once in a blue moon

After Christmas I had the spur of the moment idea to join some of my friends in Las Terrenas, a small town on the northern peninsula of Samaná, for New Year’s. So I stuffed my faithful backpack and jumped on a bus headed north.

Las Terrenas is a small, touristy town filled with (mostly French) expats and visitors. As such, the vibe freaked me out a bit at the beginning; on the upside, it’s easy to find excellent international food, such as the pizza we had on New Year’s Eve (most of the pizza you get in this country is mediocre at best and often covered with corn). Although the first day I was there was overcast and slightly rainy, I still ventured onto the beach. For New Year’s Eve we had champagne on the beach and a midnight swim under the full moon. The next day was gorgeous and sunny, so fortunately I was able to enjoy some beautiful weather before heading back to Santo Domingo in the afternoon. Highlights of my trip include absolutely breathtaking views from the top of the mountain over which you have to drive to reach Las Terrenas, some interesting experiences with transportation, and lots of singing, with or without accompaniment, and mostly while jumping around giddily in the ocean.
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2009 was good to me. In the past twelve months, I have felt proud, alone, depressed, peaceful, frightened, stressed, motivated, loved, inspired, under-appreciated, well appreciated, hurt, hopeful, angry, forgiving, complicated, simple, funny, liked, misunderstood, foreign, comfortable, uncomfortable, joyful, surprised, powerful, inevitable, creative, innocent, magical, adventurous, capable, disappointed, knowledgeable, experienced, inexperienced, accomplished, full, beautiful, frustrated, satisfied, exhausted, confused, insane, illimitable, blessed, awestruck, spiritual, happy, hyper, humbled, overwhelmed, and alive. A year ago I never could have imagined how much I would go through this year, and how much I would learn and grow as a result. Nor could I have imagined what lay in store for me beyond college. I have been blessed with amazing experiences this year, and owe much of that to others in my life who, knowingly or unknowingly, were the inspiration for so much of what I wrote, felt, thought, and learned in 2009 (Thank you). Thus another decade falls away.

So it’s 2010. This year I want to work on my relationship with the environment. I want to challenge myself to think even more critically about the everyday choices I make in order to minimize the space I take up in the universe. I want to reduce the resources I utilize and the energy I require, in all senses. And I want to start listening again to the Earth, listening in the way I did when I was small and closer to the ground. We have so much to learn from nature, and so many answers to the things for which we struggle are written in the wind and water and land that surround us, if only we paid attention. We take so much from our environment; everything we need to survive, in fact, and yet we give back so little. I think that nature has a lot to teach us about our relationships with each other, too. We would do well to give more without thinking so much about what we might (or might not) get in return, just as the Earth constantly gives to us. And the only way to apply these lessons is to really root ourselves in our environments, to respect and listen to the world around us, and to maintain our relationship with the Earth just as we work to maintain our relationships with ourselves and with other people.

Did you know that New Year’s Eve was a blue moon? That means that two full moons occurred in the same month. Not to mention that I saw a shooting star just before we headed back from the beach in the first few hours of 2010.

I’m really excited about this year!