Can You Wash My Hair Please

Day three: today Chrissy Caila and I went for a morning walk, without the large group. We focussed on fitness today as opposed to exploring and picture taking. We got back from the walk with enough time before breakfast to have showers if we wanted. I chose not to have a shower and asked Mel to wash my hair. Having someone wash your hair is not something you encounter often as an adult. It’s a very caring process or at least it felt that way. I appreciated it very much, not because it was a huge task, but because it was a bonding personal experience between the two of us. This moment was not drawn out or intimate per say but looking back on it seems precious. It is one of those things that I have found are unique to group living or travelling with people who you become close with. At least in my experience these types of interactions tend happen in times that you are living in close quarters with individuals. Small moments like this one validate the importance for me to go on journeys like the one I am on now. The journey presents opportunities for these types of interactions to happen between people but the magic is not the interaction alone but being able to recognize the moment and appreciate it that is truly remarkable. Having the clarity of mind to see these moments and feel them is what makes travelling so important to me. I think it is the lack of technology and distractions that come with living in a first world that intensifies these moments.
It has become so important for me to ‘un-plug’. My head gets so cluttered with the fast passed busy world I call home that moments seem to slip away with hardly an acknowledgment that they even happened let alone understanding there importance. I want to be able to find a balance between the two worlds I find myself a part of; the world I was born into and that I know well and the world I gravitate towards to find peace of mind and to re- center the importance of me being alive and part of the world. I need to work on finding a way to mend these two realities together. Why is it so hard to find a balance?

After breakfast we took a bus to the Zocalo in Cuernavaca and walked through the cathedral. We tried to climb the stairs to the top of the bell tower to see the view but unfortunately the door was locked. So we made our way to a garden to have some relaxing reflection time. The gardens were beautiful and lush. There were some people there selling different things but for once there was no pressure to buy. They really just let people be. Chrissy and I walked the grounds and talked before meeting up with the other girls. Then Michelle Caila, and I decided to take a small boat ride, row boat, around a pond in the garden. It was a great time once we figured out how to paddle correctly. After we split up Michelle and Mel went to the internet cafe and Caila, Chrissy and I went on a hunt for pizza and cerveza’s! We were successful with the pizza but before we had a chance to have the cerveza’s Caila realized she had lost her wallet. We all went back to the last place she had had it but we all knew that the chances of us finding her wallet were very slim. Needless to say we had no luck.

Later on in the evening before dinner a speaker came in to talk to us about her efforts and the efforts of many other naturalist organizations in trying to preserve and protect the water forest here in central Mexico. There was a lot of information and I would be here all night typing if I regurgitated it. But it was a very well done presentation; I have pictures of some of the slides to jog my memory later

It’s an early morning tomorrow so this is where I will leave it....