Help! I'm Lost in Nature!

Happy Birthday Maya!! This has been my face pretty much all week :)  Life is going pretty well at this point. In honor of my birthday I am first going to make a list of everything I am grateful in my life. Then I am going to follow it up with issues I am feeling really passionate about and hope you will help me in making them better! 1) Friends and family. At the beginning of this fellowship we were asked to think of a time when we felt loved. I remember having the hardest time figuring out what to say because I was filled with memories. All I have to do is hear my mom's voice over the phone, play tennis with my dad, or hug my boyfriend (i.e. picture to the right), and I feel this strong community of love and support. From last weekend all through the end of the month, I have people who want to come visit me because they care about me. 2) Nature. Everyday I have the pleasure of waking up to a red streaked sky or maybe a foggy one clouded in mystique. Sometimes its that

Celebrating Rosh Hashana as a community. So sweet being able to share my traditions with my family on the mountain. A few blog posts ago, I talked about how I kind of got into a routine and lost the clarity of understanding why I am here putting up with the same 12 people day after day. Now I am in a much better place. I am tackling that Judgment part of my ENTJ and working towards a fresh new year as we are between the Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I will say, living at AMI with the same 12 people kind of reminds me how much I take for granted having a larger community. In every setting I've been in, if a friendship or relationship does not work out, I could always just move onto the next one. Now I can't just switch people. I actually have to face challenges as they come up or just be ok with things not always being fair.  Here are 5 things that seem so obvious but have been so challenging. 1. Life isn't fair. So you think, since there are only

Sorry I'm going to do it again. I'm going to copy my blog from the AMI one. In my defense, I was really moved by all three of these places I visited and people I met and wanted to share it with you all here. But first, check out the sunrise here.  One of my favorite parts of being at AMI is the amazing people we meet and the stories we hear. In just the past week, I met Joy at the Heritage Harvest Festival, Michael and George from Edible Landscaping, and Norm at Geezer Farm. They have inspired me to believe that any foodie can create success for themselves, their land, and their communities through dreaming, creativity, and hard work. I'll start with Heritage Harvest Festival . Upon arriving at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's estate, I see thousands of people all coming together to savor the history and culture of food. Since AMI cherishes everything from the seeds we plant, to the people that harvest and cook them, it was a perfect place to advertise AMI&#

Hi there! Sorry it's been so long! Again, I'm blaming my broken computer for my absence, but really I've kind of struggled for inspiration. This past month I kind of got into a rut. I would work in the garden or in the kitchen all day, then work on my Capstone at night, then call someone I love, and then go to bed. Rinse. Repeat. Except a lot happened during this rut. First, let's talk about the happy. One of my best friends got married. Karen and Austin (aka Caramel and Vanilla, aka Kaustin, aka cutest newly weds) were the first of my friends to fall in love in college and now the first of them to get married. It was also the first time I saw my friends since we graduated over a year ago. So much had changed and yet nothing really did. What changed? The political scene. One of my favorite parts of college was becoming friends with such diverse, interesting, talented people. Countries represented at the wedding included Mongolia, Vietnam, Canada, Dominican