The year that started silently

After having had January, which I was able to spend in near silence in Finland, hearing rarely a sound: February was tough. No work. Self-employment really can be rough. In March I found some German Language students and made enough to survive. April and May lay ahead and I had thought about visiting Finland as well as Germany for a short visit each, but the bomb explosions in Brussels felt just too close to home. Brussels, that lovely friendly airport! Hard to imagine who would want to harm people there.

Considering that finances are tight I will take the safe option and stay at home, focusing on work instead, on teaching German and Yoga, drawing and preparing a few Fine Art project ideas: ready to strike once I reach San Francisco. Yes California ! I'm coming home... to quote Joni Mitchell!

In June we return to the Richmond area of San Francisco, the very end of the peninsula, where only fog horns sound periodically and aside from that there is barely a sound. What a lovely opportunity to be able to come back!

But we managed to plan ahead even more! January & February will most likely see us returning to Thailand! Maybe even India, but probably just Thailand as travel is hard to afford and we are both keen to learn Thai this time.. I am very excited to be able to see my Thai Massage teachers again, further my education, add some new tricks to my repertoire.. Well and I haven't yet told anybody else, but here you can have a secret:

I am working on ideas to propose to some universities for an art research project / teaching curriculum ...  shhhh (the cat is still int he bag for now)

Sometimes it's the little things that make the day good..

It's a good day when after a seriously sleep-disrupted night I find that the market vendor left the seeds in the jackfruit. Finally! I've been trying to get my hands on Jackfruit seeds for way to long.

Sometimes it's the little things that make the day good..

It was a really quiet day even if the following really doesn't sound like it:

My teachers at Massage school distributed serious kindness, meant it and then revealed my bicycle that I had left here 2 years ago! Got to love them! I got to help translate/correct some stuff and felt way better about getting free classes after that. (yes, that's right. No charge because that's the style. And also the only way I could be here in the first place.)

After a week here I finally visited my favourite cafe with garden and a fish pond with giant goldfish (I mean GIANT), it is way out of budget for this journey but that's ok. I'm here to learn and hopefully photograph. Anyhow they remembered me and I got a warm, personal, welcome. I am massively impressed, how did that happen?!

Bonus: today nobody monologued at me about angry issues nor about how they enjoy the local sex options. (yes, people do that to me, frequently ! -- why??? Don't they realise I half wrote a dissertation about the commodification of humans.. - before it got to much and I swapped subjects.)

Right now I can only say it was a quietly good day at last!

And yay, jackfruit seeds! (they can be boiled and I hear they are lovely to eat)

another land of mango trees and coconut water sellers

(written some time ago):

... am I glad we came here!!! fresh cut Mango from the street stalls.. water festival for their new year! Had water thrown at us for hours today - soaked to the bones. Very well natured people, gentle water fighting. NO aggressions whatsoever. SOOOO refreshing and restoring after the country of people who know no boundaries.Pineapple shake for $1 here and it was delicious. SO happy. Glad we came even so we spent too much that we can't afford to spend... Now I feel like we did the right thing. It'll be good for us. I could live here by the way. People, food, culture, grace....

AM SO glad we came here!! It is so extremely refreshing and restorative to be here! The people are so graceful and respectful, gentle and fun loving! It's their New Year and we have been doused in water for hours, the streets are filled with people sporting water guns and buckets....... It looks like there was a monsoon rain but it's just the whole city splashing water over each other, nobody is safe; whether one sits on a rickshaw, bus or moped... chances are everybody is soaked to the bones. VERY much fun and all in gentle humor. Had my first fresh mango cut up into pieces from a street seller. oh YUM

We had a pretty hellish journey to reach here but as soon as we landed it all got better.Our taxi driver - of reasonably old age - had tremendous fun throwing water at pedestrians and rickshaw passengers, while driving us from the airport to our guest house... You should have heard him laugh... infectious fun.

SO happy! The replacement flights cost us terribly much and I wasn't sure if we shouldn't head straight for Berlin but I think we would have arrived SO exhausted there... coming here was the BEST best best choiceJason's heat rash has not shown itself since we reached the airport in Bangalore yesterday and we decided on an airport taxi here today to keep the reappearance of the rash at bay. Same for our first night or two here. Normally we make do with fan rooms, not just to save the wallet but also the planet. But That J isn't getting sick was a bit more important today.So all is beautiful I am so happy to be out of India. For some reason I couldn't take more this time. Which likely has more to do with life and it's uncertainties than with India itself. But wow it is a challenging place and it doesn't even try to dress itself in any other way than: full on and challenging...I'll be taking a break from palak paneer for a while before I'll surely crave it all over again....

water in places where it's not wanted