hey everybody,
i´m here in spain still, at a place called el xop, which is catalan for the poplar. I am just outside of Lleida, a city in Catalonia, living with a family, Xavier, Nuria, and their 17-year-old son, Albert. I am learning so much Spanish, being here, where they speak Spanish almost all the time. Of course, it is still hard for me to understand sometimes, and very hard to speak in Spanish. It takes me about 5 minutes to say a couple sentences, and probably an hour to tell a story. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but let´s just say, i end up starting a lot of sentences in spanish, and finishing them in english. This is okay when i´m talking to the 2 other wwoofers, one who is from Australia, and the other who is from France. But if i´m talking to the family, i have to try to say it all in spanish. So, it is challenging, but good. i really like it here.
This weekend, a bunch of other wwoofers and friends came to the el xop for an exhibition by one of the wwoofers. She was showing parts of her journals from her wwoofing/travelling experiences and a bicycle trip from germany to northern spain. It was a lot of fun, fiesta, music, dancing, eating...and her drawings are really nice. This is what i really love about travelling, you meet so many people, especially other travellers, and exchange so many great ideas and experiences with each other. I am meeting people from Germany, France, Holland, Quebec, Brazil, Australia, and of course Spain, oh, and even a woman who grew up in Boulder, even though she´s been living in Puerto Rico for the last 8 years. I love it.
So, other than partying, i´ve been working pretty hard too, weeding, raking leaves, other garden work, and laying down stones for a patio. We are also working on this pyramid project. They found this pyramid, saw it on the side of the highway, and found out whose it was, and they said they could have it. So they are going to put this pyramid, 6 meters by 6 meters on the edge of the garden. It is going to teach people about sustainable sources of energy. Now, i´m not exactly sure how. This is part of the problem with not really speaking the language of the people i´m working with. Anyway, i´m sure it will be wonderful, and right now, we are just working on preparing the ground where it is going to be put, digging a hole, and moving plants, etc.... I hope before i leave, i will be able to learn how to make soap too, since this is something they like to do here.
A few days ago, Nuria´s aunt got lost. This is a very old place, and she is the last one of the original family that lived here who is alive. It was a little scary, but in the end we found her, but i wrote a little something about it because the whole situation was quite surreal.

Oh(de to) Lola!
Where did you go?
You were sweeping only a few minutes ago.
Now we are calling and maybe you hear.
But you don´t care.
You have somewhere to be.
Maybe you told us yesterday at lunch,
you were planning a holiday.
But nobody listened, said
"oh Lola, she just talks:
habla bla bla bla"
Everyone is worried
searching searching searching
the neighbors were all here.
the police and their dogs.
Even a helicopter deployed from Barcelona.
You were in the newspaper.
Lost woman. 88 years old.
Almost 24 hours you were gone.
We all knew everything would be fine,
but then it started to get dark, cold...
But we still thought everything would probably be okay.
I thought, but i wanted to take a picture of you,
with the parrot on your shoulder,
puppies at your feet.
I dreamt they found you,
sitting under a tree.
In the morning, someone found you
with dirt all over,
talking your talk.
You were fine, of course.
And now you´re back sweeping.
sweeping and talking and laughing.
You just went for a walk.
No pasa nada.


So, i don´t know where i´m going next yet, but i´ll be at el xop until at least the end of the week.
I love you guys, and feel free to comment, even just to say hi, just so i know people are reading this thing. Love you all...

HOLA!!!
yes, i´ve made it to spain, and i´m quite happy about this. i got here just last night.
hmmm...i haven´t written since i left la cite des insectes, so let me tell you about la sorga, and my short time there. my hosts from the first place gave me a ride. on the way, we stopped at lascaux, which is a prehistoric site with cave paintings. it was pretty cool, and you couldn´t even tell that it was a replica of the real thing. La Sorga, which means the source in a dialect of French, is by the Dordogne River, which is a really beautiful area. It looked like a perfect river for canoeing on, but alas, as has been my fate until now, i could not find anyone to go on a boat with me and row, row, row, gently down the stream... Foie gras is really popular in this area. It has something to do with geese and fattening them up a lot, but supposedly it´s really good.

At La Sorga, only 2 of the members were there, Liam and Aymeric. The others were all off on vacation, or living somewhere else for the winter, or studying in another country. Even Aymeric left after a week to go work in Algeria, leaving Liam, and another wwoofer and i there. Oh, and there are even more kitties at this place, 8 or 9 i think, and three of them blind. Even though i was only there for a week and a half, the place changed a lot while i was there. They built an extension onto the caravan, where the kitchen and main communal area are, making it twice as big.
I helped a little with the extension, mostly just putting up insulation. I also did some work in the gardens, and collected some walnuts and huge squashes. I did a lot of cleaning too. and wood collecting, moving, and storing.
They all have their own separate houses built out in the woods...yurts and houses built from wood and lime/straw. They have built the foundation for a main living space that is going to be quite big compared to the caravan, and it´s going to built with straw bales. I would really love to go back there in the spring or summer because there are a lot more people there, and kids running around, and abundant gardens.
Again, i didn´t have to worry about not speaking french because Aymeric spoke really good english, and Liam is from England, so only when some other friends came over occasionally did i have to sit there and try to figure out what was going on. I was getting quite good at participating in conversations without knowing what´s being said. I just had to make sure sometimes that they weren´t laughing at me. They said they weren´t.


So La Sorga was cool, but it was cold, and not Spain, so i decided to leave yesterday. I hitchhiked from Le Muscle, France to Figueres, Spain. Oh, and they don´t call it hitchhiking here, they call it autostop. So i got a ride from La Sorga to the bottom of the hill from a woman and her daughter. Then a guy from Belgium, who is a roofmaker, gave me a ride to Sarlat. Then, Fred, a truck driver drove me to Cahors. He didn´t speak much english, so it was a little hard to talk, but we did anyway. Then a guy who looked like he could have gone to Naropa picked me up and took me to the motorway to get a better ride. Another truckdriver took me to Toulouse, and he didn´t speak English at all. We spent a lot of time looking at the map and pointing and smiling and saying things that the other didn´t understand...then my last ride, another truckdriver, Julio from Barcelona, took me all the way to the campground in Figueres. He spoke pretty good English, and even bought me some coffee and potato chips at the gas station. I was actually amazed at how easy the day went. I never waited more than 5 minutes for a ride, and made it to Spain before dark, so that when i was rigging up my little tent out of tarp and rope and sticks, i could do it in the light.

today, i am going to the Salvador Dali museum here in Figueres, and then maybe taking a train or bus to Lleida, which is a little bit west of Barcelona, to go to my next wwoof farm, el xop.

hasta luego

So, my two weeks is almost over here. My hosts have been gracious enough to offer me a ride to the next place i will be wwoofing at since it is only an hour or so away. 2 weeks has seemed to go by quickly, but i also felt at home very quickly too, and it is a little sad for me to be leaving.
As far as my work here goes, i have been mostly working in the gardens. I rescued an apple tree from honeysuckle vine, which is quite strong, and blackberry brambles, which are quite thorny. Before i started this job, i had no idea there was even an apple tree in there. Other than the biting and scratching of the blackberry, i have been really enjoying this work. I get to climb trees, be outside, see the beautiful view whenever i want, hear the birds singing.... sometimes it is so quiet here that if i open the window, i can hear the cows chewing their grass. i also get a lot of time to ponder how silly we humans are. We create so much work for ourselves when we decide we want to control nature. We like some plants, we don't like others. We want to save some plants by killing others. I'm not saying we should just let the invasive plants take over our gardens. These are just the thoughts that i have when i spend hours at war in the garden. The only reason it was so bad though is because the people who owned the place before Jim and Regine haven't been working on it. They only bought this place last March.
Since it is a holiday in France, i think mostly just for the kids (they get a week off from school), the museum was open on Wednesday. It was really nice to see it open, and people visiting. Because of the holiday, one of Regine's friends from Paris, came with three children on Monday, and are here until Friday. It's been really interesting these past few days, sitting around the dinner table with 6 people, who are all speaking French, when i have no idea what's going on. I still find myself laughing though because I'm realizing words aren't actually that important when it comes to communication, at least in this context.
On Sunday, Jim and Regine and I went on a little day trip around the region. We drove through all of these small villages, where all the buildings are made of stone, and there's only one restaurant and one general store. We went to this one place with a bridge, which i have a picture of, and went for a walk, finding bugs and mushrooms everywhere. While we were driving, we came to a big flock? herd? yes herd of sheep. We got out and they were all baaaaaing at us, the lambs too. It was great! There were at least 50 of them. At the end of the day, we went to this really cool bar with local artwork and a shop, and they have live music there too sometimes. It kinda reminded me of Boulder. It made me wish i could speak French.




















Anyway.... i'm trying to figure out how to put captions on my pictures, but until then, you'll just have to figure it out for yourselves.
OH! I forgot. So Halloween. We didn't really get all dressed up, but i showed them how to make a jack-o-lantern, and we made one. I have a picture of that. And we had a music night. They have a million instruments: xylophone, drums, harmonica, guitar, violin, shakers, and lots of other cool noise makers. Plus Jim was on the computer playing with the sounds that people made into the microphone. So with 7 people and "a million" instruments, you can have a lot of fun. So, even though Halloween is not a big thing in France, we had a good one anyway. Jim told me that there's an organization in France that is trying to keep Halloween out of France because it is too American. I guess i can see that, maybe...but i like it.



If you want to check out the website, it's www.lacitedesinsectes.com

I love you all!