CAFé DECAY

I've been figuring out a new style of editing and trying FOREVER to figure out a decent watermark--but I realized I just have to stick with what I have before a whole year passes of me trying to perfect it.  You'll probably be seeing the edit style and watermark change over the next several posts, so... you've been warned.

Anyway, I thought I'd set the scene first with some of the most noticeable creatures of Finca Siempre Verde: 

Leave it to a city girl to have never really thought about what turkeys are like. When relaxed, his face is a sickly pale pink.  He's mildly red here because he didn't like how close I was (and I wasn't really, at all), but when seriously pissed, he actually turns a brilliant flaming magenta. I love this photo because it's got the chicken coop on the right, and the old house that Marcos and his sisters grew up in in the background, with laundry hanging up to dry.  

This sow had pale blue eyes.  She wasn't the prettiest, but she matched the piglets in cuteness when she rubbed her body against the planks for a good scratch.  Her pen-mate, a cute spotted pig, was slaughtered the second Saturday of my four-week stay. I've told several people about it but maybe I'll make a post about it at some point.

So, this is Polly the rabbit.  She used to "belong" to Marcos's youngest sister and is named after a past volunteer of the farm. I say used to, because, from what I understood, Polly used to be kept inside until one day they just let her roam freely around the farm.

Since then, it's seems Polly's just integrated herself in with the chickens. I swore Polly has a friendship with this handsome little bantam.

More Polly pictures--and all the other animals I haven't even gotten to yet, Elinor and Jonas the kittens; Lucky, Doggy, and Tutti, the dogs; the cows; and of course, the gorgeous wildlife... will ensue in future posts.

I never really posted again since I left for Costa Rica, but I've been back for almost two months, knee-deep into my 200-hour yoga teacher training program and unsure of when I'll do Café Decay again. I don't feel done with KUCI but I didn't reapply for the summer schedule, and I can't definitively say that I can reapply for fall quarter. 

But I started blogging at my internship, and now that I'm back in that groove I realized I never really blogged about my month in Costa Rica.

(View of La Cangreja Nacional Parque from Marcos's deck where we had meals)

I wrote emails about my experience to my loverboy, but I didn't want to spend my time blogging. A typical day on the farm for me was waking up at 5:30ish in the AM, photographing birds until breakfast, doing quick edits after lunch, and walking to the library in the town center to upload to Facebook and Instagram. Sigh--missing that a lot.  

(Chestnut-mandibled toucans, taken on my iPhone through Marcos's binoculars)

I haven't really touched my photos since I came back--I took quite a bit of HD video that I never edited either--so in the coming weeks I'll be working on them when I can, and writing on them and posting them here. 

(Hanging out on the yoga deck--the open-air bunks are behind the green tarps)

(Morning view from the yoga deck/balcony)

This was a last-minute decision (as is almost every part of my Costa Rica trip planning process), but I decided not to renew my KUCi application for spring quarter since I will be gone intermittently throughout the quarter. Tomorrow I'm going away to Costa Rica for a month, and when I come back, I'm starting yoga teacher training with the amazing True Flow Yoga and getting drunk at the LA Vegan Beer Fest in May! Oh, and also looking for work so if you know of anything let me know.

This is a little scary, but definitely very exciting, since KUCI has been almost consistently a weekly part of my life for the past 4 years. But not too worry, this isn't the last I will be around KUCI. I will likely sub for other shows throughout spring quarter, and if time permits and I feel like it, I'll renew Café Decay for the summer quarter schedule.