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!