after the glorious start to my day of shaving my legs I came back to the hostel to work my first ever front desk shift.  It went well despite the quick and dirty training session last night.  It has helped me to understand this place as a hostel business and not just a garden with some guests.  I can see now that it has a good reputation and that people really enjoy coming here and that helps to instill some pride in what I’m doing. 

I was thankful to be done with the shift by noon because the girls were headed to Espanola to attend some summer solstice Kundalini yoga peace walk organized by an ashram. It sounded really intriguing so I went.  The experience as a whole was great, the peace walk part was a little weird, but what do you expect.  First off we got lost and wound up at the actual ashram, which was really kind of cool.  Then we had to back track a minute and go 8 miles down a very bumpy dirt road to this totally random huge tent/event center in the middle of the desert. The energy of the place was really good - everyone was really “blissed out” as Sara would say.  But we were all fairly unanimous that the concept of the organized religion feel of it - the Sek religion - was a little weird.  They all were wearing white with turbans and lots of chanting and singing and canned music.  Maybe we would have been more into it if we’d been there from the beginning, but we kinda just showed up and started on this peace walk with out any comprehension of the meaning behind it.  But they had some Native American drummers and traditional spiritual practices going on and they blessed us as we walked through a pool of water which was the most authentic part of the whole deal. 

I became famished all of the sudden so we loaded back in the car and drove back the 8 miles to Espanola. The drive was beautiful.  The way the light was spilling across the valley as it set behind the mountains was incredible. I’m really starting to fall in love with this place.  Dinner was Mexican food, per my request.  I hadn’t had good Mexican food in a while and was seriously craving it.  It was delicious and we split a pitcher of Sangria to boot. 

an hour drive back and then straight to bed.