Life at the Rhiannon community

Hello all!
I am currently writing from a small interenet cafe in the town of Malchingui, Ecaudor. Malchingui is located about 15 minutes by cab from our farm, and myself and about 5 other volunteers called a cab today so that we could all use the internet and to buy some odds and ends. We arrived at the farm on March 15th, and have been meeting tons of wonderful people and enjoying ourselves thoroughly. Here at the farm there are 3 people from Oregon (2 from portland and one from corvallis) and some girls from maine and new mexico. Other volunteers are from all over the globe; Chile, Columbia, Australia, Germany, England, Canada and Austria to name a few. It is a wonderful mix of people, the only downside is that almost everyone at the farm speaks english, so this is generally the language of choice for communication. My Spanish is falling by the wayside, but hopefully it will get back on track when we hit the road again in a few days.

A typical day on the farm looks like this: At 7 am there is a community yoga class (several of which I have been teaching!) and then we have breakfast at 8:15. Then it is time for morning chores (generally, I feed the chickens and pigs, but other jobs include watering plants, cleaning up breakfast, and tiding the house)At 9:30 we are assigned our daily jobs, and we work for 4 hours with a half hour break in between. I have been doing a lot of different jobs, including planting, painting and building fences, and shoveling animal poo (fun fun), and Dave has been designated fix it man and has been doing little odds and ends fix jobs around the house for the majority of our time at the farm. We usually work in pairs or teams, so we have had a lot of time to get to know the other members of the community.
We have lunch at 2 pm (a different person is in charge of cooking each day) and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves to play music, go for a run, or read in the hammocks overlooking the mountains. We have no heat or electricity, so when it gets dark out we litter the house with candles,light the fireplace and chat or play music by candleight.

We also get 2 days a week off, so this week Dave and I took a bus to Quito and spent the day in Quito running errands and preparing for our hike around cotapaxi, which we plan to start 2 days after leaving the farm with another awesome volunteer we met named Emil. Before our side trip to Quito, however, I came down with my second bout of the stomach flu on this trip, the dreaded Rhiannon virus that apparently nearly everyone at the farm gets when they first arrive. Noone knows the origin of this unknown virus, but it results in a fever, horrible diarreah, and throwing up in the middle of the night. Awesome. Luckily, it only lasted 24 hours (largely due to everyones special remedies...such as coco tea and papaya seeds) and I was able to make the trek to Quito.

Tonight Dave and I will be doing a sweat lodge, also known as Temazcal with other members of the community. We perform the ritual in a mud hut, filled with hot rocks, which are doused with water to create a sort of steam room where we will all sit for about an hour (with breaks in between) as a way to cleanse our bodies of toxins. The secondary purpose for this Temazcal is to help prepare ourselves for San Pedro, a ritual which we will be partaking in this weekend with a Shaman who is coming to visit our farm. San Pedro is a South American medicinal plant that has been used for centuries to help cleanse the body and help provide guidance to those who are looking for purpose and direction. This ritual also requires fasting, which we will be doing all day tommorow in preparation for the ceremony on Friday evening.

Our next update will be after our 6 day trek around Cotapaxi, which we start on Monday and are navigating all by ourselves! (with maps and a compass, of course). Hope all is well with all those who are following our journey...we shall be in touch soon!

Hasta Luego,
-Robin(tweet tweet!)


Dave, weilding power tools and fixing the community sink. He´s psyched.


inspirational paintings abound


Tomas chilling during break time


Olivia and I attempting to relocate a fence post. At this point, it wasn´t going so well.


Helen´s birthday costume party at the farm


Dave and I with a beautiful evening sunset behind us:)


another view of the sunset


one of the many beautiful handpainted signs at the farm:)


riding donkeys


The super cool mosaic on our cobb oven!


Mikela and Olivia serve lunch:)


Hammocks at the farm (not occupied at the moment)