Long Overdue Update

Greetings from Pennsylvania!

These past few months here at Camphill Soltane have been great. After living in one house for the first 3 months, we have moved to another house giving us a new perspective on life in this community. Our first house was on the residential side, as opposed to our current home on the college side. Here we live with 2 students, 1 resident (all three of whom have a developmental disability) , 1 other couple, their son who is a sailor but had to come home due to pneumonia, and an older woman who has lived in Camphill communities for many years. The atmosphere here makes us feel much more like we are living in a home than a house.

Tori is working in Soltane’s textile enterprise called “in good company” (Their store website is http://ingc.etsy.com). There are four residents that work there full time (two of whom we lived with at our first house) and four student interns that work there half days Monday through Friday. They research a theme called an “inspiration” (currently they are working on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table). Then they design fabrics and different textile products to make with the fabrics. After that, they weave their own fabric, cut, and sew it into a unique product to sell at craft fairs, online, or for special orders. All of the weaving and creation of images is the work of the residents and students with disabilities. The coworkers support them and do much of the sewing. Tori enjoys the work and is proud of the products they make. The etsy shop is still just getting started, but we hope to have our bags and t-shirts listed soon!

Aaron is working in Soltane’s community services and with Soltane’s land work group. In community services, they do everything from collecting and sorting recycling from Soltane and the surrounding community to taking on odd jobs that people don’t have time for (cleaning up property lines, chopping firewood, shoveling snow & de-icing sidewalks, etc.). The land work group takes care of several things around campus from collecting and processing compost, raking leaves, trimming trees, and taking care of various fruit patches and orchards (raspberries, blackberries, apples, peaches, black walnuts, etc.). The land group even makes products with the community’s produce such as apple cider, apple butter, fruit leather, etc.

Working at Soltane has definitely been a growth experience for both of us. It is taxing at times both physically and emotionally, but also very rewarding. Soltane allows us to use our talents, learn new skills, and provides us with a sense of great satisfaction in that we are directly contributing to the growth of the students and residents we work with. We have also made new friends here that we are sure will be lifelong connections.

We hope all is well with you! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,

Aaron and Tori

P.S. I hope to upload MANY pictures and a few videos during our Christmas break which starts on the 20th.

PENNSYLVANIA!!!

We're here! We're hanging out with the Fishes, which is great fun.

The flight was good. I made friends with a lady in the terminal over our shared interest in knitting (which I learned how to do this summer and am about to finish my first scarf). There were some really adorable little kids near us on the plane who were pretty good.

John picked us up from the airport and we came back to the house and saw Laurie, Nana, and Eric (all of whom I was meeting for the first time). We went to dinner at Chili's where I taught them how to play coasters which is a game where you flip a coaster off the edge of the table and catch it midair and add one more each time. My mom is the rockstar of that game and taught it to me, but I think I may have beaten her best score last night when I got 13. I also tried Yuengling beer which was like a lighter Shiner Bock, very good.

We played outside with their two dogs for a little bit. The yard is nice and big and gorgeous. Then we played Bananagrams and then they taught us how to play 10,000 which is a dice game and lots of fun.

Jason and Dylan got home late (after 11) from working at camp. It was very exciting to finally meet Jason! Dylan's okay too, I guess :) We stayed up pretty late talking and hanging out in the kitchen.

Conclusion of day one!

Texas to Oklahoma to Texas to....Oklahoma to Colorado

****ANOTHER EDIT****
I fixed the link to the picture albums, sorry.

***Edit***
I really tried to put lots of videos and pictures up, but it was just taking WAY too long, so there will only be one or two pictures on the post, but I'll link to the rest of them in my online albums.


I took LOTS of photos and recorded some video all along our journey thus far and so I will be posting quite a few of them on here (if you have very slow internet, I apologize).

I will begin with the first leg of our trip: Fort Worth to Denver!

We took two cars to Lawton (we left my old beater with my mom) and so our trip actually began in Fort Worth, but we were in separate cars and the camera was with Aaron. I got a sunburn on the way to Lawton because it was blazing hot and the Corsica doesn't have A/C so I drove with the windows down. We met up at my mom's in Lawton and dropped of the car. Then we headed for Denver. We drove west through Oklahoma and into Texas again, then further west and then turned north and proceeded to drive through Oklahoma again (the panhandle) until we finally crossed into Colorado.

It was a long drive, but it was a good one and spirits were high. We got to our friends' place around 3 or 4 in the morning. We visited for just a couple of minutes before passing out. It had been 2 years since we'd seen Thomas and Debbie and so we were really excited. The kids were so big and they had baby 3 on the way.

Our first day was kind of lazy/relaxing. We didn't do a whole lot except sleep. We visited some in the evening and had a nice dinner. There was lots of catching up.

Some of our awesome activities while we were there:
-going to the neighborhood pool
-taking a walk in a pretty walking park nearby
-babysitting :)
-playing Bananagrams (really fun, Aaron LOVES it)
-walking around downtown Denver
-dinners outside on the patio
-taking the kids to the park
-lots of hanging out and talking
-seeing the mountains (we didn't actually go, but they looked beautiful)

A couple of my favorite pictures:

The two rivers that converge in downtown Denver



Some pretty flowers from one of our walks


A picture I took while waiting for a train in Memphis, TX (on the road to CO)

More Pictures Here, Here, and Here

Monumental Update...coming soon :)

We are currently back in Fort Worth, TX for one week. We have been to Lawton, Denver, Lincoln (Nebraska), back to Lawton, and then here. We still have two more stops to make on our trip.

Something to look forward to: pictures! LOTS of pictures from our travels so far and also...video clips (at least one from each time we crossed a state line).

This week will provide us with absolutely no have to's as well as an awesome internet connection so I will most definitely be updating this baby.

hint: look at the labels for this post and you will get a small idea of what we've seen/done so far

okay, so it wouldn't let me post all of them but here they are (babies, denver, family, food, friends, fun, plans, tejas, travels, vacation, wildlife, okies, corn, badminton, competitive sports, injuries, sleep, driving, night life, cooking, dessert)

Living the Nomad Life

As of yesterday at 1:30 PM Aaron and I are officially homeless (and unemployed) until August 26th. It was completely intentional so don't freak out and send money unless you really want to send money in which case we wouldn't turn it down :)

Yesterday began our two-month-long adventure. We will be traveling around and visiting (read: mooching off) our friends and family. We left our "summer home" that we were sitting around 1:30. Aaron headed to DFW airport to pick up my mom's roommate's brother who is visiting from Italy. I drove the old beater up to Lawton to leave with my mom since her car was stolen sometime in the very early hours of Friday morning. I got to Lawton about 4:30 and Aaron arrived an hour later. We said our goodbyes and hit the road Denver, Colorado-bound.

We left Lawton at 5:30 expecting it to take 11 hours. We arrived at the home of our friends the Lindbergs at 3:15 AM (mountain time) so we got here 15 minutes earlier than expected. Go us! We visited for just a few minutes and then went to sleep around 3:30 AM (but for us was more like 4:30 since we came from Central time).

We don't really have any set plans for our stay so far, so if you have any suggestions for what to do in the Denver/Boulder area let us know!