I made it to Findhorn!

My travels have really been pretty easy, no missed planes, trains, or boats. Getting to Findhorn was a little more challenging, since it included taxi, ferry, buses, trains, and a nice lady in a car, to get from Arnie's Backpacker's Hostel in Belfast to Crown & Anchor Pub & Lodging in the village of Findhorn. The village of Findhorn is not the Findhorn Foundation, the folks in the village have a desire for a distinction to be made between the two places. The village was a fishing village that lost it's identity (loss of schools & jobs), but it is re-inventing itself as a tourist spot. The Findhorn Foundation, aka the Foundation, has been thriving since 1962 and has been giving the Ecovillage Training course (that I am participating in) for 11 years.

The focus of the training will be in three specific areas People Care, Earth Care, and Fair Shares. I will write more on each of these as we dive in to these over the next several weeks. First up will be People Care, which requires us to dive into our hearts & spirituality as individuals and as a group or community. There are 33 people here to participate, plus 3 from the Foundation (the Focalizers) that lead us on this journey. So, quite a troop of individuals, about 50/50 male/female, ages range from 19 to 62, from all over the globe, some with experience in ecovillage life and some who don't.

We got thru ground rules & introductions this afternoon, and will start off tomorrow with Circle Dance. I will let you know about this after I have experienced it.

I think there are 12 in the bungalow that we are in, from Brazil, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, and the US. Everyone is so very excited about the next couple of weeks.