I'm really integrating into the community now. Not only am I needed at the Forest for yoga, spaceholding, and photography, I have a place in town where I'm expected at 10:00 on Saturday mornings.
It's nice to be expected places. To be needed. To feel useful.
It's also nice to use the money I earned teaching yoga to pay for my Tibetan butter tea.
Other than the sunburn, my health feels pretty decent these days. And by these days, I mean these past two days. I woke up Thursday morning at two am feeling grumbly, sulfur-y and gross.
Fuckballs. Do I have giardia again?
"Aimee, are you awake?" Tammo's voice drifted across the tent.
"Yeah."
"I think I have giardia," Tammo moaned.
"I... I... uh... think I have it too."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," I grumbled.
Fucking parasites.
So we both ran up the hundred stairs to the composting toilet, relieved ourselves, and then stumbled down the hundred stairs back to the Submarine. Where, after I'd vomited up my dinner of roasted root vegetables, we both took a dose of antibiotics (the Submarine is the home of all the anti-yogic things. Alcohol, brownies, cigarettes, and antibiotics).
Jonas is going to ask why I didn't just sit with the parasites for a few days. Drink papaya leaf tea, take grapefruit seed extract and give my body time to, err, heal itself. Which is fair. I would sit with it if I could sit with it in my own home. Where I could take a few days off work to heal. Where I would have a bathroom right next to my room and I wouldn't have to gallop up a hundred stairs to take my many runny shits.
Also, I have to teach yoga in the morning. There's one other yoga teacher here, and he has plans tomorrow. I could wake up Jonas and ask if he could teach for me because I have giardia, but that would suck for him. Especially since he's moving out of his house today.
So. Antibiotics really feel like my only option now.
I taught the yoga class at six thirty that morning. And although I felt weak, I managed to lead a proper power flow. Which I would not have been able to do without the aid of antibiotics.
Thank god for Western medicine.
Tammo and I trundled down to Spanish that day, exhausted and head-achy.
But at least I'm not vomiting or singeing everyone's nose-hairs with my burps that would make hellfire smell like roses.
My second week of Spanish was challenging in that it took me further than I've ever gone in any language thus far. In French, I've got a decent (with plenty of room for improvement) vocabulary and I can sometimes hold a conversation in present tense. If the person with whom I'm conversing possesses miraculous patience and can read minds a little bit (very helpful). But my Spanish has progressed to a level wherein I can speak (staggeringly slowly) about the past and future. And not continuously in first person or infinitive.
Magda, one of the local Guatemalan women who works in the kitchen, asked me last night to check whether or not any of the new guests have allergies.
I was able to tell her in SPANISH, "Yes, I will ask the guests during dinner so that you will know before breakfast tomorrow."
YES. Hopefully after two more months of Spanish, I will be faster and more confident... but I'm already so happy with this improvement. Holy bananas.
I've kept myself so busy during the last few weeks with painting --
-- yoga, and Spanish, that I haven't given myself much time to dream (and Maile did an astrology reading for me the other day, and said that dreaming is an important part of my life. Who knew), so after Spanish yesterday, Tammo and I took our backpacks to the pier and splayed out in the scorching sun. Without sunscreen. Such was our hubris.
I miss Europe, I scribbled in one of the few remaining blank pages of my tattered Spanish notebook. I miss the food, the culture, the ease. I love it here on the lake, but I'm getting tired of all the little things being hard. Like, having to actually plan when I can charge my phone and my dinky speaker from Mexico. Like having to constantly worry about whether or not the water I'm drinking has parasites or bacteria. If it weren't for expensive plane tickets, I think I would go back to Europe this summer. Just to give myself a few months of respite from these worries.
...
Bourget, maybe you should buy an expensive plane ticket and go to Europe. Pay attention to your needs and do your best to meet them -- isn't that what you tell everyone in your yoga classes? You still have enough money for a trip to Europe. And probably even for a return flight to Central or South America, if you want to keep studying Spanish. Which you probably will.
So. My dreams for now.
Go to Mexico for from the 22nd of February to the 6th of March.
Stay at The Forest from the 6th of March to the beginning of May.
Take Cathy and John on a tour of Guatemala from the 6th of May to the 21st of May.
Study scuba diving in Honduras from the 21st of May to the 1st of June.
Return to the Yoga Forest for the first two weeks of June.
Spend the second half of June and all of July traveling through El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
Fly to France. Hang out with friends for a month, then start the Camino in September.
Fly to Argentina in November. Try to find work. Keep studying Spanish. Become a brilliant Tango dancer. All that jazz.
...
Eh.
They're dreams. Some people have dreams with deep roots. And they grow into strong, massive, beautiful forests.
My dreams are like rainbows. They're beautiful, vibrant, effervescent, and change based on the weather.
Which is okay.
Tammo and I left the pier (el muelle) a couple of hours later, and I felt the telltale prickling of my skin that let me know an excruciating sunburn was imminent.
Wise choice, Bourget. Sprawling in the sun for two hours straight with no sunscreen.
We spent the evening helping out with Pizza Night at The Forest (I have become an expert slicer of pizza. And Tammo rocks the pizza oven). We chopped, diced, sliced a mountain of vegetables and grated not nearly enough cheese (but that's because there's never enough cheese). Then we helped clean up after the nearly thirty guests and collapsed into our beds in the submarine, wincing, groaning in pain as our charred skin rubbed against the sheets.
So unnecessary, Bourget, I thought as I heard Tammo lamenting his misfortune from across the Submarine. There are enough things in life that suck and are unpreventable.
You don't need to indulge in the things that suck AND are preventable. Jesus.
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