***Disclaimer*** The 10 Day Vipassana Silent Meditation Seminar was an amazing experience; although difficult both physically and mentally, I would recommend it to just about anyone. That being said…

IT HAS BEEN DONE! Ten days (actually nine days, ten hours and I believe two minutes and thirty-two seconds, but who is counting) of complete silence. Every day this included ten hours, 45 minutes of meditation time, a little less than an hour and a half for consciously eating, an hour and 45 minutes of listening to theory or asking questions, six hours of sleep (not counting what you do while you are supposed to be meditating), three and a half hours of “break” where you have absolutely nothing to do but say to yourself, “Ok what am I going to do now? I guess I will sit down and think.” In this time there was to be no communication of any type, head down, no eye contact. Guys and girls were completely separated on different areas of the compound and only saw each others feet in the meditation hall and in the evening discourse. No reading, writing, listening to anything, exercising, independent eating (sorry stomach), and no practicing other meditations or rituals (all snake handling and fire breathing were out). So all and all, quite a bit of time to get to get acquainted with the inside of my head. And you know what I found? My head is one crazy, messed up place!

Yes indeed, I would probably go see a professional, but I think I might cause him/her serious mental damage if I tried to explain even half of some of the things that popped into my head over the past 10 days. It is really too bad we were not able to write anything down over this time because if people would buy books of a combination of Walt Disney, Quinton Terintino, and Sinbad, I could probably have spit out ten of them without breaking a sweat. But now that the 10 days are over I am having a hard time remembering past “Ommmm” (which we didn’t and were not even aloud to use but is in my head right now). Actually this is not the exact truth, as I did scratch down some thoughts somewhere in the middle of the week that I wanted to remember, but apparently because I didn’t have much time, paper, and the fact that it was illegal, I must have decided to make what I wrote as short and cryptic as possible and have no clue what the hell it means. Some stuff like “Ahhhhh THE PAIN!!!, and Please! MAKE THE VOICES STOP!!” I understand. But when I see things that may be written in Swahili, which I don’t think I speak or code phases like “London bridges falling on cricket man” I am at a lost. With this being said, I am still going to try and describe our time of contemplation.

I guess I can start with the theory. According to S. N. Goenka, an enlightened spiritual leader in India, and our teacher along the Nobel Path (unfortunately only via a series of CDs and Mp3s), our mind is a dangerous wild elephant and it is our charge that throughout our many lives we are to tame this wild beast for the benefit of society on our path towards enlightenment. While I will admit that I have not agreed with absolutely 100% of what our digital guru has said, I do believe this is true. However, I believe that the elephant, he is speaking of is a nice calm Indian elephant that has lived in nature most of its life and with the exception of the occasional child trampling or blowing water through its trunk on people, it is a generally good elephant. Mine on the other hand, was stolen away from its home in a small zoo at an early age and sold to the circus where it was highly trained in the skills of juggling, tightrope walking, fire breathing, clown throwing and who knows what else. It then has escaped while the Ringling Brothers were doing a one night show in Manhattan, in the parking lot of the world’s largest expedition of crystal Christmas tree ornaments and other breakable things, sponsored by the peanut factory’s brand new product, “Caffeinated Crack Coated Caramelized Peanut Bars”. I don't know about your literary competence, but the above description is there to show a little foreshadowing of our ten day stint.

The elephant analogy was explained to us on the night of our first meditation. Each additional night more information was given to us concerning the techniques we learned that day, the story of Buddha, and the way of a disciple of Vipassana Meditation. On the third night it was explained to us that the previous day’s techniques had all been for the purpose of focusing our mental capacity. During these days 30+ hours of meditation had been spent concentrating on first our breathing, then the area of our breath around our nose, and finally narrowed down to one point of sensation around the entrance of the nostril of which I picked a single nose hair.

End of Part 1. Tune in later for Part 2. Nose Hair Contemplation

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.

GROW Initiative, on the move with projects underway

So almost three months after entering our first county in South America (Ecuador) we are still here. We have always said that moving slowly and working with the local people to improve their lives are the best parts of our traveling and our experiences here have proven that once again. Working through our non profit GROW we have been busy doing small projects from the mountains of Riobamba to the coast in Tabuga. This has taken many different shapes and forms throughout Central America and it is no different in Ecuador. In Riobamba we were helping with environmental education seminars at a university and an Earth Day of sorts with the participation of some 22 different primary schools in which we did out part by giving out trees for a reforestation initiative. In Tabuga we put on many different hats- from helping a new organic farm start up, contributing ideas, our machete skills, etc. to working on an Environmental Education Corner for a library being built, to chopping away to clear an area for a garden as a part of a “Happy Heart” nutrition program, to working with Bosque Seco Lalo Loor on their environmental education initiatives. Although we were able to contribute and had a great time in Tabuga, there were already a lot of other really great and motivated volunteers, mostly PCVs and RPCVs, doing good for the community and so we decided to move on. It was time to do another big GROW project somewhere that was not receiving much help, and that is what brought us to the community of Los Naranjos. It’s a Tsa’chila community, one of the indigenous groups of Ecuador. Of the eight Tsa’chila communities around Santo Domingo, Los Naranjos is the smallest and often most forgotten when it comes to outside aid. But with the help of a Peace Corps Volunteer named Clay who was working in the community until about a month ago, the community has the start of a burgeoning cultural tourism project. Unfortunately there are still some major hurdles to overcome before the program really gets going which is where GROW comes in.

The main part of the project is constructing a dry composting pit latrine. We’ve had lots of experience in using this type of baño, read a lot about them, seen plans, talked them up, but this is our first time building a complete one ourselves. And by ourselves, I mean the community is putting in the lion’s share of the work and we’re just there to prod it all along, teach where we can, bite our tongues where we can’t and buy the materials so they are the true owners of the project. It’s been great, and by this time next week we hope to be depositing our runny bellies (yep, still got that) where it will break down into sweet beautiful earth in about a year. (anyone who thinks that’s gross, travel with us for a couple of weeks and you will be throwing that flush toilet of yours out the window and installing one of these bad boys in you back yard for sure) To break out our more artistic, hippy back to nature side we are attempting to make a cool open-air shower, and bamboo hand washing station that will benefit their tourism project while educating the community on better more environmentally friendly bathroom alternative. We are also working with the community on turning the completely non-functional bathrooms of the school into something they can use as well as fixing the bathrooms and sinks in the medical center while teaching them how to do it themselves in the future if things break or go bad again (who ever thought all those years at Ga. Tech and William and Mary would lead us to becoming plumbers). Hopefully the sustainability aspects of this project will really pan out, and in any case the compost of the toilet will be the gift that keeps on giving, as long as people continue to use the shittero (I think that is Spanish).

Besides all that, living with the community has been great, especially for our football skills (no, we’re not throwing a pig skin around down here, football is with your foot, aka soccer which we play almost every night), and expanded our culinary habits into eating really gross bugs. You know, the kind who's maggots are about 2.5 inches long, the larvae look like they’re from Mars and you think the adult beetles might be able to snap your finger off if given the chance. When you squeeze the insides out they’re kinda buttery (Yum!), would not recommend it. And if muddling through conversations in Spanish were not enough for us, here their first language is Tsa’fiki, though our brains are rather full and I think all I’ve learned is how to say hello, thank you and delicious (had to complement the bugs after all).

Ecuadorian Family and Food Extravaganza!!

We have been eating our way through Ecuador with the help of our new adopted family Veronica and her mother Sara. Another great Couch Surfing experience led us to these wonderful people in Guayaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador; and if it weren’t for their amazing hospitality and through them the meeting so many wonderful people, our first taste of Ecuador would have been completely different. And by taste, I mean we’ve tasted way more stuff here than I think I have in my whole life. The food culture in Ecuador is great, with certain regional specialties, and Veronica and her mother insisted we try every single one. That includes salchicha, which is any and every part of all different animals you would never want to eat- stomach, intestines, stomach, organs… the overall taste of the soup, good; the “meat”… not my cup of tea I have decided. Peanut butter lovers that we are, we were excited to find peanut butter everywhere, but they are not so boring as to only put it on bread, here they cook with it and make some amazing dishes. Here are some of the things we scoured cities for or had put in front of us by our wonderful host, in no particular order, certainly not by preference if you can tell by the first one.

• Salchicha – still not quite sure. A soup with a lot of unidentifiable animal parts
• Bolon – a delicious ball of mashed green plantains and cheese
• Humita – a sweet ground maiz (corn) mixed with cheese and boiled in a corn husk
• Carne de seco – All about the sauce, throw in the meat and your golden
• Encebollado – A scrumptious fish soup
• New fruits like tomate de arbol, taxo, uvilla, pepino dulce
• Congrejo – Crabs (Yum!)
• Bollo – peanut butter (not sweet), fish, green plantains, deliciousness
• Cazuela - like bollo but a soup (possibly our favorite)
• Pan de yucca – tasty bread made from yucca
• Hornado – whole roast pig with mote (corn thingies)
• Twenty different homemade ice creams from fresh fruit
• Llapingacho – Fried mashed cheese potato stuff (yes!)
• Locro – Awesome potato, corn, and avocado soup
• Guatita – sheep’s stomach and potatoes with a peanutty sauce (enough said)
• Quimbolito – cake like substance in a banana leaf
• Trucha – typical trout plate
• Dulce de higo – dates in a sugary sauce with cheese (that's right, cheese)
• Polo Seco – Same incredible sauce, different meat
• Yaguarlocro – take locro and add dried blood and sausage (umm….yeah)
• Menestra – a really good legume (usually lentils) stew
• Alfenique – a mix between taffy and a rock
• Fajitas- well, not an Ecuadorian classic (we actually made this one) but with their fresh vegetables- ricissimo!

Now if you can match the food with the pictures in the collage, you win a culinary tour through Ecuador, good luck!

130 little adorable hellions Vs 7 Foreign Volunteers

So in this corner! Seven ideological, helpful, hopeful, enthusiastic, bright-eyed volunteers, covering the world from the US to the UK to Australia, with varying degrees of Spanish speaking abilities (“what does nada mean?” to understanding their swear words), varying degrees of teaching experience (“not so much teaching, but I’ve been in a classroom before?” to “the trick is to never let the kids see the fear in your eyes”),

In the other corner… 130+ adorable, innocent, 3 1/2 – 15 year old Galapagarians with varying English speaking abilities (from the complete blank stare to correcting our English)

The venue – Three open classrooms and a community playground in San Cristobal, Galapagos

LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!

It was the kids that came out swinging making use of their home court advantage and the kindness of the volunteers to multiply their numbers from what was supposed to be four groups of 15 students each (5-6 years old, 7-8 years old, 9-10 years old and 11 and up) to an overwhelming 30+ students in each class. The sly youths also snuck in 3 ½ to 4 year olds with their parents claiming they were older. Not being old enough to know how to lie like their parents they were later caught, however it was too late, they had already joined the fight, and damn it they were too adorable to throw out.

It was also the 3-5 year olds that used their supposed innocence and their youth to deal some rather devastating early blows. In the classrooms they were uncontrollable and in the sports class even worse. It was here that during a perceivably well thought out game of duck, duck, goose that one of the cuter children snuck out a carelessly left open door. When Donny went chasing after the 4 year old the rest of the class used the “rope a dope” technique to split in to two groups and head out the other open doors. The other usually very competent volunteer (the wonder from down under (Australia)) was powerless to stop them. They made their way out to the playground (looked like more of a training area for American Gladiators) and started climbing on anything and everything over 10 feet high. One of the children Donny had to chase two blocks away and physically drag the child back to the school. The first two rounds (day 1 and 2) definitely went to the children.

However, by round three the experience and determination of the volunteers started to pay off. They used oldschool techniques that the children had never seen before; like making learning fun, lots of total participation activities, and tons of attention grabbing visuals. By Thursday the volunteers even got some extra backup, two new volunteers from England, and a projector which Brooke skillfully used to trick the kids into learning how important it is (especially in the Galapagos) to protect our environment. The fight was definitely taking a turn in the volunteers favor. On Friday the venue moved to a local beach were the volunteers organized a very successful trash pickup on the way to the beach (10 garbage bags in total), but the later part of the round switched sides again as the volunteers desperately tried to control the kids as children escaped the ever fragile Duck, Duck, Goose circle and stampeded for the ocean. All the volunteers could do was frantically continue their headcounts making sure no one was going under or being taken away by the circling sea lions. In the end I think everyone was accounted for and I know everyone had fun.

Friday was technically the end of the fight for Donny and Brooke. This was a good thing as we now have heard the children have organized a last ditch effort, bringing water balloons, paint, and shaving cream to class on Monday in celebration of Carnival / Galapagos week. When we visited the school the volunteers were covered in paint and soaked head to toe. The battle that is supposed to last for six weeks is still anyone’s fight.

Good luck, volunteers, you’ll need it.

An Outside Commentary: While this blog was written mostly in jest, the importance of this education should not be missed. Here in the Galapagos, possibly more than any other place in the world, it is critical that the youth understand the impact of their environmental footprint and learn to care for and preserve their islands as models for the rest of the world. We, with the GROW Initiative, have been fortunate enough to play a small part in making this a reality. Please see our GROW Initiative website for more information on this project.

We’re engaged!!!

So I was psyched, we were going on a snorkeling trip I had been looking forward to for a long time- a gift for our anniversary from Donny. When we got to the dive shop they started getting us our snorkel equipment- you know, mask, snorkel, fins and a wet suit, BCD and weights… Donny kept looking at me kind of funny, asking if there was anything strange about all this. I rationalized that it’s cold so you need a wetsuit, the BCD was like a life vest, need weights to be able to free dive a little… As he kept prompting me for the happy, excited response he had been looking forward to, he finally had to come out and say, rather slowly and very enunciated to make sure I still couldn’t be confused, “Brooke, we are going diving.” Donny really outdid himself. Generally (and sadly) diving is usually out of our budget and I would have never signed us up for a trip, but that’s what presents are for I guess, things you would never get for yourself and I was thrilled! We were going diving, and in the Galapagos of all places! He got his happy, surprised look on my face and I couldn’t wipe the smile away for so long my cheeks hurt by the time it came to put the regulator in my mouth.

But the real climax came when we were underwater, about 60 feet down, sharks swimming to both sides of us. The whole group had just stopped to look up at the school of spotted eagle rays and sharks passing overhead, then as they continued on we hung back and Donny called me over to check out something. Turns out that something was a beautiful little clam shell with some gold ribbon coming out of it. Now apparently something along the lines of my gently opening the shell that was so carefully selected was supposed to be what happened. But when I saw the shell and ribbon I got an inkling as to what was going on and in my excitement ripped the shell in half looking to see what was inside (I’ve been waiting 3 years, I was a little anxious!) I saw the ring- a dolphin with a stone, which is just perfect though Donny calls it more of a symbolic ring- not like there’s a whole heap of jewelry store selections when you’re shopping on a small island. According to his story it came free with a purchase of a fish from a guy on the street. But it is beautiful and in true over exaggerated divemaster style he signed what I’ve been waiting to hear, but it’s hard to talk underwater so though I didn’t hear the words the point was certainly gotten across and I’m pretty sure he understood my enthusiastic YESSSSS!!! The rest of the dive I tried to pay attention to the cool sharks and turtles and such we were diving with so as to not miss out on the amazing experience of diving in the Galapagos, but mostly we just were looking at each other and smiling despite having our regulators in, hence letting in some waters and choking a bit…

When we finally rose to the surface he put it all into words and asked again. This was good because I really wanted to make sure there wasn’t any confusion and maybe we just found a dropped ring that happened to fall in a clams mouth with a ribbon and Donny wasn’t asking me to marry him, but just pointing a cool turtle or telling me he was running out of air or something. Once again my answer was an overwhelming YES! Back aboard the boat everyone helped us celebrate with the champagne Donny had bought for the occasion (guess he felt pretty sure of a yes answer).

Definitely the best scuba diving experience of my life. The sharks, turtles, swarms of fish of all shapes colors and sizes, and everything else there was to see were all fantastic, but all I was really looking at was the love of my life.

Galapagos Islands!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well we’ve been here nearly a month now, guess it’s about time to sit down and write a blog about the most beautiful and amazing place on earth!!! Well, there’s steep competition for sure, but the Galapagos are so wonderful, it’s no wonder their other name is the Enchanted Islands. Everything I’ve ever dreamed about the Galapagos is true. Wildlife abounds and it becomes commonplace to be hanging out with sea lions and sea turtles, with countless sea birds like frigates and pelicans soaring above your head. It’s a nature lover’s dream.

This is certainly a place where the pictures say it way better than we ever could- being just feet away from the wildlife or sometimes even closer (too close). Like the time we were snorkeling in one of the crystal clear little bays here and a baby sea lion came up to us, turned on its back and started blowing bubbles as it circled around us. This was the cutest thing we had ever seen until 500lb daddy sea lion decided to join in the fun. Unfortunately he was not as cute as his little baby and his idea of fun was swimming at lighting bolt speed directly toward Donny’s face only to pull up inches away and then start circling around for another run. Luckily we were underwater so no need to run home for a change of boxers but we still made it out of the water pretty quickly. I guess even in the ocean there are lines in sand you don’t want to cross. The list of the wildlife we have seen goes on and on and each encounter seems even more amazing than the last. We’ve taken about a thousand (no exaggeration) photos to remember it all by with every turtle, iguana, penguin, ect, having the slightest different stance or expression (“but it's the cutest thing ever!”) making it impossible to delete the photo.

The Galapagos are certainly a place you never forget and we feel so fortunate to have been able to see the islands in all their glory. Of the 13 main islands, we have seen 3- San Cristobal, Santa Cruz and Isabela. They are all beautiful and completely unique and I only wish we could have seen more. Sadly cruises around to the other islands are quite out of the backpacker budget making us settle for an absolutely amazing, fantastic, incredible, stupendous time on the islands we were able to see! Most of this time has been on San Cristobal, the capital of the Galapagos. Here we have been able to really get to know many of great people (and sea lions, as they outnumber the people) that call the Galapagos their home. Through the GROW Initiative we have also been able to volunteer, teaching at a school for over a week which is truly the way to realize how special a place a place can be. So as we said before check out the pictures and see for yourself. The Galapagos is truly an amazing place!

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