Let the New Year Begin!

The new year started out for us with a bath of purification in the river outside of where we had been living some 3 weeks at 4:30am, had to be before 5 so you beat the frogs. Otherwise it would be bad luck, bad health and everything else bad for the upcoming year. Glad we made it out of bed to get the good health, wealth and happiness coming our way (though I don't know where that wealth will come from unless we win the lotto without getting a ticket!)

Also for starting out the new year, we finished one of our favorite projects to date with some of the best people we’ve gotten to work with. The bathroom is finished (yay!!!) and our time in Los Naranjos was wonderful. We also linked up in Quito, Ecuador with our good friend from Jamaica, Lauren, who we tramped around the city with trying every new food we could get our hands on. Sorry stomach!

To start the new year off right spiritually, we have enrolled in a 10 day Vipassana silent meditation seminar. If we can’t open our mouths for 10 days or communicate in any way, be it hand gestures, giving someone the eye, acting out your favorite scenes from Arrested Development, etc. I guess putting up new blogs will be off the list as well. Trying to have a spiritual focus to our journey as well as that of volunteering and projects, we now find ourselves in Lima, Peru getting ready for what will probably be the hardest thing I have ever done. Not only no speaking, but there will be some 10 hours of meditation every day, about an hour at a pop. That’s an hour sitting in the tropics without moving an inch. Don’t swat those mosquitoes swarming your ears, ignore the aching cramp in your leg, leave that sweat running down your neck alone, just sit. Focus on breathing.

Wish us luck, grab a beer and talk all about how crazy we are, you can take our word allotments for the week and yes, we know we must be crazy.