decembre

december is here! this morning i work up with the sun (6:30) to scoot a friend to work (because he was loaning his car to another friend). the air was crisp but the sun was hot! i came back to my house and attempted to head to the beach but the sand was too hot so i compromised for a pool side morning at my neighbors. they were not home so i had a long solo swim and helped myself to their star fruits and mango fruits! i had a nice long hammock lay and dove into a new book, Ou es-tu? by the french author Marc Levy. It is about a girl about my age who leaves home for the peace corps and the story is told through the letters she wrote, mostly to her boyfriend in New York. It is hitting awfully close to home right now..........

but i feel healthy! and happy! last night i had some friends over for dinner. we cooked a vegi feast and pulled the dinner table outside to dine under the stars.

it has never felt less like december. and the photos of christmas trees and things on facebook are truly disorienting. so here are some more photos from the carbet trip to balance it out.

la pleine lune

tonight we have the third full moon that i have experienced in this country! but we cant count the months the same as full moons. we had one right when we arrived so its just coming up to two months. time is flying! its making me anxious. ella and i have already been talking about making this a two year trip. because with the program were doing, we have the option to stay another year as an assistant. although a lot of the people that stay become a real teacher the second year and i dont know yet if that is something im ready for. im pretty sure i will keep traveling after this. this experience has already had a profound impact on my future plans. the way people live here is just so different. there is such a different pace to things and such a different set of priorities. so like, in the afternoon from around 1:30 to 3:30 or 4:00 everything closes. everyone goes home and has a great big lunch with their family and then they take a nap in the hammock. or in their bed. and then they go back to work for a little while...then they come home and do other things. and they love to get together. these people are always having lunch parties and dinner parties and birthday parties and full moon parties! we went to a full moon party last night at this rad little house that was snuggled into the hill, surrounded by jungle. everyone we met there studied the environment, bugs or trees or water or plants. we all drank rum and talked about the full moon and about everything else under the sun.

today i hung with ella and we had a long walk through the jungle and then a long swim in the sea. then we made a fruit feast of all the fruits we could get our hands on: pineapple, mango, star fruit, chadek, apple, bananas, dragon heart. then we cooked a big dinner for milot and rasta and ourselves. ella is vegetarian also. she doesnt eat fish or anything. rasta eats fish but...as he is rasta...no meat. so since we were cooking at ellas we made all vegis. it was great! so we stuffed our bellies and then went to the sea for a digestive swim. a soul cleansing swim. un bain de minuit!

im really having a great time here! one thing is though...the rainy season has begun. i want to talk more about this later but i do want to say right away that the mosquitos are no joke in the rainy season. they are numerous and they are ravenous. they are always stealth but they pack much more punch in their sting lately. ive got to figure out how to cope with them. but you know...to balance it out the fruit has been bigger-juicier-sweeter-brighter-bountiful-er. there is this tree in ellas yard called...well i dont know what the tree is called but the fruit is called pomme rose. did i already write about this? they are like...man i dont even know how to describe them. shaped KIND of like a strawberry but grows the other way around and its pink and when it rains a lot they are REALLY pink and they taste...almost a little like a vegetable. which is weird. but they are really mildly sweet and super crisp. ill take a photo for next time.

oh yeah-i have some photos from the camping trip last weekend. so rad. we pitched a hammock in the carbet and took off into the jungle for a waterfall. we sat in the little pool below the waterfall and drank some rum and let the night fall. we (izzy, liam and i) walked back with the lights of the headlamps of the prepared ones (rasta, greg, cyril). we cooked a fish feast on the grill and drank some more rum. everyone slept well to the sounds of the jungle. mostly the bull frogs that were croaking all night long. we made a trip to the waterfall in the daylight where we used this leaf we gathered on the way there to make some jungle soap. we crushed it up and mixed it with some water and bathed ourselves in the waterfall. wonderful afternoon. so here are some pics of that.

flowers!

shampoo!

hammocks!

paradise!

culture shock

i am already anticipating how difficult the return home will be. the culture here is so comfortable and so friendly. you know french guys, even rhastas, are super polite. like when they enter a party no matter how many people there are they go around and shake every mans hand and kiss every girls cheeks. and they take real interest in remembering peoples names and inviting them into the conversation and asking their opinion. last night i went with my rhasta friend to have a feast at his friends house. maybe its because im still new here but i still get really excited about where everyone comes from and what everyone is doing. there were i think...15 or so of us last night and only two or three overlapped in nationality. there were three from french guiana but greg, the son of two metropolitans, a young woman of chinese parents and a young woman of amerindian parents certainly had different enough upbringings that they could have been from different planets. there was a girl from mexico from one of the border cities in the north which is, as her husband joked, the most dangerous city in the world right now. with the mix of english and french that he speaks and the spanish and english that she speaks, their son is bound to be trilingual. the others were from martinique, guadeloupe, france, suriname, england, america...etc. incredible! this group in particular had no problem getting right into you know...the meaning of life and the relationship humans have with nature and the end of the world. we ate a vegi feast (everyone here considers fish part of a vegi diet) of river fish, couscous, a kind of tofu-chili, and rice and we drank wine and chatted until the wee hours of the night.

today i am preparing for a trip to the jungle. im going with one american friend, one english friend (other assistants) and the rhasta and his friends to take a boat down the river towards brazil to a carbet which is like a little hut in the jungle where you hang your hammock to sleep. the men warned me that it will be cold so to bring extra clothing...though their idea of cold is any temperature where you are not actively sweating.

MOM i finally received a package from you! it was the second one you sent me. which came just in time. i have totally worn out my one swimsuit. and the english literature is greatly appreciated. especially the magazine about michigan! there was a really nice interview with seth bernard and may erlewine which was really nice to read. between that and the photos and fall recipes i am feeling a bit nostalgic today. but my time here is just beginning. im feeling like i really have some good friends here and that is invaluable. im keeping busy...sometimes too busy. but its good. its distracting. i feel stimulated again. alive-awake-aware again. today we will jump from a bridge into the river which as i have learned from experience is a great way to refresh.

so ill think of you all when i jump and hopefully i will have a good story or two to share for the next post

a plus
bisous

mango rum sorbet

im making sorbet with mangos from my neighbors yard, rum from martinique (from a friends distillery!), and local sugar and local limes! im having lunch with the man i live with and his friends. they are total carnivores so theres no telling whats on the menu...at least there will be dreamy mango dessert! and tonight my neighbor is having a birthday party so i will go to that with some friends and then were going out dancing with the haitians! 

i think i got stung by a jelly fish because i have a huge (palm sized) lump on my flank and it itches really really bad. according to rhasta man there is nothing to worry about and it will go away. but its pretty distracting. 

its another beautiful day in this tropical southern land! i am thinking of you all...i am sending warmth. i will face north on the beach while i do my morning yoga! 

heres the recipe for the mango sorbet:

Ingredients:

2 large or three medium ripe mangoes

2/3 c. sugar (less if mangoes are very sweet)

2/3 c. water

3 TBSP citrus juice (calls for lime; I used orange pineapple)

3 TBSP dark rum

pinch salt

Directions:

1. Cube the mangoes and place in food processor or blender.

2. Add sugar, water, citrus juice, rum and salt. Try to squeeze out all the pulp and juice from the pits.

3. Purée the ingredients until smooth. Taste, then add more lime juice or rum until satisfied.

4. Chill the mixture throughly in the fridge for at least two hours, then pour into your ice-cream machine and let it churn and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

5. Pour out the slushy sorbet into a container and freeze for at least a few hours.

love love love

kayla