Transitions

I´m back in Buenos Aires for a couple of days, and boy, is it a change of pace! It was sad to leave the Hare Krishna farm. I really couldn´t have asked for a better initial experience for my trip. I´m going to miss the people there a lot, but hopefully I´ll be able to carry over the sense of simplicity and mindfulness I learned while I was there.

Duke (a British volunteer who came a week or so before I left, and whom Maria nicknamed "Jaimito," because Duke is tricky to pronounce in Spanish) and I went to Maria´s again on Wednesday, and made some awesome empanadas, with a leek-tomato sauce-cheese filling.

I´ve been going back and forth with plans for my next move. Originally, I was going to hop on a bus this morning for El Bolson, to go to this cute little farm. Then I decided that I wanted to spend a week exploring Buenos Aires. But then I found out that the farm can only take me until the end of November, and after spending a day and a night in the city, I realized it´s not what I´m looking for right now. Going from 10:00 bedtime and 7:15 wake-up to 5:00am bedtime and 10:30 wake-up, living in a stuffy dorm with five other people after my luxe loft accomodations, etc. has been a bit of a shock. I´ve decided Buenos Aires can wait, so tomorrow I´m getting on a bus at 1:00 for 22 hours, and then another for 3 hours, and then another for 40 minutes :). Hopefully at the end of it I´ll find a cozy place to live for the next month!

I´ve added more photos and put captions on all of them, so check them out on the slideshow or, with captions, here. Plus, and even more exciting, I finally was able to upload a couple of videos I´ve taken. The first one is from the second night at Eco Yoga Park (I´m a little link-happy today!). It was Govinda´s 24th birthday (one of the "madres"). It´s hard to hear, but they´re singing "Hare Krishna" to the tune of "Happy Birthday." The second video is from a crazy thunderstorm one evening. The thunder was a constant rumble and the lightning flashed nearly constantly for over an hour. I can´t figure out how to imbed them in the post (if anyone knows, please share!) so here are the links. Hare Krishna Happy Birthday and Thunderstorm. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I just heard back from the owner of the farm in El Bolson and since I told her I wasn´t going to arrive until the 8th, she booked another volunteer for this week! So I´m staying in Bs. As. for the week after all! I guess I´ll have to adjust to urban living for a bit. ¡Qué locura!

Things are better than ever at the Hare Krishna farm. I´ve been here for two weeks now, and amd staying for one more, and it feels perfect. I´m feeling very comfortable with the routine and the people there. Two more volunteers have come, but one is leaving tomorrow, as is Ben, who has been here as long as I have. The only other volunteer is an older Argentine man, so I will be the only foreigner, which is perfectly fine by me. I´ve become more comfortable speaking and understanding Spanish by the day, and have begun spending more time with one of the ´madres,´or nuns, here. Gora will be 23 tomorrow, teaches us Ashtanga yoga, and has the kind of sense of humor that makes joking around in Spanish almost easier than it is in English. My days have settled into a nice routine: work in the garden in the morning, ´studying´ transcendentalist philosophy (Thoreau and the Dhammapada, a book of Buddhist verses), yoga and meditation in the afternoon. Oh, and eating a lot, in between.

I have much more to say, but unfortunately, it´s time to go back to the farm. I tried to upload more photos, and for some reason, it´s not working on this computer. I expect I´ll be back in town early next week, so hopefully, more then!

Maria, Maria

A week ago Saturday, Dagmar and I went to Maria´s house for what we thought would be lunch, but what turned out to be an afternoon of outdoor cooking and dinner with she and her family. It was an awesome afternoon. Maria is our "boss" in the garden. She´s a 32 year-old Bolivian woman who emigrated to Argentina with her four children and husband three years ago. Her sons often come with her to work, before going to school in the afternoon (I´m still not sure why they only go to school in the afternoon). Javier is 15, and loves riddles and listening to my iPod. Nelson is 8, and very smiley, despite his shyness. Nector is 9, energetic and playful. Maria´s daughter, Andrea, is 12, and until Saturday, we hadn´t met her.

We arrived around 2:30, after walking about twenty minutes using the directions Maria had given (without any street names or numbers--Maria and her husband don´t know the name of the street they live on). Knowing that Maria´s family had emigrated from Bolivia for work, and that her husband works at a nearby strawberry farm, while she works for about $15 a day at Eco Yoga Park, I had expected their home to be small and poor. which it was. What I didn´t expect, though, was the beautiful, fragrant orchards and gardens that surround her house. Maria´s family rents a house that is behind another house, owned by a man who lives in the city. He only comes by on Sundays, to check on the place. The property he owns, and that Maria´s family enjoys, is beautiful.

In addition to the fruit trees and flowers everywhere, Maria has a two vegetable gardens, plus a chicken yard with several chickens, for eggs and meat, and geese. After a tour of the property, Maria put Dagmar and I to work, cooking a feast for us to eat for dinner. One thing I love about Maria, is that she loves food. At least half of the conversations we have while working in the garden are about food. "What did you eat for breakfast this morning?" "What do you think we'll have for lunch today?" "Are there any chapatis leftover?" "What kind of cake do you like best, and how do you make it?" Since the first day I arrived, though, the dish that stood out among all others was lasagna. Dagmar and I both had described to her fifteen different ways to make lasagna, at least. I gathered that she had eaten it somewhere, or maybe just had heard of it, but had never made it before.

So, naturally, that´s what we made on Saturday at Maria´s house. Lasagna with a chicken/spinach/carrot tomato sauce and a soft cow's cheese that Andrea brought back from the neighbor´s dairy farm. Made pretty much without utensils (chicken shredded and sauce mixed by hand!) and baked, along with everything else, in the mud-and-brick outdoor oven. Along with this, pizzas with the same sauce and cheese, salad, rice, and cake. Dagmar and I left at dusk, stuffed and happy.

While visiting Maria´s home highlighted the many ways in which our lives are a world apart, it also helped me understand her a lot better. On Monday, when we saw each other again, I felt differently about her. Where I had once gotten frustrated with some of her habits, like never giving specific directions for the tasks she wanted us to do ("Go weed over there," she´d say, pointing vaguely. "Where?" I´d ask. "There! There!" she´d say, slightly more impatiently), now I would just tease her about it, and she, too, seemed much more at ease with me (Dagmar had left the previous day). Those hunger-inspiring conversations have continued, and though we may never cook lasagna together again, I can´t wait to make chicken lasagna again when I get home.

Staying in the now.

My current schedule allows a lot of time for thinking. Which is good, of course, but as I tend, like many, to think too much, I´d like to spend some of that time not thinking. One thing I´ve found myself thinking about is the time that lies ahead of me, and how I might possibly spend it. Will I find a farm I like and stay there for a few months? Will I decide to travel around the country after another month, and hop from Bariloche in Patagonia to Mendoza or Salta in the Northwest? Should I look into plane tickets to travel to other countries in South America?

Last night, Gustavo, one of the non-H.K. (Hare Krishna) residents of the finca, showed Dagmar and I a video of a speech given by Eckhart Tolle in Barcelona. The speech was in Spanish, but he spoke slowly and clearly, as he is a non-native speaker as well. I haven´t read his books, The Power of Now and A New World Now (I think), but they´ve been very popular in the US and elsewhere (both Dagmar and Gustavo had read one or both). His philosophy incorporates aspects of different religions, but much of his speech focused on living in the present, a la Buddhist philosophy. He makes it sound very simple: the past and the future don´t really exist except for in our memories and our thoughts. The only life we have is right now, this moment, so we should not obsess so much over what´s to come, and rather live each moment as it comes.

I´ve come to town today to see if I´ve gotten responses from the farms I emailed the other day. I think I know now where I´ll be headed in a couple of weeks, but I´m going to try my best not to think too much about it, and to focus instead on getting the most out of every day at Eco Yoga Park. Wish me luck.

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

So I´m on my fourth full day at "Eco Yoga Park," basically a Hare Krishna commune that takes volunteers and tourists to work on its farm and enjoy yoga and meditation. Where to begin? I arrived during the late afternoon on Thursday, just before yoga class, which was very relaxed. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not too difficult to follow in Spanish. Interestingly, though, the teachers here say everything in the first person, as in: "I inhale deeply, I exhale deeply...I put my left foot forward and bend my knee..." Also, they don't use pose names in Sanskrit or English.

There were eight of us volunteers here the day I arrived, but four left the next day, and another left the day after. Now there are three: Dagmar (female--pronounced 'Dalma') a 26 year-old Psychology student from Denmark, and Ben, a 20-year-old Bio-chem(?) student from New Jersey.

In the mornings, we have breakfast at 7:30, work from 8:30-1:00 (Dagmar and I in the garden, Ben with two men building a straw-bale cabin), lunch at 1:30, Yoga at 4:30, Snack afterwards, Dinner at 8:30. In between, our time is our own. We spend it reading, journal writing, and sharing observations and gossip we've picked up about the state of affairs at our host farm.

There are various Hare Krishna male and female monks, as well as lay people with varying degrees of devotion to Hare Krishna, who live at the farm, which they call "Nueva Vrindavan." They have services 5 times a day, which are not mandatory and which are signalled by blowing a conch shell several times. The female monks are young--women in their early twenties. The men are older, but most are fairly young as well. They spend their days cooking, praying, and taking turns at being our yoga teacher. We're not quite sure how they support themselves.

I had thought this stay would be an opportunity to cleanse myself--there's no alcohol or drugs allowed, and the Hare Krishna don't eat meat or eggs of any kind. Overall the food has been very good'-lots of vegetables and very colorful plates with salads, squash, beets, and fruit dishes. However, they seem to be quite fond of both sugar and salt, and portions are generous at all four of our meals--I may be lucky if I don't gain weight while I'm here!

My plan was to stay here for 3 or 4 weeks and then move on to a less spiritually-focussed organic farm, but I may make my departure earlier, and leave after two or two and a half weeks. Other volunteers have said that securing spots at WWOOF farms has been trickier than expected--this early in the season it's difficult for many small farms to take on extra bodies when they don't yet have a harvest. So, I've emailed all of the farms on the WWOOF list, and will hopefully be invited to at least one of them! If not, I may be chanting (yes, they really do chant "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.." over and over again, all the time) for a few more weeks. Don't worry, though, I'm pretty sure I won't be returning to the states wearing robes and smelling of incense.

PS I had hoped to upload a couple of videos, but it was taking forever. In the meantime, here are some photos for your viewing pleasure (sorry they´re not embedded!)

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahfbarnes/Argentina?feat=email#5392186269057936898

Por fin, Buenos Aires.

I've made it! After many, many months of anticipation, and 30+ hours of traveling, I'm finally in Buenos Aires (and trying to get the hang of the Spanish keyboard, so bear with me!). Travel included many legs, the first of which was from New Haven to Brooklyn, and was, ironically, the toughest. Actually, it was just the leaving home part that was hardest: saying goodbye to family (I was lucky enough to have my grandma, aunt, and uncle in town for lunch just before my departure) and cutting the cord from the house with the nervous hope that I hadn't forgotten anything. Turns out, I did, and I made my mom turn around and go back when we were 2 blocks away. Surprise, surprise!

Lovely dinner with my favorite girls in Brooklyn, and an early morning departure for JFK yesterday morning, and I was really off! I flew from JFK to Mexico City, hung out in the airport for 10 hours (slow, but not terrible), overnight flight from Mexico City to Santiago, and then two hours from Santiago to Buenos Aires. And finally, I'm here.

The weather is sunny and warm--it's probably in the upper 60s or low 70s. The city is tall and vibrant, at least in the Microcentro, where my hostel is located. The strangest thing about my trip so far is how incredibly calm I feel. Throughout the entire journey, and in contrast to how I'd been feeling in the weeks leading up to my departure, I've felt relaxed and at ease. My jaw didn't ache upon waking up from sleeping in awkward positions on the plane, and, despite this major abyss I've just stepped into, so far, I feel nothing but peace about it. We'll see if it lasts, but for now, I'm going to enjoy it while I can.

Nerves

So, anxiety has officially set in. I've been having strange dreams for about a week now, though they've mostly been unconnected to my trip. Just weird, unpleasant dreams from which I woke up with a sore back and a tight jaw. Not so bad once I woke up and realized I'm just anxious about this awesome thing I'm about to do. I'd say the dreams are worth it.