printed on the visor: Do not drive off-road. Do not drive on unnumbered roads, or “roads that are marked with an F on public maps, as well as driving Kjölur (road 35) or Kaldidalur (road 550).” So, as we turned onto a non-“F” lettered road marked as 570 on our map, which ostensibly meant “safe and passable for our little rental car,” we never imagined that this very same road would later be used for a Jeep commercial: http://broadbandsports.com/node/40291 . Needless to say, we needed a few extra tries to power our little Skoda up some of the hills (we had already descended hills just as steep, so there was no turning back), but we powered on in slow motion (just like that Jeep!). We culminated our 10 kilometer “car hiking” adventure over 2 hours later and just as sweaty as if we had run it ourselves, but infinitely proud of our little trusty steed.

We had arranged a one week visit to Iceland before we’d even left the U.S. (as it was cheaper to buy two flights: Parisà Reykjavik, Reykjavikà Boston, then to buy one flight from Paris to Boston, with a short layover in Reykjavik), and originally we looked for Help-X hosts to stay with. After hearing nothing for months, on our last day in Spain I had grudgingly paid a deposit to Sad Cars (this would be our biggest expenditure of the whole trip besides the airfare), only to receive an e-mail minutes later from a Help-X host in Iceland who said she’d LOVE us to come! Well, it seemed a little silly to rent a car only to have it sit at their farm while we worked, so for the beginning of the week we explored on our own (camping is allowed anywhere which is not “private property or a national park,” which turned out to be pretty much everywhere). Just as we were getting a little bored of gorgeous 50’ waterfalls and exquisite scenery (which are literally everywhere), we arranged to stay with the hosts on their farm for our last 2 nights and help them process rhubarb. This was fun because were able to learn a lot more about Icelandic culture (which somehow our museum visits hadn’t quite covered), and also to shower before we had to face Passport Control at the airport and the next stage of travel.

So we made it home, but we’ve both decided that, although we’re not quite ready to hang up our traveling hats, our future workations will be shorter in length (we never want to travel with so much STUFF again: no additional clothing needed for changing seasons). We’re not sure where we’re headed next—Argentina? Scotland? Madagascar? Oregon?—but we will keep you informed as soon as our lives are once again interesting. I suppose substitute teaching, nordic ski coaching and snow making have their moments of great adventure, but somehow encounters with angsty teenagers or frozen snow-gun nucleators, while just as dangerous, are not quite as fun to recount as encounters with wild boar.

Have a very Happy New Year, and thanks for reading!

Starting the Long Road Home

Our time since the last blog has been marked by a lot of planning for our return home. We’ve been sorting out paper-work for our summer of trip-leading with Williwaw, making good use of the pro-deals that we have as part of this job, and frantically planning the scant three and a half days between our arrival home and our departure for training. In these three days we will have to unpack and sort out the mess involved in our year of travel, sort out the messes that we left at home because we left in the same overly-rushed fashion, and promptly pack up everything that we will need for a summer of leading teenagers through the woods, leading Lucia and Alberto through the streets of NYC (did we mention that these Spanish friends are coming to visit for two weeks immediately after our trips finish in August?), and then going to another friend’s wedding. Essentially, if I have described this right, your imagination should be generating circus music as images of us bumping into each other as we rush between our parents’ houses carrying bundles of outdoor equipment marquee through your heads. But that’s ok, I’m still very excited to get home, because at least it will be our circus.

Enough of the future, though, this is a blog anyway! Our third and final week at los Robledos was marked by a pair of summer-time cheese emergencies. The first was that a batch of milk bought from one of their contributing goat-farmers came contaminated with a mild bacteria, that caused the cheese to swell up and fill with air pockets. Not to worry, says Maria Jesus, we just throw those cheeses in olive oil, which suffocates the bacteria. What’s more the little pockets suck up oil and the cheese becomes extra delicious. The second was a bit more complicated. With summer, comes flies, eager to lay eggs in things. The cheesery is a very clean place, but flies being flies get in anyway, and on one of our cheese making days Maria Jesus walked in the door, took one sniff and said, “today we’re going to have worm problems.”

Her nose was not wrong. What followed was a marathon of cheese cleaning, which may have been Aubrey’s favorite job yet in this year of WWOOFing. That night, after showering for about an hour and a half, she told me that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to go to bed for fear of dreaming about worms. I was, however, very little help. I come from the same school of thought as Rafael (MJ’s husband), which teaches that worms are simply additional protein, and rather than avoiding wormy foods we should select them specially, because the flies look for only the best cheeses to lay their eggs in. After picking the worms off of the cheeses that hadn’t played host to the eggs themselves (worms that Aubrey dubbed “immigrants”), we chucked the really wormy ones that had hatched the eggs (these worms were “natives”) into the olive oil. The logic was similar to the bacteria: suffocate the worms, whose nicely drilled tunnels make excellent oil pockets. Go figure.

As Aubrey mentioned last time, another wonderful aspect of being at Monte Robledo was to be able to cook for ourselves. This was not always the case as twice a week MJ would bring down lunch for cheesing days. After three weeks, I think I can safely say that in their family, the cheese-makers eat nothing but grilled white fish, or pork and potato stew, as this is what she brought down every time. This diet is indicative of a general Spanish lack of adventurousness when it comes to food. I’ve never seen so many people who are squeamish about so many things. Raisons, sauces, anything green in general, breads that are any color but the purest of whites, spicey foods, ethnic foods – all of these things are suspect. It’s no wonder that when we entered MJ’s market to select things for our larder we discovered the selection to be depressingly narrow, as she carries things primarily for eaters she refers to has her “traditional” Spaniards, and she carries them frozen and individually wrapped. Despite this, we invited as many of the family members as could clear a spot in the working schedule (that is, we got one of the three sons to come with his girl-friend) to come to have a meal that we cooked. Aubrey whipped up a chicken in orange sauce with stuffing and green-beans that makes my mouth water just thinking about it, and I think it was a hit. At least MJ told us that she liked it, and the others finished what was on their plates (with the exception of some raisons) with out too much pushing things around with their forks or saying “¿Eso que es?”

After finishing at Monte Robledos, we made our final return to Finca Buenvino, and discovered a few new inhabitants at the finca – Sophie, an 18-year-old Australian helper, and Jago, the eldest Chesterton son – and that we had arrived just in time for another fiesta. This one was the romeria of Los Marines, the town nearest to the Finca. You might remember from a couple of blogs back that we have hit up a romeria already, and this one was quite similar, except that this time we were accompanied by Jago Chesteron, who, as his friends put it, is a social weathervane. Attending the romeria with him was a non-stop ride of being introduced to Spaniards, making circuits of the fair grounds, and being handed lots of beers (to the point where one of Jago’s friends took a beer from my hand that I’d just received from someone else, threw it away, and handed me another). Romerias are all about food, drink, and friends, but to kick the whole show off, they first carry a giant float with a gaudily outfitted Virgin Mary out to a chapel in the outskirts of town. The whole thing is very similar to Semana Santa, a fact that Charley vigorously denies saying, “No no, this is much more festive… you might even be able to whoop a little bit if you don’t get too carried away.”

Mid-week, two more WWOOFers arrived, bringing us up to a small army of five youngsters. The newest members of the crew were named Cesar and Vinita (very latino sounding to us), and Sam told us that they were from California, which prompted speculations that they would be “Latin Kiiiings” (imagine that one with Jago’s British accent imitating a Hispanic accent). However, they turned out to be from Calgary – very nice, unassuming yoga types. Again, go figure. During our last three days with the Chestertons things were very busy (five WWOOFers get a lot done) and social with big happy dinners. On the last night we headed into town to see what we thought would be a professional Flamenco show, but what turned out to be the Spanish equivalent of an elementary school dance recital. The show consisted of an enormous crowd of three to twelve-year-old girls (and one very out of place looking young gentleman), all throwing their skirts up rhythmically (or arrhythmically), looking at each other for a clue about the next dance move they were to make, and bumping into each other when inevitably someone started dancing in the wrong direction. While there were one or two other acts of higher caliber, the kids really made the show, and we left absolutely in stitches, recalling one moment where the crowd of girls turned around, lifted their skirts and shook their frilly, bloomer-festooned bottoms at the crowd, while the one boy, who had no skirt to lift, theatrically covered his eyes and shook his head. The evening was capped off with a barbeque down at the spring-fed pool that we had helped to fix up, where we told ghost stories and discovered that the patch job that Jago had done to the pool was wholly inadequate and the water leaked out before I could muster up the courage to jump into the icy water.

We bid farewell one last time to Buenvino on Saturday morning, and hopped a bus to Cadiz, a Spanish port town/peninsula and one of Europe’s oldest cities (founded around 1100 BC), to see a Spanish beach before leaving Europe. It turns out to be a great city for travelers of our ilk; that is to say, we found a lot of free things to go and see. We stumbled into an art exhibit, which had some great Brazilian “naïf” style on display, the history museum which happens to be free on Sundays, a Roman salt-fish factory archeology site, and a charity festival where, for one Euro, we got to watch professional quality Tango, belly-dancing, and of course the ubiquitous Flamenco. We also coincidentally bumped into Emma, a WWOOFer who we had met at los Robledos, who had also come to Cadiz for the weekend, and was staying just around the corner from our “pension.” And yes, we did see the beach, although at first it was difficult to spot between the thousands and thousands of umbrellas and semi-nude women. Frisbee-throwing seemed out of the question during prime-time, we decided to only go to the beach before 10am, and/or after 6pm, which meant that not only could we find a place to sit, but that we were able to watch both sunset and sunrise over the ocean.

So now here we are in the Seville airport, once again saying adios to Spain, and heading off to see our families. Between now and then we have one last chance to buy French patisseries and Kebabs in Paris, and a whole week of excitement in Iceland. Don’t worry though, we’ll keep you updated even after we get home, as we’re almost sure to have one last story to tell!

Goats and Oranges

SO, we’ve thrown another twist into our travels, quite literally in fact, as to get to access our current location one must travel a very steep, curvy road down the hill (which we, of course, mostly choose to travel on bikes, at night, with our trusty headlamps which, fortunately, are not quite bright enough to remind us that there is no guardrail around these corners) to a little goat farm called Monte Robledos, which, because it’s at the bottom of a valley, of course means ‘mountain of the oaks.”  Don’t worry, no baa-aa-aad news to report, just a bit of cheesiness, as we’re taking a bit of a workation from Finca Buenvino, and spending a few weeks producing ‘quesos artisinales.’

We learned of this small cheese operation– which is about 10km from the Chesterton’s and 5km down from Aracena) from another American WWOOFer who we happened to meet on the street during one of the many Semana Santa processions. He gave us their telephone number in case we ever wanted to pay them a visit. Things at the Chesterton’s were going fine, but we had started to get a bit too comfortable, a bit antsy to learn new things and speak more Spanish, and a bit worried that the Chestertons might soon tire of our constant presence, or at least of bread, which Sam the Sour-Doughboy was (and is) making almost daily. J We will go back to the Chestertons before we leave Spain, but for now we are thoroughly enjoying our stay at Monte Robledos.

As we’re working with a Spanish Spanish family (Maria Jesus, Rafael, Rafael Jr., Manuel, y Miguel) as opposed to a British Spanish family (Sam, Jeannie, Charlie, Grania and Jago), we have not only been able to immerse ourselves in curds and whey, but in the Spanish, or should I say ‘Andalu-th” language. And, when we mentioned how hot it’s supposed to be this coming week (high 80’s F), and that this was pretty much the hottest our summers in New England ever get, they showed us to a small reservoir they had made in which we are also welcome to immerse ourselves. After shooing away a few pigs, Sam gladly took a dip, but although it’s not the grossest pond I’ve ever seen—certainly cleaner than the Bates ‘puddle,’—the heat has not quite yet driven me to brave the muck and murk to wallow in the watering hole.

Although some of our enjoyment of the past couple of weeks here stems from obvious and logical sources, such as the fact that this is a very warm, helpful and enthusiastic family with lots of knowledge to share, other aspects of our contentment here are in some ways rather paradoxical. I can almost see the grimaces on the faces of my busy readers as I write this (although I guess those of you who are TOO busy won’t have time to read this), but I think part of our satisfaction comes from the fact that we work hard, and a lot, almost all day, almost every day. What?! This makes you happy?! Well, I can’t say that the work itself is particularly intriguing; fatiguing is more the adjective I’d use to describe today’s work of flipping over and wiping the shelves of thousands of little round cheeses. Nor do I even like goat milk or cheese that much. Sam says that this just because I’m not used to it, and that I’d feel this way about cow’s milk, too, if I hadn’t grown up with it, but I maintain that we stuck to cow’s milk for a reason, and the reason MY taste buds provide is that cow’s milk doesn’t contain that at-once sweet and savory essence of goat-butt. (This said, I must admit that goat’s milk is not THAT different from cow’s milk, and I have been drinking it willingly. It’s also supposed to be much better for you, and easier to absorb). So, then why are we feeling more relaxed here? First of all, when we work hard and long, we appreciate NOT working much more. Downtime seems like a luxury—we don’t feel guilty sitting around, even if we’re doing nothing!—and we’re not bored, and for me at least, being bored is much worse than being tired. Also, we are living in a casa which is on the farm, whereas the rest of the family lives in town. This means not only do we have cute baby animals to ogle at, but we are cooking for ourselves (and no, the arrangement of this sentence does not imply that we are cooking baby animals), which is more work, but also more autonomy: something we’ve really been missing this year.

Our cooking has been particularly inspired lately, with help from the oranges and lemons, ripe for the picking, just outside our door, and goats, ripe for the milking, running around everywhere. Both milk and citrus fruit, it turns out, are harder to acquire than they look, however. My first attempt at harvesting oranges was met with spiny resistance: not only do the small branches have thorns, but even the larger, “perfect climbing” branches are be-spiked. So, I thought, “I’ll just pick up those which have already fallen to the ground, as long as they don’t look rotten!” Good plan, except the oranges on the ground, even the ones the ants haven’t invaded, are a bit tooooo sweet…. But, every obstacle is a learning opportunity— now I send Sam to get the oranges!

As for the goats, there are more than 300 of them, most of which need milking, so fortunately there is a milking machine. However, I think someone overheard our rather deflated “Ohhhh, I guess we won’t be learning to milk a goat” sighs– as we rolled up to see the lady goats flaunting their pumps– and decided to teach us some lessons.

Lesson #1: When the machine breaks, you must still milk the goats, because if not the milk can curdle in their udders, and kill them.

Lesson #2: To milk a goat, hold one teat in each hand, and squeeze, it’s that easy!

Lesson #3: If nothing is coming out, and you’re squeezing as hard as you can, keep squeezing… and squeezing…. And squeezing up here, and down there… and twist maybe?…

Lesson #4: Goats kick.

Lesson #5: When you finally get one little, tiny stream of milk out, the goat will kick your bucket over so that you cannot prove you’ve mustered a drop.

Lesson #6: Sam is just better at getting the ladies to put out.

Lesson #7: If all of the goats on the row are milked except the one you’re pleading with, move out of the way and let Rafael milk it—he can do it so fast that the milk froths in the bucket!

Lesson #8: HUGE, full udders are impossible to get a handle on, and therefore nearly impossible to milk unless you’re Rafael (see lesson 7).

Lesson #9: Although you may not contribute more than 1.5 liters to the 120 liters total collected (by 4 milkers including yourself), do not feel too bad: at least the goats you milked seemed to enjoy your gentle massaging more than the others’ vicious tugging, and at least if the goat kicked over your bucket, you didn’t lose much milk.

With all of the lessons we’re learning, I think the most valuable is probably that farming, and especially selling your products to make a living, is a LOT of work. Maria Jesus and her family not only manage the farm and garden, make loads of cheese at least twice a week and turn all the drying cheeses once a day, but they have two small stores/bars in Aracena where they sell their own cheese and pork products as well as other groceries (and where we go to access internet), and go to most of the festivals in Andalucia to try to sell their products at kiosks to make ends meet. She’s really an incredible woman, and for me her ability to juggle all of this work it’s at once inspiring and frustrating. It seems so ridiculous to me that food production is so underpaid and underappreciated—providing good quality and healthy food should be held in such high regard, and yet I feel that it’s taken for granted by so many people who have never done it, and requires SO much time and energy from the few people who are willing to undertake it. That’s not to say it isn’t rewarding— as I’ve mentioned, we feel very satisfied after a long day’s work here—but the rewards certainly aren’t (usually) financial. I just think we should pay a bit more thought to, and also a bit more money to those brave souls who produce the energy we need to survive (especially those who do it efficiently without ruining our environment or health in the process—food produced industrially often contains fewer calories of energy than were burned to produce it, not to mention process, package and ship it, and so to pour more money into this broken system/energy drain is not what I’m endorsing). So hats off to Maria, who’s does all this and is also a mother… another underappreciated and UNpaid position….

Alright, I’ll stop before I alienate any of our constituency with my political views and values. We really need your vote of confidence in our blog, as we don’t want our ratings to drop, and we desperately want to hold on to at least our current 3.6 followers/day. J

I believe we have exactly 4 weeks from today before we will debark in Massachusetts, and I cannot way to make my way back to our ‘old world.’ ‘Till then, know that we’re having lots of fun being cheesy! Hasta pronto!

Getting to know Al-Andalus

“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!” asks our devoted blog reader. “It has been almost a month, and NOTHING!” Well, reader(s… which we hope includes more than just our families), the computer has been broken! And also, we’re in Spain in the spring! Give us a break!

So yes, we’re back in Aracena, home of pata negra jamon, and more importantly, the wonderful Chestertons. We arrived the night after the first day of Semana Santa, which is the week leading up to Easter. It’s a pretty big deal around here, what with the strong Catholic history they’ve got, and for anyone who has seen pictures of Spaniards dressed up colorful KKK outfits, this is that celebration. Somehow, though this attire is very shocking for us Americans the first time we lay eyes on it, it takes only a very short time for it to start to seem rather endearing. The way that they have to hold on to the bottom of their great, sinister, pointy hoods so that the eye-holes stay lined up with their eyes as they shuffle through the streets holding enormous crosses, candles, or gilded staves makes them seem somewhat harmless and clumsy, and one begins to wonder why the KKK thought these outfits would be so scary. I mean, as long as they are dressed in those robes, they certainly aren’t going to be very effective chasing after anyone!

We had a week of watching processions, some which began at 5a.m., which consisted of enormous pasos (big passion of the Christ themed floats) being carted through the streets by forty or so costaleros (anybody from the town with broad shoulders and a desire to hump their 50 kilo share of the paso through the streets for 5 hours or so) and preceded by long parades of pointy-hooded nazarines (penitents). Occasionally the floats stop in the street, and from above a volunteer from the town proceeds to sing a saeta (a religious flamenco lament, which usually goes something like “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, cuuuuuaaaaaantooooo doooooooooloooooooorrrrrrr” drawn out for about 5 minutes). The whole thing was an immense amount of fun, although completely exhausting at the same time, and we weren’t even carrying the gilded floats.

Another relatively new feature to our stay has been the presence of guests at the B&B, which after our very quiet stay here in December makes for an interesting change in pace. With guests the finca is a decidedly different place, with three course meals every night for dinner, constant bustling about to serve up tapas and coffee and tea and cakes, and stoking up the fireplace at just the right time of day so that the guests can sit beside a “leaping flame”. After a few nights of this, Sam Chesterton said to me, “this is what having a B&B is all about, it’s all theat-tah!”

Since we last updated, another momentous event has transpired: Aubrey Nelson has aged another year. She finally caught up to yours truly, and joined the ranks of the 24-year-olds (nearly 25! Crap!). For her birthday, I found her some replacement Crocs (or Hobekys as it were- doubly appreciated as the puppy here has managed to steal and shred her Chaco sandals, may they rest in pieces), and made her a home-made version of the tiramisu ice-cream cake that we devoured for my birthday in the Pyrenees. We also had a delightful dinner with Juan from the Jabugo Jamon factory, and some random Dutch travel agent.

Another noticia is that we did a couple of days of painting on the roof terrace of a friend of the Chesterton’s and earned a few Eurobucks, which we used to take a trip to Granada to celebrate Aubrey’s birthday. Granada is home to La Alhambra, which is an enormous Moorish city/castle, that is probably Spain’s number one tourist attraction (and for good reason… it’s beautiful). Every day 6,000 people are allowed to visit, and tickets to visit are sold in advance. When I went to make our reservation, I discovered that the entire week that we were planning to visit was already sold out. Upon arriving in Granada, however, the proprietors of the hostel where we were staying told us that the Alhambra is always sold out, but that they keep 500 tickets on reserve for people who don’t plan ahead. In order to get one of these tickets, it is best to queue up an hour or 45 minutes before the ticket windows open. So after our first night in Granada, having been up listen to Flamenco in a little dive in a back alley until some odd hour of the morning, we hauled ourselves out of bed and got out the door by 6:45 a.m., and were in line at the Alhambra by 7:05. “Alright!” we thought “We’re nearly at the front of the line! We’re sure to get one of those 500 tickets.” Then along came a security guard. “Hoy, no hay visita,” he intoned, today the Alhambra is closed. What? They can’t do this to us! Why? “I don’t know, there’s someone here…” he mumbled, “it has something to do with Carlos V” (a long dead Spanish king). We were skeptical, and hung around until we were sure that he wasn’t just making this up to thin out the line, but it turned out to indeed be closed, and for some reason we weren’t invited to this special event.

So we needed a plan B. Fortunately, it was still only 8 a.m. and we had plenty of time to formulate plan B, which is how, by noon, we found ourselves in the little town of Güejar Sierra, only a 2 euro round-trip bus fare outside of Granada, and directly at the base of the beautiful Sierra Nevada. They even had free candies and hiking maps at the town-hall, and by following one of the trails indicated on the map we ended up at a Spanish Civil War bunker, perched high atop a mountain, overlooking a beautiful reservoir below. We felt on top of the world, quipping about how nature’s splendor outshone any dumb Moorish palace, as we reached the far end of the hiking loop which was so neatly marked out on the map. So… there’s the road we see on the map, and here’s the trail we just came from, and so the return part of this trail should be…. straight through those spiny bushes, around the bulls, across the 12 razor-wire fences and…. we chose to walk back on a road. We stopped at one point to show the map to some locals and ask where we went wrong, but they were just as puzzled as us: “There aren’t any trails there, es todo privado.” We sighed, shook our travel-weary heads, and figured that it probably had something to do with Carlos V, as well. Spain is lovely, but as hiking enthusiasts, it will be nice to be back home where “trail crew” is a choice for a summer job.

We returned to the hotel, had a dinner of tapas out on the town, and got ready for another early morning. Luckily, on our second attempt, we got into the Alhambra, only to see that we weren’t allowed to visit the palace until 1pm, and our “morning” ticket was only good until 2pm. As we approached what appeared to be the junction between the palace gardens and the palace itself, a guard checked our ticket, saying “Ahh, not until 1 o’clock,” and ushered us toward the gardens. We looked at our map, puzzled, as it seemed absurd that while we would have a good 5 hours to walk around about an acre of gardens, the walled castle, which seemed at least 4 times the size, would need to be explored in under an hour. Once again cursing Spanish planning, after a couple hours of playing tag in the hedge mazes, we decided to leave the Alhambra for an early lunch, and then come back later for our palace time-slot. We were feeling very proud of our time management as we slipped across the bridge toward the palace at 12:50pm… only to immediately discover that the palace was only one very small element of the walled city on that side of the bridge, and that we could have accessed any of the various other buildings, museums and exhibits all morning if we had only crossed over! So, as seems to be our style this year, we decided to overstay the expiration hour on our tickets, and just continue walking around post-2pm hoping we wouldn’t be deported discovered. Somehow, our tickets still worked at most of the exhibits, and in retrospect, despite Aubrey’s nervousness each time we saw a museum guard, this was the perfect time to be touring the Alhambra, because most of the “morning” ticket people had already left, and even the speediest (read: Chinese) tour groups from the afternoon hadn’t yet caught up. This meant two things: first, we had the place mostly to ourselves, and could take our time without feeling claustrophobic, and secondly, our photo quality was greatly enhanced by the lack of 12 or 17 ladies in pink raincoats contributing themselves to the vista.

Our final night in Granada was topped off by a delicious dinner in a Lebanese restaurant, and the next day we headed back to Aracena, stopping to see the Feria of Sevilla (basically like a giant county fair, Spanish style, which means lots of women dress up, or at least dressing their children up, in Flamenco dresses) on the way. We were rather disappointed with the Feria in Sevilla, but promised we were “just there at the wrong time,” (i.e. we missed out on the hour when everyone’s drunk and dancing), but not to worry, there are plenty more festivals to come.

In fact, it’s the beginning of festival season in Spain, and for those who are so inclined (as many Spaniards are) there is at least one Romeria or fiesta every weekend from now until the end of August. We were informed by the Chestertons that you tend to arrive at one of these celebrations, and you are immediately invited to picnics with every Spanish family you pass, offered wine and beer, and basically made one of the gang. We arrived at the romeria of Valdelarco after having biked/walked from Buenvino equipped with a picnic, but it became immediately clear that we were not to be made feel like one of the gang. Maybe it was our smiling faces or our little backpacks (or most likely our blindingly blond hair and plaid shirt, respectively), but it was apparently just a bit too obvious that we weren’t Spanish, and we received only dubious looks, and grudging “Holas.” But we took our picnic regardless, and enjoyed the ambiance of flamenco wailing, drum and fife players, and people on horseback circling about offering young girls rides on the rumps of their animals. Maybe next time I’ll borrow someone’s bullfighter outfit, and we’ll find Aubrey a flamenco dress; that will probably make at least me fit in better!

All in all things have sort of held an even keel here in Andalucia this past month. The wildflowers and the sunsets (around 9:30pm) have brought spectacular bursts of color to our days, and although it was cold and rainy for a big chunk of April, now it’s suddenly August, and we’ve been swimming almost every evening this week. We’ve been cooking quite frequently, making lots of desserts and bread mostly, but also had Jewish (but actually Morrocan, it turns out) and Mexican nights where we cooked three course meals for the family, and tried out new recipes.

As far as work it has been the usual assortment of odd jobs, but the major project so far has been pool renovation. We’ve been getting the “Infinity Pool” changing rooms and showers scraped and painted in anticipation of the summer season and starting the process of the restoring a spring-fed pool that was the first structure that the family built on the property 20 some-odd years ago. Despite lots of good times, we’re starting to get very excited to go home, as it has been a long few months whizzing around Europe. And, assuming that Iceland doesn’t belch out another cloud of smoke and ash, we might be doing that in only a few (five, to be precise) weeks. I’m certainly ready. Miss you all, and see you soon(ish)!

Springing back to Spain

Our computer power cord is broken so now I am typing on Sams iPod and it won’t let me write a normal blog! Grrrr! It’s always something! But just wanted to let you all know that we are in Spain. We had originally planned on going to the B&B in northern France, but they couldn’t take us on short notice, whereas Jeannie said, “Oh, come back to us!” So here we are. Hopefully we’ll get the last of our computer issues sorted soon so we can elaborate, and tell you about spring in Spain!

Foolishness

Hello everyone!

I think you’ll recall that at the end of the last blog entry you were all promised an in depth account of our experiences with our new hosts, Hans and Jacqueline (two wild and crazy Dutch). We were greeted very warmly, and immediately set to work planting their permaculture garden, cutting straw, and digging out stones and rubble from around an old ruin so that we could rebuild a terrace and an old bread oven. We were served gourmet meals for dinner, and mostly bread for breakfast and lunch (two meals at which we continually shocked our hosts by eating what they saw as foreign and disgusting combinations, such as peanut butter and jam, or even worse, peanut butter and apples!). We learned how to smoke fish, went to an archaeology museum, tooks some nice walks, and read some great borrowed books about food and sustainable living. But of course, our European adventure wouldn’t be nearly as exciting to read about if it didn’t come with a few twists and turns, and so I can honestly tell you that we have already left their home in the Morvan, and are now sitting somewhere rather unexpected. However, seeing as its April Fool’s Day (even if it isn’t any longer by the time I am able to post this, I swear it’s April 1^st as I write), and I cannot resist the urge to be a little foolish, I am going to leave it up to you all to guess where we are!

In And Out

We write to you from the hamlet of Denault, near the village of Corancy, near the slightly larger village of Chateau-Chinon, in the Burgundy region, from the home of our latest hosts, a Dutch couple named Hans and Jacqueline.

“But, wait!” demands the flustered blog enthusiast, “I thought you were going to someplace deeper in the Pyrennees!?” Well, yes, that was the plan, but then began the story of the last couple of weeks, entitled: We Came, We Saw, and We Got the HELL OUT! This is the story of the Jardins D’Eve, host number five.

Before it began, the day of “switching farms” was already off to a bad start. When we left Sol and Joan’s, Aubrey had three days of stomach bug under her belt – “le gastro” as they call it in French – and was feeling downright “enferma,” in every sense of the word. We loaded into the camper-van of a friend of Sol and Joan’s, Ramon, who was passing through Saint Girons on his way back to Spain, and set off to the market where we had convened to meet our next host at noon. As the van careened around the corners of the little French routes, and the boxes that Ramon had painstakingly stacked in the back of the van tumbled into heaps on the floor (“No os preocupéis, más alla del suelo no van a ir!” or “Don’t worry, they can’t fall any further than the floor!”), Aubrey was already feeling faint. And when we said goodbye to Sol at the market and lugged our oversized and overweight backpacks to the plaza where we were to meet Rene-Jean, we began to have serious doubts about the wisdom of changing farms when Aubrey was on three days of nearly no food and hardly any sleep. Little did we know that was not to be the worst of our fears.

We were picked up by Rene-Jean, the man who we understood to be Eve’s husband. This was a mistaken assumption, however, as we learned during the car ride that he and Eve did not live in the same house. “Oh,” we said, “so is she your girl-friend?” “Yeah, something like that,” was his response, “we have two daughters together.” In this year, however, untraditional relationships have ceased to faze us, and he seemed nice enough so we continued cheerily on our way.

The bubble was burst on our arrival to chez Eve. The property was visibly a disaster from the first moment we arrived: the house in a poor state of maintenance, the yard full of trash, the garden nothing but brambles. That’s ok, we thought, good people live in messy homes, sometimes, but we chuckled to ourselves as she explained that she made her living as an interior decorator, and just gardened on the side. Aubrey went promptly to bed (our room was admittedly quite cozy and comfortable) and I ate lunch with Eve. Our meal consisted of a bit of cauliflower boiled to an unrecognizable state topped with some cheese, and some grated carrots with vinegar. That’s alright, simple food, I thought, I can handle this. However, after a lunch conversation that could be described only as tense (a lot of complaining about her life, threatening to slap her daughter, and talking vaguely about all of her projects that she had “prevu” but never finished), my ability to rationalize away the problems of our new host was beginning to waver.

We decided to give things some time to improve, and for a spell it seemed they might. We spent the weekend recovering, had a nice dinner with the family to celebrate the sale of a car that they had fixed up, and got to watch the final ski race of the Olympics on French TV (during which the announcers held firmly to the belief that the only possible outcome of the race would be two French skiers tying for first place. Unfortunately, Norway was also competing in the Olympics). However, once the work week began, our ability to put up with ridiculousness was put to the test again.

Our first day, we came down to breakfast, waiting for an assignment…. Eve chatted, took the children to school, and left us twiddling our thumbs. Upon her return, she had us write down a detailed “list” of assignments, and we got started around 10:30 with item #1: “raking the leaves”. This is in quotes because it was absolutely impossible to accomplish without first going through all of the junk that was all over the lawn, sorting out the useful things from the trash, and clearing everything away so that we could actually push the leaves around with her swiftly shattering plastic rakes. We occasionally felt like archaeologists on a dig, unearthing bits of plastic toys and the heads or handles of tools that had been tossed out to decay under the layers of crib mattresses and plastic sheeting. We shouted our discoveries to each other from our trenches of debris: “What the hell is this? An oven mitt? Why is it under the rose bush?” We found a bed frame, a shower curtain, an old satellite dish, card-board boxes, and the remains of a metal rake (“Oh, there that is,” said Eve). Eve looked on, picking her favorite broken/unidentifiable things out of the truckload worth of trash we had decided must be sent to the dump (Note*- Aubrey is the daughter of Karin Nelson, and also strictly abides by her mother’s “save anything that could one day be useful” ideology, but these things surpassed even her “usefulness” standards). When we came across a dead Christmas tree, and started to add it to a brush pile, Eve stopped us, saying, “Oh, no, don’t get rid of that. I’ve had it since August (?!), and I just can’t bear to part with it.” The only things we didn’t find in the garden were living flowers, not even perennials: only dead ones and shattered plastic pots were in evidence.

We spent 3 full days trying to clean up Eve’s disastrous backyard, but we continued to tell ourselves, “this isn’t so bad—at least we’re working outside, at least Rene-Jean is organized, so we can ask him if we need tools, and at least we are learning French.” That much was true. In two weeks at Eve’s house I think I learned all of the possible ways to tell someone to shut up (“tais-toi ou je vais te claquer” was her favorite). This was because the relationship between Eve and her two daughters (aged 4 and 7) seemed to us (although we’re no experts in these matters) somewhat abusive. For instance, rather than making her 4-year-old daughter comb her hair, she instead just told her, “Look at your hair! You are so ugly! Are you really going to go to school like that?” Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending how you look at it), the girls seemed to be quite accustomed to this, and had learned to simply ignore their mother completely, as she had no will to actually exercise any authority over them. This made the atmosphere at the house somewhat less than relaxing: the girls, desperate for attention, make as much noise as they possibly can, while the mother tells them to shut-up and they ignore her and screech all the louder. This continues until Eve puts on a DVD, which entertains the girls for about half an hour, or until Rene-Jean comes over for dinner and actually pays them a bit of attention. Unfortunately, he also is the only one who really disciplines the kids, so for the time being, “si tu ne tais pas, tu iras chez Papa!” was also a common, and somewhat effective threat (Papa doesn’t let them throw their toys all over the house), but we’re both convinced that some day soon they will realize, as we did, that it is a relief rather than a punishment to go stay with their father.

Problem number one for me chez Eve, however, was the food. With the exception of a few very nice meals, our diet at Eve’s consisted mostly of Melba toasts, instant soups, and instant mashed potatoes. Most of the real food that we ate was either made by us, or Rene-Jean, when we ate at his house down below. The problem seemed to be that Eve didn’t actually like food. She ate very small amounts of very plain foods, and then spent the rest of her dinner chastising her children for eating too much. This is not to say that she actually did something about her daughters’ diets, but rather the contrary. She berated them for eating what they did (mostly things like sausages, cheeses, and desserts) and as much as they did (they ate easily as much as Aubrey or I, and the youngest girl ate an entire, foot-long, chocolate Easter bunny in one day), but even as she scolded she continued serving them seconds, thirds, and fourths. The girls were very overweight, and had a tendency to ask everyone who came into the door if they had brought any “bon-bons” for them.

We hedged for about a week. The location was gorgeous (if anyone ever wants to go for a Pyrenees hiking vacation, Massat would be an ideal starting point or base of operations), and we were learning some good French. But the more we thought it through, that’s all the place had going for it, and we decided, “life’s too short.” We called Hans and Jacqueline to ask if we could come early, and moved up the date to Thursday, March 18th, but as time went on we decided that wasn’t soon enough and made arrangements to return to Sol and Joan’s Catalan ranch on Saturday the 13th.

Just around this time, Massat was socked by about a foot of snow. With the snow, we couldn’t clean her garden-mess, we had finished with the other items on her list (painting a few spots on the wall) in what she seemed to think was record time (and relative to the pace at which she did things, perhaps it was), and when we asked her what to do with ourselves her response was “j’sais pas”. For week number two with Eve, we literally did no real work, and mostly just killed time waiting for snow to melt. At least when we had to break the news to Eve that we were leaving early, we could use the lack of work, due to the snow, as a reason for moving on, and despite our worrying and practicing our “we’ve decided to leave” speech hundreds of times, we ended on a cordial note (a relief after the reaction of Rafael at the farm in southern Spain).

This is not to say that we wasted our time in Massat. We did several very nice hikes, even after the snow, and serendipitously managed to hook up with the local school to teach French kids how to cross-country ski. Three times we accompanied the school up to a little XC ski center called the Etang de Lers and skied around setting up slalom courses, teaching them how to play “Sharks and Minnows”, and introducing the kids to skate-skiing. After the final session (which coincided with our last day at Eve’s), the Directrice of the school asked the assembled professors, “alright, who’s going to host these two next year?” as we blushed and shook hands and thanked them for buying us ski passes and renting us skis.

So there you have it, the story of the Jardins d’Eve. A bit different from the biblical story, perhaps—it was no Eden—but both stories end with a couple leaving the “jardin.” We were brought back to Saint Girons by the ever helpful and responsive Rene-Jean (“why couldn’t we have ended up WWOOFing at his house” we asked ruefully), and returned to Sol and Joan’s. For five days we returned to the rhythm of Catalan living, and just to establish an even starker contrast between the productivity of the two hosts, helped to plant an entire, well-planned organic orchard of 70-some-odd apple trees in the course of less than a week (Hmmm… more biblical connections?). The whole of Ariege also seemed to be happy that we had left Eve’s house, and the week at Sol and Joan’s the weather was downright spectacular. We also went horse-back riding three days that week, so we got some good color(s) on our butts as well as on our faces. The last evening we took a long trail ride, trotting past brand new baby calves and as we gaped at the view of the Pyrenees stained pink by a beautiful sunset. It was a great way to finish our adventures in Southern France.

And then we hopped a train North, and were greeted welcomed at the gare de Nevers by an enthusiastic and friendly Hans, and whisked off to yet another starkly different place. Although this time, in a much more positive way. How you ask? Well, you’ll have to read the next blog. Love you all, miss you dearly!

Odes and Olympics

Well, I almost had another excuse for not writing. On one of our recent trips to town, we decided to bring our computer, just in case there was somewhere with WIFI so that we could have at least a few minutes of contact with the outside world (we have hardly any access to internet here, and they don’t have television). Unfortunately, the curvy roads were too much for the bag in which the computer was packed, and I grimaced as it tumbled off the back seat onto the floor of the van. When it failed to “allumer” that evening, I began to write the following ode to my ‘fallen’ computer:

When you fell, I thought “Oh, he’s seen worse,”
and we just left you in my travel purse,
And now, oh laptop so trusted,
so well-traveled, and sticker encrusted,
You have decided to repay us for this neglect,
But if only we could do something to earn back your respect…
According to the DELL chat support,
Since your facade remains blank it could be an electrical short,
But interpreting your one remaining blinking light is rather hard…
Perhaps if we refresh your memory card…?
Eureka! You power up if we remove those broken memories!
But now you’re so slow we can’t navigate you with ease…
So one last trip, to some guy named Guillaume,
Who practices “l’informatique” from his home.
We looked to buy some good new memory for you to ‘recover,’
But we had one last surprise to discover!
Guillaume suggested that first we clean out any dust,
Just on the off chance that buying new memory wasn’t a must,
And it turns out what we first thought was the end of your six year stint,
Was merely a little conglomeration of lint!

Ahh, and so now he’s back again, and Sam is reminding me that (it’s) life is short, and I’d better get to writing.
Speaking of things which remind us that life is short, Sam’s Birthday was on the 17th, and now he’s nearly a quarter century old. To celebrate, on Wednesday we left to try and squeeze a winter’s worth of skiing into three days, and our feet into really crappy rental boots (Fischer skate boots: ay, there’s the rub). The first day the family and the other HelpXers all came with us to a place called the Plateau de Beille, and we tried to give them lessons in how to skate-ski, or, in the case of the one helpless helper, we instead just wrote the self-help book, “Get up, Stand up (in just 20 minutes!)”. At the end of the first day of skiing, the family dropped us off at our “Gite” (we’re still not sure how to classify this hostel/boarding house/hotel type thing in English), which was in a small town in the valley below the ski station. Once installed in our 24 euros/night room, and cooking dinner in the common room, we immediately set about trying to celebrate Sam’s birthday “properly,” which, in Sam terms, means making friends with a Spanish couple so that we can hablar, Tiramisu ice cream cake, and watching Olympic cross-country ski races. The third condition was the hardest to come by, as there wasn’t a TV or internet access at the gite, so we surveyed the local bars and finally found one which conceded to leave the television tuned to the Olympic games rather than one of the 28 all-important soccer games going on simultaneously. Sam spent his 4 hours in the bar alternately cursing the coverage of skiing (which seemed to focus predominantly on some guy removing a bump from the downhill skiing course, while only showing snippets of the Nordic events), and then the poor performance of the American cross-country skiers. There was one notable exception: it was extremely exciting to watch what the French announcers called a “grosse surprise,” as Simi Hamilton, a friend of Sam’s (he went to Middlebury and competed with Sam all throughout college, and even I’ve met him a few times), finished first of all the Americans in the men’s sprint, making it to the quarter-finals. So, thanks, Simi, for coming through for Sam on his birthday—even if he is a bit sad/jealous that he can’t be there with you.

The following morning, we took advantage of our new Spanish friends, and convinced them to drive us to the next town over so we could try out a different cross-country skiing area. This area, called Chioula, had MUCH more comfortable rental boots, longer and more interesting trails, and plus, it was a beautiful day: I was even warm enough to strip down to what Sam refers to as my “Sporty Aubrey” look, which is his euphemism for the “Maybe-I-Can-Admit-You’re-My-Girlfriend” look, because it resembles more closely the garb he associates with ‘real’ cross-country skiers: spandex rather than windpants.

The third day we awoke to rain, which means both snow in the mountains (and therefore at the ski area), and panic in the hearts of Spanish people. “That’s ok,” we thought, “there’s a free bus which goes up to Beille, we’ll ski there, we just have to check out and go into town for the bus!” BUT, nothing is that easy: the women at the desk kindly informed me that they don’t take credit cards, and that the nearest ATM was at the post office in town…. So, we missed that free bus, but were able to catch another a few hours later, and had a winter-wonderland ski, punctuated by lunch amongst thousands of school children on a field trip, before hurrying back down (in another free bus) so that we could figure out how we were going to get back to the farm….

The first 75km were much easier than we thought they’d be: we found a bus going part way, and then successfully hitchhiked to within just 25km of our town. We were feeling very proud of ourselves: we had an hour before it would get dark, and we’d been told by the family that this should be the easiest stretch to hitchhike because it was mostly local people, and “everyone stops for hitchhikers!” Well, apparently everyone wasn’t on the road, because no one picked us up…. It got dark, and then we went from being “the blond girl and the friendly looking guy” to “the sketchy people lurking on the side of the road.” We found a telephone booth and tried to call, but they only accepted French telephone cards, so we knocked on some old lady’s door, and used her telephone, but Sol and Joan didn’t pick up….
We had given up hope, picturing ourselves dragging up to the house at 3am, having walked 25km after 3 days straight of skiing, having not eaten dinner….

When what, to our wondrous eyes should appear,
But a car, slowing, and stopping so near,
And who do you suppose was driving this car?
Who not only saved us from walking so far,
But in fact dropped us AT the doorstep of our current home,
That’s right, two times our savior: Guillaume.

Besides learning that we have a lot of luck, we have also been learning other things in this region of France. First of all, we’ve learned that life must be pretty damn good here in Ariege, because the only thing people can seem to find to protest in this region of the France (a country who’s national pastimes are protests and strikes), are bears: “Non aux ours!” is scrawled all over the roads and street signs, in protest to the reintroduction of bears into the Pyrenees. Another thing we’ve learned is that if there’s a sign which says “BOUE!” it doesn’t mean you need to call Ghostbusters, it means that your bike will cease to roll, and your feet will gain 10lbs due to the gooey substance we might compare to mud, but who’s conglomerative properties are much more adequately described by the word BOUE! Hopefully we’ll be able to load pictures of this substance soon. Finally, we have both learned how amazing local farmer’s markets can be once they’re well established: I can’t explain how warm and inviting the atmosphere was, even on a below-freezing day. Granted, it’s harder to grow organic vegetables in February in New England, but still, ever since visiting a few of the markets here, I have been strategizing about how I can convince the United States to get it’s act together so that we can buy fresh, local products, from quilts to quince, from nice smiling people, instead of wandering around like zombies in the fluorescent lights of supermarkets, buying things from who knows where while an angsty teenager tries to put a plastic bag around every one of our preservative-stuffed, already-packaged objects. So, I’ll begin my campaign here: buy local, everyone, and if you’re town doesn’t have a market, start one, because if nothing else, it’s much more fun!

Tomorrow we leave for the next farm, and we’re hoping that they will have better internet access so that we can get back in touch with you all, as well as the Olympics.  We’ll let you know what the next farm is like ASAP, and sorry to anyone who has been frustrated by our lack of communication: we have been too. Cheerio!

Catalan’s got our tongue

We have been installed with our newest hosts for just over two weeks and after our time here I feel pretty comfortable saying that I can understand “una mica” (that’s un poquito for Spanish speakers or un peu for Francophones) of Catalan. Our newest hosts are Joan (like Joe-ahn, which is Catalan for Juan) Carles Boixadera and Sol (Soledad) de les Cots. There are also two other Catalan Help-Xers working here, Dani and Nuria, which makes for a lot of conversations in a language which is somewhere between French and Spanish, but is still completely foreign to both of us. However, there are two children (two and a five years old) in the house, and so we have started to pick up all sorts of phrases that will only be useful if we start trying to charm children on the streets of Girona; for example, “Qui vol suc?!” (“Who wants juice?!”)

Sol and Joan have been hosting WWOOFers for five years, and are decidedly better at balancing the difficulties of having strangers in their house all of the time than any of our previous hosts. The work we have been doing for them – mostly making “protection” for an apple orchard they going to plant in the next two months, but interspersed with a variety of other odd-jobs – has been very well organized, punctual and clear. They communicate clearly about things that bother them and what they expect from us, which makes things run very smoothly round these parts.

Even though our hosts mostly seem like very practical people, of the farms we have been on so far this one is definitely the most… how shall I put it… alternative. On the one hand, we are learning a great deal living here – Sol and Joan’s house, which they built themselves, is full of fantastic ideas, like composting toilets, rain water cisterns, well planned and well insulated spaces, and an impressive array of home-grown/home-preserved produce – but this alternativeness is accompanied by some quirks that we’re starting to come to expect at WWOOFing farms: the wild claims about vaccines have come up again, as have a few other conspiracy theories about world governments and B-rock Obama. At this point, we have mostly given up arguing against these assertions and begun to simply sigh, and then join the others by half-heartedly shaking our fist at The Man.

This alternativeness has led to two very exciting evenings in the past week, which at first blush we thought were going to be very similar, but in reality turned out to be decidedly different. The first came when we decided to take Joan up on his offer to go dancing with him at a place that he pays to go every Thursday, after taking lessons for this kind of dance each Tuesday. I don’t know what we were expecting really, but the first clue regarding the ‘tone’ of the upcoming entertainment came during the car ride when Joan disclosed the name of the kind of dancing we were going to do: the “five rhythms” dance. But, we were already in the car on the way to where all of these rhythms got together to do their thing so we figured, oh why not.

Well, I’ll tell you why not: because when we first arrived it was us, Joan, and four French women in a little wood-floored room, listening to flute music while we limbered up in order to get down (a.k.a. leap about wildly, with each body part seemingly choosing a different rhythm with which to move). Aubrey and I exchanged sheepish glances as one of the francaises explained that we would be “dancing” continuously for the next TWO HOURS, whether or not the music was still playing, but that luckily for us, the first session is always free for beginners. As the alternative was to slink bashfully out of the dancehall and then sit in the unheated entryway while listening to the tribal thumps and grunts from next door, we decided to jump right in as best we could. Fortunately, the music did get a little better, and so the time passed faster than I had feared it would, but the evening didn’t end before I embarrassed myself by laughing out-loud at the most forceful French lady, who kept insisting that we “dance more flowing”. Once we had escaped, I chalked it up as a positive experience, since now if I am ever frustrated with Joan I can just picture him busting what seemed to be his trademark dance move (imagine those action figure ads where they show a little plastic guy knocking down legos while a voice says “Karate-chop Action”, and then repeat that movement and add African drumming techno to the background). I don’t know if we’ll go back though, as somehow I can’t come to terms with paying for this dance, when you could save yourself a drive, some money, and lots of embarrassment if you just put on some music and gallivanted about in your livingroom.

Now, perhaps because we are suckers for comedy, when we were invited to go dancing again the very next night, we accepted readily. It may seem that we don’t learn from our mistakes, but this time were comforted by the fact that the other WWOOFers, Sol, and the kids were all coming along, and that this was supposed to be a Traditional Ball, as opposed to a hippy-flail-fest. This time, however, we were pleasantly surprised, and we found ourselves in the midst of a sort of French contra-dance. At first it was sparsely attended, as the first half-hour was for learners of the dances, but by dinner time (a delicious potluck, or “auberge espagnole” in French, where dishes were just passed down an enormous table for us to sample) people had begun to pour in. By the time the dancing truly got underway, there were maybe as many as a hundred dancers, all hopping and whirling around each other to neat little folk tunes: this was the hippy crowd that I’ve come to know and love.

After that night, and having spoken to some people about the region (Ariège, in the Midi-Pyrenees), we’ve decided that we’ve come to rest in a sort of French/Multicultural Vermont. There are people from all over the world and France who have settled here, just hoping to live in a nice town with nice people, buy local, and grow vegetables. Besides Bates College, Vermont is the only other place in the world where I can imagine a dance like this being such an unequivocal hit. The only real difference that I’ve discerned is that they have nothing as sweet as Vermont’s Northern Kingdom an hour’s drive away.

Although we may not have yet found all five of our rhythms, we are settling in to the pace of life here quite nicely. We have our own little cabin with a wood-stove and an outhouse that we can retreat to whenever we want privacy, and the company of all of the Catalans has been very pleasant. It’s very quiet here, with a beautiful view of the Pyrenees, and there’s not really much news to report, just a few odds and ends of our everyday travels: we’ve been cooking, and adding lots of recipes to their WWOOF cookbook; we’ve played ping-pong and jumped on the trampoline; I was recruited to spend a night in Perignan with Joan in order to help take down a greenhouse that he had bought; we’ve taken several nice walks (not quite enough uphills around here to call them hikes) through the foothills of the Pyrenees; we took one ill-fated bike ride to Saint Girons (where we got a flat tire, and had to use a system of alternatively running/walking and handing off the one good bike in order to get into town, and then hitchhiking to get home); and we’re working on finding information about a planned hiking trip to a mountain refuge some time in the near future. Hopefully we’ll load some pictures sometime soon, but until then, you’ll just have to picture us yourselves. Love you all!