Eight lovely ladies descended upon the chateau this week – two of them were the creative workshop leaders – a documentarian and a cake creator! Two of the guests were besties since they were 15 and two of the guests were a couple, so I wondered if the group would splinter off into cliques. However, they did a great job interacting with each other in a beautiful way that created a lot of friendships among strangers.
Unfortunately, the van (“Vango”) wasn’t up for making new friends. The day before the group arrived, we discovered a coolant leak which meant that I had to quickly fill the radiator with coolant and drive like a bat out of hell to get to the train station before all of it leaked out and then repeat to get home. When I took her into the shop she also desperately needed a brake job, so we had to leave her there for a bit of a stay. We are going to be able to pick her up before the last group of guests arrive!
The heat has definitely broken, and we have quickly entered into fall. I finally had to break into my bag for a pair of jeans and sweatshirt! There have been a few rainstorms and thunderstorms that were beautiful. The full moon and the lunar eclipse were both obscured by the clouds, but she shone bright the day before and after.
This week the group went to the winery and the thermal baths for their outings and had some fun workshops. The cake creator took the group through baking sponges on one day and decorating them on the second day with strawberries and flowers from the garden. Lucky for us, cake doesn’t travel well, so all the cake that didn’t get eaten during retreat was left for us! The documentarian talked through how to tell your story in interview format and took the group through a discussion on feminism and the show Bridgerton.
I held a workshop about intuition on the night of the full moon and was excited by the openness of the group. Several folks had a tarot reading and I took one guest through a past life regression. I only taught yoga one day this week. Somehow (I don’t actually remember how), I hurt my ankle enough that I am having a hard time moving it, it is bruised, stiff and swollen. I hope that the icing, elevating and arnica I am using on a regular basis will heal it up quickly to be able to teach next week.
A volunteer departed this week and we are gaining an operations consultant. It is strange to think that there will be a complete change up in the staff within the next two weeks! In addition to it being the LAST retreat next week, we will harvest the fruit trees on the property. There are apricots, pears, apples, peaches, plums, and quince (pic below). I had no idea what those were and thought that quince was a meat product. I wasn’t too far off, because it is often served in a chutney alongside meat.
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