All you ever imagined, and dreamt. And more. This is how bus life feels, and it is our reality. All we can do is to bow our heads and be grateful deep in our hearts. Follow our stories in words and pictures, and you will see why
Af Cecilie Felumb Conrad | December 16, 2018
When I run in the mornings with my husband and children and dogs (not too early) alongside the animals of Mon la Bassa, the carob trees, the vineyards and the old stone walls, even looking at flowers and mountains and the ocean, I am happy and grateful. This is obviously fantastic. Barefoot shoes, the wind, the sun – and the fact, we actually made the change, started the bus and found such fantastic place to park, and want to run together in the mornings, because we like it. It could have been a dream, and now it is reality.
I am also happy and grateful, when I open my compartment doors in the bus, and the morf into large shelfs / outdoor tables, and I can make sewing workshop or serve lunch or place books and coffee cups outside the reach of amazing Otto (the large dog, a spanish mastif) and the horses Rocky and Malindro. I suppose the peacock Eric, could land and study spanish and vegan cooking with me, and have a sip of my soy latte, but it has not happened yet.
In all the life in the bus is an amazing adventure. Who would have imagined, I would some day live in a bus? What kind of idea is that to begin with? Not mine, not at all and not new either. My big red bus is becoming a friend, and I love to learn from living in it. Slowly but surely we learn to finish all projects right away, witch is a fantastic life lesson. My beloved grandmother always said: Tie a little bow on your project. Maybe this does not translate into english very well, but it means: Finish what you are doing, and get clear, you are done and all is in order. This relates to conversations as well as cooking or writing or doing a building project. Make sure, you get all the way to the end, so you can let go and move on, and your old projects are not getting in the way for new inspiration.
This is quite hard, but living five people and two dogs in 21 sqm makes it just so much more obvious, when we get sloppy, and I love learning this in all the details of planning, changing small habits, thinking about processes.
This week we gave two interviews to danish students, about unschooling. It is always fun to try to explain our lifestyle in this area, and it becomes more clear each time for us, just how much all of our choices work together to the life, we really want.
We do not like the term unschooling, because it is focused on what we don’t do. We like the term freedom, and the term voluntarily, and the term living, and the term passion. This is what we do: What we feel is right, we walk the direction the angels are pointing, and the way the vibration is high, we do what feels awesome and learn as we move on.
To work with the animals at the refugium here is great work, so meaningful and heartwarming, making relations to animals and people and doing physical work that makes a difference. We talk a lot about how this makes us feel, how participation and community makes your heart sing, and how sometimes work is work, sometimes you are tired, but the horses are thirsty anyway, the pigs need food, and the are needs cleaning. On so many levels this is perfect.
We also absorb language, and the language barrier is driving the need for this. Living here makes it so obvious to all of us, we need as much language skill as we can get. The two eldest children are studying english, reading books in english in their kindles, and working in workbooks and with flashcards. To me it is the spanish and catalan languages presenting themselves as the next challenge, and I also work with the deschooling: Getting the fear out of the system, that was installed in my schooltime, learning language studying is all about communication and relations, learning to not care about “mistakes”, to just work with the language. I collect words like treasures now, and wonder about sentences, and feel deeply, I need to learn some basic grammar. I speak three languages, and I never learned grammer. Maybe it is time now …
A driving motivation that took us out on this adventure, was the danish winter and my winter blues. It is now december, and we are not in the canaries or asia, not doing beach time and sunscreen, we are by no means as far south as we had planned to be. But we have completely achieved the goal: To escape winter.
As we travel, our needs and ideas change, and we realize, we do not want to be at the beach all the time, we do not need to be lazy in the sun. We like to work, to build, to run, to walk, and to just be outside doing something meaningful together. The climate does not have to be like high summer, we are happy here with the 15-18 degrees daytime and just around 10-12 at nights. Because there is SUN, and we get to be outside. Even when it is cold it is not cold. We are not even wearing our warmest clothes when we are out at night. I get to stand under the stars as long as I want without freezing, and to walk barefoot in the daytime. It is perfect.
It is a bit hard for us to understand it is actually december, Christmas is just around the corner. And we love this. Christmas becomes a spiritual thing, a thing about music and joy, about cultural exchange and sending letters. It seems now, some of our friends are coming to the area for Christmas, and that will be wonderful. But it is not about the Christmas, it is about the friendship. All we want is some gluten free vegan cake, some music, a bit of presents and a mass in a beautiful church. That will be Christmas, and it will be perfect.
Peace and love
Week 50 – Trusting the path