I'm trying to figure out how to say everything I am currently learning about in Spanish, to keep my skills up. "Labranza minima" is minimum tillage, which is what my advisor has a grant for.

I wish all I had to do all day was gather fruits and vegetables, and walk around and help whoever needed extra help. Everything with careers and money is so silly and made-up. I don't even see how agriculture can be sustainable, to be perfectly honest. Especially the way it's done here. If you don't put your waste back in, then it's not a true cycle. You can get some nitrogen-fixing with legumes, but it doesn't make up for everything you are taking out. You have to close the loop at some point, you can't keep taking. It won't work in the end. We should at least figure out how to cycle waste before we suppose it could be sustainable.

I'm not feeling that discouraged, I'm not feeling depressed. I just can't pretend this isn't silly when it is. I'm not particularly good at pretending, but we all have to do it so much, that I still often do. The first week, people kept asking me things I didn't know the answer to. I felt like I was supposed to know, but I wasn't sure how. So I just said that I had no idea, and lots of people thought that was funny. Now it's been awhile, and it looks bad if I keep saying that. So I make up answers and people seem satisfied. I figure I'm doing as well as anyone else.

I am completely alone in the apartment right now, except for this little plant someone gave me (the girl I had been living with). She gave it to a co-worker, who didn't water it, and figured it was dead. She said I could have it and see if it lived. When she gave it to me, I was having a conversation with her boyfriend about animism and other things. I basically said that the plant had a degree of sentience (those obviously very different from our own) and that I cared about the plant a lot. He didn't know what to make of what I was saying, because I was able to speak with him at his level of logic, and then I was making (to him) logically absurd statements. Normally I wouldn't bother discussing such things, but he is largely Buddhist and believes that everything is essentially connected.

Anyway, I don't know what this plant needs, but I attend to it everyday, and it not only came back to life right away, but is prospering incredibly. I don't care if it a coincidence, it doesn't matter. I'm so happy it's here and doing so well. That's all that matters in the end.