Learning to Live Peace: A very exciting year! Marriage... House... Sri Lanka!

On June 9th, 2016 at the Seattle Municipal Courthouse, Logan and I were officially joined in matrimony. We had a beautiful short ceremony with our own vows in the presence of one of my sisters and Logan's brother.

In order to include our families and our many friends all over the country and world without having them fly to meet us, we decided to ask that people who would like to contribute and help us celebrate this wonderful time in our lives instead make a physical page that we could include in a book I created. We have received many beautiful and thoughtful pages already and are so thankful to all those that have contributed in this way and through our various celebrations and website. For those of you that would still like to send us a page, please submit your address via this link so we can send you a page to complete. Once all the pages are collected, we'll bound the book with a ribbon on the left.

Our Wedding Book

After the wedding, we got to work on building our little house... We bought the trailer in the spring and did a lot of research and some forestry work at that time. We really got started building in early August when we started the framing. From there, we spent all day everyday building! We often worked 10-12 hours a day because we knew we needed to get it weathered in and ready for the Pacific Northwest winter (rain). We were actually lucky and the rains barely affected us during the building process! After it all, we think she's ready - all the exterior wood is cedar with environmentally friendly wood preservatives called "Eco Wood Treatment" and "Seal Once." Our windows and door are all double-paned and reclaimed - all flashed in multiple ways to send water away from the house. The roof is galvanized steel with hidden fasteners. The roof is also vented, the whole house is caulked and we've got our wonderful friends looking after her :) The box on the tongue of the house is for storage. The interior has a sleeping loft and a storage loft built in, but although we have the interior space all planned out, that is all that has been done so far inside. She took her "first steps" last week less than a mile over some rough terrain with no problem at all! Now, she's got her wheels off and is sitting pretty for the winter... SO MANY Thanks to all the amazing people that have helped us along the way - we've had many people contribute materials, labor, moral support and tons of building expertise. We don't know how we would have done it without you!

Our completed tiny house exterior

The back side

The front side has the most windows, so we can point that side where we want solar gain (or not)!

Test firing our tiny wood stove made for sailboats! We're going to be perfectly toasty when we get this installed!

She came a LONG way in 2 months! There were SO many steps and SO much learning...

Even though we are very excited about finishing our tiny abode, we are taking a hiatus from building to experience another extraordinary adventure!

.... Here's where we'll be living for the next 8 months!

Sinharaja Forest Reserve in Sri Lanka

Why Sri Lanka - you may be wondering...

This summer, Logan and I (and a friend of ours - Blair) accepted post-graduate fellowship positions through Yale to get a couple of projects started at a research field station adjacent to the Sinharaja National Forest Reserve, where we will also be living. Their professor has been working there for over 30 years and has developed the station, the projects, and the funding. The projects will be to start a native tree arboretum and to research, design, and plant a traditional home garden demonstration. The idea of these projects is to have a site for researchers, politicians, etc. to visit that will help them better understand the plants and growing methods of the area. Everything will be labeled and there will be resources in English to help people learn. The home garden is interesting because people there have been growing them for thousands of years and it is important to try to glean and document the extensive knowledge that they have about what plants grow together, how to propagate them, what they are used for, etc. So, we don't know how much we'll get done, but I suspect we'll be able to build a nursery and collect and start propagating some plants, get the land cleared for planting, do interviews and work on design. The Sinharaja National Forest Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage site - the last large virgin forest in the country. There is a ton of wildlife including monkeys, elephants, leopards, boar, lots of tropical birds and amphibians and only 25 households in the nearby village. The wildlife may actually outnumber the people here! ...not to mention the plants... There is no internet out there - we'll have to travel 45 minutes to use it in a nearby town... We'll have a phone, but it's funny to think we will be even more remote than when we were in Peace Corps! Still, I'll make sure to get some blog posts out from time to time when we do make it in to the 'big town.' We will have a particularly unique experience in Sri Lanka being so remote... Sri Lanka has a population of over 20 million people and is only as big as the state of West Virginia! So, as you can imagine, the city will be a very different environment. Additionally, the people where we will live will primarily be Sinhalese (the most populous ethnic group in Sri Lanka) and Buddhist. We are very excited to experience and be immersed in another new culture. We will attempt to learn as much Sinhala (language) as we can because although people in the city speak English, we have heard that it is very uncommon for the people of the village... and we leave Saturday! It's been a whirlwind year for us, but while it's been busy - we couldn't be happier!