Okay, so here we are in Santa Fe...

Hawaii: sand, sun and not much fun

So sometimes things don't work out how we imagine they might...
Nine months in paradise turned into two weeks of scooping horse poo and getting eaten alive by mosquitos.
The farm we were depending on was dissappointing to say the least. And Hawaii as a whole didn't mesh with our perogatives. For such a lush and beautiful place, it is saddening how much its taken for granted and mis-used.

So, about a month into our journey, we find ourselves in Santa Fe, NM. And already the universe has been ultimately more open to us. We've been here only a week and we already have a place to live, a job, and a handful of promising opportunities. Mike got a job at the local co-op today (woo-hoo!) and I'm waiting to hear back from the school here, but I'll (hopefully) be starting the full-time program at the Scherer Institute of Natural Healing...
We've met some great people, and once we got past the initial shock of realizing that we're not going to be living in 75* sunny weather for nine months, we've been really loving the mountain atmosphere. Santa Fe is a groovy place to be. A few of the locals have already warned us, "it's the land of entrapment..."


Olomana Fartens by Mike Decker

Image this: you’re in this room and the floor of this room is filled with chicken feces. On top of the feces is horse manure, goat poop, duck doo-doo, and dog crap. The ceiling of this caa-caa room is semi-permeable -meaning that during heavy downpours the rain leaks through, and when its not raining, mosquitoes are playing a fun game of connect the dots on your skin. In this room of damp fecal horror there is deposits of trash on tables surrounding you. Thrown into the horrible vortex is mud, dirt covered mutts, roaming roosters cockle-dooing at
3:30 in the morning and a huge moster bullfrog making a sound that resembles a tuba player being runover by a semi-truck full of Johnny Cash impersonators making one singular note at the bottom of their throats (okay, I don't know where I was going with that.) But all of this - the poop, the animals, the rain - all of it is nothing compared to the giant elephant in the room (the owner of the farm). The elephant is loud and obnoxious and doesn't stop talking. It's arrogant, belittling and rude. All it talks about is money, it's own self importance, and why you're "not doing it right". There's not much space left for anyone else in this room besides the elephant and he wants you to know it....without ever telling you. This pretty much sums up my experience at Olomana Gardens.

In addition, Kailua and Oahu as a whole was not what we expected. Besides the terribleness that was Olomana Gardens, the area was infiltrated with Wal-Mart culture. A ton of cars, chain businesses, a lot of people posing - not much in the way of progressive green culture.

And it's not that we expected to see giant banana trees and native Hawaiians dressed in grass skirts doing the hula and playing ukelele's- but as we discovered, middle America has found it's way there and the results aren't pretty.

Hawaii imports 90% of their products which is ridiculous considering they have four growing seasons. The Hawaiian culture seems kind of lost to a lot of natives which I can understand - Hawaii is part of Polynesia not the United States. When you try to make something into something it's not, it just doesn't seem right. What do I know really. But both Brit and I could sense that this situation was totally wrong for us and we pulled the plug and started a new voyage.

Santa Fe

I've got a cousin in Santa Fe and there is a really great massage school for Brit sooooooooo.......that's where we ended up. Now Santa Fe is the second oldest city in the U.S. It sits at 6,600 feet and has 300 days of sunshine a year. In addition it is a cultural arts mecca. Painting, photography, film, museums, writing, and so on and so forth In less than a week we found a place to live downtown, I found a job at a co-op and Brit enrolled in massage school. Since we've been here the people have been super nice, laid back, friendly - sending out good vibrations. It's reaffirmed our decision to move here and stands in sharp contrast to Hawaii, where people seemed more leery of us.

I wanted to apologize for being so late in updating this blog - we've been extremely busy. Trains, plains, buses, cars, more buses, more planes, shuttle vans and more cars = scrambled brain action. We promise to update this puppy more often and send you wonderful folk some great pics.

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