"What you build with your hands, you also build within yourself"

We are now beginning to get into the swing of things at our camp. The routine of our daily life has begun which consists of waking up around 7:00 a.m., breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and work until about 3:00 p.m. with a small break in between. The work we are doing varies daily because we are broken into groups to tackle separate jobs. What we have completed thus far: constructing a large plastic barrel compost bin for our organic waste, cleared the overgrown areas of the medicinal plant garden, cleared the field for the greenhouse, built the base and waste storage area for the latrine (we are using all materials from on site and moving wheelbarrows full of material to where the latrine will be built). It's very labor intensive, but seeing all the progress is very rewarding.

We divide into teams to handle the cooking duties also and we have cooked one entire day (everyone enjoyed our spaghetti) and we are going to cook again for everyone tomorrow (Faith's Americana tacos, her specialty). We also had a birthday within our group so Faith baked a pan of brownies to celebrate. We are enjoying the food everyone is preparing too, we eat all our meals outside on a table where the mountaintops surrounding us are visible from every direction.

We have all gone out as a group to the central part of San Cristobal and have stopped in several coffee shops and interesting hangouts in town. We were given a tour of the inside of the museum today and I was able to participate in a cleansing ceremony performed by Don Victorio, a local curandero (traditional healer). The ritual consisted of lighting rows of thin candles on the floor and him rubbing albaca plant on the saint figures that are in the sacred space created inside the museum. The bundle of plants was also waved over the lit candles (three rows of twelve, all different heights, all white) and then focusing on San Juan and going back and forth touching the blessed figure and myself on particular parts of my body. He was transferring the energy from the saint and himself onto me and distributed the blessings through contact with the bundle of the albaca plant. Afterwards an egg was cracked opened and dropped into a glass of water and examined, there were two visible imperfections that Don Victorio said were released from myself and into the egg. It was very interesting, it was similar to a ritual Faith and I witnessed at the Chamula church a few days back. At that ritual a juvenile male was being treated and a black rooster was rubbed on the affected individual, during the incantation and ritual the chicken was killed and placed down on the church floor. There are different uses of external elements to curing an individual and the rooster, egg, plants, and candles all play significant roles with channeling the energy to the individual receiving the treatment.

Speaking of roosters, our place is turning into a regular farm! We were given a large brownish rooster as a gift by a Natate staff member. We will keep you posted on what exactly will become of said chicken, buenas noches everyone!