The past few days have been interesting, hilarious, ironic and beautiful. I sort of don't know where to begin and since I am typing on a Português computer, everything is underlined red and I keep hitting wrong letters like "ç" and such.
We arrived one week ago here at Quinta do Sol, home of escola do riso (school of laughter) and right at the very beginning of their laughter yoga retreat. There were about 10 extra people, other then the family of four and their one wwoofer, Dandera- who was an awesome Brazilian girl! and GiGI, a fourteen year old who was inspired by the Anastasia books and came to help out and spend some time here. It was quite the four days! We participated the first day in the meditation and laughter yoga and had a blast, or something of the sort. It was rather strange cracking up in strangers faces or while touching elbows...or necks...or bums. Never tried anything like that before. What really made me lose it was when we were all laying on the floor with our heads in a circle, laughing ass off, and I realized, "wow, I'm in Portugal right now, laughing like there's no tomorrah, with complete strangers, I must be doing something right!" We also got to eat really amazing food those days thanks to Paula who was hired to cook for the retreaters. She was an older Português woman who had a big quinta, whos entire family played in a reggae band, total sweetheart.
In midst of all of this excitement we would have a siesta at a river! We visited 4 different rivers and they were all really beautiful and the best one was luckily placed on my birthday, which was the last day of the retreat. It was a glorious waterfall! I couldn't have asked for anything better! We had about a 15 minute hike to walk up the mountain that was really intense and fun to wind around. I gathered up the courage to swim out and under the waterfall, with the support of Meem and felt really refreshed and cleansed. It was a really beautiful day for the long awaited 22.
The past couple days have been been a bit calmer, but not too much since we still always have about 10 people at the lunch table. We get up every morning at 6:30 and work from 7 to 11, before it gets too hot and we head to the river, then work for another hour or two when we get back in the evening. The first day we did lots of watering, some harvesting, some planting and a little weeding. It went by pretty fast and easy.
Today was a bit more challenging. We had to break apart a huge mound of wood, branches, broken furniture and who knows what, all tied together with massive brambles and tons of thorns. It got the best of me for some time due to the mosquitos and super frequent thorn stabbings. I even had to take a short intermission on the trampoline, jeeezzzz. Mimi was rockin' some hardcore to keep her head straight. Luckily it was only 4 hours of that, so it didn't drag out too long.
So that's a lot of the story here at quinta do sol so far. We eat mostly salad, laugh at the intricacies of people's personalities, wonder how a kingly 4 year old runs his own show and always manage to leave time to bask in the sun.
Pretty much where ever we are, we learn to make the best of it and that works really well for us. We're feeling really lucky to be here sharing these experiences and learning a ton in the process.
I wish I could record all the hilarity and even the frustrations but it all just comes and goes as it pleases and thats juss' fine :)
namaste and love to all the moments!
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