Slowing Down -- Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

February and March are going to be slow blog months, I've decided. I would like to focus more of my limited time and attention on painting, studying Spanish, and becoming a super-crazy-fit-yoga-ninja (have I mentioned that life at The Yoga Forest is making me ridiculously buff?). 

I wish I could focus on everything. All the time (which seems to be antithetical to "focus", but I don't care).

Unfortunately, I can't focus on everything. All the time (maybe one day). So I'll let go of writing two or three times a week, and try to be satisfied with a minimum of four blog posts per month. Also, as this is a travel blog and I've been quite settled in "mi carpa", as of late, I don't have much inspiration anyway. Which is what it is. I'm not gonna judge it. I'm also going to try my best to not stress out about the dearth of blog entries (something I'm not very good at. Stressing out over unimportant things is a specialty of mine). 

This last week flew by in a flurry of painting --

 

-- and more painting. It felt wonderful to take out my brushes again, after about a month of ignoring them in my backpack next to the just-in-case spoon I stole from the Forest kitchen. I spent hours at Shambala the other day, working on a psychedelic tortoise.

"Did you... did you, uh... order anything?" John, a British chap who makes a sublime Tibetan butter tea, asked me politely and pointedly.

"Yes, but I finished it a while ago," I said, purposefully leaving "a while" up to his imagination.

"Okay, no problem, thanks," the British chap backed away apologetically.

That probably means I should order something else now...

So I ordered a hot lemon ginger tea and returned to my psychedelic tortoise.

 

Worried that I'd wear out my welcome at Shambala, I decided to paint my chipmunk at Del Lago the next day. Where I tried to appreciate the lack of internet as something that kept my focused on my art. And not a monstrous (and unrelenting) inconvenience.

This is Tammo on pancake day at The Forest.

I've also spent fifteen hours in Spanish class with my friend Joe (the random bloke I volunteered with in Germany over four years ago). 

I WILL LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE. IT WILL HAPPEN. I WILL FINALLY NOT BE A STEREOTYPICAL MONOLINGUAL AMERICAN.

My brain hates Spanish. So much. But Joe and Evelin (our teacher) make learning hilarious. Because of Joe's incessant mistakes and bromas pesadas and Evelin's sassy sense of humor. 

But if I continue to spend fifteen hours a week in class between now and May... I think I'll be able to make myself understood in most situations. 

Which would be a beautiful thing. 

After two years of pining for short hair, I decided to finally chop off all my locks. All of them. Nary a lock is left on my head. 

Tammo and I went to San Pedro last Thursday. Where a British chap with excessively long dreadlocks and at least seven barking furballs running amok around his studio, cut off all my locks. And blew them onto the furry specimen curled at my feet.

"Chickpea doesn't mind, does she now?" Ross crooned to his donut-ed (that really ought to be a word) dog.

An hour later, I emerged from the hostel/hair salon feeling lighter, happier, freer, and much more like my outside was in tune with my inside.

I asked Tammo to take a photo of my hair. And he skipped the actual hair bit. But it gives you a general idea.

 We celebrated the haircut with...

umm...

...

... with deep-fried oreos served with chocolate syrup and vanilla ice cream.

(This is what happens after spending almost four months at a yoga retreat. You begin to crave things that would normally make you gag)

The longer I stay at The Forest, the more I feel like this place has the potential to become a seasonal home for me. A place I can return to for three months every year, brush up on my Spanish, teach yoga, maybe teach English and share art at some of the children's schools...

What would my life be like if I had this place as a home I could always come back to? 
 

If I set aside three months every year wherein I knew I could be here? 
 

Here to reconnect with natural rhythms of life -- like waking up with the sun and eating mostly seasonal, local food.
 

Here, wherein I can meet and connect with people from all over the world.
 

The issue for me would be expectations. I think I'd probably return to this place and want the magic from the year before (but with less giardia and fewer scorpions). I would have such a hard time letting each new season stand alone. 

We'll see. Maybe that's a practice I need to invite into my life. Learning to let memories exist in a space that doesn't influence my appreciation of the present. Because my memories of my time here thus far are (for the most part) fucking amazing. And I want to enjoy these memories. But I want to be able to come back and not let those memories interfere with the next experience. Whatever it happens to be.

But that's a long time away, Bourget. As Jonas says, you'll have to actually LEAVE the Forest, before you start planning to come back.