After living abroad for nearly a year, I'm excited to return home to share all the amazing experience I've been having and all the insperational things I've been learning.

In September of last year, I flew to Hawaii and met with Malia Akutagawa from Sust`aina`ble Molikai'i and members of PRI USA. Through this experience I fell in love with the island culture and was deeply inspired by the beauty and simplicity of native Hawaiian systems of land mangment and sustainablity.

Shortly after leaving the islands I traveled to Australia and spent 3 months learning from Geoff Lawton, Nick Huggins, Paul Taylor, Tim Braker, Byron Joel and many other amazing teachers, students and new friends discovered through the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. The PRI internship with Geoff Lawton was a complete immersion in permaculture and gave me an even more insperation to contintue on my journey to learn and teach permaculture.

This brought me to a small village in central Thailand where my journey of discovery would really begin to take on new and exciting forms. With the help of Christian Shearer and others at Terra Genesis International, myself, three other managers, 9 interns and a wealth of help from the community and other permaculture centers in Thailand, we founded Rak Tamachat (Thai for "Love and Concerve Nature") Permaculture farm and edcuation center. Slowly we've begun the process of transforming 50 acres of rice and corn monocrops into a fully integrated permaculture system all while establishing our community and teaching Permaculture Design (PDCs) and Introductary courses.

It's been an amazingly wild and inspirational ride! Now I'm excited to return home to Austin for a brief vacation and an oportunity to share all these amazing adventures with my friends, family and community there. In August, I will conduct my very first full on Permaculture Design Course. This is very exciting for me! I've had the opportunity to teach aside amazing teachers such as Christian Shearer and Geoffroy Godeau, this will be my very first opportunity to teach this paradigm shifting course through my own experiences.

One of the major insperations for teaching this course was to offer it as a charity to the community. I charged only what was necessary to pay for my travel, pay Creation Flame, who will be hosting the event, and pay for food and other accomodations for course participants. Any additional money earned through the course will return to various community organizations involved in helping to make it all happen. Food is Free Project, Vajra Azaya communities, Love ATX and many other amazing community organizations and contributors.

Stay tuned for other exciting updates as August draws closer!