Thank god, because it may not have worked out if we didn’t; a miss-match of travel personalities is a disappointing deal  breaker for a traveler like me. He probably didn’t realize that I was scrutinizing his travel persona, watching closely how he reacted to adverse travel situations…. well, he passed the test!

A mysterious yet hilarious role reversal took place. Back home, as Taurus-Taurus relationships would have it, I’m more of the manager of our relationship- planning things for us to do, figuring out logistics, etc; however, as I travel, I take on a new identity, leaving my planner and plans behind and pretending that I know the time by looking at the sun. I’m carefree, never blissfully unaware, but I can jump right into a travel situation.

My boyfriend, laid-back, laissez faire about plans, normally unhesitatingly comfortable in a myriad of situations, cautiously tested the Jamaican water as he eased the reins from my hands and was eager about making plans for each new day. It was precious, really.  I fully relaxed, as I intended to, and let him take over the agenda…he even tidied up our hotel room. (what?!)

We traded roles while traveling; it was strange, but it worked, and we easily fell into our new rythmn.

One of the biggest things we have in common is our love for food and drink. We are hard-core foodies. As our food came, we both became dead silent, our heads dropping to our plates while we gnawed at our chicken and fries (this could be because we were always hungry by the time we ate, and the chicken was always so damn delicious, or we both wanted to finish first so the other wouldn’t pick off our plate).

I don’t want to say that we forgot about each other while we ate….but we would both become preoccupied having taste-bud affairs with each new style of chicken.

After devouring, we would look at each other and resume chatter, and when it got be around 5:30, we would watch the intense, orange sun dip behind Negril’s mellow, clear water that you could see straight to the bottom of.

On our journey, we weeded through the scattered throngs of Rastafarians selling marijuana (no pun intended). My personal favorite was an old man with his dreads caputured on top of his head with a drab, yellow fabric who pointed prestigiously at the marijuana pin on his shirt as if this somehow made him the official seller of marijuana. “If you need any __________.” (Insert any of the following terms: marijuana, weed, da bush, da Bob Marley, ganja, da herb mon, da green, da smoke, da grass.)

We pondered philosophical questions about illicit drugs….. How does everyone get it? How do they make money selling it, if every other Jamaican is selling it? Is there a hierarchy with a man at the top?…..

Although many travelers felt pestered by the Jamaicans always coming up and offering something, my boyfriend and I, who have very outgoing and friendly personalities ourselves, always made a point to talk to everyone who offered us a greeting, after all, it is part of Jamaican culture to be very friendly and helpful. I have always found this sense of easy sociability to be refreshing; we were both bothered by bougie foreigners who lifted their noses and turned their heads at a friendly Jamaican saying hello.

We we enthralled by performers, whether it was aged Jamaican men serenading us on the beach or cliff divers, who had jumped from these heights so many times they no longer felt the weightless, tingly sensation in their stomachs.

Although we’re both very frugal with money, we could justify indulging in top-notch Piña Coladas and countless Red Stripes, a refreshing Jamaican lager.

And how could we not partake in the fresh fruit? Every day on the beach, the fruit lady’s high pitch voice with trilled r’s became a recurring melody. “FRRROOOOOOOOOT!”

As it turns out, we were also both inspired by the same man- a crossing guard; he helped us cross the street everyday with a big smile on his face. One day we asked him, how is your day going? He answered with a radiant look on his face and said, “Oh man, I am enjoying it sooooo much!” Needless to say, he is the reason why I love traveling- meeting people who are so enthused with life in its simplest form.  He’s the type of person that makes you forget about the hustlers, the rip off’s, the fake cab drivers.

It is a pleasure to travel with someone who appreciates the same understated luxuries and is drawn to the same inspiringly ordinary souls.

I am thankful that I have a boyfriend who is open to experiences and revels in the occurances of travel just as much as I do. We enjoyed our Jamaican vacation and discovered that we travel so well together we may just have to apply for the amazing race.

What have been your travel duo experiences? Please feel free to share your own (best/worst) experiences traveling with a significant other!

I felt tensions heighten in the kitchen. As a 5^th generation Anise Cookie connoisseur, I felt the pressure to help figure this out, though it would be hard to tell where we went wrong; this capricious recipe came down to an exact science. It required impeccably exact steps with hours of specific preparation days in advance. I thought we might not salvage these 4 batches. However, after the oven reached homeostasis, after more flour was kneaded in, and after the finicky ingredients calmed down, the dough was recovered after our first few failed baking attempts.

The ingredients present in Anise Cookies are what make most normal cookies delicious: butter, milk, flour, eggs, and sugar. However, drams of anise oil are what give our anise cookies their strong, pungent flavor. (Yes, our old, tattered recipe in typewriter font really does call for drams.)

Not to mention, the recipe calls for chemicals- specifically ammonium carbonate, an ingredient used in many traditional German recipes as a leavening agent. Ammonium Carbonate, also know as Baker’s Ammonia, Hartshorn, or Hirschhorn Salz (German), precedes baking soda and baking powder, and gives the cookies their light, airy thickness. The disadvantages of using ammonium carbonate are that it’s hard to find, and it’s rather undesirable to become lightheaded and pass out while baking; it has a very stong, chemical smell (I wouldn’t recommend taking a whiff out of the bottle up close).

The ammounium carbonate powder is dissolved in warm milk, and eventually its sharp smell is overpowered by the Anise oil, which gives the cookies their stimulating smell and treasured taste and sends surges of nostalgia through the hearts and mouths of my family members.

Once we’re in the zone, we operate together smoother than a well oiled machine. Several hands roll out a ball of dough with rolling pins, cut shapes with traditional metal cookie-cutters, roll the extra back into a ball, and repeat until we are left with very few scraps. This year, the trays were popped into one of three ovens, which must be watched carefully; as my Uncle Dave said, there’s about a 30 second window from undercooked to burnt.

The assembly line continues with the icing brigade who frosts the cooled cookies with pastel colored icing and tops them off with an array of sprinkles, red hots, and chocolate bits. At my aunt and uncles house, we had space to lay the cookies out on a long table; however, older family members recall my great Aunt Lois, the Anise Cookie guru,  lining every millimeter of free space in her tiny house with drying cookies.

After this years full day extravaganza, this year we ended up with about 700 cookies, which are shipped to other family members and, of course, eaten quickly by all of us.

The depressing part is, we hand-make all these beautiful cookies with an abundance of love and… nobody else likes them! These strong Anise cookies have a flavor similar to black licorice which makes most people cringe when they try them and throw the rest of the cookie away, politely. That’s ok, more for us!

Year after year, I enjoy my family’s company while we work together to create this once a year delicacy.  I enjoy these scrumptious anise morsels from the tin until every last crumb is gone. This has been such a special bonding event for the family, especially this year, since  all the aunts, uncles, cousins, sibilings, and grandparents were gathered together. I know I will continue to take part in this beautiful tradition of making these beautiful little cookies.

We (the other volunteers and I) worked hands-on at the farm with Max Myers, one of the current leaders in the field of permaculture. He made this information digestible to us, so I owe him credit for my current knowledge of the subject.

What is permaculture you say? Permaculture is grounded in several principals: everything is connected to everything else, everything has more than one function, and the needs of one thing can always be filled by another.

The overarching premise is a symbiosis with everything around us, and turning problems into solutions while expending the least amount of energy and creating functional, diverse ecosystems.

Permaculture is rooted in natural cycles, and it uses basic tools and culturally appropriate material to create sustainable habitats for humans and the environment. Human habitats catered to specific environments create empowered, healthy, and self sufficient individuals and communities. It’s a beautiful fusion of design and ecology, and it creates an ease and flow for all systems involved, as it doesn’t yank or strain any one system.

Merriam Webster may put it as “an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems.”

While many have the notion that “going green” is difficult and requires more time and effort than necessary, I found the solutions encountered through a permaculture lens to be profoundly… basic.

Modeling our human-made settlements after the natural ecosystem of our environment, so that everything can flourish, is just so intuitive, so… un-American. After all, it seems we will do anything possible to avoid simplicity and ease.

My experience with permaculture in Costa Rica reminded me of some radically simple solutions:

- Growing and harvesting our own food. We grew a variety of food and spices at the farm: ginger, beans, vanilla, potatoes, all spice, papaya, lemongrass, mangoes, cinnamon, you name it. We blended up fresh almonds to make almond milk, and created our own chocolate from harvesting cacao.

-Creating a biodigestor for scrap food. In the biodigestor, scrap foods will ferment and produce a gas, which can power other areas of living: cooking, lighting, etc.

-Digging swales for maximized water flow. Enhancing the natural routes in which water already flows, and growing food along these routes, allows for the best possible use of water.

-Composting. Food Scraps can be composted to create rich fertilizer for plants and gardens. (As you can see, a common theme of permaculture is taking waste and converting it to new sources.)

If permaculture lived inside the box, it would look like a very complex equation between plants and animals and humans per square inch of land in order to equal complete sustainability and synchronicity.

But often we don’t see that nature already lays this foundation for us. Exhibit A: The vanilla vine needs shade and likes to climb, and cacao trees provide the perfect girth and height for the vine, creating the perfect symbiotic relationship between chocolate and vanilla. The opponents of the inevitable first date question grow together. Who knew?

Max continually reminded us that with permaculture, nothing is impossible, our only limits lie in the mind, and he used this specific example:

We cannot feed everybody in the world. (False!) 11% of the worlds rooftops could provide all the food for everyone in the world. Permaculture screams, WAKE UP! Lets utilize space and resources, and grow food on top of the rooftops! Nature provides us everything we need, problems are solutions, done.

I find that the principals of permaculture can not only be applied to nature, but the way in which we live. As we are constantly careening in and out of each others lives, we must remember that we are connected to everything else, and the more diverse webs we create, the better.  Most importantly, we have all the solutions, and in order to find these solutions, we must first be mindful and embrace simplicity and abundance.

[I traveled to Costa Rica with Volunteers for Peace (VFP). To read more about VFP, check out my previous blog post http://wordsofawanderer.com/2012/03/08/volunteers-for-peace/ or visit their website at http://www.vfp.org/ ]