I (heart) Buttons

(English version below)

Ich bin unter die Button-Designer dieser Welt gegangen und habe drei erste Designs fertiggestellt.
Seit drei Jahren träume ich nun davon Buttons, Sticker und irgendwann dann vielleicht auch T-Shirts usw. zu designen und seit dem habe ich einige Ideen und Skizzen gesammelt. Jetzt habe ich endlich den ersten Schritt in diese Richtung getan.
Da ich Transparenz mag: Mit dem Gewinn, den ich mit den Buttons (und meinem Hoop-Business) mache, bezahle ich meine Miete und mein Essen, investiere es in weitere Buttons (und Hoops) und der Rest wird zur Seite gelegt für das Reise-Abenteuer, das ich derzeit plane.
Desweiteren gehen 10% des Gewinns an den Antitierbenutzungshof!
Mehr Infos zu dem Hof findet ihr hier.

Ich hoffe, dass euch meine Buttons gefallen und wenn ja, dass ihr diesen Link mit anderen teilt :)
Ein Button kostet 1€ + Porto 0,55€
Falls ihr einen Shop habt und meine Buttons dort verkaufen möchtet, könnt ihr auch größere Mengen bei mir bestellen mit einem speziellen Angebot abhängig von der Menge.

Bestellung via Email: loveforfruits@gmail.com
(ein Shop ist in Planung)

//

I've joined the button-designers of this world and have designed the first three buttons of my own.
For three years now I've been dreaming about designing buttons, stickers and maybe one day also t-shirts and other stuff. Since then I have been collecting quite a few ideas and sketches and finally I have taken the first step into this direction.
I like transparency, so: The money I make from this (and my hoop-business) goes into paying my rent and my food, into the production of new buttons (and hoops) and the rest will be put aside for the travelling adventure that I am currently planning.
Also I'm donating 10% from the profit to the Antitierbenutzungshof (farm against the explotation of animals).
You can find more information about the farm here.

I hope you like the designs and if so, share this link with others :)
They are 1 € a piece + postage 0,55€
If you have a shop and would like to sell my buttons, you can also order a bulk with a special offer according to the amount of buttons.

Order via email: loveforfruits@gmail.com
(a shop is in planning stage)

Vegan Hase, grün

Vegan Hase, orange

Flower Power

Education without borders - A closer look...

I have started to see the western education and schooling agenda very critically and I would recommend to everybody to ask oneself: Why should the western education system and the western knowledge be so great and "superior" that "we" would have to spread it in the whole wide world?
Are western people all surprisingly happy? Does the western system work perfectly without harming anyone? And even if that would be the case - would that allow the western people to force all the other peoples to live by the same rules and in the same way?

Yes, I said "force". Now many people would argue that the west does not force anybody, that other peoples and cultures would want to learn how to read and speak English and so on.
Is that really the case? I suggest to take a deeper look.

So what is the west actually doing? And let me say, by "the west" I mean mostly the 1%, the corporations, the money-makers, the head of the game - and of course all the people that work for them not seeing the big picture yet, so the 99%.
First the west goes into regions where people live in small, sustainable communities in harmony with nature and they call the people there "uncivilized". The west robs them of their food, their water, their land. So the people have to start work for the west to sustain themselves, because the way they have sustained themselves for thousands of years doesn't work anymore, the west has taken it all. Now they are dependant on the west for work, for "generous" donations etc.
But that's still not enough. They have to be "civilized", they have to be "schooled". Why? Because they have to be good workers. It is as simple as that.
So the west tells them, that they would be dumb, they wouldn't know anything, that their way of life would be bad and the western way of life would be good. The west does this until the "uncivilized" people start to actually believe that they would be uncivilized. From then on it seems to be easy. The "uncivilized" people are now fighting themselves to get the western education and the western teachers go into these countries believing they would be doing something good. They have the best intentions, yes. But are they really helping? Or are they not just strengthening the dependency of more and more peoples on the western system and thus making the 1% richer and more powerful?

These indigenous peoples have adapted to their surroundings, to the nature they live in, they very often have a vast oral tradition, they have a huge knowledge about how to grow ones food, how to build a house, how to live sustainably so the future generations can survive too. They have rich cultures, full of music and art. They have a strong sense of spirituality...
I do not want to idealise indigenous peoples, but there are certain facts:
- They manage to deal with topics the west has problems with: sustainability, making communal decisions, living self-sufficiently.
- Every way of life is unique and nobody would want other peoples just marching in and forcing there way of life unto ones own.

Again, I do not want to say that everything about indigenous peoples would be perfect. But neither is everything perfect in the western world - far from that actually.
So who are we to just force our education and with that our way of life on other peoples and who are we to be so arrogant as to think that the western knowledge is worth more than the non-western knowledge?
How could a written tradition and with that the need to write and read be worth more or less than an oral tradition and with that the need to have a huge amount of knowledge and wisdom in ones head?
So, who are we to judge other traditions?

Imperialism still exist, it just goes through the backdoor now. 

And the missionaries are now teachers who are preaching the western life to "those who have to be saved".

In my opinion, we as humans and earthlings should work together and learn from each other instead of forcing each other to learn to live in one specific way. Every culture has something to offer, we all could learn so much. Or in the words of Sitting Bull:

Documentaries about this topic:

Schooling the World - A White Man's Last Burden

I highly recommend this documentary!

""Schooling the World" takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply troubling look at the role played by modern education in the destruction of the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures."

To find out more about the film and how you can get involved, visit http://schoolingtheworld.org  

Ancient Futures - Learning from the Ladakh

"An important and interesting documentary based on the same named book by Helena Norberg-Hodge. This documentary describes the untouched land of Ladakh, when Helena first arrived in 1975, on how everyone is so happy and contented. In the "olden" world, Ladakhis women enjoyed high social status and families and communities ties were very strong.

Then the documentary moves over to showing how the peaceful land of Ladakh changed socially, ecologically and economically when "development" set in. Ladakhis starts to enjoy the comfort and convenience of modernization, at the same time, increasing greed, intolerance, unemployment, inflation, pollution etc. set in and is threatening the ecological balance and social harmony which were maintained over the past centuries.

The film and book raise important questions about the whole notion of progress, and explores the root causes of the problems faced by a highly industrialized society to create awareness.

Is this 'development' truly progress?"

Back again

Haven't written in a while.. I wasn't sure where to go with this blog and where to go in my life. I was thinking about that a lot these past months and I came up with some ideas about where I want to go and what I want to do. And even some accomplishments that brought me a few steps closer to my dreams ;)
I am now in Berlin for one and half years travelling only rarely within Germany to visit friends and family and that drives me more and more crazy, that I haven't been "really" travelling for so long..
I need travelling. I need to see the world out there, get inspired by it, experience adventures, meet different cultures and languages and people. That is a basic need of mine and without expressing it, I am unhappy.
But I have other needs as well. I need the means for food and clothing and fun stuff, I need some kind of home, and if I want to travel, I need some kind of method of transportation.
I also need to express myself creatively. And well, there are still some more things I need.. nature, information, spirituality etc...

So how to juggle all these needs? That has been my assignment in life for the past three years and will still be for some time...
One thing has been especially difficult to even come up with an idea for that could actually work: Combining travelling and complete flexibility with sustaining myself. After many ideas that were more long term and that would not bring about any money in the near future, I finally had one great idea that would actually bring together creativity, fun, fitness and earning some money on the road:
Hoop Dance! Yes, Hoop Dance!
I totally fell in love with dancing with a hula hoop, I love giving workshops and I have fun building hula hoops and taping them in all kind of colors.
I can sell my hoops in any flee market or just on the road, I can give workshops in whatever town I'm at and I can do street art with Hoop Dance in any city. It seems perfect and I hope it really is..

You can check out my Hoop Dance blog here:

http://hoopilicious-mango.blogspot.de/

So that's my dream: Travelling and earning my money with Hoop Dance.
But there are still some things that have to be done...
I need a car. For all the hoops I want to sell and also because it is so much more easier travelling with a car instead of hitch-hiking and the many other ways of travelling aren't even possible because of my dog..
But first I needed my drivers license - and I have taken this step towards my dreams already. On the 31st of July I passed the test and got my license.
So now I need a bus. That task is not an easy one.. To find one that matches my needs.. But I'm on it.
And the next thing is to save some money to be on the safe side. To earn money on the road might not work right away and I don't want to return too soon because of money problems.. Also I need some money in the beginning to invest into making the car nice and comfy, buying stuff I'll need on the road like a solar panel etc..
I think, that when these things stand, I can finally go back on the road. And I really hope that can be soon, but I have no idea how long it'll take me to save up the money and find a nice car..

And about this blog: I decided to use this blog as my thoughts & travel blog. Having all these different topics like recipes and travel and art in one blog is not my thing.. So I'll be separating it some time, when I have time off from all my work on the Hoop Dance Business ;)

See you soon and have fun following your dreams ;)

Pictures from Beneficio/Spain Part 3 // Bilder aus Beneficio/Spanien Teil 3

Here's the final part of my pictures from Beni. There more pics from the actual community  ;) Hope you'll enjoy!

Hier ist der letzte Teil meiner Bilder aus Beni. Diesmal mit mehr Bildern von der eigentlichen Kommune ;) Hoffe, sie gefallen euch!

Shaggy and Luna

That's what happens every winter with all the rain and wind...

Old Beneficio

Friends...

A centipede, their bites can be very hurtful.

My home for nine months :)

And my home from the other side.

Luna and Maurizio

"My" shower :)

A cob house almost finished.

The eucalyptos forrest.

The car park.

The pool filled with spring water.

On the top left in the backround you can see the biggest waterfall in Beni.

A dome in the backround.

What do you want to be?

Well here's a post about veganism again. I know, I said just in my last post, that the topic of veganism will be moved to the new blog, but I don't want to talk here about recipes, and not even about animal rights or our health. I want to talk about the inevitability of a vegan world.

I just watched this video on youtube and came to a realization. This realization made me more confident about veganism and its future and it lifted a weight from me. I am now confident, that veganism IS the future. Probably not because a majority goes vegan because of a personal choice, because of the animals or their health. I think most people need a lot of time to make these connections and many may never. Veganism is the future because there is no alternative. People will be forced to go vegan, because the way we eat and live right now is not sustainable for very much longer. There will be a tremendous change in all areas because we are now speeding towards a wall. Either we hit it and destroy ourselves, or we manage to change the direction in time. And I think we will. I think we are not suicidal, we just have a slow reaction time, and we are probably also short sighted and just begin to see the wall. But we do want live. Like any species, we have deep inside us survival instincts. We, like all species, want our species to continue, and if we personally wouldn't make it, then at least our species had to.

We have to change, we will be forced to at some point. So, why not change now already? Why not go vegan now, because we want to, instead of being forced to do it later? We now can make a conscious choice out of it, we now can be pioneers. Later on we'll be just following the masses..

So, what do you want to be? A pioneer, or a follower?

Pictures from Beneficio/Spain Part 2 // Bilder aus Beneficio/Spanien Teil 2

(Deutscher Text unten)

Haven't written anything for some time now, because I was working on some other ideas. Now I'm back with some news :) I decided to seperate the topics of this blog in two, maybe more, different blogs. In this blog I'm going to concentrate on alternatives way of living, travell journals, and articles about life in communes etc., and I'll be moving all the articles about veganism and raw foodism including the recipies to the new blog Vegan Deliciousness .
I hope that's helping with the clarity of the blogs and I wish you a lot of fun with the second part of the series "Pictures from Beneficio" :) I took the pictures of the second and soon to come third part during November 2010 and April 2011. In this second part there are mostly pictures of the nature there, in the third part you'll see more pics of the actual cummunity, the buildings there etc.

P.S.: By the way, it's going to be more bilingual on both blogs from now on, so that my English-speaking friends can also understand something ;)

Habe jetzt schon länger nichts mehr geschrieben, da ich an ein paar anderen Ideen gearbeitet habe. Jetzt melde ich mich mit Neugikeiten zurück :) Ich habe mich entschieden, die Themen, die bisher in diesem Blog vorkamen, auf zwei, vielleicht auch mehr, verschiedene Blogs aufzuteilen. In diesem Blog werde ich mich von nun an auf alternative Lebensweisen, Reiseberichte, Berichte über das Kommunenleben etc. konzentrieren und alles zum Thema Veganismus und Rohkost samt allen Rezepten wird in nächster Zeit zum neuen Blog Vegan Deliciousness umziehen.
Ich hoffe, dass dies die Übersichtlichkeit der Blogs erleichtert und wünsche Euch jetzt viel Spaß mit dem zweiten Teil der Bilderserie aus Beneficio :) Ich habe die Bilder des zweiten und bald nachfolgenden dritten Teils zwischen November 2010 und April 2011 aufgenommen. In diesem zweiten Teil sind hauptsächlich Bilder von der Natur dort, im dritten Teil werden dann mehr Bilder von der eigentlichen Kommune, den Behausungen dort etc. folgen.


P.S.: Es wird übrigens hier und auf dem anderen Blog in Zukunft auch zwei-sprachiger zugehen, damit meine Englischprachigen Freunde auch etwas verstehen ;)

Fruit salad with a view ;)

My cape goosberry plants getting big and with first fruits :)

Luna with her friend Shaggy

On the way out of Beni going to Orgiva.

On the way to Orgiva.

Fig tree in autumn.

Forbidden fruits..

Almost in Orgiva.

I heart cherimoyas :)

Luna's catching up on some reading.. ^^

Luna's painting a little bit for her mama ;D

Two rainbows over Beni :)

Luna with her friend Cookie

Spring is coming, the almond trees are blossoming..

Surprising snow fall..

A few hours later all the snow was gone already and the next day was sunny.

Spring's great :)

Olive trees full with loads of olives.

One of the first blossoming flowers.

Almonds are coming :)

My lettuce is gowing :)

Sweet fig leaves are grabbing for the sun.

Orgiva in spring.