Slackin off

This week was especially fun. Earlier in the our teacher ryan showed us how to make Tadelakt. It was such a special opportunity because it is not practiced by anyone else in the country. Tadelakt is a morroco technique, which is a waterproof lime plaster that can be incorporated with amazing colors and has an amazing glossy look to it. Here is the wikipedia page for it. It is a very long and tedious process of applying a few layers of plaster, smoothing it out, burnishing it with stones, and applying soap. But it is well worth the work. We made sample tiles the first day, the second day we tadelakt the cob oven, the carrot shed, and part of our wood shelter we made. The third day we did a sgraffito design on the cob oven and carrot shed, followed up by painting the art work. Sgraffito is an art style by scraping off the shiny bit of the plaster which leaves a contrast. (Pictures will be up in a week!). Just about everynight our entire class was out by the fire place where everything is located and working on the tadelakt/sgraffito while enjoying a fire, drinking beers, and eating ice cream. It was so much fun to be with this awesome group who truly works hard and plays hard. Side note, I dunno if i ever mentioned that we play basketball, 4 square, and slackline in between brakes. Fun to be playing all these childhood games with adults. And I digress...


The last two days of the week we learned about earthen floors. An interesting concept was brought up that concrete is positively charged so it takes electrons away from you while earthen floors are negatively charged so they give you electrons or something like that. It makes a lot of sense because when you stand on concrete it so damn hard and uncomfortable, while an earthen floor is so smooth and just feels right. The architecture and creativeness that is involved with natural building is unbelievable compared to that of a stick frame house. There are so many cool interesting characteristics that come from each home that you take away, while most modern architecture and stick framing everything gets lost into look how big my house is and look at my flat screen television. With natural building small subtleties stick and out you just stand there and are blown away by how amazing one little design makes you feel more comfortable and at home.

This week I have also been teaching my class mates and teachers bowdrill and cordage making after our morning stretches and reflections. It was awesome for me because I have never taught adults much of anything before let alone 12 of them. But it really worked out well, the first day I did a demonstration, the second I taught everyone how to spin cordage from natural fibers (we just used long sedge grass) everyone made bracelets so its been cool to see everyone walking around with their braclets. And the third everyone started carving their bowdrills. Unfortunately thurs and friday our schedule was packed so not too many people have gotten specific proper technique taught to them yet, but hopefully next week we can start churning out coals. Its been a great experience so far and I have been getting awesome feedback.

Friday night we played another epic round of bocce ball followed up by a ping pong tournament, and a movie. Saturday I swam, worked on  my practicum (models are gettin there), and slacked. Sunday I worked more on my practicum and went swimming at blueberry lake again. I can't believe this is the last week, it is so sad. But I am also excited to start up school again and see all my friends. I learned so much here. I have realized that our education is so fucked up and institutionalized that there is no wonder for the student. All the information is simply just given to you and you accept it, take it for granted, and try to memorize it for the next test. When in all reality the things in school you learn should blow your mind, theories behind everything, critical thinking is out the window. Anyway that is enough ranting, now ya'll know why I hate school. Um I'll have one more post for this adventure capping off my experience, for those of you that I will be seeing in a week can't wait, and for those of you that are further down the road-it won't be long, and I plan on making a lot of skype/phone calls/and chats.
Peace.