Ilana in the Cloud Forest

Good morning, and happy long weekend! I hope you are all doing well.  I've certainly had a busy last couple of weeks. But where to begin is the challenge.  Well, I suppose I'll start by telling you about the event I organized and hosted yesterday. That seems like a good place to start. Around Tuesday of this past week, I was thinking to myself and doing a bit of investigating on the internet about what I could do to promote more awareness about the biodiversity of Neblinas. You all know that I am truly in awe of the biodiversity here, and biodiversity monitoring is something that I have dedicated my time to since moving to the community. Well, with the drought, there has not been as much to monitor, and I've become a bit lax about my efforts. For this reason, I was perusing the internet to see what such actions could be taken to promote more biodiversity conservation and awareness and one such action was celebrating International Day of Biodiversity, which happens to be cel...

Hello everyone! I didn't get the chance to write to you all this weekend, but I couldn't let the week go by without telling you about the awesome adventure I had and sharing some of my insights about living in Mexico and the importance of the work we as volunteers are doing in our communities. As I mentioned, I just got back from an incredible adventure that took me from Neblinas all the way across the state of Querétaro to the town of San Pablo, Amealco. My journey started Friday morning at 5am, when, per usual, Miguel picked me up at my house and we began our loop around the community, stopping for people looking to catch a ride out of Neblinas. But, given that Friday was Mother's Day (in Mexico they celebrate Mother's Day on the 10th of May), no one was out waiting and Miguel decided that he couldn't take me out of the community afterall, given that he was going to spend more than he would make if he went. Luckily, one of the other local drivers in the town, Porf...

Hello, everyone! This week's newsletter is coming to you a day early because tomorrow I'll be heading to Xilitla with my host family to do some shopping and exploring. But I wanted to make sure I updated you on what's been happening up here in the cloud forest. The last couple of weeks have been both productive and relaxing. Since my event, work has been picking up momentum, with more projects and more activities piling up.  I've started focusing my efforts on the high school, working with the students to help them implement various sustainability projects including a school garden, a bottle recycling program, tree planting, and more. This week, I worked with the oldest students to start composts at their school, first teaching them about the theory and best practices of composting and then helping them start their own compost bins. Hopefully with some funding, we will be able to implement larger scale climate and sustainability projects such as a climate monitoring sys...