Author: rcragun
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Plenitud – Puerto Rico Trip – day 5
This was our first of two excursions during the service trip. I voted (well, strong-armed) the students to do this excursion over some of the others – it was a trip to El Yunque National Forest. It’s the only tropical rainforest in the United States. We got up early and hit the road, as it…
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Plenitud – Puerto Rico Trip – day 4
This day was like the previous one, following the standard schedule. But we did have our first novel activity that the staff arranged because we were stuck in the Learning Center in the afternoons: Salsa lessons. They knew a young woman who was quite good at Salsa who came out this night and gave us…
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Plenitud – Puerto Rico Trip – day 3
This was a pretty typical day on the farm. We got up at 6:00. I read at the gazebo while some students did yoga. We ate breakfast, then went out to work on projects – the ones I mentioned in the previous post (e.g., road maintenance, planting, weeding, etc.). We’d usually work from about 8:00…
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Plenitud – Puerto Rico Trip – day 2
The staff at Plenitud are, well, they’re hippies. And I’m totally cool with that. In another life, I probably would be too. Anyway, I only mention that because it helps explain some of what we did during the time we were there. Like, for instance, every morning at 6:00 am one of the staff members…
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Plenitud – Puerto Rico Trip – day 1
I was invited to go with UT students on another service trip. This time we went to Puerto Rico to live, work, and learn on an eco-farm called Plenitud. The farm is run using permaculture principles which, in a nutshell, boil down to utilizing sustainable agricultural principles based on natural ecosystems. For instance, permaculture principles…
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launching Toren
One of Toren’s favorite activities when jumping on the trampoline is for me to launch him really high. We used to call this “skyrocketing” someone when I was growing up. The video isn’t great because I was filming it; I’ll try to get better footage in the future:
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I knew this day would come
I think every kid eventually learns a song like this and parents wonder how and why. Anyway, I overheard Toren saying this in the back of the car and had to capture it on film. He explains where he heard it and illustrates that he obviously has no idea what he’s saying:
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hiking in Colt Creek State Park
Toren and I did a little hiking a few Sundays back at a new park. The layout was odd and the maps they had didn’t align with the actually trails as far as I could tell, but we did get to hike around a lake (Toren made it most of the way) and actually saw…
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roadsideamerica.com visits
In addition to our occasional hikes, I decided to start visiting some of the strange roadside attractions in the Tampa area. Here are a few of the first places we visited. A local RV dealer decided to use a few old Airstream trailers to create a work of art next to I-4 called Airstream Ranch:…
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Toren’s puppy
Yeah, Toren doesn’t have a real puppy; never will. But he decided his robot puppy needed some water: