Finding Adventure with Ryan and Brandy: Back at the Hostel in the Forest....

We arrived back at the hostel around 8:00 pm and were hoping that we hadn't missed dinner...we should not have worried! We made ourselves comfortable around the fire and joined our hostel mates in playing guitar, djembe, tambourine and maracas. (I say we, but I just watched...Ryan played guitar and djembe and sang for us) There were many talented musicians and a few who played original music. One man, Travis Andrew Taylor, played a song called "Nobody's Knockin" that everybody fell in love with. (Jesus buys him a beer in the song, but I promise it's not offensive!)
After an hour or two, we were all pretty hungry but dinner was no where in sight so we kept up the music. There were so many different types of people: a mother and her teenage son and two elementary aged daughters, a mother and father with their teenage daughter, college students, a young couple getting away from their life for a weekend, a daughter who brought her mother to the hostel for her 70th birthday, a man who manages a Home Depot in Savannah, and a couple from Titusville(next to our old hometown!)

Eventually they brought out some vegan banana bread with fig, grape and blueberry jam and also some guacamole and hummus and we passed it around the fire to calm our growling bellies.

At about midnight we heard the dinner bell, but nobody got up. Apparently, they had been fooled before and so we waited until the 2nd dinner bell before we headed into a screened building used for the dining area and got into a giant circle. It's tradition at the Hostel in the Forest to go around and say who you are and what you're thankful for. Even though I was starving, I thought this was a very nice practice and it made me feel close to this room full of strangers as we all showed our gratitude for all life has to offer.

Dinner consisted of: miso soup, curry soup, a fruit salad with apples, grapes, raspberries, fresh coconut and sunflower seeds, a vegan lasagna (really good!), lentils and french bread. Everything was really good and it went down quickly :) At the hostel, they request that everyone helps out with chores such as dishes, sweeping, cooking, etc and since I hadn't been able to help with dinner (full kitchen) I tried to go around and collect plates and silverware. Once a server, always a server!

Since it was almost 1 by this point, Ryan and I headed to bed where we found a night full of my night terrors (Someone at the door, spiders crawling on me, bugs everywhere...night terrors are when you wake up and essentially hallucinate...I get them from time to time and it freaks Ryan out every time)

(The chickens surrounded our tree house! "Wake up lazy humans")
While it was still dark out, a chorus of roosters decided to begin their morning song. There must have been 3-5 and one of them sounded like a teenage rooster whose voice would crack every time he tried to cockadoodledoo. Around 10 am (can't believe we slept that late with a constant rooster alarm going off!) we finally rolled out of bed and headed to the kitchen for some fair-trade, organic coffee that is brewed by the hostel for a small donation. (The only coffee I've ever been able to drink black...and it was good!) We took our coffee down to the lake and enjoyed the silence of the forest.

We drained our coffee and made our way to the canoes the hostel provides for guests. It's a pretty small lake so we made our way around it quickly, but it was so quiet and beautiful I could have sat out there all day!