Never shine sun, let the moon stay above, I wanna keep on keepin' on lovin' my love

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile! It's really busy here, surprisingly. We have class only Tuesday - Friday, but usually Tuesday and Thursday are completely scheduled up morning to night and Wednesday and Friday have morning and afternoons scheduled. Monday we have work departments in the afternoons, and it feels like all the free time is sucked away into work or KP or meals or planning things to do in the rest of the free time. Usually this means dancing or watching documentaries together. I'm not sure how many I have watched so far. And I think I really do dance every day. The homework doesn't feel like it is too intense, but if I think ahead to all my big projects (one in every class) it starts to get overwhelming. I've been trying to really get started on my projects but I'm still so excited about my daily practice of creative expression that a lot of my time/brain power ends up getting sucked into that.

This past Saturday was one of the best times I've had here so far. We all, at lunch on Saturday, decided that we really wanted to cook for ourselves for Saturday night dinner. For us, this meant a lot of steps: signing out of dinner so the cooks could adjust quantities, getting passwords and keys into the other food sheds (besides the one where we get all our oatcakes and apples), being aware of all the different dietary needs in our group, coming up with enough ingredients for some semblance of a dish, preparing it, and organizing enough dinner utensils for everyone to join together in one house. I was prepared for it to be really shabby, thrown together, and our house opted to just make a raw dessert (apples, soaked sunflower seeds and raisins, dried coconut, and cinnamon, delicious!) and bring some food from the Commnity Center (CC, where we eat all our other meals), just to make sure we would all have enough food. I was blown away though, as everyone prepared loads of delicious food, all with an awareness of who could eat what, and spent money (not very much at all) and spent all afternoon baking spelt bread and EVERYTHING you could possible think of. We set up our classroom in a big, clean circle and attuned and everyone shared what they were bringing and what was in it and we all made toasts and there was so so much joy. It was one of the first times we have Really felt like a family to me.

After the dinner, which disappeared pretty quickly, we all laid on the floor together, having of course all eaten way too much, and told stories and played games and sang and laughed for a long, long time. And then, of course, we danced. Not all of us were ready, so it was just a small group of dancers for a long time until Seth and Matt came back from an excursion and told us there was a 70s dance party happening in the Universal Hall. It was hilarious and strange. It ended up being a 16-year-old's birthday party. Everyone was dressed in really intense costumes and it was kind of cool to see a bunch of teenagers partying it up in Findhorn. Of course, because we are in Findhorn, everyone seemed to have been invited, and so every once in awhile I would see who I thought was a teenager in a minidress and platform, knee high boots, and it would turn out to be a forty-five year old. Also, I'm not going to lie, we kind of got that party started. We were riding the high of just discovering 5 rhythms dancing and coming out of a night full of love and happiness, so we were ready for anything, and at the party it was a bunch of self-conscious teenagers - though it's true that they were quickly losing that self-consciousness through alcohol consumption (remember they were sixteen and it was a party with tons of adults in attendance as well...Europe?). In any case, Tim hurt his hip from his incredible dancing and could hardly walk the next day, but we all agreed any physical pains we may have suffered at the dance (it really was WILD) were completely worth it.

This morning I ended up skipping the session on clowning for Creativity class because I woke up feeling like I could throw up a hundred times and it would never be enough. I may have accidentally eaten something with wheat (which I have discovered I am genuinely allergic to) or dairy in the CC last night, which would explain it. But I didn't throw up because I have a phobia of it, which I learned this morning is called Emetophobia. So sometimes when I am nauseated I start to have little panic attacks, because I am irrationally afraid of throwing up/don't know how. It was a weird morning. I mostly tried to fall back asleep and hoped it would go away after some more rest. It seems to have subsided, but I'm going to be really careful about what I eat. Most of us here are taking this kind of care and attention with our bodies and food and it's really amazing to see what everyone is learning about their health. I'm sad I couldn't even go over to the class to see what it was all about, but I'm glad to have taken care of myself, and I've just been relaxing in bed listening to Greg Brown for awhile now, which makes me have a lot of good memories of family and friends and home.

Mom and Dad are in Kenya right now, I'm sending them lots of love, and you should too. Patrick has a broken hand from playing Ultimate, which makes him a badass. I have a new first cousin? I don't know what relation she is to me, but my cousin Elaine had a beautiful baby girl named Taylor. I can't wait to see her. I can't wait to see my family! I had a dream about the Indianapolis airport the other night. I'm not ready to go home though, I still have so much to do here and love it tremendously, and wouldn't really rather be anywhere else in the world at this point in my life. Ecovillage living is amazing and I wish you could all come see.

Love,
Nora

P.S. I put new pictures up too!