>Deep breath>
After a 4 day long van journey with 2 other people, down the western edge of continental Europe, which involved a crazy wheel-off breakdown on a Spanish mountain...I am installed at Tamera!
My own melodrama is becoming ever more visible to me, in sentences like the one above, and more longstanding examples I regret only in retrospect: like what the hell was I doing making such a big deal out of going? Its just travelling, everyone (well, lots of) people do it, no biggie. By making it into the everlasting life-change phenomena I have, it's now harder to take it back, climb back down off that aspiration (because it's also hard for me to admit I'm wrong, and I'm prideful). Silly Gemma.
As an astute person may tell from such an opening, Tamera is a place that encourages one to delve into oneself, and openly discuss 'inner work' and progress your self development. People visiting and living here are honest and proactive with it. The community runs courses called 'Love School'. Every announcement begins with and ends with a thanksgiving - because to live on the site is to connect with nature and the divine, in a way I dont grasp yet, because spirituality isnt yet appealing to me. The whole energy of the place, or atmosphere, is low. or rather slow, reflective, contemplative. Ive slowed down in attunement, showing my quiet-Gem aspect.
However when i arrived I was at panic station: my lift, Dave, brought me right into the heart of the site, to the Campus, last Friday night, and presented me to reception. Sabina showed me the room I could stay in with 15 other students and guests, where the toilets were, told me what would be happening over the weekend...but I felt utterly disoriented! Frustration boiled in me at not getting here to start the course, at not thinking about arriving at a weekend when no work would be done in teams allowing me to socialise with my team-workers, at having decided to leave the housing coop at all! So i spent those 48hours coming down off that nervous high. calming myself, being still and silent and timid. Does anyone else find that they are way more conscious of the time they spend in toilets when theyre alone somewhere, and anxious with it? These ones here are, I think, cob-walled, with tiled floors, very clean, for both poo and pee and with sawdust to add after - obviously the composting type. Im ok on my own, find it much easier than lots of people. A factor that intimidate me though. here it's rifely multi-lingual, with the predominant denomination of people being German (theres a historic german-community link: Zeg near Berlin helped spawn Tamera). And I dont speak any german! Or portuguese! Argh! It triggers all my colonial hegemony guilt that people can, and have to, change their language to english in order to communicate with me. Ugh.
The weekend drove home the point that I am far from anyone who knows me, or loves me, and that it will take time to develop intimacy abroad. I miss my friends, housemates, lovers, family. Even though its been a mere week, I have pangs for them. I do value what I had in Ipswich at Random CAmel, so much more when im in lack of it - it was home. I WILL use past tense, to help maintain my intention, though i know it will also always be my home.
Simon, one of my longest friends and one of the closest of those, has lent me his camera, and i really want to take photos with it for this blog. But it's making juddering clickings and wont stop, so no pictures so far :-(
In the mornings mist hangs above the many lakes, larger and smaller, that the Tamerans have created on this land. They refer to themselves as guardians of it. This morning, as every Monday, there was a ritual up at the stone circle, to greet and pray for..err..things. 96 stones of differing shapes, sizes, colours, degrees of decoration with cosmograms. We held silence facing the direction of the sun, broken when it rose above the horizon, whereupon began a water ceremony that is replicated simultaneously at peace communities all over the world. It is a connection with the global peace network. Gratitude was spoken for all the work and sacrifices made in the name of peace and healing the earth, and then each thanksgiver poured water into a bowl by the fire in the middle of the circle.
Today I felt my energy re-inflate the bubbly Gemma, easily linked to the fact that the course schedule recommenced and I was given tasks to perform! Whoop thats what i respond well to. getting stuff done, having a role. My comfort zone is NOT pure socializing, and its difficult for me to relax or stay still for long, Which people here instantly cottoned on to, and challenged me over; because the prevailing paradigm here is to do things with respect, love, and by taking your time. To 'be'. There's an unspoken approval for meditation and displays of poermaculture principles like 'observe before acting, show love if you intervene'. These are just phrases to me - i can know them, have known them, and they make sense to me, i agree with them...but ive not taken the opportunity to relish in their practice. This is what Ive said this trip is about; developing patience and care in my work, to achieve some discipline, a space for self reflection and growth. From day 1, it seems!
Day 1 subsequently involved weeding pots of then transplanting various herbs into hill-beds created along Holzer principles; like at Orchard Barn CIC. This was with a swiss guy who recommended I read Anastasia: a book about a woman reconnecting with nature (i find this turn of phrase really offputting, so airy fairy and spectator sport!). We were accompanied by a toddler Lucia, who has spent a day per week for her last - and first - year with the gardeners. She was happy shifting bean pods and weeds for us.
Lunch, as it has been for my stay so far, was delicious: lots of raw salads, tasty dressings and sauces, roasted veg, and fried chickpeas. Herbal tea is on tap, though the signs 'tea for vomiting- diarrhoea' didnt inspire me with confidence! Im not sick - yet... 
For the second time, I volunteered to wash up in the kitchen, because thats commonly acknowledged as The place to get to know whats going on anywhere. And the pans are so huge!!! And shiny. Everythings bigger on the continent, landscapes, utensils. 
I swam in the campus lake.
We had a course participants meeting, which was an open circle to ask questions and make connections.
I rang up the PO and got my travel money card activated. My other errand was to scope out the site shop for a new headtorch, as my fiver-from-argos specimen has already failed. now it only lights up red, but it isnt open til sunday.
I joined a group doing some yoga outside, and will most definitelz ache tomorrow!
The afternoon shift for gardeners is 5-6:30pm, and we weeded some long winding lakeside beds of cabbage, celery and chard, then filled in the gaps with more of the same and added onions down the middle. Peoples conversations went way over my head: ''do you think consciousness is permanent?''. Well...gee.... apparently yesterday there had been a visit to a local guru called Muji. I feel unenlightened. And,  im only reluctantly curious. Not enough hard graft for me to warrant soulsearching!
Dinner, then a Political Cafe event; a talk by Mugove, a Zimbabwean man doing permaculture work in schools in Malawi. he showed us pictures of transformed schoolyards, barren bare ground to lush food forests. His presentation illuminated how the mindset of the people in Africa has been beaten down over the last 100 years, and is now very much 'we are the poorest of the poor, we have no resources only problems' as well as divorcing them from their food growing and identifying heritage, offering up in its place the promise of mass consumerist luxuries; and how their previously rich and abundant landscape has been monocultured into substandard production. He was positive and hopeful, and I could see why- it takes but a few weeks for biomass to rot down into humus in Africa: a true miracle in your raised bed!
I am connecting verbally to my fellow students more today, but I see how my brain recognizes and plays into the social hierarchy: I have aligned myself, made myself aware of, the alphas: young, trendy-hippy dressed and vibrant; the undercurrent of cool. Its easy to be attracted to them, and feel spurned when i see they are attracted to others. To desire the kudos of affiliation. I wore my bikini top this afternoon and was simultaenously grateful for the attention it brought me and disgusted with myself for being so superficial and lame at making connection from my true self!
OK theres one operable PC for several hundred people, this has been a massive first away-post, and it ends here. Ive been watched by a giant grasshopper on the wall for the duration. x