Dawn's digressions I got restless. So I went to Ecuador to learn how to make compost and speak better Spanish.

The second week of the course is over now and it was just as good as the first. Again, we seem to have covered lots in quite a short time: organic pest management, plant nutrition, fertilizers, and lots more. I’m now able to identify different plant families, which I’m quite pleased about :) And there’s been lots more poop. That’s the word you hear most often on the farm: poop. All kinds – pig, horse, chicken, cow, guinea pig, even human – it all gets used. Everything comes down to poop in the end. I never thought I’d ever have so much to do with excrement as I have done here. Anyway. There have been other fun things to do, such as making jewellery from palm seeds, harvesting tobacco chillies, hacking things up with machetes (I want a machete!), preparing strange and delicious fruits for breakfast. This afternoon five of us are taking a canoe trip out to Isla Corazon to see a colony of frigate birds and have a short tour of the mangrove area near the coast. Looking forward to that. We’ve been joined this week by a lady from New Zealand, Natasha, who I get on with very well. She’s a bit older than the rest of us, which may be why. And she’s said I can come and stay with her in NZ sometime, too, which I shall definitely do at some point. As for my travel plans, Nicol and I have decided to skip the first 2 weeks of the second month of the course to go to the Galapagos Islands. I am very, very excited about this. Then we’ll be back on the farm for the last 2 weeks of the second month, when we’ll be covering permaculture and alternative energy. After that, I’m hoping to take a trip to the mountains, do some hiking in one of the national parks and take a day trip to Otavalo for the indigenous market before heading for Peru. We’ll see how that works out. Aside from reproducing my course notes, there’s not a lot I have to report, as the days are full of farm work and classes, and we all go to bed at around 9 after reading, playing cards or watching organic farming videos in the evenings. I’m certainly feeling a lot more positive about my life now though and am confident that I’ll be able to get myself out of the rut I’ve fallen into with translation over the past few years. As I had hoped, getting some distance from everyday life is helping me to put things in perspective and realise that it’s not actually going to be that difficult to change my circumstances for the better. Woo hoo! Thanks again to everyone who’s sent mails and left comments, I really enjoy hearing from you all at the weekends. I may spend next weekend on the farm so don’t worry if you don’t hear anything from me. I’ll certainly be in touch again the weekend after. Love to everyone, d xx