This week has been the halfway mark of our time here. It has gone by SO quickly, making me question the very nature of time… I choose to trust the process and progress of time – and the project.

Monday, July 22^nd was one of our weekly workdays with the organisations. The weekend was rejuvenating for me. I found a yoga studio around the corner from our accommodation and was able to practice and rest. During the weekend, Oliver, Rachel, and I also met up to plan our project in greater detail. Thus, I was initially feeling good about the workday ahead of us. This however shifted as we realised that the children in Picacho are only there from Tuesday to Saturday, meaning that we had a lot of re-planning to do. Is this the nature of any project? Plan, re-plan, repeat.

Despite these altered plans, we had a great day in Picacho sharing our ideas with Adrián and Juan, having a nice lunch at a local restaurant, and playing around with clay in a communal space for remembrance of the many years of conflict. I keep being amazed by the friendly, open-minded, and charismatic nature of the people we are working with. I feel so blessed to work alongside them.

 Rachel, Otilia, and Oliver in Picacho

Tuesday, July 23^rd was a long day full of learning. We kicked off at UPB with a session on how to prototype our project, followed by actually prototyping our project with the kids in Picacho. We wished to make a shared and creative mind map to identify what the children know, think, and feel about nature and sustainability in their everyday lives. Overall, it went well – it was so much fun, and it was lovely to reconnect with the children. They were SO good at understanding what we wanted from them (with much translation help from David, Dyllan, and Alison), and beyond all, they were SO forgiving of our poor Spanish.

We learned a lot from the session about how to manage, structure, and implement our ideas with the kids for the next weeks. We will need a bigger debrief following the KID method; what we wish to Keep, Improve, and Drop for the upcoming sessions.

While being in Picacho gives me a greater energy boost than black coffee, I must admit that my head is buzzing after a long but educational day.

 Picacho after weekly drawing class

Wednesday, July 24^th was telling me to take a break as my head was still buzzing from yesterday. And I listened. I did not join the group at Sueños de Hellas. Instead, I slept in, went to a yoga class, did groceries and laundry, and relaxed at a café with my journal. Before coming to Colombia, I knew that I needed to seriously practice my self-care rituals to balance my recovering head injury. As with much else, though, things are easier said than done.

Today was the first day where I managed to take a break before fully being on the brink of burnout. I am grateful that I have done so, and I am excited for another jam-packed day tomorrow.

Comfort food at Primavera Café 

Thursday, July 25^th I woke up feeling tired – almost as if I was still mentally and socially hungover from Tuesday. In the morning, I went to a Kundalini yoga class, which felt more like a sleeping and breathing yoga class…. I felt ready to jump back into bed after. However, as the day continued, I gained a bit of energy from our first meeting with the volunteers. They are awesome; they care and want to commit to our project!  

In the afternoon, we went to Picacho, an always-positive experience. The place and the people are so warm and, as Oliver said, welcoming. They offer us so much of their space, time, and energy, which truly makes us feel welcome. However, it is also overwhelming to me in the sense that I want to give back space, time, and energy. I want to spend all my time with them and give them all my energy (if only that was possible…)

All in all, this day raised some crucial questions on how to map and manage our collective capacities and expectations in the best way possible. Equally, I become aware of my necessary need to check in with myself and my health… As with much else, this is easier said than done.

 Meeting our volunteers!

Friday, July 26^th can best be described as the culminating crash. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. We realised that we had promised too much of our time to Picacho without sufficient time to plan and prepare for the activities we wished to do there with the children… As David and Dani keep saying: “It is better to have fewer but more meaningful experiences.” This has been the guiding sentence for our re-evaluation process today. It has equally been crucial for my personal rethinking of how to spend and appreciate my time here. Today, at the three-week mark, it hit me how difficult it is to plan, execute, and implement a meaningful project in a Spanish-speaking community in Colombia in only six weeks. The word difficult might not even fully capture the struggles; ethically, morally, and mentally; I feel currently. For now, I will pull the plug for the weekend and trust the process.

No Friday without Foodie Friday